lucas

At least 22 still retains the drive box on the outer axles, but only the inner drive box is actually connected. According to the description of this photo on Flickr: This modification had presumably already been made by the time the Irish railcars were built, which explains why they only had one driven axle per bogie from the factory.

I was mostly thinking of the unintended seams where brass and 3D printed parts join, but I guess it's nothing that a bit of model filler can't fix. Also, moving the discussion about motor bogies here: The High Level LongRider would've been ideal with 40 mm wheelbase, it's a shame it's not made any more. I am in the process of making my own etched motorbogies for my C class build. They're designed around a Mitsumi motor with a 30:1 gear ratio (the largest gear ratio I could find for a single stage worm) which should give a nice slow top speed of ~50 scale mph. I had already built the first set, but I miscalculated the clearance so the gears bind up pretty badly. I need to get them remade with a bit more clearance. I have attached some pictures below. Some of my thoughts: My design only works for 21mm, it's too wide for OO gauge. You would either need to have a design where the motor isn't contained within the side frames, or a teeny tiny motor. High Level discontinued the LoRider/LongRider when their supply of Mashima motors ran out. There aren't many sources of good dual-shaft motors anymore which are required for motorbogies like these. I'm using Mitsumi motors I bought in bulk from China for cheap, but there are definitely a few duds in my batch. I spent half an afternoon testing and measuring all my motors to make sure the ones I'm using are good and well matched, but not everyone has the equipment to do that. And I have no idea about their longevity. As far as I know Black Beetles use Mashima motors too (or at least did in the past) so if you're planning to use them it might be worth checking if they have enough supply available. Motorbogies aren't very powerful, so for a railcar with 2 intermediate coaches you would probably need at least 2 of them. But it might be worth doing some testing through tight curves or an incline.

I agree that etched kits always look a lot better for coach/railcar sides. A hybrid etched/3D printed kit would be my preference too. Not sure what you want to do with the roof? The front section above the cab would need to be 3D printed. The rest could be brass but it might be tricky to get the curve to match up perfectly. We could also print it and get the curve exactly the same, but that would probably have to be printed in a few sections giving a few more joins to clean up.

Absolutely. I was mostly just eyeballing it so having some proper cross sections would be a big help

I had actually thought of doing something similar. I'm sure you're a lot more experienced with etch design than I am, but I'm happy to help with the CAD/3D printing. I had started messing around in CAD some months ago to try and get the cab shape right, but haven't worked on it in a while now. Below is as far as I'd gotten. It doesn't have any real detail, and the shape still looks a little off to me.

There's one still standing in the far corner of Kent station in Cork. Picture taken from the Lower Glanmire Road earlier today. Had I been 30 seconds earlier with the camera you would've seen 2601/02 pass by in the background.

I have used 3D printed dies in the past to get the curve in coach body sides consistent. These are printed on a very coarse setting on my printer since the surface doesn't matter anyway. The brass etch is sandwiched in between and pressed tight in the vise. It takes a little bit of trial and error to get the die right since brass tends to 'spring back' a little bit, so the die is designed to have a slightly tighter curve than what's actually needed. I'm sure something similar could be adapted for those curves.

I finally got around to properly regauging my Park Royals. I used Alan Gibson conductive EM wheels since I personally don't like the look of NMRA code 110 wheels, and the process should be the same if you're using P4 wheels. Anyone who wants to regauge the factory wheels can follow Mol's post above as a guide instead. To start disassembly of the factory wheelset I gently pulled the two halves apart with my hands. This is enough to pull one of the two half-axles out of the insulating sleeve. To pull the other half axle out it is actually a bit more difficult. DO NOT just grab the sleeve with your pliers and pull, see my previous post for the consequences. First I pulled out the wheel a bit to create a gap between the back of the wheel and the sleeve. The throat of my puller is not wide enough to fit the sleeve, but I've come across this problem before so I have a short length of aluminium tube that I use for this purpose. Once there is a bit of a gap I put that in my puller and used a small length of 1.5mm diameter rod to push the remaining half axle through the sleeve. Once the two half are out of the sleeve they can simply be pressed out through the wheel to get a completely disassembled wheelset. I pressed two nice shiny AGW wheels onto the half axles. These are not quite as tight a fit as the factory wheels, so take care when pressing that the wheels go onto the axles straight. I pressed them in a little further than necessary; it is very easy to pull them back out once the wheelset is reassembled, but nearly impossible to press them further in. (Apologies about the out-of-focus photo for this one.) Then I gently pushed the two half-axles back into the insulating sleeve bit by bit, measuring the total length of the axle as I went. I made sure the sleeve was approximately centred so both half-axles are firmly held in position. The overall axle should be 28 mm; 2x 13.5 mm half-axles with a 1 mm air gap inside the sleeve. Once the axle length was correctly set, I pulled out the two wheels to the correct back-to-back, 19.3 mm for EM in my case. Take care not to put any pressure on the pinpoint as you could easily mess up your axle this way. I use a 1 mm inner diameter brass bushing which I have given a suitable chamfer on the inside. To replace the sleeve I broke I cut a small length of polystyrene tube. This is nominally 1/8" outer diameter with unspecified inner diameter, but snugly fits the half-axles. This doesn't grip the axles as well as the proper sleeves, so I cut it to the same length as the back-to-back to prevent the axles from creeping in any further. The slightly sprung bearings on the bogie should prevent the axles from moving any further outward, so this should be sufficient. I am nothing if not consistent at being 0.01 mm over on all my measurements Before installing the freshly regauged wheelsets, I modified the brakes as these foul on the flanges of the 'correct' gauge wheels. First step was to snip the linkage from the outside brake shoes. In my Park Royals the linkages are not sufficiently glued to the inside brake shoes, so they can be gently pulled apart. Once it is loose the linkage piece can be 'unhooked' from the frame on both ends, gently manoeuvred back and forth, and eventually lifted out from the top side of the bogie. Then I gently snipped off the 8 brake shoes. For the outside ones I tried to cut the brakes along with the pivots to keep them as one piece. This worked for some but not for others; for some the glue bonding them together was not enough to prevent the tiny pivot piece from flying away. To prevent the regauged wheelset fouling the inner brake mounting pieces I had to file a small chamfer on the outside edges which you might be able to make out in the photo below. This is definitely necessary if you're using RTR or EM wheels, but you might be able to skip this if you're using P4 wheels. Then the final step is to install the wheelsets and carefully glue the brakes back in place. Mol's technique of using fine wire above is probably stronger, but I was lazy so I just used Superglue and glued the brakes into position. I haven't tried bisecting the linkage and gluing it to the brakes yet, it's something that won't be visible unless you have one heck of a derailment anyway, but I will probably end up doing that similar to what Mol showed above. And here is the end result installed under the coach:

This one sold recently for £580/€675: https://www.ebay.ie/itm/147282572613 It's a seller's market for 071s at the moment.

There is also an EU-based etcher I have in the past, Hauler Ltd in the Czech Republic (https://www.etchworks.eu). Their standard sizes and artwork requirements are a bit different from PPD but it's not too difficult to convert. I've always used the old Hollywood Foundry guides to creating artwork. They don't seem to be available online anymore but I'll upload my copies to the resources section later this afternoon. Of all the etched kits out there, I reckon only a small portion of those have been digitised, while I doubt any etching place will accept any new artwork in anything other than a digital format these days. So any slight tweak or alteration, or moving to a new etcher, or whatever else would probably require digitising the whole thing. I reckon this might well be one of the reasons we're seeing some etched kits disappearing. Many of the people who were skilled in designing hand drawn etched kits in the past may not be familiar with the digital methods used today. I think we could well see an uptick eventually as the amount of digital artwork starts to fill the gaps left by the shrinking number of hand drawn kits. Of course there are many other reasons such as the rapid improvements in 3D-printing, the increasing number and detail of RTR models, etc. Personally I'd love to have a go at making some etched kits at some point, although I have too many other projects going on right now.

I had hoped to have the chassis finished by this weekend, unfortunately things didn't go quite my way. I could tell the supposedly 'press fit' worms were tight on the motor shaft, but I figured it would be grand It was not grand... To make matters worse I managed to damage the worms trying to get them back off the motor shaft. And while I do have spare motors, I do not have any spare worms. Oh well, lesson learnt, I'll give them a pass with the reamer next time. Unfortunately this does mean I'll have to wait for some new worm wheels to arrive

The 16.5mm gauge OO track most people use is slightly under scale for standard gauge. It's actually really HO scale track that we use in OO. Some modellers in the UK use EM and/or P4 track and wheels which are more accurate to scale. In Ireland the 'problem' is doubly bad since we use broad gauge track, so the scale accurate track gauge should be 21mm instead of 16.5mm. So some modellers (like me) who care too much about accuracy or just like the extra challenge will regauge stock to run on 21mm gauge track. I'm sure you can find a few videos around the place on EM/P4 conversions (especially from UK modellers). It usually involves pulling the wheels out to the correct gauge, but depending on the model can require some more significant modifications. There are quite a few posts on this forum about people converting their stock too.

First attempt at regauging hasn't gone so well... Looks like the sleeve just keeps the axles insulated from each other using a friction fit on the axles. There is no internal spacer keeping the axles apart. Even when set to 16.5mm there is a small gap between the sleeves and the back of the wheels, so moving the wheels out shouldn't make the axles any more likely to move within the sleeves. We just need to be careful not move the axles within the sleeves during the regauging process. I will be trying to get some conductive EM wheels to replace the code 110 factory ones. Although EM track is very tolerant of coarser wheels they are pretty massive and unsightly in my opinion. It's going to be pretty difficult to fit new wheels without removing the axles from the sleeves, so now I just need to find a reliable way of getting the axles out without the sleeves exploding on me.

I received my Park Royals this morning. They look amazing, but I think I can see what's been causing derailments for others. One of the brake lines on one end droops down and fouls the flange of one of the wheels: IMG_3119.mp4 This is a lot easier to see on the green coaches with the grey brake lines. The video shows the worst affected of my PRs, but all of them seem to have some level of contact with the wheel. This only happens at the end where the two lines cross over, the other end has enough clearance. I have not actually experienced any derailments, but I could see this causing problems especially in combination with some iffy track. I will be regauging mine so the wheels will be moved out, well away of these lines. But otherwise I reckon a drop of glue to stick the brake line to the underside of the floor might be the best solution.

Too late... Just finished respraying mine in pink