Atso

Hi Julia,

Nice to see you today. The Pecket looks incredible, wheel problems or not! Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me, most enlighting and I hope to make use of your motor to get the N2 ready but not a 2mm finescale chassis... yet!

Thanks guys! It was great to see you both today! Julia the Pecket is just outstanding and thank you for the kind gift!

Also thanks to MikeJ for letting the J50 out briefly on NOEL, even though they were running the BR period today! A couple of pictures of the '50 on NOEL!

Also nice to see Tim again, I promise I'll call soon to finally arrange a visit!

If you're interested, I've still got my laser cut wheels somewhere. Not much good for 2mm scale (1.5mm thick material) but it would give you an indication of how they would look.

Just as another line of thought, have you thought of having the wheels laser cut? I had some test pieces done awhile ago and they seemed very good and fine. Unfortunately I've never actually used them in anger - no available tyres in N gauge. However some of the German finescale modellers use the same method to upgrade Fleischmann stock examples of which can be found here: http://www.raw-nette.de/henk/Br65Deutsch.htm

Sorry if you've already seen this page but it might prove to be a more precise route.

Well they might not be prototypical but they most certainly look the part! I do like you Gresley/Toad conversion!

Great work there! I spent an enjoyable evening looking through your blogs, not often you see a scratch build N gauge chassis.

A quick question if I may; on your pannier tank conversion which Fleischmann wheels did you use to represent the 4'8 driving wheels? I've got a couple of future projects planned for which I'd like some 4'8's with see through spokes...

Hi Tom,

That does look good. If it wasn't for the thickness of the locomotive driving wheels I would be fooled into thinking this was a much larger scale! Inspirational for us N gaugers!

Looking at the yard area it almost seems a shame to cover all that lovely scale trackwork. Do you think that a rtr track system (does Atlas do code 40 track?) would look as effective if then combined with easy track for the rest of the layout?

Hi Simon,

Shame there is to be no station at the moment. I always thought the bottlenecks between Hadley Wood and Potters Bar would be for some interesting train movements! Maybe as a later addition then?

To help your searching I've dug out my own copy of Kings Cross to Potters Bar. It is mainly a pictorial record but has some interesting photos, information and track formations in it (sadly Hadley Wood is just a dot on an OS map so no help here for a track diagram but interesting pictures no the less...).

Authors are Charlie and Jim Connor

Published by Middleton Press

ISBN: 978 1 906008 62 8

First published on 2009 so may well still be in print.

Hope this helps

Steve

Hi Simon,

Looks like you're modelling is moving southwards now! If you'd like a double track section which includes a basic station yet still retain the two tunnels at either end try Hadley Wood which is fraction further south. There are a couple of pictures both before and after the quadrupling of that section (late 1950's?) in the book 'Kings Cross to Potters Bar'. Hadley Wood would also be a slightly shorter section of line...

You'll need some quad sets now you're modelling an area which would be heavily worked by suburban services out of Kings Cross!

Great modelling there! I like the saddle tank good use of FUD as well as a Terrier chassis!

Did you do any post finishing work on the tank? The finish looks pretty smooth for a 3D print!

Excellent work! I've got one to do in N gauge at some unspecified point in the future so getting a lot of inspiration from you model!

Re shorting out the wheels, could you etch a backing piece to the profile of the spokes and somehow get that to make electrical contact with both the tire and the axle? Some form of alignment could be printed onto the wheel center to ensure all lines up as it should...

Alternatively, etch the entire wheel and solder up in layers - something I was thinking about a few years back but never got pass the armchair stage!

A quicker way of covering the wire trunks is to cover them with superglue and dip into talc. The mixture goes hard almost instantly and nicely hides the fact the trees are not made of wood!

That sounds like a design error to me, something wasnt measured or drawn correctly.

 

I was fortunate in having some great drawings of the rims so I could engineer the interference fit in, 0.1mm for both wheel-axle and wheel-rim which seems to have done the job so far. The accuracy of the printing seems to be good enough for that not to be an issue. Of course 'standard parts' i.e. parts made to a drawing (with tolerances) does help lots.

 

M

It sounds like a design error to me too. In theory the printing process is accurate enough to ensure interference fits should work as designed. I tried laser cutting some wheel centers a little while back (never did make tyres for them though) and a 0.1mm interference fit was fine for the axles... The nice thing about 3D printing is that if you make a mistake its a case of modifying the design and re-printing - only the cost of the original prints is lost and not the cost of any tooling.

Hi Missy,

They look good. Have you printed them in FUD or another material? I always wanted to print some wheels but didn't think FUD was strong enough and the other materials were not fine enough. Depending on how you get on I'll have to rethink that....

Also did you turn your own tyres?

Fantastic work Tom. Can't wait to see the fully finished version!

Love the track work as well, I'm now very tempted to have a go with Easy Track for my new layout!

I would recommend that Frosted Ultra Detail is your friend here. The White Detail material is very coarse when compared and will struggle to print details below 0.3mm. Also the print depth of FUD is finer than either of the other two requiring less post printing clean up and smoothing.

Simon, excellent work so far. I'm not a fan of Thompson locos (hence my modelling period is firmly set in the Gresley era) but I can appreciate a good project when I see one! Mr King has outdone himself with this kit and you've done a great job of applying it to a rather expensive rtr model.

Re the valve gear: I think it looks more than acceptable. Does the comet V2 gear look better? Yes but looking at your locomotive as a whole I don't think your approach detracts from it at all. Personally I would be more worried about matching the blackening of the gear to that of the coupling rods.

10/10 for effort, keep up the great work. Although I don't often post yours is a must read blog and source of inspiration for me!

Why are you relettering Silver Fox as an LMS loco? The LMS never possessed any A4's (being an LNER loco).

Looking good there! Those bogies really to look the business!

Heres a possible 4th solution http://www.lner.info/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4369&hilit=split+axle

Nice work and good reference to one of my favourite films! Bet you didn't do it in 6 minutes though but yes you can cook!!!!

Looking very good there! B) Makes me think about some other 6 wheelers that made their way into LNER stock...

Looking good Will. I've never got on with Sketchup, nice to see what can be done with it! The windows appear to be solid, have you thought about modelling them open and glaze afterwards?

I've just got some bits for Shapeways in FUD it looks very good although you can still see some of the build lines - its still a big step up for them.

Hi,

Re the Garratt; would it be possible to use a double ended motor mounted centrally and drive both chassis via the cardan shaft? The motor could be slung underneath the boiler - sorry I don't have a copy of your book but looking at the LNER Garrett it should be possible to hide a motor under the boiler...

On making a drawbar for the rebuilt Jubilee, I'd use a piece of 40thou plastikard with two holds drilled at each end. Two pieces of brass (or other metal) wire could be glued to the drawbar to provide current between the loco and tender split pins...

Just some thoughts...