bentwaters81tfw Posted October 11, 2020 Share Posted October 11, 2020 The pink ballast is not far off, quite a bit of the granite ballast has a pinkish tinge. The smaller grade looks about right. Can you break some of the larger stuff down? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gunzo Posted October 11, 2020 Share Posted October 11, 2020 Hendie, you have probably answered this elsewhere but is your printer that good or are your doing any immediate post-print finishing (acetone fumes for example)? Meanwhile, I'm with Terry1954 on the supports colour. (They don't half remind me of the dirty great stocking clips I was fascinated by when my mum dragged me 'round Marks and Sparks every Saturday back in the fifties; steam punk indeed!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jo NZ Posted October 12, 2020 Share Posted October 12, 2020 Instead of PVA/water to fix the ballast, try using Matte Medium (art supply shops have it). Apart from anything else, it's much easier to remove. I used it on an OO layout and when I needed to move or replace the track the ballast just scraped off. Not something that you can do with PVA.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete in Lincs Posted October 12, 2020 Share Posted October 12, 2020 Great update. Will the large grit pieces grind down into slightly smaller bits? And to fix them, double sided tape? I'm with @johnlambert for light grey roof cradles. I love those end covers. They give a nice finish. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
perdu Posted October 12, 2020 Share Posted October 12, 2020 Beautiful supports and cradles H, how about distressed Red Oxide finish with rust bubbling through for the cradles? No worries here, I know you will sort it out beautifully. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mumbly Posted October 12, 2020 Share Posted October 12, 2020 I used to use PVA/water and a drop of washing up liquid to glue crushed coal into the tenders of OO locos with no issues, so should work for your ballast ok. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CedB Posted October 12, 2020 Share Posted October 12, 2020 Supports and end pieces looking great hendie, superb work I suppose I should add my 5/8ths in. I think I'd forget about the ballast - she's on a shiny black base with a mirror and it's going to be hard to have a realistic edge to the ballast innit? Let alone the material and fixing problems. I'd go for clean sleepers and an 'In the work shed' story. I'm with Bill on the cradles too - the grey looks a bit weird against the white and, as they'll be under the roof and only seen in the mirror, a more realistic finish, like the supports or as rusty iron, would look better IMHO. HTH Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnlambert Posted October 12, 2020 Share Posted October 12, 2020 4 hours ago, Mumbly said: I used to use PVA/water and a drop of washing up liquid to glue crushed coal into the tenders of OO locos with no issues, so should work for your ballast ok. I used the same for ballast on an N gauge model railway. Lifting the ballast was possible by placing a paper towel soaked in warm water over the track, which unstuck the glue. It was messy but did the job. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hendie Posted October 13, 2020 Author Share Posted October 13, 2020 On 10/11/2020 at 5:17 PM, giemme said: Amazing stuff, hendie Ciao thanks Giorgio On 10/11/2020 at 5:22 PM, johnlambert said: Great work on the whole build; I've enjoyed following along. Maybe the support should be grey? Contrasting with the roof but not such a stark contrast as black against white. John, I've gone with the grimy flat black, which is a shade of grey. Since the support structures are that color, I thought they should all be the same. I don't think it looks too bad - certainly better than a stark 'black' black On 10/11/2020 at 5:25 PM, Terry1954 said: Brilliant stuff. My take. Cradle and structure should be the same colour. Colour should be something neutral, that doesn't detract from the white roof, or that absolutely gorgeous chocolate and cream. Apart from that I have no opinion at all! Terry thanks Terry. Grimy flat black, and grimy flat black they are. On 10/11/2020 at 5:47 PM, bentwaters81tfw said: The pink ballast is not far off, quite a bit of the granite ballast has a pinkish tinge. The smaller grade looks about right. Can you break some of the larger stuff down? I probably could but I'm in two minds as to whether to include ballast or not now that I have everything most things on the base - there's not a lot of room left and I'm not sure I can make it look 'natural' enough On 10/11/2020 at 7:41 PM, gunzo said: Hendie, you have probably answered this elsewhere but is your printer that good or are your doing any immediate post-print finishing (acetone fumes for example)? Meanwhile, I'm with Terry1954 on the supports colour. (They don't half remind me of the dirty great stocking clips I was fascinated by when my mum dragged me 'round Marks and Sparks every Saturday back in the fifties; steam punk indeed!) Gunzo, it's as out of the box as they come. I use the Elegoo Mars which can be had for less than $200 delivered these days. Talk about a bargain! The only finishing is a bath in IPA and removal of the supports. On 10/11/2020 at 8:32 PM, Jo NZ said: Instead of PVA/water to fix the ballast, try using Matte Medium (art supply shops have it). Apart from anything else, it's much easier to remove. I used it on an OO layout and when I needed to move or replace the track the ballast just scraped off. Not something that you can do with PVA.... I've been investigating Mod Podge Matte which seems popular with rail modelers over here. It appears this would have a better chance of sticking to a hard shiny surface that regular PVA glue.... still can't make my mind up though On 10/12/2020 at 2:18 AM, Pete in Lincs said: Great update. Will the large grit pieces grind down into slightly smaller bits? And to fix them, double sided tape? I'm with @johnlambert for light grey roof cradles. I love those end covers. They give a nice finish. Thanks Pete. Yeah, I'm pleased with the end covers - I thought bare rails just loked unfinished On 10/12/2020 at 3:22 AM, perdu said: Beautiful supports and cradles H, how about distressed Red Oxide finish with rust bubbling through for the cradles? No worries here, I know you will sort it out beautifully. Sorry Bill, grimy flat black On 10/12/2020 at 3:45 AM, Mumbly said: I used to use PVA/water and a drop of washing up liquid to glue crushed coal into the tenders of OO locos with no issues, so should work for your ballast ok. thanks Mumbly On 10/12/2020 at 3:53 AM, CedB said: Supports and end pieces looking great hendie, superb work I suppose I should add my 5/8ths in. I think I'd forget about the ballast - she's on a shiny black base with a mirror and it's going to be hard to have a realistic edge to the ballast innit? Let alone the material and fixing problems. I'd go for clean sleepers and an 'In the work shed' story. I'm with Bill on the cradles too - the grey looks a bit weird against the white and, as they'll be under the roof and only seen in the mirror, a more realistic finish, like the supports or as rusty iron, would look better IMHO. HTH Ced, I am leaning more and more towards no ballast. One, the longevity of any glue to stay stuck to the acrylic base is in question, and two, there's very little room left once the mirror is in place and the plaque is stuck on the front. Any ballast would have to end in line with the sleeper ends and I'm not sure that would look good. On 10/12/2020 at 8:04 AM, johnlambert said: I used the same for ballast on an N gauge model railway. Lifting the ballast was possible by placing a paper towel soaked in warm water over the track, which unstuck the glue. It was messy but did the job. thanks for the tip John. There will likely be more experimentation before I am committed (in more sense than one) Missives dealt with, it's time for the news. A funny old day today was. It threw up a few surprises and almost had me reaching for the tranquilizers. First item on the agenda was to mark out the base. The white paper taped in place is my surrogate mirror. I wanted to make sure I didn't end up with the supports fixed in place then the mirror wouldn't fit did I? That would have been stoopid. It was a case of measure everything three times, then measure it another three, then check those dimensions at the opposite end to make sure I had everything symmetrical. Then I had to drill 4 holes through the upper and lower surfaces of the acrylic base. Drilling that stuff is no fun. Not at all. I had modeled a couple of holes in the base of the support structure as fixing points. The first attempt was using self tappers, but the deep thread on those started splitting the resin as it is so brittle. Next up was machine screws. Those managed to cut their own threads into the resin but stripped the resin easily when tightening the screws. Okay then what's next? More machine screws but this time, I cut off their heads and epoxied the threaded rod into the support structures That way, I could then bolt the things in from below. The old step drills came in handy again to open the holes out underneath and I managed to get a hole large enough to fit a socket through, making fixing them in place a breeze. I was careful not to tighten the nuts too much in case I puled the epoxy out of the base - just snug enough so that nothing moved, then added a lock nut for security. Both support structures now in place, it was time to attempt hoisting the roof into place. That was a lot easier to write than it was to accomplish since I only have two hands, and found during this exercise that I needed about 6 hands to do the job. There was lots of balancing, cursing, sweating, more cursing and the greatest fear I have ever encountered while building a model. It scared the crappola out of me to be honest. One false move, one little slip, or something giving way and I could have two years of repair work ahead of me to finish this build (again)! The gods were smiling, well, maybe not quite smiling - I think they had more of a wry grin on their faces today. I got everything in place and realized... Gadzooks! This is not going to work! All these months I've been handling this roof, it felt very light. Today it felt very, very heavy, and very dangerous I present the evidence below. Ignore the fact the roof is the wrong way up and take a look at the overall arrangement. Notice anything? There's a bit of a bend isn't there? A hell of a bend in fact. At this point a mild panic set in. - All this design and effort and the darned thing isn't going to work. The moment arm on that cantilever is too long and creating the bend in the brass tube. First thought... okay, I can replace that with brass rod. However, I'm now startling to question the support structure. The moment introduced by that cantilever is placing a lot of stress on the printed parts, particularly the angled support. The moment is also trying to tip the vertical supports in towards the center. Replacing the bras tube with rod isn't going to fix that - if anything, the rigidity of the rod is going to place yet more stress on the support structure. Okay, it's holding now, but the printed resin is very brittle and to be honest I have no idea how strong it really is or how long it could last in that state before a catastrophic failure. And that catastrophic failure could be, well, catastrophic! It was coffee time. I ran through a bunch of ideas with input from a few BMer's before hitting on an idea, that while not ideal, would eliminate the danger of the thing crumbling before my very eyes, and me lying crying on the floor. A quick trip to the local hardware store found the supplies I needed. Of course, being in the US all the supplies were in units of barleycorns inches. I had designed the structure to take a 3 mm diameter tube/rod, and all I could get here was 1/8", and as we all know - 1/8" is not 3 mm, it's 3 point freaking 2 mm. That 0.2 mm took a lot of work let me tell you, along with a boatload more apprehension and fear thrown in for good measure. First I had to open out the holes little by little (yes, I was too darned lazy to take the structure off the base again), before finally filing the holes so I had a nice clip fit with the 1/8" rod and here's my (bodged) fix. One single long rod instead of two shorter rods. Having one continuous rod eliminates 95% of the moment arm that was acting on each end structure. There is still a small, though much reduced moment acting on the angled support arms due to the slight bend in the rod, but the majority of the weight of the roof will now for the most part act down through the vertical structures where they are at their strongest It's not ideal I know. Okay, it is far from ideal as I now have a humongous rod traveling all the way down the length of the roof, obscuring some of that detail that I spent so much time on all those years ago. However, I'd much rather that detail be partially obscured than end up in pieces on the floor at some future point. Now the question is did it actually work? Have a guess... In the interest of full disclosure I made an oopsie. But the oopsie turned out to be rather beneficial - most unlike things for me! The oopsie was in those measurements that I made earlier. Despite measuring in triplicate triple times, and then double checking that, I had completely ignored the roof cradles in all my measurements. Doofus! I had intended the roof to be approximately 5 mm or thereabouts clear of the car, where now, due to my utter ineptitude, the roof cradle rests ever so gently on the side-frame, holding the roof at an almost perfect viewing angle. A clearer shot of the interference here. I really couldn't have planned it better. Lucky or what! With all that excitement it was time to lay down for a rest, so to finish the day off, I blackened the brass rod and gave it a shine with cherry blossom's finest I also bought some 1/8" steel rod and may substitute the brass with that as it has less tendency to bend, though I feel pretty confident the entire structure is now safe enough. Now that problem has been solved... those gears are whirring again, and I can now think of a way to use the same principles and have the roof un-obscured. That would all depend on me being able to find the right brass profiles in the right lengths though and my old supply house has shut down and I don't think those brass profiles are available any longer. To be honest though - I need to finish this and put it to bed soon. I may revisit the roof supports at a future date mirror and plaque next 13 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
giemme Posted October 14, 2020 Share Posted October 14, 2020 This is looking gorgeous! Ciao 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CedB Posted October 14, 2020 Share Posted October 14, 2020 Seconded! Superb result hendie and looking marvellous 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete in Lincs Posted October 14, 2020 Share Posted October 14, 2020 Thirded? from me. Impressive stuff as always. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
perdu Posted October 15, 2020 Share Posted October 15, 2020 That is a lovely 'designed in' interface between the carriage and the support, I don't know how you do it sir. All that time designing and building and it pops out ready to wear at the end, superb and brilliant. 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul821 Posted October 15, 2020 Share Posted October 15, 2020 Seems @hendie ' s build has make the BBC News web-site (well sort of) - you need to scroll down a bit https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-54540298 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete in Lincs Posted October 15, 2020 Share Posted October 15, 2020 The damned fools glued the roof on! https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/A169/production/_114912314_mediaitem114912263.jpg 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Swindell Posted October 16, 2020 Share Posted October 16, 2020 On 15/10/2020 at 16:47, Paul821 said: you need to scroll down a bit Is @hendie's workshop also a "Dark Satanic Mill"? enquiring minds want to know.... 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bandsaw Steve Posted October 20, 2020 Share Posted October 20, 2020 If you want to avoid using ballast and want to display the underside, why not build a bridge... Am running away now...🏃🏽 1 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bentwaters81tfw Posted October 20, 2020 Share Posted October 20, 2020 Hendie went for realism, with water coming through the ceiling! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heloman1 Posted October 21, 2020 Share Posted October 21, 2020 Wow Alan, excellent result, all that swearing was worth it. Congratulations. Colin 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Swindell Posted October 21, 2020 Share Posted October 21, 2020 On 20/10/2020 at 01:26, Bandsaw Steve said: If you want to avoid using ballast and want to display the underside, why not build a bridge... Am running away now...🏃🏽 He needs to build two - a high one so we can see underneath, and a low one to strip the roof off .... 1 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gunzo Posted October 21, 2020 Share Posted October 21, 2020 Just a thought- if the rails were set as if over an inspection/maintenance pit, the pit itself could be 3-sided to allow a mirror base? Les 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hendie Posted October 22, 2020 Author Share Posted October 22, 2020 On 10/14/2020 at 3:15 AM, giemme said: This is looking gorgeous! Ciao On 10/14/2020 at 3:57 AM, CedB said: Seconded! Superb result hendie and looking marvellous On 10/14/2020 at 1:34 PM, Pete in Lincs said: Thirded? from me. Impressive stuff as always. Thanks guys, not long to go now On 10/15/2020 at 4:08 AM, perdu said: That is a lovely 'designed in' interface between the carriage and the support, I don't know how you do it sir. All that time designing and building and it pops out ready to wear at the end, superb and brilliant. 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 Luck Bill, just sheer luck On 10/15/2020 at 11:47 AM, Paul821 said: Seems @hendie ' s build has make the BBC News web-site (well sort of) - you need to scroll down a bit https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-54540298 jinkies! I've been rumbled On 10/15/2020 at 1:47 PM, Pete in Lincs said: The damned fools glued the roof on! https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/A169/production/_114912314_mediaitem114912263.jpg On 10/16/2020 at 3:51 PM, Dave Swindell said: <snip> Is @hendie's workshop also a "Dark Satanic Mill"? enquiring minds want to know.... it could be but I can't lay my hands on any virgins around here. On 10/19/2020 at 8:26 PM, Bandsaw Steve said: If you want to avoid using ballast and want to display the underside, why not build a bridge... Am running away now...🏃🏽 how's that floaty tanky thing coming along Steve? Got the tracks made yet? Yes? Good! On 10/20/2020 at 3:40 AM, bentwaters81tfw said: Hendie went for realism, with water coming through the ceiling! and now apparently down through the kitchen floor and big stains on the basement ceiling. If it wasn't for bad luck, I'd.... On 10/21/2020 at 6:25 AM, heloman1 said: Wow Alan, excellent result, all that swearing was worth it. Congratulations. Colin thanks Colin On 10/21/2020 at 8:43 AM, Dave Swindell said: He needs to build two - a high one so we can see underneath, and a low one to strip the roof off .... a couple of small modifications to the display case, an elf, and away we go On 10/21/2020 at 10:10 AM, gunzo said: Just a thought- if the rails were set as if over an inspection/maintenance pit, the pit itself could be 3-sided to allow a mirror base? Les Read on dear Gunzo The last piece of the jigsaw puzzle arrived today. What it is you may well ask? Okay then. It's a mirror. A real glass one, not one of those cheap acrylic plasticky ones. Bloomin' expensive it was too. I searched for days trying to find something cheaper, but twas not to be. In the end, I bit the bullet and just bought it. It should show up the underside of the roof nicely with the added bonus that you can actually see some of the chassis work too. It's just resting in place at the moment. This weekend should see it all finished. I also bought a plaque. I'm not sure if I like the wording but couldn't think of anything else. I also printed off a base for the plaque - which will be sprayed black in due course - if I decide to use it. I may just lay the plaque flat on the case. Thoughts from the hive? Today was a vacation day so spent some time working on the Bristol. I wanted to leave the display case for Pegasus to the weekend so I have plenty of time to clean everything up and make sure it's all hunky dory. Tantalizingly close to the finish line now. I can almost taste the axle grease. 10 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bandsaw Steve Posted October 22, 2020 Share Posted October 22, 2020 That’s Looking really great Allan. 👍 There is -finally- an update on the tracks / floaty tank boat thing for your perusal should you care to take an expert peek. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heloman1 Posted October 23, 2020 Share Posted October 23, 2020 Six years Alan, some determination... Colin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
perdu Posted October 23, 2020 Share Posted October 23, 2020 I don't think it says enough about you Alan. Er before I grab my coat, your wee dram and some bridies and scuttle off outa here I would use the black shiny plinth for the plaque, it adds even more gravitas to a completed dream. I have loved every second of sharing it with you, learnt an immeasurable amount about railway carriages and how to design a dream properly. Then build it, still highlighted by a granite bar top. Wow! Superb. 🧥 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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