2mmMark

A previous layout of mine was assembled using "impact located steel percussion dowels". 2" & 3" ones. However, I agree, top quality woodwork for one of my favourite railway subjects.

I've never got into the theory, when I was frequently replacing electromagnet pushbuttons due to internal arcing, I simply swapped to using AC and fewer issues. Completely removed by using a higher rated pushbutton and packing it with Vaseline. I'm currently using "PK" electromagnets, which have a low internal resistance. It would be better to have ones with a higher resistance. Coils from the old Post Office 3000 relays are very good but are somewhat bulky. These had 5 & 30 ohm options. Shorting out the 48ah battery gave me a valuable reminder how batteries work! Mark

I'd strongly recommend not using a 12v lead-acid battery, they can deliver a lot of current if shorted out, which a low resistance electromagnet will effectively do. I have a scar on my wrist and a hole in a steel watch strap from when I accidentally shorted out my bike's 48ah battery to the frame with my watch. It's perfectly OK to use AC for electromagnets, I've been doing it for years. There's less sparking inside the pushbutton and it avoids residual magnetism building up in the couplers. I also feel that the slight oscillation helps overcome stiction in my chosen DG couplers. I use a seperate transformer for my magnets, as Stubby says, running the magnets from the same transformer, even if on a different winding, will interact with the controller. You could try using neodymium permanent magnets, moving them into position mechanically, like this example: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/52042-tucking-mill/page-8&do=findComment&comment=1725281 Mark

Looking really good David. You should definitely reward yourself with a drop of Scottish Laughing Water.

Whatever the layout, urban or rural, 2mm scale benefits from a lighter pallette of colours than larger scales. So soot blackening could be done with a medium to darkish grey shade and still have some emphasis.

Bit late to the party but what a lovely layout! From somewhere to somewhere else in a small space. Ingenious idea, very well excecuted. I love it!

Anyway, how irresponsible is this! Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia. - Dr. Dionysus Lardner (1793-1859), Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy at University College, London.

I like WC class and Merchant Navys around backwater Southern commuter routes. Means I get to see & hear steam locos only a short walk away from my house! And it's popular too. Whenever it's mentioned on our local Facebook forum, there's always a good turnout of local people to watch them come through.

I used a cheap small flat-blade screwdiver with tip filed to a wheel profile to remove stray ballast after ballasting and painting. This also has the advantage of removing paint from the inside top of the rail which I find a useful aid to better electrical pickup. I need to smooth off some too coarse ballast on a 2mm industrial layout and my plan, not yet tried out I should caution, is to use coloured tile grout. Somewhere like Topps Tiles will have grout in many useful shades, greys, browns etc. An interesting project. I saw this at your open day last year. Mark

Sealing with a coat of undiluted Unibond will solve that. It certainly seals up Sundeala board very well.

When I built Clive Road Sidings, I used a 6mm ply baseboard surface on which was laid 9mm Sundeala. The layout used the thin plastic moulded sleepers into which rail simply drops and at intervals, 18mm long pins were pushed into the Sundeala and through the ply. The rail was soldered onto the pins and then the power feeds were soldered onto the pins protuding through underneath. The combination of ply & sundeala gives a strong and stable 15mm thick base. The layout must be now approaching 20 years old and is still working reliably, so I believe. Thin (10 thou) sleepers made ballasting very simple. I still have a stock of these mouldings and would have no problem using them again. I've got some thin PCB which makes matching point sleepers. The Association used to supply a version of the strip rail in phosphor-bronze. I wouldn't mind getting hold of some if anyone has any they are not going to use. Mark

I've used 300mm square cork floor tiles as track underlay. Defintely a lot better that the rolls of cork sheet sold for this purpose. The tiles have a finished level surface top and bottom and seem less compressible than untreated cork. Adjacent to baseboard joints, I substituted ply for the cork. Mark

The open cell green foam in my Mossmer stock box was visibly crumbling. This happened over a fairly short space of time after a good few years of service with no degradation. The residue felt slightly sticky but fortunately brushed off the stock. It was similar to the crumbling of foam carpet underlay. Fortunately, I was able to get some new closed cell foam cut for the trays. This came from Alan Smith's company "ABS Cases" and is what was used in commercially made rolling stock cases. I'm hoping it's the right stuff for the job. Over in the Collectables forum, there are some examples of tinplate stock with paint damage from long term storage in open cell foam. Sorry I can't be more specific than that. Acid free tissue paper would be a good choice for long term storage for items that will not be disturbed but it's not very robust for a frequently used stock box. I've seen the mains cable sheathing of a Marklin Z power unit affected by prolonged storage in its expanded polystyrene packing.

My current standard gauge stock box has the stock standing on their wheels, my previous one had them on their sides. As long as the stock is safely restrained, I don't think it really matters. What's important is to have a foam that doesn't "pick" at the details, doesn't degrade and is safely inert. Some foams give off a gas which can affect items stored. My original "Mossmer N-box" foam degraded after about 20 years use and needed replacing. I have seen sliced up camping mat used most successfully. Mark

I already have fine-toothed blades and a decent saw-frame. Things have improved as I how have a beeswax block to provide lubrication. Vale of Penwal was in the August 1957 MRN and the following year, the MRN for August 1958 has a description of building the Leek & Manifold 2-6-4 "J.B Earle". As you say, an era of 100% scratchbuilding. It would be fascinating to see the models but they seem to have disappeared over the course of time. An L&M 2-6-4 would still be a challenging build today, even with the small coreless motors and gears now available. By contrast, Irish 3ft offers a lot of possibilities for 2mm http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/1345/entry-15590-distracted-from-the-straight-onto-the-narrow/ Mark

Thanks Chris. Maybe I mis-remembered and it's in another magazine, either the MRN or MRC. Perhaps the RM was a bit snooty about "push-along" diecast toys. Certainly one or two Lone Star Jintys gained powered 2mm chassis. Denys Brownlee had one and so did Bert Groves. Mark

I find it easier to cut out the thicker material when using a piercing saw. The thinner material can pick up on the blade. It could be that my sawing technique leaves something to be desired! Half-hard 0.5mm or 0.7mm phosphor-bronze will give you frames that wil last a lifetime. As you can see from my blog, I prefer to mechanically assemble my chassis. PCB is fine as long as you don't overheat it when soldering. Having said that, my J69 chassis was put together using 0.5mm P/B & PCB spacers at least 20 years ago and it's still going strong. The thicker frame material allows the fixing screws to be countersunk. If you want a robust chassis, then P/B frames combined with an Acetal spacing block will provide it. You can build a chassis this way with hand tools. 1/4" acetal sheet is readily available. It''s very easy to cut and shape. Mark

2017 is the diamond jubilee of the launch of Lone Star "Treble-O-Trains" (the push-along range). I know the range was announced in the Railway Modeller during 1957 but I can't recall the issue.Does anyone happen to have RMs for that year and can confirm this?

In the lengths that DIY sheds sell 12mm angle, there's plenty of material for motor mounts! This type of mount can also be tapped with a 5.5mm thread to hold a coreless motor. The name brand coreless motors (Faulhaber, Portescap, Citizen etc) come with a threaded boss. I'm not expecting much wear, my 2mm locos don't do a lot of mileage. The wear pattern of a worm & wormwheel is such that closing up the mesh doesn't really resolve the problem. The worm and/or the worm wheel tend to become throated. That's what we've observed on Copenhagen Fields. Mark

A little white ago, we left the chassis soap opera with this cliff-hanger "Coming in part 3, mounting the motor and meshing the worm & wormwheel". Well, it's here at last!. The chassis block and frames have been trimmed up thus This chassis is a particularly unfancy set of ironmongery, referring back to the prototype photograph in part 1 http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/1345/entry-14132-peckett-y-class-framed-part-1/ Note the lack of anything resembling guard irons. They've either been knocked off or deleted by a cost-conscious accountant. I suspect the latter. Anyway, it's jolly convenient for a lazy person like myself. The ends of the chassis have been given a recess where the buffer beam will sit, in order to avoid a short circuit across the split frames. Next on the agenda is how to power the locomotive. I chose to use the flat sided can motor available from the 2mm Scale Association. This is a compact powerful and smooth-running unit. It has a pair of mounting holes in one end which accept an M1.0 thread (12BA can also be used). Here's the motor and worm. The worm & wormwheel are Association products from several years ago but are none the worse for that. I needed to use the motor in an upright configuration which meant there was not a flat surface allowing the motor to be glued in position. To be perfectly honest, I'm not a fan of glueing motors in place. It's a perfectly sound practice and with the right adhesive, will give no problems. It's just that I prefer a slightly more engineered solution. What was needed was a strong right-angled section to mate up with the chassis block and hold the motor rigidly in place. I chose to use a section of 12mm aluminium angle of the type available from DIY stores. This has the hard work done as a slice of it will give an accurate 90 degree angle. It was drilled and shaped using my Proxxon MF70 mill and finished off with files. A mill isn't necessary, it's just a quick way of achieving the end result. Hopefully the photos will show the small amount of shaping and drilling needed. The base was tapped 12BA for the mounting screw. The large countersink is to accomodate the bearing boss of the motor, so it sits flush against the mount. With the motor attached, it should now be clear it's held in place. The front face of the mount has a small recess to allow the mount to be as close to the wormwheel as possible. To fine-tune the mesh of the worm and wormwheel, the base is carefully sanded on some wet & dry paper glued to MDF. Working slowly using a circular motion, it's possible to reduce the dimension quite precisely. The fixing screw is placed in the chassis then the mounting is screwed in place. It is just a fraction narrower than the central chassis block thus electically isolated from the frames. A single mounting screw has proved quite sufficient to hold the mount in place as there's quite a bit of friction between the mounting and the chassis block. If it becomes necessary, a small shear-pin can be inserted to lock everything in position. The worm is slipped onto the motor shaft and as can be seen, the meshing is just about right. There are a number of ways to get the worm/wormwheel mesh correct. For every combination, there is a specific dimension of axle centres but as these are at right angles, I personally don't find it easy to use. Originally, I started off using either a "Rizla" cigarette paper or a sliver of aluminium kitchen foil to set the meshing clearance. Nowadays, I tend to eyeball it and work by feel, knowing from experience how much backlash there needs to be on the wormwheel. The photo below shows the result Using a steel worm on the motor shaft, there is a way to check the mesh is a happy one. The worm is reamed out so it easily rotates on the motor shaft but has no perceptible clearance. This allows the worm to be spun on the shaft by fingertip to ensure there are no tight spots and it all rotates freely. A fingertip is a surprisingly sensitive measuring device! Once everything is confirmed OK, the worm will be secured with a drop of Loctite. Now we can try the chassis against the body. The unused end of the motor shaft needs some trimming to fit. This is marked with a felt tip permanent marker and will be cut off using a carborundum disc in a mini-drill as the motor shaft is hardened steel. The shaft won't be completely cut back as I want to try mounting a small flywheel, simply to see what effect it might have. This brings the progress on this loco up to date. The next instalment will hopefully cover the fitting of the coupling rods, flywheel and wires to the motor. Oh yes, I fibbed about the "small recess allowing room for the wormwheel". I made a mistake with the position of the mounting hole and had to relieve some of the mounting to allow the wormwheel to rotate because I did not particularly want to make another mounting...!

The kit doesn't include anything like that. I have some 0.3mm square nickel-silver wire which I'm thinking of soldering in to represent the panel joins but looking at the photos, the joints are not that prominent and the rivets are very small in 2mm scale. It might be as well to simply fill in the lines and use Archer rivet decals if they do one fine enough.