D869

Thanks Alan - it's good to know what the situation is, even if it isn't exactly what we would want it to be.

I haven't used any 3D printed stuff as yet but no doubt I will do in the not too distant future... and I won't miss having to mark and drill vent holes.

Regards, Andy

That's looking good David.

Either way I would certainly dump those Rapido couplings, they do nothing for your beautiful modelling.

... which opens up the question of what to use instead. I don't think that the answer is easy for corridor coaches. It depends what you want to do with them.

If you want to uncouple them a lot then you need an auto coupler but the DG is less than ideal because parts of it want to lift into the space occupied by the gangway. I have still used DGs on rake ends and full brakes but the gap between adjacent vehicles is too big (probably worse than with Rapidos). Other auto couplers are available.

Within fixed rakes you have lots more options but if you want to propel rakes through crossovers then you need to take a bit more care regarding buffer locking, lateral friction between the gangways and coupling forces trying to 'steer' the bogies in undesirable ways. I am currently using couplings mounted to the bogie pivots with rare earth magnets to attach one coach to the next. These allow the bogies to 'steer' freely, give close coupling and easy setup and break down at shows but they are probably only marginally less obtrusive than Rapidos.

Regards, Andy

My understanding is that the Ultima roof is extruded aluminium, to the same profile as the Ultima LMS kits.

I suspected that some of the Ultima LMS kits had an extruded roof but I could not find this in Alan's catalog as a separately available item. Maybe I missed it or maybe he is conserving his stocks to sell with complete kits.

For both this roof profile and the 2mm LMS one the main difficulty I can see will be the lack of roof rain-strips. Looking around rmweb I can see that some people have used lining tape successfully for this in 4mm, but I haven't managed to track down thin enough lining tape, and also I suspect that any folds or creases in the tape will be more noticeable in 2mm.

I agree that attaching things to Aluminium is going to be tricky. The plastic ones should present fewer issues in this area if they will take solvents.

Good luck with the 3D printing.

D869 remarked in a recent blog post that he was posting about a kit you can't build

That could mean two things. On the one hand there are kits that are no longer available... on the other, there are some that are just, well... not very good.

Rolling a three-arc roof profile from thin brass sheet looks to be hard ... does anyone have any advice?

By coincidence I emailed Mr Allen Worsley Works about suitable pre-formed roofs a couple of weeks back. Unfortunately he wasn't able to suggest many options.

The things that I know of are...

- MTK/Fleetline/BH Enterprises roof mouldings. Not sure on the quality of these. Certainly their recent floor and side mouldings are not as good as the old MTK/Fleetline ones.

- Ultima list a 3D printed plastic 'SECR' roof moulding. Never seen one.

- The 2mm Association Shop 3 lists two plastic roof sections - LMS and Mark 1 but the latter is out of stock. Again, I don't know anything more about them.

- Ultima list a roof for the Siphon. Assuming it's the same as shipped in their Siphon kit then I think it's extruded metal.

Regards, Andy

That sounds like a good idea, as does (I think) 'Western Road's idea of using carriage sidings as a backdrop to an MPD layout.

It would still be a good idea to think about formations when planning your shopping list - in the steam era there was a lot of remarshalling and coaches worked complex diagrams but it was far from random - usually trains were made up of multiple sets of coaches (e.g. BTK+CK+TK+BTK with the van sections pointing outwards). The trains might be split en route or on reaching their destination but the sets would stay together unless there was a need to take a vehicle out for repairs or similar.

I have a couple of PDFs with late 50s WR carriage workings. They were scanned by Robert Carroll and I'm pretty sure I got them from the BRCS Yahoo group. Well worth joining if you aren't already on there.

Liking the new coach and the train David although I think your customer base must be quite well-to-do. You have a lot of first class accommodation and luggage space and not much space in cattle class. Nothing that another coach or two won't fix though . Having the brake ends facing outwards is usually more typical too.

Any idea what sort of train service (and therefore formation) you are aiming for?

Nice work again David. Glad to see that you were successful with the 2mm Association bogies.

I'm just finishing off a Thompson BG so will post some words and pictures about that soon.

Regards, Andy

Thanks Jerry and Nigel for the pics from Nottingham. The pic of the 22 shunting the sleepers is a particular favourite. We must get round to putting the Pirates Hotel into that gap though - even though it will probably just be a 'flat' on the backscene.

The 22 wound up doing a lot of work as the station pilot for the whole weekend because more than one Farish 08 proved reluctant to play nicely. We have since provided more volts on the input side of the controllers so we are hoping that the performance of some of the more err... 'classic' mechanisms will be better next time.

I'll post a link on the blog for the benefit of those who don't follow the 2mm forum.

Regards, Andy

I don't think that there is any mystery about this - the maroon Westerns were painted in standard coaching stock maroon - which is known by many and various names nowadays.

 

The intention was that they matched their trains.

 

Regards,

John Isherwood.

I've agonised on this regarding the painting of my coaches and more recently a Farish Western. My conclusion is that when you look at real locos and stock in service there is no 'correct' shade of maroon. I've seen several mid 60s photos of trains where the individual coaches in the same train are not the same shade and also one of a maroon Western pulling a maroon train where the loco shade doesn't match the train. Often it seems to fade to a slightly lighter, redder shade which I find quite pleasing... until it gets a bit out of hand with the last few locos to retain maroon.

In other photos it seems to have turned almost purple, although in this case it could be the film because there are no other maroon things in the same shot for comparison.

Anyways, after doing several coaches in Precision maroon straight from the tin (which my subjective judgement says is a bit dark), I mixed in some red before painting the Western and was very pleased with the result.

Regards, Andy

The photo isn't very detailed but the bogies you used don't seem a million miles away from being correct.

The Association ones involve more folding and soldering than the ones you used. They are pretty good representations of the bogies used on the passenger carrying vehicles but many of the NPCS vehicles had bogies of the same basic design but with shorter springs and smaller footsteps. I decided it was impractical to change the springs on the Association kits, so my model has bogies that are not quite typical of those used on the full brakes in the photos I've seen. They should be perfect for your brake third etc though.

Hi David,

Nice job - I particularly like the colour.

For tumblehomes I use a suitable sized piece of metal rod (smaller than the diameter I'm aiming for) and put the coach side on what I grandiosely call a 'tumblehome jig'. You could use wooden dowel, but I think metal is probably better for the smaller diameters.

The jig in question is easily made in 5 minutes from a few strips of cereal packet - one base piece comfortably bigger than the coach side, a strip at the top to locate the top edge of the coach side and then two (or more) strips glued on top of each other so that they don't quite clear near to the bottom edge of the coach side and prop it up away from the base. I then carefully push the metal rod down onto the lower part of the coach side and the lower strips of card force the bottom edge to bend around the metal rod. I often use more than one metal rod of different (progressively smaller) diameters to gradually form the curve.

Take your time and keep removing and checking because it's easier to add more curve than to reduce the curve... although reducing the curve isn't impossible if you do go wrong - just smooth the curve against a slightly larger diameter rod.

I don't think this was my idea originally but I have no idea where it came from.

Of course it pays to have plenty of choice of metal rod diameters to choose from, but be creative and scour your toolbox, kitchen drawers etc.

Regards, Andy

Hi David,

Thanks for the thread - I'm getting started on a full brake at the moment so it's very interesting to see your work - you're rather closer to the finish line than I am. Nice job.

Regards, Andy