murrayec

This GNR T2 tank loco visited the shop for some upgrades- breaks, pick-ups, and wheel weights. Body off and a bit of a survey being carried out. With drawings done the parts were cut out in .5mm brass- wheel weights, break hangers n bars. All cleaned up with the Tufnol break shoes ready to go on. Main pick-ups upgraded with .4mm NS wipers and break stuff being soldered on. Nice little set of cast brass break shoes soldered on the bogie truck. .4mm NS wiper pick-ups installed under the bogie truck. Almost there. Chassis up and running. Body back on and its off to the owner and paint shop. Eoin

There is a great article in the Gauge O Guild Gazette this month on the MRSI 'Locos For Ardmore' where the above model builder and others are credited for the amazing array of Irish type locos on this layout, amazing stuff...... Eoin

If you use stick on LED strip lighting you wont have to worry about light coming up through the roof, the LEDs are facing downwards. You could also mount the strips on a wide piece of card and then fix that to the roof?.... Eoin

Excellent, we'll file that for future reference...... Eoin

I reckon Broithe's approach is correct, it looks like yours have the screws removed! are they second hand? as some clever chap may have glued them without the screws. Here is an image I found on e-bay which clearly shows screws;- Eoin

Nice space there Jason, this is going to be fun to watch develop. My only suggestion on the shed, and you have probably considered this- is to install roof gutters and down pipes. This will stop water dripping from the corrugated sheeted roof onto the wall, generally it hits the wall low down and causes dampness to the lower planks and the floor edge if no guttering is installed. Also the added extension of the gutters weather the wall better from the rain. Eoin

This is the list of scanned drawings the IRRS have available at the moment;- Eoin

Thanks all for likes and coments John CNC'ing parts is OK for one or two off items, but etching would be far quicker for batch runs like your kits Yes, I must send a link to Alan Doherty and NIL and have a chat The second bogie with its detail soldered on and cleaned up while in the sprue. Now the frames are ready to take the third laminate which is sweat soldered on the back Soldered on and cleaned up, the soldering was done with the detail face up and the 3rd laminate frame clamped under, this prevents gravity making the detail parts fall off when the heat gets going- just one problem, one of the axle box bolts boiled up in the solder and popped out and stuck to the face of the box. That had to be fixed! Preparing the 2.4mm copper tube to make the spring housings top and bottom of the spring, in this photo the pipe was filed down to size .8mm for the top housing and then sliced up .7mm deep on the lathe with a slitting saw. All the parts for the spring system;- spring are made from M2 brass screws, spring housings from the above tube, shock mounting and torsion bar mountings folded and soldered from the .25mm brass sheet, and little brass keeper plates for under the axle boxes. Soldering this lot is going to be fun...... You may be interested to know why I used brass for this?- when I made the Class A bogie side patterns out of plastic I had untold problems with the plastic deforming with the glues used- plastic weld being the worst! This led to problems making the moulds and then the WM casts came out slightly warped, nothing that a few drops onto the workbench couldn't sort but not great. Also as the patterns were plastic they wanted to float in the moulding chemicals while liquid, nothing worse than coming back to the mould several hours later thinking your done, to find the pattern came free and floated up to the surface while the chemicals set. Eoin

A very common logo in the car & motorcycle world https://www.google.com/search?q=wings+wheel+logo&client=firefox-b&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwicrN_9s7reAhUB_KQKHVGcBw0QsAR6BAgGEAE&biw=1280&bih=891 There is a thread on here discussing the origins of the flying snail logo, where we came to the conclusion that the Persians came up with the winged logo for their God- Aru Mazda (could have spelt that wrong) and since then all have adopted it in some fashion.... Eoin

Date for the November Train & Model Fair;-

That was the other thing about the BR sides- they only came in 8'6'' from Dart Castings, and I built the bogies in 8'6'', so now I'll have to change them also- they are on order.... Eoin

While working on the bogie sides last week I was getting very irritated working with the BR Commonwealth sides! Fortunately while talking to my friendly railway historian and collector of all handy stuff for the modeller, he announced a laminate drawing had come across his desk, including a sketch of the bogie sides- excellent. So I 'bit the bogie', so to speak, and decided to change tack and develop up CIE Commonwealth sides, a scan was duly and gratefully received, imported into Autocad, traced, adjusted and prepared to CNC out two sets of parts to make patterns to make moulds from;- .5mm brass for the main frame bits. .23mm brass for the smaller items and the brackets for the suspension torsion bar. Those little bits came free from the tabs in the sheet- all were found! All the bits, I'm going to use M2 machine screws to make the suspension springs with a bit of 2.4mm copper pipe to mount them in and various sizes of brass pipe for the shock. The shock and torsion bar will be installed after the sides are cast- mmmh! I hope? After de-burring the .5mm sheet I set about soldering in .35mm PB wire to create bolt heads on the axle boxes, this was done on the back of the sheet held down on two strips of .23mm brass so the wire would protrude out the front. Nice little bolt heads after cleaning up the front. I then set about soldering the main structure together, there are 3 laminates in this construction and I left the middle one attached to the sprue to hold it better and then bits were clamped in the jig and sweat soldered on- top done first. Gave up at this point this evening while the going was good...... Eoin

It's a Brendan Kelly built model, a bit of a trade for work to be done on one of his Gauge 1 models It's motored up and does run but needs a bit of tweaking & finishing I love it Eoin

Hi Guys I had a thoroughly enjoyable weekend, great to meet all I chatted with, and a big thanks to all that commented on the DARTs and the J10 and even a few orders taken. Thanks to the chaps of the MRSI for the hard work..... My hoard from the show;- I also picked up a few digital Loco drawing books from the IRRS boys for reference in up and coming projects Deposit in on my IRM Silver Class A Roll on next year! but need to save up again......... Eoin