Power Bogie Japan

Now look at these here.  I'm going to have to get some of these to try out.  I have one particular project in mind that this would be the ideal answer to the current poor drive train.

So, after all the years of argument about whether or not HO scale suspended motors can be done here we have a commercial product at least.  Now of course these won't be suitable for everything, but with due diligence I can a lot of modellers being able to use these.

Progress Update

The good news is that there has been some, the bad news is that the outcome doesn't meet all the requirements for a commercial drive.

Let me explain.

The prototype gear box was made with cut gears, which were expensive and we had to look for alternatives.  A Chinese manufacturer said they could produce what we wanted by printing the gears on their machines.  After a prolonged period of exchanges this turned out not to be the case.

We went and looked elsewhere and a different prototype designed for P4 is in the process of being brought to market using printed gears.  The bad news is that they will be sold with the proviso that the gears are not designed for sustained running, which is not what I wanted.

This is a problem that money could make go away, but I fear that he market is so small that the money required is far beyond my means.  Rough ball park figures of around £10,000, or $15,000.  This would probably mean producing 10,000 sets of gears to get the unit costs down.

So the project is now on hold until we can come up with alternatives.

Delays

I've just had an update from the supplier of the gears for the axle hung motors and we've hit that problem that comes from only wanting a low production run, rather than thousand of gears, which would be a doddle.  For definitions of doddle that mean having enough capital to invest in an injection moulding tool being made.

So it is back to the drawing board for this.  There is a solution, but as the old adage of cheap, fast, quality, choose any two applies.

Slipping into the New Year

Can you see the problem?

Well this is very much work in progress, and what you see here has some bugs that still need working on.

Oops, I've put that axle  in the  wrong way round.

To answer what it is going in. North Shore Suydam EMU.

I plan to put the chip behind the battery boxes/resistors.

The problem to correct is that the new bogie bolsters are putting the side frames slightly too wide for the axle lengths. Hence the axles drop out of the trucks. However, the motor runs, I just can't show any running of the unit along track at this point in time. So new parts for printing out on order. Gears for a production run are the next project goal, and that looks like February, due to money.

So Happy New Year to everyone who reads my blog. Remember patience is a virtue, and virtue is a grace, and Grace is a little girl with dirt on her face. :-)

Farewell to the Old, Welcome New & Shiny

 
Not been posting much here of late. Lots of good reasons for that state of affairs, but now I have something I want to show you, which you can see above. This is a prototype axle hung motor for H0 and 4mm scale models of trams, trolley cars, EMUs etc. project that I have been driving.

They will be available to buy later in the New Year, further information on this will be announced as and when we have finalised the details. Don't expect these to be cheap, as they are bespoke, small run items that are hand assembled.

Test runs show that one power bogies will be adequate to power a car and trailer, assuming that the trailer is free rolling i.e.: pin-point bearings and not weighted to sink the Titanic. I will post a picture of an assembled bogie/truck in the New Year, but just wanted to give you all a taste of something that quite excites me.

So, let me finish this blog post by wishing you all a Happy New Year.

Ready-to-Run

I'm going to start by telling you what I'm going to tell you. There is no such thing as ready-to-run for a modeller who wants to model a specific prototype.

This post comes from an email by one of my readers, name redacted to protect the innocent, who wrote asking how I was getting on with building the Sunshine kits that I had bought off him recently?

Ready-to-run, or ready-to-roll, or out-of-the-box, all describe the concept that the model is fully complete and ready to be run in a train on your layout. For definitions of fully complete that include less than full detail, and for ready to run in a train that might require some fettling, this is largely true.

But, as soon as you start setting standards that are different to those specified by the manufacturer, then not so much. The truth then being that the model has all the basics and requires further work. As such I now have a dozen models on the work bench in various stages of transitioning from RTR out of the box, to actually ready to operate on my layout.

Unfortunately, Real Life (tm) has rather gotten in the way of late, what with my contract at work coming to an end and all. So I've been doing easy stuff to take my mind off the hard stuff. Such is life. Anyway, it's summer for definitions of summer that vary from rain, to dull and over clouded, with an occasional spot of sunshine, as and when.

LMS Brake Van chassis build

This project started as a request by me for an etched replacement chassis for the Hornby LMS Stanier brake van.

I had a drawing of what I thought was the right brake van, which was produced to use the etc. I started by separating the solebars, their overlays and the foot boards from the etch.

I used super glue to assemble. Rinse and repeat for the other side and then remove the floor from the etch.

Fold up various bits and glue together.

Admire the neatness and I then placed one of the two Hornby Stanier brake van bodies I had on the chassis to test the height of the buffers, which are Bachmann sprung buffers that are just right..

I then added the brake gear and connecting rodding and prepared the lower foot board for attachment.

Side view all looking pretty hunky-bunky to me.

First signs of trouble ahead came when I started looking at attaching the lower foot boards. I ended up making up this strap hangers from staples.

I then soldered them onto the lower foot board. and afterwards glued plastic strip to thicken the foot boards as i thought at the time that they looked too thin.

It all went Pete Tong- wrong...

So I stripped my model down and soldered the fabricated hangers to etched angle parts that were supposed to run down the front facing of the solebars.

Difficult to describe, but it also meant that I had to solder the solebars and overlays with the top foot boards all together as one piece.

Finally, everything rebuilt. This chassis was made using a combination of gluing and soldering the etches together, which worked quite well, once I ironed out the assembly sequence.

An end shot, cruelly enlarged showing finished product.

 

Weathering Private Owner Tank Wagons 1

Tank wagons are not just black and unloved, they are black, or silver, unloved and dirty too.

Berry Wiggins was a Southern Railway petroleum products wagon owner and so I just had to have a couple of their wagons to represent their fleet on my railway.

Quite pleased with the black, though perhaps a bit too dusty and not oily enough looking.

 

This Esso tank wagon as the very first one I weathered and I'm not completely satisfied witht he finish. I think I over did it a bit, if truth be told.

  

WLJR: Sands End (Part 5): The End

 Left end of the layout with the tracks for the goods shed and the coal line and the main line exit to the fiddle yard.

Middle left showing the mileage yard and the main junction for all the yard entrances.

Middle right with the entry to the mileage yard with the unbuilt turntable and loco shed lines.

Far right end showing the exit to the fiddle yard with the both the back and front yard leads.

An overall view looking along the layout.

How it all began...

... with a few wagons and locomotive put down to see how it all fitted together. How it all ended...

... with a bit of a whimper. Either way, end of the line for Sands End.

WLJR: Sands End (Part 4)

Continuing on from last time. Here is a shot of me laying out the Woodland Scenic track foam base for the goods depot and coal line for Sands End.



Here is the track being built, which I showed in the last post, but now including the cross-over and the three siding that will make up the mileage yard.



The adjoining middle board junction is here showing how the turnouts relate to the mileage yard throat and the lead tracks to the turntable that I planned on having.



Here is view looking from the East end towards the West end of the layout in the far distance showing the progress I had made.

And now looking from the East end towards the West. The piece of track suspended over the middle here represents where I planned to put a road bridge.



Here is a view looking at the mileage yard giving an idea of the capacity.



And here is a shot of my GWR pannier converted to P4 with Ultrascale drop-in wheelsets pulling a string of coal trucks from the coal line.



My Cambrian SR 25ton Pill Box brake van rebuild that appears on the CLAG site with a Bullied Q1 Austerity 0-6-0 good engine that I have converted to P4 with Alan Gibson wheels to P4.

The final part to come in due course.

WLJR: Sands End (Part 3)

The Sands End project was my biggest learning curve to date for modelling as I did something I've never done before and that was to make track. I started by staining sleepers.


I then use a wonderful programme called Templot to create templates for all the custom turnouts that Sands End required. Here you can see the templates with the stained sleepers held down by double-sided sticky tape.

I then used turnout kits by Exactoscale as components for the turnouts I needed, as I wanted to make them according the Great Western Railway standards, and the Exactoscale turnout kits follow LNER/BR Eastern region practice.

Here is a close up of me making a crossover where I have added running check rails that go throughout the turnout.

I then progressed onto the main junction that involved building four slightly overlapped adjoining turnouts as can be seen here.

 

However, the compound turnout and double slip were beyond my skill levels, but I managed to get Tony from CLAG to build me them, and I weathered some wagons for him.

The double slip and compound turnout were made using ply and rivets, whereas I made all my turnouts using chairs glued to ply sleepers. Therefore I ended up gluing chairs to both individually after the event.

This next picture shows a work in progress and the order in which I built the turnouts. Here I was looking down the rails to check alignment through the pair of turnouts.

More to come.

Weathering Private Owner Mineral Wagons 2

Here are a few more pictures of wagons that I have weathered, all from the rather useful Bachmann Blue Riband range.

Top plank painted to represent a replacement fitted during wartime. Not totally happy with the end result and may re-do this at some time in the future.

I like how this one turned out, given that it is a black wagon I thought it would be a bit of a pig to weather and make it look good. A combination of powders and washes, with a quick brush over with a fiber glass pen to polish the surface up.

Faded the lettering on this by judicious use of the fiber glass pen and then the usual powder and ink washes.

 

Again really pleased with this. I used some rusting compound for the interior and then lightly applied weathering to the oustisde, so as to represent a newish wagon in reasonable condition.