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.