irishthump

Looks fantastic! Very hard to tell it's not regular ballast. The weathering job on those cement bubbles is great too. What techniques did you use on them?

The main cause of that "bounce effect" is that the wheelsets on UK stock are being attracted to the uncoupling magnet. It's the axles that are at fault, Bachmann and Hornby use a magnetically attractive metal in their axles. US manufacturers make a point of manufacturing non magnetic wheelsets. It really only happens with the large undertrack magnet as it's long enough that the couplers are still pulled to the side just as the wheelsets roll over the magnet and you get a small jerk which separates the stock. Bloody nightmare! I'm actually in the process of switching out the undertrack magnets for the ones that slot between the rails. If you use small neodymium magnets you won't have this problem either as the "magnetic footprint" is tiny. I've done something similar with this brass strip but the drag really builds up over a rake of 6 or 7 coaches!

Again, great info.Thanks for clearing that up.

Thanks Raider, great info. So were all 141’s fitted to run on trains with air brakes or was it just locos that had the A suffix after their loco number? For instance 161sa. I believe the S was to indicate it could work with suburban signaling and the A demoted it was fitted for air brakes.

Ah right. So these are air lines? Are these for loco control or air brakes? So more will need to be added, you only get 6 per loco!

While fitting the buffer details to my locos I notice with the 141’s that there are holes for 5 MU cables at each end but only 6 cables are supplied. Looking at photos of the real thing I see the number of cables varies. Anybody know the reason for this?

Made a start on fitting the valances to the 141's. First a notch the width and height of the coupler needs to be cut in the valance. Since the mounting holes for the valance are now covered by the coupler the pegs have been cut of the insert and a couple of pieces of styrene will be used to fix it in place. These were attached with cyano glue. Like so..... Plastic filler is then used to fill any gaps and is sanded smooth. A bit of paint and job done!

I was finding that uncoupling was hit and miss with the NEM Kadee. The coupler head has very limited movement compared to even a short shank draft box coupler and when they did uncouple I found they would often RE-couple when trying to shunt the wagons/coaches to another position on the track. The coupler heads just didn't move far enough to stay uncoupled. I also noticed the combination of bogie mounted NEM couplers and body mounted couplers is prone to derail when pushing the stock back over crossovers, especially when using bogie stock like coaches or container flats. That has disappeared when used draft boxes.

Yeah I don't particularly like the NEM couplers, they can cause problems when you mix them with regular, body mounted couplers. I run lots of US stock on my layout and they're all fitted with body mounted Kadees. They run very reliably. Yes I plan to fi all the valances and buffer detail as soon as I get the chance.

The process is pretty much the same for the 071, but it's a little more hassle as the sideframes are harder to remove and are slightly bulkier than the ones on the 141. This makes space a little tighter so careful measuring is needed. They also seem to be made of a harder plastic than the 141's sideframes so are more difficult to cut. The 201 was interesting; I originally tried to mount the coupler box to the pivoting NEM pocket but this made the coupler sit way too low so I made the decision to remove it. I used the exact same process as the 141/071. While there is a little more room to work with the couple box still needs to be trimmed. Again the coupler height is bang on. So I've taken the plunge and fitted all of my Irish locos with the Kadees and I'm very happy with them. The running is excellent and I haven't had any come away from their mountings yet even though I had doubts about the strength of the cyano glue. Hopefully over the next few days I'll get the aprons and buffer detailed installed on a few on them.

I had been toying with the idea of fitting body mounted Kadee couplers to all of my Irish Locos. I'm not a huge fan of the NEM couplers and I wanted to add all of the buffer detail to my locos. The Irish locos are a bit of a challenge as most of them don't have a huge amount of space under behind the buffer beam and I was reluctant to perform major surgery on them. But after some experimentation I found a method that's as painless as possible. I'm not reinventing the wheel here, a couple of forum members have done the same with slightly different approaches. First up is the MM 141. I am using Kadee 141 whisker couplers (handy to number to remember). These have an underset shank which places the coupler head at the perfect height when the draft box is fitted to the underside of the cut out in the apron of the loco. Unfortunately the box is too long and will interfere with the bogies but there's enough clearance at the back of the box to allow it to be trimmed. Here's how it looks afterwards with the coupler inserted. I next made up some mounting brackets from brass strip. A hole was drilled and tapped to accept a screw for the coupler box. The coupler attaches like so and the face of the bracket will be fixed to the back of the loco apron. The small mounting tabs for the apron insert need to be removed to allow the bracket to sit flush. The bracket is fixed to the back of the apron. I used superglue for this, if I find it's not strong enough I can use epoxy but I've had no problems so far. The NEM pocket on the bogie sideframes needs to be removed. A sharp blade takes care of this. Some of the purists among us might wince at this so avert your eyes! The bogie frame back in place. It looks tight but there is plenty of room, the shaping of the coupler box and bracket provides clearance. A quick check with the Kadee gauge shows that it's spot on.

Well over a year since my last update and I've finally got some more work to show! A couple of years ago I had made a rake of 42' container flats by converting Hornby freightliner wagons but was never happy with the lack of detail so I decided to try and improve them a little, so I scratchbuilt some brake cylinders and rigging from styrene. I also picked up some white metal buffers and vacuum pipes from Genesis kits. Finally I added Weshty's brake wheels using brass wire and popped on some metal wheelsets. Still far from perfect, but overall a big improvement IMHO.

DCC decoders generally don't even supply a full 12v to the loco's motor. The track voltage with various DCC systems can vary widly but the decoder regulates the voltage supplied to the motor.

Some nice work there, Noel. Just wondering, do you have any issues when mixing and matching NEM Kadees with the regular draft box Kadees such as the 146's? I found that sometimes the two different types didn't "play nice" when pushing stock over points and tight curves and especially when using delayed uncoupling. Crossovers in particular can be a nightmare! I also tried using neodymium magnets instead of Kadee's magnets but also encountered problems where the neodymium magnets where too strong and would pull the couplers too far to the side so the couplers heads would miss each other when trying to shunt. Again, this is mainly a problem with propelling stock into sidings etc. To be honest I'm tending to pull away from using the NEM Kaddes, preferring to body mount the draft box type where possible. I'm working on a way to fit the draft box to MM 141's but it may involve a lot of surgery!

New Jim from MM. A gentlemen and always a great help. RIP

One small thing, you know you need to make cuts in the copper clad strips to isolate the tracks and prevent a short circuit.

I have some 90% iso which is the same stuff they mention in MR. It doesn’t damage plastic but will strip acrylic paint from models if you soak them.

It’s odd, I’ve read a lot of articles in Model Railroader where they describe thinning their acrylic paints with alcohol. Obviously their popular brands don’t give them trouble but I find that Vallejo and Games Workshop acrylics turn to a gritty sludge...

One thing about surgical spirits/isopropyl alcohol. I’ve noticed that it can cause a funny reaction with certain brands of acrylic paints where the paint clumps and clogs the brush like bejeezus.

That little spanner they include with the airbrush should carry a health warning! You may need to use it to remove the spray tip, but nothing more than finger pressure should be enough to secure it. The threads are too easily stripped regardless of the quality of the brush.

These generic airbrushes all suffer from the same issue: poor finish due to there low cost. They look the part but rough internal finishing, coarse screw threads and poorly fitting parts let them down. Like I said they are fine for spraying a general coat of paint but can't cope with finer work. I've relegated mine to spraying coats of auto primer on models.

No it doesn't have a trigger limiter, but to be honest that's not really an issue.

The old adage of “you get what you pay for” really does apply here. Lots of people get could results with the cheaper models (myself included) but I got increasingly frustrated with problems with cleaning and paint drying during painting and clogging the brush. By the way I also have a badger single action brush which give far less trouble. I ended up getting an Iwata Neo and it was a great investment. Careful cleaning is still essential but I have far less issues.

I rarely use the Luas myself but it's an excellent service, and if it reduces congestion in the city then more power to it. But until the public transport system is of an appropriate standard I think the removal of cars from the city is a pipe dream at the moment and not something I'd like to see to be honest. There's a small percentage who will want/need to drive there own cars for work or whatever purposes.

Noel, am I right in assuming these are budget airbrushes? If so then cleaning is even more important. The cheaper models, while serviceable, tend to not be as well finished as more expensive models. This becomes a problem as the roughter finish on internal parts makes it much easier for paint to accumulate and harden. I have a couple of cheaper brushes that came with my compressor and while they work ok they are a bi*ch to keep clean and are really only suitable for applying coats when respraying. They're not good for detail work. As Eoin said, cellulose thinners is yer only man for cleaning away paint deposits and sometimes an overnight soak is the only way to get it completely clean.