Lacathedrale

Thank you for the tips! I think for 2mm I'd mostly be 3D printing! In this case I'm thinking of it purely as a process-driven exercise - probably in 5mm or 7mm/ft - because I want to try it with styrene, wire, maybe even balsa, etc. I don't have a large scale layout and may never have one, but I want to try scratchbuilding! Initially I'd like to build some early wagons - i.e. opens of RCH 1887, SER/LCDR/LBSCR 'house' designs. I feel like while this won't be easy, it will probably be the most accessible set of prototypes before moving onto complex designs like rectangular tank wagons or outside-framed vans. I'd be working on the assumption I'd use commercial castings as an intermediate step before 3D printing. I would see a trajectory from this to building coaches, and maybe even locos (with the attendant learnings around designing etches in CAD). I've ordered the Geoff Kent book - I guess what's going to be fairly important is to get some works drawings!

I've done a fair few airfix kits in my time, and hybrid plastic/brass/resin/whitemetal kits. I've rarely needed to venture much beyond assembling what is provided for me - and with some frustrating exceptions generally found the process rewarding and easy. That said, I would like to strike out into more distinct scratchbuilding territory - initially with wagon bodies out of styrene, and then maybe into designing etches and 3D printing. Are there resources out there which guide one through this process? i.e. how to approach construction, sizing materials, translating works diagrams into meaningful measurements, etc. ? I am fully aware that there are easier ways than building everything from scratch (I'm assuming that I'll source wheels, W-irons commercially, however) Many thanks!

Thanks, Richard - I'm looking forwad to getting some of those six-wheeler's on the layout soon! Today I've been painting the rail sides (in a very thin sienna) and laying out the ballast for the layout, see below: The areas not ballasted are around the switch blades - I think I'll do that traditionally with pledge/wet-water + PVA, etc. rather than using Ballast Magic as elsewhere. Here's a test piece I did. Ballast magic is a powder based glue that activates with water, so misting over the top is all you need to do - unfortunately this test piece was slightly damp, hence the rather egregious amount of ballast ontop of the sleepers! I'm using Treemendus Normandy Earth as recommended by @TomE In the rear was ballasted using Stacey's Miniature Masonry: Feldon Grit 30 - but I found that it darkened out way too much. It might be suitable to create some subtle blending effects but seems a bit useless by itself. The Layout's been sprayed with wet water, so now it's just a case of sitting on my hands for a few hours to see how it's going to end up!

Thanks @D9020 Nimbus - I'm actually modelling in 2mmFS rather than N, so it all requires new chassis/etc. to be built. I've got a 57xx chassis in the works, this 8750, and a small prairie in the gloat box I may need to forward date it though, given my success so far!

Yes @Harlequin it's in 2mm - I'm struggling to put together anything that runs better than a bag of hammers being thrown up a flight of stairs, so this seemed an expedient option!

Thank you so much Keith, I had seen that page but didn't notice the cab wall differences- thank you!

Hi all, I found a lovely llittle kit-built pannier, but I have no idea what it actually is - it looks to my uneducated eye like a 57xx , but I'm not sure at all. I sthere anything that would identify it more specifically or as a particular era/etc. ? Many thanks!

The track has been (re) painted and trains run without issue, so I've laid out the road at one end of the board and painted it with a dusty grey. It will get some gravel covering and sympathetic airbrushing, but looks OK to me - the big pink slash is the frame of the scenic board - hopefully illustrating how sight lines are cut effectively, and the foreshortening of the road as it reaches towards the backscene: The idea is to have both crossings closed against the railway, to justify the abrupt truncation of the layout on the right hand side. The rear 'mainline' would notionally continue onward towards a terminus (or maybe just a yard), and the front siding will be a siding going off to an industry of sorts. Current front runners are a dairy (i.e. adventures printing some four and six wheeled Siphons) or a gasworks (rectangular tar wagons, coke wagons, etc). The grey driveway is mostly for contouring, to bring the goods yard area up to road level. Behind the driveway will be a cattle dock accessed directly from the road.

So it's been three months, and i have done little modelling but the time I have spent, has been primarily building, rebuilding, scrapping and building again, and then rebuilding the same bloody Jinty over and over again. I briefly was inspired to investigate 7mm but while it's certainly an interesting diversion it's not my core focus. I realised that since I'm going to be working out of a remote apartment for a few months I could pack some 2mm wagon kits and a small toolbox and get going on them - thoughts which steered me back towards Hennock. Well, booting it back up after a time was quite a disheartening process - the WLANmaus controller had run out of batteries, upon replacing them the layout just refused to work with the Type 3. Even after a thorough go-over with garryflex. After some sage advice from @justin1985 I actually spent some time cleaning rather than burnishing the layout, and sorting out the rear faces of the Type 3 wheels and pickups. The layout now worked, but I'd developed a dead spot (for some reason I was relying on an end-on soldered connection between rail pieces to conduct) - a few droppers and that was sorted. Then I realised the first turnout decoder/motor (cobalt) wasn't working either - but that was sorted with a quick relearning of the DCC address. At this point, the trackwork all worked - even if the loco was a bit lumpy in one or two places. I needed to sort a proper 'dock' for the cassette system I plan on using, so whipped this up out of 1mm brass rod and 1mmn I/D brass tube: I put the male side on the layout, because otherwise those pins would project out and easily get snagged on something: And it worked a real treat - very smooth and easy to use with a nice positive alignment. With all of the electrics and trackwork bar uncouplers complete (and since i don't actually have any couplings that's a bit moot), thoughts turned to the next stages - finalising the groundwork and ballasting.

Thanks, I was thinking there was some specific way to do it in Templot just for the sake of completeness!

oh, very interesting - is this an accurate track plan? Seems also to have been identified as Giles Barnabe as an interesting 'micro' : Certainly it would have a very light railway feel - could potentially meet my requirements for interesting trackwork by having a three way tandem on the far left and a slip at bottom-middle.

That's very kind Martin, thank you - I'm not quite sure where to enable the gauge widening - is it just opening the template and gauge -> modify -> modify track gauge? Cheers!

Thank you Martin, I can't actually make the red circled wing rail end any shorter - I do understand the principle however, so this seems like it'll have to be a post-print modification to the template. I see what you mean about the yellow circles now - cheers! I built this using the auto function with some tweaks afterwards. I'm really far away from being a wizard at Templot but I've been using it on and off now for long enough I can generally get around - different kinds of snaking, pegging and joining up disparate templates does somewhat flummox me though. Any time O-MF comes up, it seems that you're happy to help out - so for this one I just wanted to check - the minimum radius on this layout is through the right hand route of that tandem - just around 4'. The 'main' loco on the layout would be my little Y6 shunter (something like 7' wheelbase!) and I'm not planning on anything larger than a J15 navigating the layout ever, Presumably with enough slop on the middle axle this should be fine still laid to O-MF instead of GOG-Fine? Cheers!

Hi there, I've put together a track formation which I think works - the scale is O-MF based on B6 geometry: I believe I've done what needs to be done with regard to the timbering and rail changes (i.e. super long check rail on the middle road, short wing-rail on the leftmost vee, etc.) but just wanted a quick sanity check before I treat it as gospel and move forward if anyone here can cast a quick look at the above and make sure I've not made any egregious mistakes! Cheers!

If you can give me a prototypically accurate layout that'd fit in 7' x 18" I'd honestly love to hear it - given the choice I'd prefer to go prototypical, but I'm very much thinking of layouts like Chris Nevard, Iain Rice, etc. where it is a bit of implausible fun but taken seriously - if that makes sense?! Quick sketch revision of the previous with a proper three-way and shifted so the board join is between the threeway and the diamond. The extra length on the left I think will help to disguise the end of the track - the track passing between a pair of buildings or something.

Another muse, this time supplanting the single slip from the Ricean plan into the same schematic as Mog's Elston Rd, only the visible section shown: It seems there's a bit of a quandary - my headshunt needs to be large enough to hold a Y14 (45') plus at least a couple of wagons (45') which means that realistically it can be no shorter than around two feet, and seeing as basically any pointwork sits between 18-24" - my left hand board can at most only contain the closure of the loop. The solution appears to be to split that left siding from within the loop, like so (please excuse the hilarious pig's ear of a three-way - and the fact the diamond neatly straddles the board join - minor details!) I imagine the middle of the backscene to be the rear of some houses or factories. This is definitely my favourite at the moment!

As something of a palate cleanser from some rather rough trials and tribulations in 2mm finescale, I find myself staring at some old 7mm wagons and a Connoisseur Models Y6 tram loco kit. I've always been a big fan of @mog 's Elston Rd (seen here on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHe7IfXHkOs ) which is why I ended up getting the Y6 a few years ago. Though I've met with varying levels of success I'm no stranger to etched kit building, hand laying track or giving up halfway on things - so with that positive view in mind, I thought it might be fun to design a layout that could potentially fit in my study (ironically while one of the smallest rooms in the house, it does have the longest uninterrupted wall space) and my workshop. Thus, Dimensions: Scenic length of 7' x 18" Fiddle yard of 3' - Sector-plate, cassette or traverser somewhat mandatory FY length calculated on inglenook headshunt of Y6 plus three 17'6" headstock wagons plus a brake van, i.e. roughly 110' or approx 2'6" If it goes well, would like to be able to support a GER Y14 / LNER J15 in the FY with the wagons, which gets it to the approx 3' max length Scene: Twig-off-a-branch off the Wisbech and Upwell, or secondary termini in one of those locations Freight-focused, but I'll sneak in a 'Henrietta' tramway carriage Operationally while I would like to be able to operate prototypically, I'd be happy with a dolled up inglenook Secnically important to have verticality - road/rail/river, buildings of different heights/etc. My initial idea was to follow Elston Rd pretty slavishly - initially with the visible sector plate - but I realised that extending the run off stage would not have much of a material impact and allow a larger scenic area. In the original, the running lines terminate approximately where the blue brake van is in the following diagram, with an overhanging sector plate: In this particular idea, as you can see however - things are fairly congested, with very little room for the railway. Maybe a wharf front left and a road approximately at the brake van's location (wich an accompanying building to mask the exit scene right), but industries will be very close to being flat. The plan operated prototypically would only have two destinations - front left and rear right - and as an inglenook would operate dropping the requisite number of wagons at the three points illustrated, using the traverser as a headshunt. Something based on the Ricean ideal of using complicated track (which I really enjoy building!) implausibly, a layout built from a single slip and a three-way! This would be more interesting to build, but seems to be complicated just for the sake of it: So I ask you, dear RMwebbers - how would you put together an East Anglian tramway branch stub in 7' of visible area? Answers on a postcard!

Hello chaps, I guess it's time to pick myself up and dust myself off and have another run at getting a working loco. My last attempt ended with binding occuring when the loco was on the track or held a certain way - the general opinion was that a) the driven axle's gear was binding against the helical gear on the idler axle when under strain and b) the inconsistent muff length was allowing this to happen and/or forcing it to occur. I found it incredibly difficult to cut the muffs to the correct width while maintaining parallel ends (in an effort to stop/reduce any oscillation of the muff/gear/wheels as they rotate). Is there a de facto method by which this is achieved? And, how much slop SHOULD i be leaving?

Realistically you can't fit a "real" plan onto that space so you'll need to decide on a gimmick - a shunting puzzle like an inglenook, a tymesaver, a bitsa-station, etc. What about a stone terminal and PW depot? That puts you post 70's and you get your shunting of loads and empties. Gravel shed at the back as part of the inglenook (loads, empties and a cripple track "in real life") and then the PW track/sheds at the front, covering the "headshunt" part of the inglenook?

Hello there! I was wondering if there was anywhere that I can buy standard 7mm track components - rail, sleepers, chairs, etc. that's not C&L Finescale? Nothing personal, I have just found the turnaround and comms to be a bit of a challenge. Many thanks,

What does it mean when wheels have a sticking point only when a) the chassis is oriented one way up, or b) flat on the workbench? My Jinty was jamming very occasionally, so I assumed this was a meshing problem on the worm. Turns out, it carried on even without the motor/worm/gearbox attached. I figured it might be because the brake gear was interfering. Turns out, after an hour of tweaking with no progress and removing it entirely, that wasn't the case either. (Which probably means the gearbox was fine) Now, if I have one side of the chassis face up it's perfectly fine - even running against the edge of the workbench. But the other way up, or flat on the workbench it sticks part-way through a revolution. The only thing I can think of is that the muffs aren't cut parallel and it's catching, or the idler/geared muffs are binding. Either way, it seems two steps backwards. I can't justify a lathe to cut the muffs to length, and I just can't seem to get them sub-mm perfectly parallel. I really just don't know if I can handle building ANOTHER Jinty chassis in the hope that the stars align perfectly - it's literally just one problem after the other and I'm seeing zero meaningful output after literally dozens of hours of trying.

Cracking little layout right there - are these your first efforts building track? They look really lovely!

And.... here we are! Everything does seem to be running smoothly - worm fixed, motor settled, rigging attached and a charcoal grey undercoat applied. I reckon it's fairly unlikely that I'll be able to wire a DCC chip in before Sunday @CF MRC, so maybe I should just solder some fly leads from the chassis to the motor tags and get it going on the MRC test tracks in DC-mode? Either way I'm really chuffed

So, after some advice in the Q&A thread, I revisited the bearings on the gearbox. I could not use the phosphor bronze bearings prescribed by Mr. Higgs, as I'd already broached out the gearbox hole to fit the brass bearings and they're different sizes. As a result, I decided to slim down the bearing - another thing a lathe would probably have been a good tool to have around for. The bearing and gearbox are now dead straight (tested with a 3" length of axle steel), and the worm is now over the centre of the helical gear: My thoughts at this stage are: 1) apply the 603 to the motor shaft and then temporarily hold the motor in place and apply 9v via battery to it and validate that the wheels on the bus go round and round 2) finish up the brake rigging/sand pipes 3) glue the motor in with 2-party epoxy glue

Thanks Nick - I tried that before but I think my motor mount was too flexible, the chassis had warped after being bent and straightened, and I wasn't able to get a reliable mesh. I'm going to try with this one bearing and see how it goes - my sole justification is that I can cut it off and end up where I was before with no problem, but I can't put it back on! I'll stop cluttering this thread though, thank you!