Garden Railway Forum

The weather forecast sounds promising for the weekend Phil, but it is Wales! Looking forward to being together again.

I’ve just been notified that Micron Radio Control have released their new MR603 receiver so one is on order for Trefor, whose nameplates Martyn brought over yesterday when he visited to have a play with Yr Hen Felin shunting puzzle. I have ordered a spare as I’m minded to build a Slater’s ‘Prince’ as a future project having gained confidence with my loco builds in the less expensive end of the range.

Oh dear, the weather forecast for Saturday has deteriorated!

Phil

A wet day at the Gwili but luckily we were allowed to use a small marquee so went ahead. Not as many visitors as there would have been on a sunny day but those who came kept me busy all day getting them shunting on the layout and having lots of fun.

Next outing looks like being there again on the 17th July.

Phil

An overcast day with intermittent rainstorms at the Gwili today with Phil and two other colleagues from our group. Reduced visitor numbers due to the forecast but a good day out nonetheless.
The theme of the day was 'Railway Oddities' and items on offer were...
We presented some of our own models...
The next date will also include classic cars and steam train rides throughout the day.

Sitting in my hotel near Northampton after a great time at the National Show in Peterborough. My partner and I have made a short break of it and combined with some family visits. I now have two more locos to build and a couple more figures to paint.

Phil

Home now and had a quick look in the boxes of the kits I have lined up:-

a Clara from Boot Lane Works. Another company making 3D printed and laser cut kits with some rather lovely quaint vehicles in the catalogue at very attractive prices. The 3D printed parts have the usual lines from printing but I'm assured they sand out easily, I'll report back once I get going. They use Binnie spoked wheels for the drivers with a 3D printed insert for the cranks so quartering is supposed to be easy to set up and get right.

a Hunslet 125 0-6-0 diesel from Bole Laser Craft. This uses a mixture of laser cut acrylic, some finely cast resin parts and very high quality 3D printed nylon for the detailing parts. The kit uses the Roundhouse HBK -D3 Chassis Kit so the finished loco has serious weight. There are 3D printed parts to detail the chassis.

Phil

I have made a start on the Hunslet diesel.

The chassis sides required drilling for addition of 3D printed detailing parts and the Bole kit includes a laser cut template to clip over the brass wheel bearings to mark the necessary holes, drilled at 2mm diameter. The easiest way to mark the positions seemed to be to drill very carefully, using the pillar drill through the template, then drill completely with template removed. The local chump (me) managed to do the first side with the template the wrong way up so some holes (6 of 12) had to be redrilled and later filled with Cataloy. The chassis was then cleaned and given two coats of etch primer.

The first picture shows the correctly drilled side uppermost, Cataloy can be seen on the other side. The couplings and buffer beams were held to the chassis for painting, the latter separated from it by lumps of blu tack.
The second picture shows 3D printed details added.
The chassis has been given an initial coat of acrylic primer. Picture to follow.

Phil

Very interesting.
PM sent.

Having applied the 3D printed detailing parts I then sprayed the chassis with grey primer followed by two coats of matt black. Next came adding the axles, wheels and driving gear wheel, tightening the grub screws with them roughly in place. The cranks were then pressed onto the ends of the axles using a drill press vice to force them gently into place. At this point the side play was excessive so I removed a crank at a time from one side and added a shim, as supplied in the kit for the purpose, which seemed to bring it within limits (0.5mm or so). Adding a connecting rod to one side of the chassis allowed all three axles to turn nearly freely but the second one caused a sticking point. The solution was to file the end holes a little larger and to flatten the slight rim machining in the factory had left round the holes. I found that reversing one of the connecting rods gave much freer running, obviously slightly out of symmetry. I then adjusted the positions of the wheels to give the correct back to back ( a brass plate is supplied in the kit) and so that they were evenly spaced between the sides of the frame. The chassis would now roll freely along a piece of track. I then attached the motor to its mounting plate and added the driving worm gear, then fixed this to the frames and adjusted its position to engage with the driving gear wheel. A 6volt battery was then used to test the running and it worked well in both directions.

The photos show side and underneath views at this stage:-
I will next add the partial footplate, battery and radio receiver board and associated switches and socket for charge. Somehow this is not with the Hunslet kit so I await the parts delivery to proceed further with the chassis.

Phil

Looks good and I'll bet it runs well too

Rik

Loving this Hunslet build. Please continue keeping us informed as you progress..

Glad to see your positive feedback!
This is how far I got yesterday with adding rivets to the cab sides. To the left are two rows of rivets on their sprue and to the right the third row from the sprue separated off ready for fixing. The kit contains 144 rivets of which only eight (I think) are spare and they ping off into the great unknown with alarming alacrity. It’s suggested that one cut them from the sprue after gluing in place with fine side cutters, which I don’t have, hence the nail scissors. I used a small puddle of’Power Bond’ on a pice of scrap polythene and dipped the stem into that, up to three at a time. The rivet spacing on the sprue does not quite match the spacing of the holes in the black acrylic but by flexing the sprue (it is nylon), with practice it becomes ‘easy’ to stick three at a time in place away from the edge of the acrylic, snip from the sprue and press down with a narrow implement to get firmly home.

After some riveting fun this afternoon we now have:-
Each piece has one rivet omitted at the edge for ease of assembly of the cab, that leaves 16 needed, I counted the remaining rivets on the sprue, there were 15! I found one lurking on the bench, then crawled around the floor and found two more. I now have two spare at the moment.

Phil

An easy one for the last job today - adding the buffer beams which were painted earlier
Phil

A little to report today:-

The missing footplate bits arrived from Steve at Bole Laser Craft yesterday morning so I was set to do more, only to find that the postal monster had managed to turn them into rather more bits than intended. At least the plate for mounting the electrics was intact so this morning I filed two of the slots out to form holes for the charging socket and on/off switch:-
the switch is a spdt type. This means that I can have centre ‘off’ and either side ‘on’. Which makes life easier.

I thought I could then add the batteries, thermal fuse and receiver and do some testing. The kit includes a lamp housing for the centre of the bonnet and another which could be put on the rear of the cab. I would like to have them switch automatically from white to red with direction of travel (may not be true to prototype) and found I had some two wire bicolour LEDs which I could use. I reckoned that it should be possible to connect them to the P1 and P2 outlets on the Micron MR603 I have and emailed Andy at Micron to confirm that this is right. It is but the early version of the software my receiver has needed updating so the receiver is on the way back to Andy.

I eventually managed to get this far by lunchtime:-
There are six NiMH cells. The thermal fuse is the yellow flat object with red wire soldered on between cells and motor.

Phil

an update on Trefor the Tram:-

He had his first proper trial run yesterday when we visited the Rhos & Betws Tramway with our local 16mm NGS group
Having added a further two NiMH cells, making six in total, he ran very well pulling the two coaches shown. I had originally used four cells but the cut-off voltage of the new Micron MR603 is 4.5v so there is very little headroom for running with only four cells. When left in a siding for a time the MR603 turned itself off after a period of non-use. The new Micron receiver works well but has some behaviour differences to the now unobtainable Deltang based version.

Many thanks to Alan and Syndy for a great day out.

Phil

And back to the Hunslet:-

Having received a replacement set of parts from Steve of Bole Laser Craft, for which many thanks, I could now begin assembly of the footplate and body. I did this on Friday whilst the roofers were busy finishing off two days of repair work - perhaps I was distracted!

Left hand cab and bonnet sides added either side of the cab front.

I then carried on adding the other sides and cab rear together with the bonnet front. There were some pictures - but ....

Yesterday the kit was taken to share with friends at the Rhos & Betws and attracted lots of interest, however I was horrified to realise I had glued the cab back in place with the rivets on the inside. What a prat! This morning I tried to unglue the cab back with more of the liquid glue I have been using to no avail. I also tried to dissolve the Power Bond with the supplied solvent, again no success. The last resort was to drill out the stems of the rivets with a 1.5mm drill in a pin vice and prise away the heads with a scalpel. This worked as the rivets being made of nylon are softer than the acrylic cab back so I could drill quite cleanly into the rivet stem. A picture follows.
I very much hope I will be able to buy some more rivets from Steve at Bole, otherwise I may be looking to 3D printing friends for some help.

Silly Phil

Hi Phil,
Glad I'm not the only one fouling up Bole's excellent kit!

Thanks Rob.

Today I have straightened the cab end of the bonnet moulding which was slightly curved and thus too long to go into place. An easy way to do this was using a shooting board, the emery board included in the kit and one of the scrap blocks of hardwood that come in handy so often:-
The emery board was held against the block as it was slid back and forward using the rougher side. A couple of minutes work saw the curvature removed and the bonnet then fitted lengthwise well but with a little side to side play. A strip of 0.5 mm black plastikard was glued to the inside of the bonnet frames on both sides, this ensured a better fit.

I used a 4mm drill in a pin vice to open up the holes for the magnets in bonnet and cab roof and superglued them in.
I also did some work on the lights fixing LEDs in place with Cataloy.

Phil

Following the build with interest. I do like seeing models emerge.
Rik

Extremely tidy work, sir!