Standing Still

So, almost four years since everything went wrong (the first time) with the build of Ivor I'm basically back to where I was before.

After a little more work today I now have four wheels with crank pins, two of which have been fitted with insulating bushes. In otherwords exactly where I was before I found that the original wheels didn't fit the chassis.

I took the same approach as last time, i.e. the simple approach, and "borrowed" the insulating bushes from a set of Hornby disc wheels. The crank pins are 14BA bolts, which will be trimmed to length later. In fact they are just loosly fitted at the moment as I decided the next step (turning axles) would be easier if I can check them against the wheels without the crank pins in the way.

No idea when I'll get to try turning the axles but this does at least seem like progress even if I'm no closer to a completed model than I was back in 2018.

0.2mm from Success

I am never ever ever ever making wheels again. As you can probably guess the next step in the long running saga of building Ivor didn't go entirely as planned.

Having remembered from last time that it was hard work profiling the wheels I set everything up carefully and then turned the first wheel. Just as last time it was a slow process. I'm not sure if that's because the tool isn't as sharp as it might be, or if the brass Shapeways uses isn't ideal for turning, or if the Unimat 3 is a little underpowered for the job, but you have to take very very light cuts and I stopped frequently things cool slightly (otherwise the cutting tool gets so hot the oil smokes). Anway slow and steady got me to a nicely profiled 20mm wheel.

After the success of the first wheel, I made a coffee, and then profiled the second wheel. Then I made another coffee and profiled the third wheel. Then I made another coffee and started on the fourth and final wheel.

I took the final wheel nice and slowly and was just 0.2mm away from a completed wheel (i.e. I needed to advance the cross slide by just 0.1mm) when the threaded rod of the wheel holding tool sheared off and the knurled knob when flying across the room; fortunately away from me. So that's the second time I've had that tool fail now and I've no idea if it's just a bad design or something I'm doing wrong. Either way I was now just 0.2mm shy of four completed wheels which was rather frustrating.

The rod had snapped very close to the wheel so there wasn't enough left to try and screw anything on to the remaining stub. In the end I used the live centre to push the fixing against the wheel. It wasn't pretty and the wheel did slip a couple of times but it stayed straight and allowed me to reduce the diameter by the final 0.2mm.

Fortunately I think none of the remaining work to use the wheels would need the wheel holding tool (they just need holding in the step chucks) so hopefully I can continue on with the build of Ivor, but I don't think I'll ever try making my own wheels again.

Signs of Life

Given how sporadic, or none existant, posts have been over the last year or so I've no idea if anyone is still reading this blog, but believe it or not there are signs of some modelling happening!

Some of you may remember that for Christmas all the way back in 2016 I was bought a kit for building an OO guage model of Ivor the Engine. This was a nice present and the first from my then newly born son, Toby. Well Toby, is now five and a half, and I now have a second son, Thomas, who is 14 months old. What I don't have though is a completed model of Ivor the Engine.

The last time I blogged about the kit was almost four years ago in August of 2018 when everything had gone horribly wrong: I'd broken the wheel holding tool for my lathe and the wheels I had made, although correct to the instructions, didn't fit in the model. At that point I put the kit away in a box, never expecting it to be four years before it would appear again.

So where are we know? Well, fohrmann-WERKZEUGE were very helpful and sold me replacement parts for the wheel holding tool which saved me quite a bit of money over buying a complete replacement. Of course any money saved was then spent on having new set of wheels produced. These are essentially they same as last time (lost wax brass castings using 3D printed waxes all done through Shapeways) albeit slightly smaller to solve the main issue that arose with the originals.

So far all I've done is separate the wheels and drill out the axle hole to 2mm, but as you can see roughly placing them against the chassis suggests that they will fit this time, especially given they will be fractionally smaller once I've turned them on the lathe to properly profile the edge and add the flange.

I've no idea when I'll get to do more work on the wheels but hopefully it won't take four years before there is more to report.

Oh, dear! wherever is the train?

I first wrote about the Bullhouse Railway accident back in 2013 and have writen short updates a number of times since. I've now pulled all that research into a single article but rather than publish it here I wrote it as a guest post for the Railway Work, Life & Death project.

Even if you've read all my previous posts about this accident you should find something new in this longer version as I spent quite a bit of time finding more contemperaneous newspaper reports to try and give a more detailed first hand account of the accident and it's immediate aftermath; lots of graphic descriptions of death and mutilation!

Half a Sleeper

One of the comments on the previous post pointed out that the tool for adding the rail chair marks could also be useful to modellers of narrow gauge lines in 7mm scale as often these lines used standard gauge sleepers cut in half. Strangely I'd actually modelled this already when testing the tool but forgot to include the photo in the original post so for completeness... here is a newly creosoted, half sleeper, ready for use in laying some new narrow gauge track.

The Ghost In The Sleeper

Wooden railway sleepers don't last forever and often need replacing. The wood is of course still useable for other things. For example, it's not hard to find old sleepers used as fence posts. Such uses of old sleepers are easy to spot as, apart from their fairly standard size, you can usually see the impression left by the rail chair including holes where they were bolted down. Whilst you may see similar fences on model railways, how many modellers go to the trouble of modelling the ghost of the rail chair?

Whilst most people might not bother with such small details some people like to go the extra mile to make their models as lifelike as they can. One such person contacted me last year to ask if it would be possible to design a tool that would make it nice and easy to add these marks to 7mm to the foot scale sleepers.

The design work was relatively easy as I managed to track down a drawing for a rail chair (specifically a four bolt version used by the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway) which I used to produce a 3D printed prototype on my resin printer. This was then tested using some of my son's Playdoh.

Of course the resin version is unlikely to hold up to repeated use being hammered into wooden sleepers, but having proved that the pattern it left seemed right, a little more work got me to a an easy to use tool that I could have 3D printed in brass.

Of course once the brass version arrived I couldn't resist giving it a go before posting it on to it's new home.

I think that looks pretty good, and as it takes just seconds to add the marks it's easy enough to quickly detail a large pile of sleepers ready to build a fence or maybe for an old siding where the rails have been removed. Given how many different ways old sleepers get used the possibilites are endless.

If you want to add rail chair details to your own 7mm scale model landscape then I've made the tool available to buy on Shapeways (see here).

While four bolt chairs were fairly common, I do have drawings for rail chairs from other companies which (given time) I'm intending to use to produce a set of tools, but in the meantime if you want a tool to produce the ghost of a specific comapnies rail chair let me know and I'll do my best to help.

An Orange Simplex

I've not had much time for modelling lately so the work on completing the 16mm scale Simplex locomotive seems to have taken forever, but as you can see I finally got there.

Now I know most Simplex locos are painted a shade of green, but my four year old son was insistent that it had to be orange. I wasn't convinced by the idea at first but I'm actually really happy with how it looks and it certainly won't ever get lost in the garden! Strangely there is a prototype for painting Simplex locomotives this colour (in fact this exact shade of orange) as Alan Keef Ltd. paint their locos, inlcuding their hire locos, orange and over the years that has included a few Simplex locomotives.

So given the lack of dirt (I've not yet had the heart to weather the model) my back story is that it's just been over hauled and repainted by Alan Keef Ltd. and is now ready for it's first hire contract.

And to finish with here is a short video to show that it does actually work. Sorry about the shaky camera work, but I was controlling the locomotive via an app on my phone while also holding the camera and trying to ensure it didn't run off the end of the track!