Atso

Alan, I've sent you a PM on the N Gauge Forum.

Thanks Mike. If you ever decide to backdate the layout this might be able to be made available for a running turn or two as I think it would be more appropriate for the area than some of my GNR types you've let run on the original NoEL in the past.

Grrr! My ex wife's grandfather (from Nottingham funnily enough) used to use that phase around once every two minutes! It really got on my nerves but I kept the peace and used to just smile politely.

Thank you to those who post such positive comments about my D49 efforts. Clive: They are N gauge models. The locomotive body measures under 70mm in length. Tony: Thank you for your kind comments and high opinion of my bodging, I think you are the first person I've see refer to CAD design, 3D printing and scratchbuilding in the same sentence! There are two ways I could answer your question on the costs: My own methods now involves me printing my work on my own machine which is an earlier version of the one that Allan Butler uses for his figures and lamps. A litre of resin would cost somewhere around £100 which sounds a lot but each of those little D49 models used less than 6ml of resin! However, that is not factoring in the time taken for me to design the model, the time taken to print it (six hours each from memory) or the upfront costs for the printer and CAD software. My machine, while equaling the quality of Shapeway's Frosted Ultra Detail (FUD) material, couldn't hope to be used as a production machine and make any kind of livable profit out of just printing loco bodies due to the build area being insufficient to build more than one at a time. However it could be used to print masters which (after a little fettling) could be used as masters for resin and/or white metal casting - my longer term goal. However, using a commercial bureau such as Shapeways, prints can be produced at a reasonable cost. For example my K3 body and tender currently retails via Shapeways for £35.54. Most of this is the printing costs (calculated by volume of material used) with a small markup coming back to me as the designer. This works out around £4 cheaper than the white metal K3 body and tender kit I purchased around a decade ago and more or less in line with a similar size Langley white metal kit now. Obviously, when billed by volume of material used, the larger the item, the higher the cost. AJModels 4mm scale N1 body for example (which someone featured in this thread several pages back) would set you back £82.49 when printed in FUD which is a bit more expensive than, say, a Golden Arrow resin kit. I would assume a small portion of this price would go to AJModels. If you are prepared to spend a little time learning a CAD program (and there as some nice free ones available now), then the costs could be reduced a little further as you could submit your own designs to Shapeways and not pay a markup to another design (assuming that they added one to their models in the first place). 3D printing will save quite of bit of time on the assembly side of things but there are still slight stratifications from the printing process that will need to be lightly sanded down to get the best results - although my unsanded J6 that I showed you at Warley did seem to pass the muster with you. The D49's each went through this sanding process three times until I was happy. The total time for this was around 2 hours (not including the time for the primer to dry between applications) and to be honest should be well within the reach of anyone who has built and painted a kit before. Where a white metal kit will always have the advantage is weight. You can 3D print in metals but these are somewhat pricey for what you get at the moment in my opinion. I would suggest that from Shapeways, FUD (or the higher resolution FXD) prints for 2mm are best, desirable in OO but rather expensive in O gauge (although the less detailed, cheaper, printing materials have been used by others to great effect in that scale).

Good evening everyone, I hope that Tony (Mr Wright as I addressed him upon meeting him for the first time at Warley last year!) doesn't mind me sharing a couple of in progress photos again now at some 'mojo' has returned from a recent (very) low spell. Above is a D49 Hunt class variant. I've just done my initial fitting of the handrails but it looks like I need to do a little tweaking around the smokebox front. This variant of the D49 class used rotary cam operated Lentz poppet valves so I'll be doing some trimming and altering of the valve gear when I pluck up the courage! I don't know which member of the class this will be yet but hopefully the future owner will know this when I remember to ask them! I do know it needs to be painted in BR mixed traffic black however. This one is one of the original Shire builds which I've just finished fettling and will be receiving its handrails in the next day or two. This one is for me and will become Lincolnshire as it was briefly allocated to Kings Cross between 1928-29; in my universe, it remained as a Kings Cross locomotive into the 1930s and will be seen on Pullman and semi-fast links - the only unknown at this point is whether I adopt the pre or post 1928 apple green livery. Both models utilise 3D prints of my own design, Dapol Schools locomotive chassis, heavily modified M7 bogies and Dapol B17 tenders (shortly to have the bodies replaced with the earlier stepped group standard tender design). There are a couple of minor tweaks to the loco body dimensions but I personally feel that they are already starting to look the part.

Good evening Tony, You comments regarding basic formality and respect remind me about my time served in commercial banking around ten years ago. We were encouraged to form a first name relationship with the customer as quickly as possible - apparently this was how modern business was conducted (we were called relationship managers at the time). This over roughly a year happened with most of my customers, many of whom had invited me more than once to use their christian name. A couple of customers wished to remain on a more formal basis, which to be honest proved to be just as productive as the informal relationships. My own humble opinion as a child of the 1980s is that a formal form of address is recommended whenever initiating contact with someone for the first time as a sign of respect. Being invited to drop the formality by the other participant is a sign that the level of respect has been noted and an element of trust is deemed to exist between one or both parties. However, I am very much aware that many of my generation seem not to agree with this. Personally do not mind if somebody I don't or barely know refers to me on a first name basis but I wouldn't make the assumption that somebody I don't know feels the same way. With regard to cold callers, many of them don't get the opportunity to refer to me in any capacity, informal or otherwise! I rarely answer the phone if I don't recognise the number and, on the occasions I do, hang up immediately if I can hear a busy call centre in the background!

Tom, your C12 is lovely, well done on an excellent model! It reminds me that my N gauge version is in serious need of a chassis upgrade! Presently it runs on a modified Dapol 14xx chassis which is lively to say the least. However, it is lack of spoken wheels of this early Dapol effort that really jars with me so I'll have to look properly into an alternative arrangement once I've got some other bits and pieces completed. Tony, I enjoyed your article in Railway Model, indeed it was the reason I bought the magazine. I've recently returned from a few days in Gloucestershire where my girlfriend and I visited both the Dean Forest and Gloucestershire and Warwickshire railways. While I thoroughly enjoyed travelling on the steam lines, my real cop was the purchase of many old magazines and a couple of second hand books for the princely sum of around £5. In nearly every case the magazines predate my birth but the wealth of information and scale drawings has made me rather happy (an unusual situation as I've suffered with serious depression since 2009) and has increased my list of projects for 3D printing quite substantially - Nick Camping's 'Lord Farrington' drawings and notes were a great find for me as I can now directly compare the differences between the Robinson B2s and B3s and modify my B2 CAD work accordingly to one day make a reasonable representation of Valour! I also learnt something new from these references. While my own (embryonic) layout is of a fictional location, I have placed it south of Potters Bar. Over last week's purchasing and reading, I discovered that the LMS (via the old North London lines) ran services on LNER metals around this area and for a long time many of these formations were made up of old North London four wheel stock, hauled by Jintys (and occasionally a Fowler 2-6-2 tank). Further flicking through the magazines I'd purchased revealed that I now own some basic outline drawings of the four wheel stock so an LMS service will be modelled to represent the North London services once the layout is in a more complete state. To tie this in with your article, I think that it is a great shame that scale drawings of locomotives and stock is something that seems to have disappeared from modern magazines. While I appreciate that, due to the (potentially) more limited resources of the draftsmen of the era, the accuracy of the drawings may be questionable but, for me at least, they do provide a good (and cheap at the prices I paid!) starting point for further research before creating the CAD and final 3D prints. Could the withdrawal of regular scale drawings in magazines be linked to the apparent decline of modellers scratchbuilding more obscure prototypes or was the withdrawal due to a perceived lack of interest of the readers? I regularly spend a considerable amount of time finding out which previous editions of magazines published a certain scale drawing and/or suitable reference books and then trying to source copies. With all the drawings penned over the years, could a magazine such as Railway Modeller start to republish these in future editions for those of us not fortunate enough to gain from their benefit the first time around?

Thank you Tim, I'll give that a go!

Hi Tim, The P2 looks fantastic! A quick question if I may; how did you line the axle ends? I've managed to get some nice black circles on my repainted Dapol A3 (will become Humorist c. 1938) and lined the outer part of the wheel. However, the white lining on the center of the wheel has so far defeated me... Any help and/or advice you could give would be most gratefully received.

Hi Tom, Great work on that Mk1, as always, and thank you for posting your video from the 17th. My girlfriend and I visited the Mid Hants on Friday and had a wonderful time riding the line and just managing to squeak into the last 'works' tour of the day. I must have mentioned this following my last visit but it was somewhat surreal wondering around Ropley yard and picking out all the bits you've modelled. You really have captured the look and feel of the location to perfection and I look forward to watching you tackle the station buildings. As always, looking forward to the next post!

Hi Mike, I was just wondering if there have been any updates regarding this awesome layout?

Incredible work Tim! I've said it elsewhere but I cannot wait to see this locomotive in the flesh! As long as it isn't the tender chassis for 'The Brownlee' A1!

This thread is complete now, its discussing everything and anything! Tony, I've finally managed to get hold of a copy of The Model Railway Journal and have thoroughly enjoyed reading your article. You mentioned earlier about the editor's choice of pictures (seemingly slightly disappointed in the choices), I really enjoyed the picture looking down the road with the Willoughby Arms on the left and the station on the right. That picture just oozes atmosphere and really drew me into the scene and the realisation that there is some exceptional scenic modelling which, for me, compliments the stunning locomotives we're more used to seeing in this thread. However, I am left wondering where the GWR station was!

That cat is more than friendly! He/she walked into front of my car as I tried to leave and lay down, then wouldn't move. I had to get out of the car and fussed him/her and, after many minutes, had to pick the darn thing up and move it out of the way!

Good evening Tony, The 16xx looks excellent and I'm sure Mr Foster will be very happy with it. Iain's 'Florence' is really good and it's hard to believe that that is his first etched locomotive kit. To keep you updated, I've made a bit of progress with the vans. Roofs are now attached to all the vans with the exception of the brake van. This is because I needed to get into the veranda areas using a rattle can of etch primer from Halfords - I couldn't see any way of doing this with the roof on. Not in picture is the second brake van which is still in it's raw brass state. But wait! There's an interloper in the rake! An old GNR Clerestory fruit van has made an appearance! This is something I designed over a year ago but kept having problems printing it on my B9Creator. I finally figured out why I was having problems an after a quick redesign it was successfully printed today. Other than remove the printer supports and give it a squire of Halfords red plastic primer, I've not done any cleaning up to the print (although it could do with a bit of smoothing on the roof). The chassis is a Peco 10' wooden solebar version which is a scale two inches too long in the wheelbase (c. 0.35mm) but I think it looks ok. Apologies for the poor quality phone camera photographs.

I can't help with bridge numbers I'm afraid. However, I would like to say thank you to Tony and Daddyman for their advice on removing araldite. I couldn't get hold of any old-recipe Nitromoors, so I thought I'd have a go using cellulose thinners instead, 48 hours later and success! The offending vans and roofs have been cleaned up, formed properly to shape and are currently curing. This now means that the first two vans started are now the furthest behind in construction (brake vans excluded). The other vans (another fish van and three fruit vans) have had their roofs attached (soldered, after much faffing, on the fish van!) and Peco wagon chassis hacked about to fit; I also added vacuum pipes from some guitar wire. As Tony asked that I keep posting my progress on these there is a photograph below. The middle fruit van is sitting a bit high at the moment (it's on a 9' wheelbase chassis compared to the 10' of the other vans) and will need some attention during the week.

Thank you Tony, I wouldn't have started if it hadn't been for your locomotive building video/tutorial - I've since built another four of these kits, another fish van and three fruit vans (helped by the fact that I realised that the supplier lives within five miles of me!). Internal soldering is a non-starter on these kits as they have an integral floor with the sides being folded up from this. Looking at the photograph, I'm not happy with the fitting of the roof on the perishables van. This has been attached using araldite, any suggestions on how to remove the epoxy so that I might have another go please? You did indeed mention Seccotine and Pafra as alternatives to soldering but I'll admit that I had to look these up when I got home; they seem like a much better way of doing things really! It was no problem covering your demonstration stand so that you and Mo could get your lunch. It wasn't until afterwards that I calculated the approximate value of the models on display and suddenly thanked my lucky stars that nothing untoward happened to them while you were away! My father and I had a great conversation with Tim regarding 'scale' painting while you were away and I'll be trying some of the techniques he suggested in the future.

Good evening Tony, It was great to see you again on Sunday and I hope that you enjoyed your weekend in Stevenage. Following our discussion on the merits of soldering, I thought I'd show you my efforts with some etched wagon kits I picked up at the show from the BH Enterprises stand. These were designed 26 years ago (according to the date on the etch) and in some ways were more challenging (in other ways very simple) than the 2mm Scale Association cattle truck I build a few months ago. As per my views expressed on Sunday, these have been put together using nothing more than gum of arabic. As I didn't have a bottle to hand, I simply removed it from some spare envelopes I had to hand and dolloped it on - far more robust than that solder stuff you insist on using! Joking aside, I spent an enjoyable day yesterday putting these together and practicing my soldering technique (there is actually a second GNR brake van, but that's progressed to getting a squirt of primer so wasn't available to photograph). From left to right: GCR fish van, GNR brake van and NER/LNER perishables van. The fish and brake van were my star finds of the show as I've been after these for quite some time and it saves me the effort of scratch building them or designing something to 3D print. The perishables van was my first attempt and took around three hours, but the time I got to the second brake van, I had this down to an hour and a half (including messing measuring and bending guitar wire for the handrails). Everything was soldered together with the exception of the roofs which defeated me and were attached with araldite. I'd like some more fish vans but Ray only had the one on his stand. Ultimately, I'd like to have a rake but this will also mean I'd really need to build something to haul them (Robinson B5 perhaps)...

Are you sure you'll only need one pack of transfers?! Seriously though, that's impressive stuff there again Tom. Please tell me you're exhibiting next year, I'd love to see this layout in the flesh.

Lovely K3s there Tony. As you asked to see other's examples of K3s, here is my N gauge version: An early 3D printed body sitting on a converted Farish V2. I rewheeled it using Farish B1 wheels (which are undersize for the B1 but about right for the K3) and lowered the cylinders and valve gear hangers to a more prototypical height. However, I had some problems drilling out the centre crank to take a screw for the new style Farish wheels. Hans Starman of Holland came to my rescue here and precision drilled out the old cranks and sorted out the quartering for me. All the lining was done using a bow pen and was either my first or second attempt at lining a loco this way. The boiler bands were lined bits of tape which, in hindsight wasn't the best idea ever as they were forever peeling off. It never did quite sit right on the chassis due to a modification to the pickups; which allowed the loco to actually run!. It has now been retired while a replacement is being built. The replacement will use transfers for the boiler bands, just a case of do I make my own of use the fox ones... Oh, finally, the funny round this in the cab is the flywheel from the original V2 motor! Edit: I can't take any credit for the layout it was running on in the picture. This was taken on the North of England Line exhibition layout where the kind souls of the Scarborough club allowed me to run the loco at St. Albans a few years back.

I would suggest that if over 50% of the loco is still in existence (or in one place), then it counts as a cop...

BofB, MN or something else???

I love how Ropley is turning out Tom! I was at the real location earlier in the year (first time in years) and was picking out bits that I recognised from your layout - exceptional modelling! I think that you're Farish/Dapol 2MT hybrid idea has merit. However, you might want to think about adding pickups to the rear pony as the Farish 2MT has traction tyres on the rear axle. Alternatively, you might consider swapping the original driving wheels for some from a 9F (nominally the same diameter?) and the pony wheels for some more modern ones...

Good morning Tony, These are some wonderful photographs of one of my favourite layouts. The factors contributing to this statement are that Copenhagen Fields broadly represents my own modelling interests (only far better than I could achieve), a North London 1930s (ish) LNER period layout representing almost a scale mile of visible track and to 2mm scale to boot (even though I model in N gauge!). In addition, the fact that the layout can stand up to such scrutiny from the camera is amazing! With regard to scale running I use the timing method to judge the speed of my trains. My modest embryonic layout is an L shape seven foot by 5 foot a locomotive completes roughly half a scale mile (or which around two thirds is visible) per lap. Therefore an A3 completing a lap in 30 seconds is doing roughly 60 miles per hour, while a freight completing a lap in one and a half minutes is 20 miles per hour, etc. It's really made me slow down my trains and made me realise that, just because my own space is modest, I can enjoy a reasonably lengthy run with an express. In addition, the likes of O.S. Nock used this method, timing the locomotive's progress between mileposts to ascertain the average speeds; all of which adds to the fun for me!

In the words of some of the local inhabitants who lived around the area where I held my first employment in the late 1990s: 'Man, that looks sick like bro, init. Total respect for that, like. Totally well book, init'.