Chris Brown (Emettman)'s workbench

[nickbrad]

That's one heck of a victoria sponge you've got the penguins balanced on.

[Mountain]

Nice display. Do you get many kiddies wanting to push the button?

[Emettman]

That's one heck of a victoria sponge you've got the penguins balanced on.

My most commonly used baseboard material these days: insulation foam.
It breaks into excellent cliffs

Chris

[Emettman]

Now I've gone and done it.

How do you ruin every knife you have?
Buy a new knife. Every other knife will instantly seem blunt.

I have just got operational (need a dab of paint and added crew figures: photos then)
Two of the familiar Triang/Hornby "Nellie" locos.
With
Rechargeable battery power,
Radio Control,
Directional head and tail lights.
And
Radio-control activated couplings at both ends.

Trouble is, there is no way I can retro-fit any of my earlier locos, short of scrapping all of their guts.

Chris.

[Mountain]

When I have tried those motors matched to steel and brass gears, the extra friction in the gears raises the starting voltage, negating any speed reduction the gears might provide. The plastic chassis, with nylon gears and a low powered motor is actually a very well executed bit of cost engineering. The Triang designed chassis from Nellie,Polly et. al. belongs in the age of heroic design which, had the grunt from the X04 to make it move. I have a Nellie with the newer wheels and rods using the old gear with Pug cylinders and motion grafted on. It's a later model with a Johnson motor

You maybe surprised to know that when I was preparing such a Triang 0-4-0 chassis for Ruthy, when I removed the pickups I've not found such a free running chassis as I have with this Triang one. Even though its con rods were connected, when I spun the wheels they took ages before they stopped. Some metal pinpoint axled wheels dont do that! While the chassis probably had reasonably high milage so had opened up a bit, I have to say that most of the friction those old Triang chassis had came in the form of the well made but heavily sprung pickups.

[Mountain]

Now I've gone and done it.

How do you ruin every knife you have?
Buy a new knife. Every other knife will instantly seem blunt.

I have just got operational (need a dab of paint and added crew figures: photos then)
Two of the familiar Triang/Hornby "Nellie" locos.
With
Rechargeable battery power,
Radio Control,
Directional head and tail lights.
And
Radio-control activated couplings at both ends.

Trouble is, there is no way I can retro-fit any of my earlier locos, short of scrapping all of their guts.

Chris.

The new locos of yours sound very promising indeed. What voltage motor are you using?

[Emettman]

The new locos of yours sound very promising indeed. What voltage motor are you using?

A range of ones basically at 3V.

Having had a look at what's available now. I can see, I think, a route to add operating remote couplings to some chipped locos.
The motor or motors for that would be:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Mini-Micro-C ... 0282.m3503

To avoid motion limit switches or motor burn-out I'd suggest using an eccentric capable of complete rotation to get the 2-position motion.

Chris

[Mountain]

Is interesting.

[Bufferstop]

Looking forward to some photos Chris.

[Emettman]

Looking forward to some photos Chris.

Can do.

Finished: not particularly remarkable-looking "Nellie" bodies, though one now has outside cylinders.(originally a Smokey Joe chassis)

But while 7178 is carrying couplings in their normal couple and pull position, 12 is showing its trick.

Front hook raised, rear loop (no hook) lowered.

Basically a vertical slow motor has a pin turning about 120 degrees to shift a flat plate with modified ends to push or release the loop and hook

Getting everything inside a small shunter, well I'd have got nowhere near this when i started playing with this idea for power and control.

Rt, new low voltage drive motor. Above it control chip
Centre, vertical,coupling plate drive motor.
Left, 2 rectangular 1.2 v batteries (charge in place through socket)

This is the "exploded" "is everything properly connected and working" moment before the wires are shortened and/or tucked away in the hope that the body will still fit over everything, as it did before adding wiring.

Chris.



.

[Emettman]

Recently arrived, some O scale horse-drawn tram kits from Russia.
Printed card, needing no cutting or glue to assemble.

The idea was to see if the (majority of the) kit might be a cheap and different route to some O-16.5 coaches
I ordered 3, along with an HO industrial building for a different project.

Ordered this way the carriages came out at £5.00 each including postage.

Propped up to give the height with a substitute chassis (4-wheel coach or long brake van chassis ideal)
Coach is 150mm long and 50mm wide. Includes neat glazing.
To get verandah variations a photocopy of some parts would be a possibility, but I might make "metal" railing ends by cutting down doll's house samples.
(I've re-scaled such before!)

This coach was built to learn assembly. It needs no glue but a few small drops of superglue would improve things a little and make things considerable easier.
Assembled carefully only 2 small tags are visible at either end, and these could be done away with if using glue.
It shows more under the flash than in daylight, but the roof edges could use a touch of felt-tip to colour them.

Shown against a Hornby saddletank to show how it would match against an O-16.5 conversion of such.

Overall this seems, to me at least, a viable (and cheap) route.
A bit more play with this sample, I think, before I makeup the two I'd actually need.

Chris.

[Emettman]

Oh, and just for fun, the eclectic trains currently running in my window:

Mostly, their own mother wouldn't recognise them.

Down to 6" radius on the sharp bits, that piece of track.

Chris

[Emettman]

Halloween approaches, and I need something cheap and easy to make a (new) window display.
(Not being flush with either money or energy, the second being on the tighter budget)

Likely answers for this year:

I've got a couple of near life-size skulls on the estimate, which is looking good, that I should be able to run a 9mm gauge ghost train through at least one eye socket. (track and motor units already to hand.)

A poke around on eBay turned up little "Zomlings" which included a train series that looked as if it might have potential.
a £10 investment in blind bags got me three locos and seven coaches, plus 10 little rubbery monsters.

There was potential to squeeze in my two smallest OO motor blocks, but I decided instead to use two small n scale motors in different ways, to give me one and a spare.

The loco is lightly glued together in three parts.
The carriages are roofless. I may cut a couple of them down to flat cars for better display of the Zomlings.
The loco converted to the old Bachmann 0-4-0 very easily (the plastic is soft, not brittle.)
Whichever Zomling becomes the driver will need lower region surgery to make room for the motor.
For this train I will remove the wheels.

For the second train I will power the first coach using the N motor bogie. Here I intend to keep the wheels, leaving them floating just above and outside of the track.

It's a million to one chance, so it's bound to work.

Chris

[Mountain]

Haha. Like the Zomlin things.
The Russian card coach is just the thing for modelling on a budget. It has great potential.

[Emettman]

The green loco is now running sweetly.

The only half-sensible use I can see for the size is as a fairground "children's railway in O."

On OO track and scale the loco and coaches could do nicely for a Hobbit railway in the Shire.

A thought literally as I was typing this. would it marry to a Dapol/Hornby L&Y pug chassis?
The loco would need a cab roof, and possible back.

At a pound a loco, one cab section could be sacrificed for that!

Chris.