Merry Christmas

 

Is it really that time of year already? Where did it go?

Modelling this year has all but come to a stand still, except for the odd purchase here and there. I basically have spent the year designing the new house and trying to keep it to a budget, which alas I continually fail at. But footings have gone in and hopefully be in by mid next year. The best part will be a train room equating to 78 sq metres, which will allow me to maybe build that dream railway. Several proposals have been put forward but I would really like to cover the Blayney-Demondrille line specifically Stanfield, Carcoar and Mandurama 1968-74 but we will see what happens. Any pictures people have in that time will be excepted gratefully.

Bowen Creek is tidily packed away in it boxes and if you look at some of the pictures on Ian's Blog  you will see it. Specifically here, yep that's it in the boxes next to the door, well part of it. Don’t have any plans for it at the moment and it may never see an exhibition again but we will see.

Anyway the festivities of Christmas are here and that will be great for me as I can use the break and forget about all the stresses of work and building houses. So Merry Christmas to you all and hopefully will see you all next year at various shows and conventions and continue enjoying this great hobby.

HooRoo.

Andrew

P.S. Just one purchase that turned up recently, my CPH. Totally unmodified here but still a nice model, however I have scored a Stephen Johnson CPH kit so I think I will work on that before anything gets touched on this one.

This is me!!!!!

Turn the volume up, get up from the modelling bench and click on the link.

WOOHOO…hilarious!!!!

AMRM…

Hi Guys,

 

Enjoy the next issue of AMRM.

Nice little blurb in there for a Christmas read.

 

Andrew

From The Cab of 4908…

Hi Everyone,

Been a while and nothing really to report, but I did finally get to upload some video taken from Epping 2011 by a kindly gent who I can’t remember…Oops.

The first scene the camera is on RP25/110 wheels and you will see it bounce thru the points but the rest is on real wheels :).

I wonder how many of you knew the station building was on a curve?

Cheers

Missing In Action…

 

Hi All,

I cant say I have done anything in the hobby since Epping, apart from the littlest bit of help on Ian’s layout. But what I would like to let you all know about is Justin Moy’s new blog. Good guy, good photographer and a great modeller. Click HERE.

  See ya.

Epping 2011…

Well, we got away with another show. Bowen ran well at times, and pissed me completely off at other times. Who invited the Gremlins to a show! 4908 hasn’t moaned or groaned before, why did it choose to be a right royal pain in the arse this weekend? We had a few derails but it seems to get less and less each time, but I did get some comic relief when Oddwalls (Stand 23) had wagons splayed all over the yard. Couldn’t help but stick one into em about keepin’ those big wheels on the I-beam track. It was all in fun.

Fantastic to meet lots of guys from the blog scene and I hope I didn’t look too much like a deer in the headlights when you introduced yourself, a lot of that went on!  Also I apologise if I missed you, eg Ray Pilgram, Gary Laker filled me in on that one :).

The activity after the show was entertaining, Friday night we spent freezing our backsides off in the stadium as James McInerney changed every train we had marshalled earlier into something different leaving a mess and a half for us to clean up :). Saturday saw a group of us off to Chinese and then back to Aaron Dennings to check out his casting set up. Sunday was more relaxing, dinner at the hotel and a few beers with Chris who was on the Jembaicumbene layout. Great guy and if you are reading this Chris, email your details to me and we will do that cab ride at some stage.

Thanks to all the guys that helped out over the weekend, whether you drove trains or not it was good to have you there. Thanks to Damian Chrystie for the extra hand in packing up, much apprieciated. Rob would have had a hell of a time carrying that stuff out on his own :).

I have a video to upload once I have time to do it which was done with a lipstick camera. I will work on that for next time.

HooRoo.

Off to Epping..

Hi Everyone,

 

The trailer is packed and we are ready for the EMRC show. Please stop by for a chat and make yourself known if you are attending.

We did have a tidy up off the layout and fixed some minor issues, we also did some extra weathering. They are things that just make the lead up to a show hectic and you wonder where the time went.

Have fun, hope to see you there.

Exhibition equals BEER……”MMMMMMM  BEEEEER”

Suspension….

Simple suspension was my aim for the TOR models and I think I have achieved that. My 49 and 47 class locos have run successfully with the springy suspension I came up with a few years ago but I think my latest idea is much more successful, as the old idea did add some resistance, but I didn’t want to go to the expense of building complete new bogies so I accepted it. This new method adds springing to each individual wheel and provides improved electrical pick up without the resistance.

So I will try and explain what I have done as photos are a bit tricky.

Step 1.

Hopefully you can see here, the idea is to take a length of 8 thou phosphor bronze wire  and eventually make a “Z” shape.

Solder the wire to the inside edge of the bearing and fold as above. This is where it gets tricky because normally, you would put the axle together and drop in the bogie, but here I am going to fix the bearing in the pick up frame, without any wheels or gearing attached, which gets a little fiddly later.

 

I use some packing and a peg to hold things in place but I removed the peg in the pic so you can see. But from here I will bend the wire back along the top of the pick up frame and solder in place which creates that Z shape I was referring to earlier. Repeat for all 6 axles.

Now the failing with this is that not all wheels are equally sprung,creating issues, but it works and will make the loco run reliably. This will get us thru full exhibition weekends with reliable running.

However, discussions on rebuilding the side frame completely  has commenced.  So I would say things in the future will have a more accurate resolution. Stay tuned.

Andrew

4908 waits for 4716 from Canowindra to arrive so it can continue with its loaded wheat train to Cowra.

Wheel Exchange Part 2…

Co-Co bogies with P87 are tricky as the wheels can lock in curves which derails the leading or trailing axle. The solution to this is to allow extra lateral movement in the centre axle. We have to pack the back of the wheel to stop the Phosphor Bronze bearing from falling out of the pick up housing anyway so the solution is to pack the end axles with 20 thou Phosphor Bronze and the centre with 10 thou. Unfortunately each loco seems to be different as the centre axle isn’t always dead centre such as the 49 Class so some experimentation is required.

Clearly this pic shows the comparison in the wheels, and reminds me why I went down this path.So here you can see the packing, what you may have noticed is that the gearing is not in the centre of the axle, this makes the packing interesting as the axle will slide a little further one way then the other but isn’t a major issue.

I have had a change of plan on the suspension, so this has made things a little slower then I thought it would be but there are some benefits to the new idea.  I will do some testing this week and report back next week.

Bye for now..

P87 Upgrade…

 

In the upcoming weeks to Epping Show, I will be doing a wheel exchange to Tom Rogers, Train-O-Rama, 49 class Locomotive.

This give me a chance to document it here and add the springy suspension to the loco.

 

I will start this week and keep the short updates coming.

Cheers

maintenance is in town...

The maintenance train has arrived late on the Canowindra - Gregra line, hauled by a 44 class, the first the line has seen but will not be the last.

This shot was taken by Ian after set up of BC in his new layout room. Now neither of us are big on the night scenes but they can be quite captivating.

The Epping show is now fast approaching and some maintenance needs to be attended to as well as some new trains to be added such as the 44 and maybe a DEB set as passenger traffic seems to be on the increase.

Hooroo for now…

Hi-Tech Details

Hi Everyone,

Received some stuff in the post today. I found this stuff when I went looking for some diaphragms for my 620/720 as I don’t like the gap between cars.

I also picked up some brake hoses and MU brake hoses for diesels. The thing about these is they are made of rubber instead of the hard plastic we have come to expect.

Check it out at www.hitechdetails.com

I will see how they go.

Cheers

Andrew

GUILTY, of over weathering...

With some time on my hands and a swag of new books, it has become obvious to me that I am guilty of getting carried away with weathering. I seem to have been caught in the situation of looking at and photographing stock that is derelict and thinking that this is how they always looked. So with time period modelling in mind it was time to adjust some wagons back to dirty and grimy instead of rusted and abused.

 The top picture is more how the van may have appeared in the 1990's (different code of coarse), so now is more late 60's to early 80's.
I am quite pleased I went to the effort because the vans  aren't all the same. I painted some lighter and darker then each other which gives a more natural effect then when the were all plastic grey from On Track Models. I have also added the improvements like Sergent couplers, chains and scale wheels. Also changed the spider brake wheel and thinned the mounting bracket. I would like to change the shunters steps but ahhh, maybe some other time.

So I guess the object of the post is to think about your period of modelling and weather accordingly, no matter how tempting it is to do the big rust patterns and dents that we can find today.

Some Explaining...

Hi All,

Yes I went missing for a while and likely to do it again. Her indoors has taken on a more responsible roll at work and has created the unfortunate event of shifting house, BUGGER! When I bought my current home I never envisaged moving again before the inevitable dirt nap but here I go again shifting house. To add to the stress I may as well build. Well very few houses on the market cater for a train room (every home should have one), so to get what I want, I need to build.

I have purchased a block at a really good price and is only a couple of doors from Ian. Poor bugger between us isn't going to know whats goin on. Still it will make layout tours by fellow bloggers easy.

I have been doing some work, I have rewheeled a traino 44 ( yet to be tested), put the IDR MLV together and have done various other little jobs.
The RU project is back in the drawers, however some thought is going into new W irons and more will be revealed at a later time.

Displaying BC this year is on the back burner, however we have accepted an offer from the Epping club to again feature at their show on the June long weekend. This show gets better every year and to me is fast becoming the best show in Sydney if not already.

Tom Rogers  and Craig Warton recently had a trip to Valley Heights and checked out the hole in the wheel situation. Seems a 1.5 mm hole is the go but I have yet to mill one out to see if it looks right, I am sure it will.

Anyhow, I will try to post some pics again soon and hopefully keep the little jobs going.

Ciao

What do ya know...

Feb issue of AMRM is out and look at that, a couple of pics of Bowen Creek from the Armidale Convention. See, we did have a good time!

Maybe I should talk to James about a lineside offer?

2011...

Happy New Year All,

The festive season was good to me, significant additions have been made to the library with Ron Prestons Day of the Passenger Train 1,2,and 3. This is a complete history of passenger train operations in NSW. Also Rons 44 class to go with my 48 class book, as well as Train Hobby publication of the 44 Class. A must for those TrainORama 44's I bought for $150 late last year, Bargain! And Lawrance Ryan's second book on Cowra, so lots of reading for me to get through.
A few kits have been given to me by the little brother, Ian Lindsays G2 goods shed which will be addapted for Merriwa and Stephen Johnson's Creamy Kate, very handy. So they will find their way to the "to be built" kit draw.

Bowen Creek has been set up in the shed for repairs and testing of the few RU's I have together. When a new wagon receives P87 wheels, there is always adjustments needed and these are no different, but more on those another time.

I have also been doing some titivating to Bowen Creek with a nice set of Platform scales that arrived from a well known modeller who shall remain nameless. I don't know if the colours are right but this is how I remember them so will do for now, I think they were all different anyway as the SM usually touched em up. Placed some milk cans on too but not sure about the baggage trolley, may delete that. I will add some things to the Fettler shed, but maybe later.

 

 

I went a little nuts and decided to add some detail to some wheels, I drilled some holes. Now they are not right but wanted to see if it could be done and if it was worth it. In conclusion yes it can, and yes it is. When the wagon rolls past it really sticks out so I will do more. Does anyone know the actual hole size and position?

Last thing I will add is the Infront Models DOT tanker I completed last year, I forgot to post the result so now is as good a time as any. The first pic is a dusty copy of the photo that comes with the kit.

I changed a few things in the kit, I replaced the ladder and the turnbuckles and should have made my own grab irons but maybe next time. I also added extra support angle next to the ladder as they were left out of the kit but overall it is an excellent kit and recommend it highly. I think the wheels should be 33" wheels too, but I need to get more so will correct later, I think they were 33" wheels? Will have to double check later.

HooRoo