Scalefour Forum

First trial of the RTS machine has proved very encouraging but I have had to prepare more bits of expanded foam to work on to check out the results. I expect to be able to show more results in the next few days once I have had chance to get to grips with this machine.

Ralph

Having gone through a mammoth workbench tidy up I thought it would be useful to have a stand to hold some metal sections in so I drew up a design and cut this out on my laser cutter. 2mm MDF which is a pain on the Emblaser cutter but after a few hours work a suitable stand came out. I passed the ide...

Tony's photos show lots of foam that needs turning into scenery. The group have spent a long time trawling Youtube looking at various people producing scenery using many different techniques. I found Luke Towan's videos most interesting and a read of a thread on RMWeb opened up further interesting i...

At the same time I have been playing around with static grass and some test pieces for Slattocks. I will post on the Slattocks thread for that.

Ralph

Its been a while since I wrote anything but I have been busy. I decided to stop work on the sprung tender chassis for the 4F and change it to a different design along the lines I used for the A Class locos. These have a milled brass block chassis which gives low down weight in the tenders and make i...

Hi Dave,

I use this solder most of the time with a phosphoric acid flux and set the iron about 350 degrees. Love it, it flows beautifully and I rarely have to clean up after that.

Love the Black 5 Dave, superb work.

Ralph

Thanks Robin and Dave. Would be most interested in learning more but right now I am working on this tender. I am sure we will host another get together like the last one Dave once all this is over. It was a year last March when we had the last one, time flies. Our group enjoyed playing host and it w...

Thanks Dave. Have you thought about selling your jig for putting wheels on square? Yes, I did but so far the reject rate has been pretty high so for now it is a non starter. Once I have got a working version you will see what I mean. Colin Wrangles is sadly missed, but I have one of his locos, a con...

That looks great, we need one of those for Slattocks, I have one in the cupboard to convert one day.

Ralph

Been a while since I posted but I have been beavering away with things. The L&Y locos have had their chimneys changed and now, thanks to John Redrup and help from L&Y Society boys sending me in that direction, they now have brass lost wax castings which are a bit more circular than the cast ...

I took a look at Lightburn but I don't think it supports the commercial machines like my HPC laser. Hi Dave, It is always worth dropping these guys a line as they are very helpful and obliging. In view of the number of HPC machines around they may well be interested in adding in a driver for it - I...

Those windows look nice Jeremy. The Photon never ceases to amaze me at what you can do with it, I did try doing some boiler washout plugs the other day and kicked that into touch, perhaps a mite too small but otherwise it is a brilliant piece of kit.

Ralph

That is very interesting Dave. The Slattocks group have some Black 5s which were built using Hornby bodies with a Comet chassis, Mashima motors and Roadrunner+ 40:1 gearboxes. Whilst they ran perfectly the speed at which they ran with a passenger train was, in our view, far too slow so the ratio got...

Thanks for your encouragement guys. The second loco is now running much better after stripping down the tender, the tender wheels were dragging on the sideframes so did a bit of thinning down and now it runs well. Moved on to my good old 4F. Now this has a long, long history. It is a real combinatio...

Things have progressed since the last post and a lot of detailing has taken place. One loco is running perfectly, the other still needs some tweaking which is tomorrow's job. Need to get a couple of brass whistles and some chequer plate for the fall plate. Getting there.

Ralph

That goods shed is going to look superb David. I usually find when brick lines don't come out right that it is down to me putting in the same line twice (or sometimes even more times) on the drawing and normally because the step and repeat function gets cocked up (by me!). As far as software for the...

Looks to me like that crane is mounted on an old tender chassis. They were often used for odd things like that.

Ralph

I see in all those fine looking bits that the drive shaft has the pins at right angles - they should be in-line in order to achieve a constant velocity drive and minimise wear. See https://www.beldenuniversal.com/universal-joint-phasing or others. That's very useful Dave thanks, I can easily change...

Since we are all constrained and tied to our home and with me being fed up of making buildings I decided to resurrect one of my old projects that I have had on the go for 2 or 3 years (or probably more actually). This isn't my oldest project, like most people I have quite a few more some of which da...

Looks almost like scratch building, but without the need to mark out the parts. There appears to be an ex-L&Y Class 27 lurking in the background. How about posting something about that? Hi Dave, yes it certainly was like scratch building with the exception that the rivet detail was actually ver...

I am watching this with a great deal of interest. In my possession I have had, for many years I might add, a set of parts which I inherited from various sources of a very early etch of a Stanier 2-6-2T. Now this must date back to the 1960s or thereabouts and I believe it was produced by the LMS Soci...

Shame you didn't have a high quality state of the art Cine camera with you at the time Ah yes, if only we had digital in those days a lot of memories would be preserved. We used to get off the train at Great Longstone, walk along the lanes to Monsal Head, go down the hill and up to the station, spe...

That's an interesting film Tim. Brings back memories of me standing in a field at the side of Monsal Dale box trainspotting all those years ago.

Has anyone else spotted at 7:51 the last coach on the train looking like there was a door left open? Or is it just me? Looks like it anyway.

Ralpg

Hi David, Nice work - looks like we are treading the same path right now. I bought some downpipe brackets from Modelu and the group got through 50 quite quickly so I drew some up for printing on my Photon too. I modified the design by adding a spigot to go into a drilled hole and then printed it. I ...

That's great thanks. Will take a look and see.

Ralph