Spoony McSpoonface

We had an unexpected new item of rolling stock to play with - The Boat!

For those who are not familiar with Festiniog Railway heritage this is, indeed, a genuine vehicle, and at special events you can still see it being used - or at least a modern replica.

The original 'Boat' was a whimsical inspection car designed by, and for, the Spooner family's use.

Mostly it gravitated down the FR line in the same was as its famous slate trains, but it also had a sail and a mast so it could travel independently along the flat 1-mile embankment known as 'The Cob' at the bottom end of the line.

This model is a 3D print which was gifted to us last week by one of our operating team at the Porthmadog show.

Himself has replaced the printed axles and wheels with metal ones so it is able to run, and fitted a coupling at the back - or should I say aft? - so it can be attached to the end of trains, which is how the real one is taken up the FR line on its rare outings.

The original vehicle met is end - the the owner damn-near did, too!- when it free-wheeled into a collision with an Up train in 1886 south of Dduallt, when Mr Spooner decided to set off down the line without the train staff which would guarantee he wasn't going to meet something coming the other way.

And, inevitably, he did!

Opportunities for 'sailing' the Boat ourselves appear to be limited, at least in public,

The replica was not built until 2005 so it has no place on Minffordd, and there's no likelihood of it ever venturing onto the Welsh Highland for it to be used on Bron Hebog.

(Aside from the fact that Bron Hebog is unlikely to appear again at an exhibition, anyway.)

But if the mood takes us to unpack Dduallt for a nostalgic running session at home it is possible the Boat may be taken for a spin.

Battered Bagnal

I've not hung around getting Kidbrooke ready to be permanently abandoned on a length of track in Minffordd Yard.

I don't have enough tiny alphabet transfers in stock to attempt to replicate all the graffiti which was painted onto the hulk of the loco during its time in the yard, but I've had a go at representing some of the other whitewash embelishments.

The 3d print was given a spray with red oxide primer before applying a succession of diluted acrylic washes of various shades of brown and then dry brushing with some orange hues and darker colours to get what I hope looks like a suitably rusty effect.

Being a print it is absolutely featherweight so we'll have no problem permanently gluing it onto the length of track in front of the slate sheds.

It should make an interesting conversation piece in Porthmadog in a two week's time.

I wonder what the ratio will be between those who give a knowing smile and those who point and say 'What's that doing there?'

Surgical Violence

There's nothing so strange as receiving a new model in the post and then immediately starting to hack it to bits, but that was how I spend one afternoon this week.

The model in question is a Fourdees 3D print of a Bagnall 0-4-0 which is being heavily distressed to be version of Kidbrooke, a small tank which spent most of the 1960s looking very sorry for itself in Minffordd Yard.

The kit is very cleverly designed so you can sit the body on a static chassis with very nicely represented valve gear, or install a Bachmann Percy chassis.

No other adaptation is required, it is simple swap.  Nicely done Fourdees!

The fidelity of these prints is most impressive these days, although it's fortunate that I needed to chop a lot of bits off because in my experience it is incredibly easy to break off the small details on models such as this.

Whilst I admire that it is possible to render such fine items such as handrails, regulators and really small pipework I do wonder whether it wouldn't be better to leave it for modellers who desire this kind of detail to add it themselves in a more robust material?

The other aspect which always makes check and check again with prints like this differentiating what is a production support sprue which needs to be removed, and what is the part of the model which must remain?  

The spider's web of supports in the cab opening on this print are a case in point.

As you can see by comparing the photos I've posted there was a lot which needed to be chopped off and filed away, such as the cab back sheet, the chimney, smokebox door and the dumb buffers.

The most intricate job was to remove the cab support frame so the cab roof can be resting partly on top of the saddle tank, which is how the loco looked when it was at Minffordd.

With the destruction done the next task is to paint and weather it to look supremely rusted and neglected....

Space Saver

There's one finishing touch to be added before we pack up Minffordd to take it it Porthamdog next month.

Having recently become aware that during the 1960s the hulk of the Bagnall 0-4-0 Kidbrooke was hanging around the yard we had to do something to represent that.

You can read more about it here.

A 3D print of a very similar Bagnall tank should be arriving any time soon, and shall set to work distressing it appropriately.

In the meantime, Himself has prepared a isolated length of weed-strewn track for it to rest on.

This is not strictly prototypical because in reality Kidbrooke was placed on the long siding which runs in front of the Maenofferen sheds, but that's a useful bit of yard for shunting wagons around so we're going to reposition it slightly.

The model in the picture is an old white metal body we somehow acquired - or were gifted - long ago and is sitting there to give an impression of how it's going to appear.

Back Burners

I bet we've all got them, haven't we? Those modelling projects sitting in a box which you say you will get around to one day.

This pair are one of mine.

If you don't immediately recognise them from their ghostly resin appearance, they are 3D prints from Robex of bodies for the Manning Wardle tank loco Jubilee 1897.

And if you know something about the history of that locomotive you may wonder what my interest in them would be.

There is is tangential connection to the FR in that it started out working at the Cilgwyn quarry alongside Lilla, and made a fleeting trip along the Welsh Highland as part of a transfer move to the Penrhyn quarry.

But the reason I have them is nothing to do with rolling stock for Dduallt, Bron Hebog or Minffordd.

A couple of years ago when I was developing my home dual gauge test track - which turned into a full-blown layout - I was looking for a couple of small tank locomotives which would look at home on the small narrow gauge loop which is done up like a very small scale tourist railway.

I was very impressed with the smooth performance of the Minitrains outside framed F&C chassis which powers our Lilla (also a Robex print) but I found the slight more chunky look of the Manning Wardle loco more attractive.

I've always intended to get these bodies mounted on a pair of spare F&C chassis we have in stock, but it's one of those things that I've not got round to.

Or more accurately, Himself has always had to much to be getting on with that it seemed unreasonable for me to add to the backlog by asking if it'd mind taking a look at them for me.

As well as the chassis I ordered in the other parts we'd need, such as the etch for the motion and slide bars.

I'd even had a couple of name plates produced because I intended to finish them in freelance liveries and name them after my children. (Very soppy for a serious prototype modeller, I know.)

I wonder, however, whether this might be a good moment to suggest the idea to Himself, because we get seriously drawn into the Dinas project.

And I also suspect he might be quite glad of another excuse not to have to try to sort out the knotty problem of how to attach valve gear to the NG15 chassis which is sitting on the workbench taunting him...

Mesh Door Solution

You can call me a hypocrite if you like, and I won't disagree, but after many years of - lets call it scepticism - about 3D printing the new fangled technology has proven to be the best solution to the problem of how to recreate the small mesh safety doors on the Hudson toast rack carriage 39.

Even better was that I didn't have to do anything to get them, having been offered eight spares from fellow NG modeller, Colin Lea.

As printed, they were just under a millimetre too wide for the gap between the body panels - if it was the 009 Society / Dundas kit it would have been even more so - but it proved possible to file them carefully at either side to fit snugly.

You can probably make out in the picture that I have made and fitted the seat benches and the backrests.

Now it's just about ready to pass to Himself to add the brass bits and get it painted.

Cheers Colin!

Bagnall Bling

Now back from his sojourn down south Himself is getting on with preparing Gelert for it's roll-out at the Greenock show.

We've decided to finish it in its current lined out livery, because frankly it just looked too dull in all-over dark blue.

For this he's using Kemco / Modelmaster BR mixed traffic lining sheets.

These are also what we used on our spoof BR liveried Lyd.

Its arguable that the grey is a little too - well - grey for the lining on the real loco which looks more brilliant white, but these transfers are very crisp which more than makes up for it in my mind.

If you look very closely you might be able to make out that he has deployed his thick black transfer line trick to get perfect definition on the change between the blue of the tank and the black of the running plate.

I think it'll make a very attractive little engine and look terrific taking turns with Russell and the Baldwin hauling our new WHHR set on Bron Hebog.

In The Navy

The first navy blue topcoat is being applied to Gelert.

Himself is still not entirely happy with the way paint takes and dries on these 3D printed bodies, even when they’ve been cured in white spirit and primed.

It looks a little ropey just now, but just like with Lilla I’m very confident with how the finish will turn out.

Embellishments

Himself has been doing some lovely detailing work on our Robex Gelert.

This is what really lifts a 3D printed body and makes it something that can live alongside a loco built from an etched brass kit, or one of the current, highly detailed, ready to run products.

I hope other modellers who are at the start of their journey in this hobby use this as inspiration, and perhaps in future decide not to settle for what comes off the printer as the finished article.

Most of the new bits have been made from brass, so they show very clearly in the pictures.

The most obvious are things like the coal rails on the bunker and the whistle, but look closely and you'll see lots of other things like the footsteps and various bits of pipework coming out from under the cab.

Most importantly, at the front end, he's made up something to represent the air brake pump and created a dart for the smokebox door.

This has mostly been done with scraps that you might find among your modelling materials such as hand rail knobs 16BA nuts, brass tube, wire and styrene rod.

I appreciate that for someone who never scratch builds that probably reads like one of those recipes that blithely refer to 'store cupboard ingredients'.....

Weight Watching

With the prototype chassis complete and working well, Himself has been beefing up the Bagnall, Gelert, to give it a little more tractive effort.

One of the challenges with 3D printed bodies is their extreme lightness, especially in a scale which has previously got used to heavyweight white metal locomotive bodies.

So he has stuffed lead into every available orifice.

The only visible bits are these pieces you can see in the bunker, which has yet to be filled with coal.

Lead has also been fitted inside the side tanks and also stuffed into the smokebox and the front section of the boiler, which all helps with the weight distribution on a model which runs the risk of being tail-heavy.

The chassis we've test build for the developer has an very clever roller system above the bogie truck which provides excellent support and a smooth swing.

If you look carefully you'll also notice that the nuts to secure the motion have been fitted now, and Himself has also created a firebox piece to fit inside the cab.

The fixed rear coupling will need to be replaced with one that swings before it can haul anything around our tight curves going boiler-first, but visitors to the Troon show this weekend might catch a glimpse of it having a - rather improbable - test run around the Dduallt spiral.

Gelert Goes To Dduallt

Gelert has moved under its own power.

Himself sent me a short video of it undergoing a test run on Dduallt.



As is self-evident from the film it now has the motor wired to the pick-ups and the motion fitted, although on the rear axle the rods are just held in place with a bit of plastic sheath for now because we don't have any 16BA nuts yet.

The motion looks very skinny under a relatively large locomotive, and Himself tells me that assembling the slidebars, crosshead and connecting rod made making up Garratt motion seem like working on 7mm scale!

It's encouraging to see that it will haul a pair of plastic carriages up the slope quite happily which makes me believe that it will be up to the job I have in mind for it on Bron Hebog, where the gradient is less severe.

(I know, I know....)

In any case I'll be encouraging Himself to try to stuff as much ballast into the lightweight 3D plastic body as he can.

Those big side tanks are a prime candidate, as is the hollow smokebox.

Venting

I'm usually quite circumspect and diplomatic on this blog.

I try not to go in for polemics or to stir up controversy for the sake of it, or just to get attention.

Every now and then, however, I feel that there is something which has to be said, and this is such an occasion.

The subject is 3D printing.

Or to be correct, 3D printing design and the degree of care and attention which does - and more frequently, doesn't - go into it.

This is not a rant against the technology.

We have a couple of 3D printed locomotive bodies ourselves which were designed by Robex who have created wonderfully detailed and fine models.

Here, for example, is a screenshot of one of their FR slate wagons.

There is always another end to every spectrum, sadly.

The other day, as I was googling around for pictures to research a model, I was led to a 'shop' on perhaps the most well-known 3D print site where I was appalled to come across a fleet of what were purported to be scale models of FR stock - some of it of very rare items of rolling stock of which I know of only a few previous models, all painstakingly scratch built.

(Many of which by me.)

In most cases what is presented are computer simulated images, not actual printed models, so it is impossible to judge them in reality, but what I can see on the screen makes it exceedingly hard for me to accept the stated claim that they are accurate scale models.

There are some dimensions which are just grotesque, and other parts which, frankly, might as well be built using Lego.

It seems to me that many of these designs are being 'knocked up' in almost indecent haste with seemingly not a care that parts of them bear no obvious resemblance to the real thing.

Some of the prices are, frankly, iniquitous, and I don't mind telling you that it makes me mad.

In my view it is even more important in this digital age to keep the words caveat emptor at the forefront of your mind.

Making Myself Unpopular

Himself's birthday has come around again, and just like last year I decided to treat him to a Robex 3D print.

We've seen what a fabulous job he made of the Lilla so I thought I'd challenge him with the WHHR's Bagnall 0-4-2 Gelert.

As the real one has made a test trip as far up the line as Beddgelert it would be nice to be able to represent that on Bron Hebog.

It's true that in his first experience of the material he found it very much less robust that he was used to with brass, and it was quite a steep learning curve, but at least the project with the Minitrains chassis was quite straightforward.

Not so with Gelert.

The Robex print is designed to fit the Fleishmann 0-4-0 chassis, and no problem there because I've had one of them in strategic storage for years.

The difficulty is that the Bagnall is outside-framed and Himself looked rather unimpressed when I broke it to him that his challenge is to try to covert it with new driving axles, fly cranks and all the rest,

I've no doubt he'll be able to achieve that because he managed it brilliantly on a pair of Ibertrens under our original Penrhyn ladies more than 20 years ago.

I am expectiing my name will be mud when he gets round to trying to do it, though.....

Lilla

With the name and works plates from Narrow Planet fitted our Robex Lilla is ready at last.

We'll just leave these here.

Lovely Lined Lilla

So, after many hours of very delicate work, here she is - a lined out Lilla.

All she needs now is for the name and works plates to be fitted, which are currently on order from Narrow Planet.

As I'd hoped the lining really does help to draw the eye away from the inevitable imperfections of the 3D printed surface in places, although I have to say that the Robex body is one of the most impressive I have yet seen which is why we decided to take the plunge.

It is a shame that the motor and fly wheel is such a bloody great intrusion in the cab, but we shall do our best to disguise it with a portly locomotive crew.

To return to a theme in the post on the latest ready to run announcement a few days ago, we should be grateful to Minitrains for coming up with a simple, and very well running outside frame chassis which can be exploited by kit and CAD designers alike.

I can't wait to see her running on the layouts in due course.

Lilla Lining

Happy New Year to you!

I've got a rather nice picture for the first post of 2018.

Himself has been making steady progress with the second stage of the lining on Lilla, adding the thin red lines inside the pale blue which he put on first.

It's very delicate and painstaking work and what you see here is the result of a number of short sessions at the workbench because dealing with something as small as a quarry Hunslet in OO9 you quickly tire your brain and eyesight.

For the red lines he's switched onto the Kemco / Modelmaster waterslide transfers which are a little bit finer than the Fox product he used on the blue and the corner pieces have a smaller radius as well which works better for sitting inside the blue.

For the moment he's just got the 'clock side' of the loco done but it's clear that it's going to look stunning when it's finished.

Lining it out also has the benefit that, hopefully, it will distract the eye from the imperfect surface of the 3D printed body which still has many obvious horizontal bands despite his efforts to tidy it up.

I guess we've just been spoiled by having so many brass locomotive bodies in the fleet.

Review Of The Year - Part 1

Let's face it, there's not a lot of modelling gets done in the run up to Christmas, so I've got into the habit on the blog of taking stock of what we have achieved over the course of a year.

Quite often I end up surprising myself with how much has been done, because progress on a model can be such a haphazard affair that you sometimes don't realise how many things you have been working on over the period.

January

At the start of the year Himself was putting the finishing touches to our scratch built model of the new FR service car 125.

A few miles down the coast I was starting work on one of the more obvious missing pieces on Bron Hebog - the ruined barn which sits in the middle of the S bend.

And after many years sitting in primer Himself got around to painting the exquisite model of Britomart which was built up from a Brian Madge Quarry Hunslet kit  (which are sadly filed under H for Hen's Teeth currently, more's the pity.)

February

There were other locomotive loose ends which Himself set about tidying up earlier this year, including the long-standing issue we had with the wheels on our Welsh Pony.

This model was built - with extreme difficulty! - from another now unavailable kit  (do you spot a trend here?) and the problem was that one of the wheels on it was slightly less than round.

Our little pony ran with a nasty limp.

Fortunately, one of my contacts who knows the manufacturer was able to obtain a replacement set of wheels, for which we are most grateful.

Himself pulled the chassis part and replaced them, with the result that it now runs much more satisfactorily as you can see below.

Which is more than can be said about the real Welsh Pony! (Patience is a virtue...)

As milder weather arrived he ventured into the garage and began scenic work on the layout again, making a start on the scale miles of post and wire fencing alongside the line.

I was very taken with an overhead shot he took of the farmyard area, which I think showed off the subtlety of the scenic work he's been doing.

March

While that was going on Himself had been painting the old barn which was ready to be tried out in position on the layout, and looked very effective.

We'd also taken a radical step into a new technology: 3D printing.

For his birthday I bought him a copy of the Robex design for the unique Quarry Hunslet Lilla which I had been admiring for some time after seeing pictures of models which other people had made.

Until now all our locomotives have had brass or white metal bodies.

Himself found that bits fell off this one from virtually the first time he held it, which didn't do much to endear him to the medium.

On my workbench I had begun another stretch of house building with the intention of finally finishing the Oberon Woods estate scene.

To be continued after Christmas.

I See A Red Engine And I Want To Paint It Black?

With apologies to Sir Mick and Keith, but it appears I have a decision to make with regards to our Lilla.

Himself has been adding a few brass embellishments to the 3D printed Robex body, such as the handrails and whatever it is on top of the dome.

(UPDATE: since this was posted a reader has got in touch to tell me it is a regulator lubrication valve. Every day's a school day.)

I get the impression he finds working with this inherently brittle material rather stressful compared to brass or white metal.

(His last email to me began with the words 'before I wreck it completely....')

Those of you who are familiar with the Minitrains chassis which is used on this kit will notice what a good job he's done reshaping the fly cranks so they no longer have the big counter weight on them.

He has also made use of a handy etched fret from RT Models to replace the slidebars and the original, and rather chunky, couplings have been changed as well for brass ones.

So now he's asking me about my preferences for painting it?

It seems to me we have three choices,

For a while on the FR it ran it plain black livery.

(I'm sure he'd be delighted if we plumped for that.)

Then for a long while it was in lined out Penrhyn Quarry Railway livery, and last winter it emerged from Boston Lodge in the rather natty Cilgwyn green.

What do you all reckon?

Slide Bars

Himself has been working on fitting the new cylinders, slidebars and crossheads to the Minitrains chassis on our Robex Lilla.

He told me there were a few adaptations required, but then we never had time for him to actually explain to me what they were, so you'll just have to look at the pretty pictures instead.

I've yet to see it run but from what Himself tells me it is sensationally back-heavy which is obvious from the position of the motor which is positioned vertically in the cab area,

Fortunately for us there is a lot of space inside the saddle tank, and even the smokebox which can be stuffed with weight, which as well as stopping it doing wheelies every time it moves should also do wonders for its tractive effort.

Red Bull

We have some wheels for our Lilla at last.

The Robex 3D body is resting on top of the Minitrains F&C outside frame chassis, but there is still a section of print to be removed from inside the body before it sits in position properly, which explains why it's sitting so high at the back.

When I saw it my first impression was that it looked like a Red Bull F1 car which are set up with a very aggressive rake.

I've set Himself the challenge of doing something to trim the fly cranks.

The Minitrains chassis comes with the large balance weights which you can see in the picture above, but Lilla is fitted with basic cranks.

Hopefully some judicious use of a cutting disc on the end of the mini drill should sort that out.

Of course, that's easy for me to say....