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An 'MLP' modelling thread for your Daughter - Curious??


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🙂 Over the last 15 years, I've bought several Gaugemaster controllers, but they all got sold on with the layouts they were connected to. So this stone age controller from the 1970's is all I have left at present. Next time I build a layout for myself, I'll probably get another Gaugemaster unit again.

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Nov 14th 2016 - I was going to turn some cones from some acrylic bar to top parts of the Crystal Empire, but a trip to a craft store found some clear acrylic multi-faceted cones that saved me a lot of effort.

 

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While at the craft shop, I got some multi-faceted clear hearts for the 'Crystal Heart' that spins at the centre of the Crystal Empire. The hearts were flat backed, and chromed on the flat side. Two were glued around some steel wire, with a thin clear acrylic spacer to take up the wire thickness.

 

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An old servo motor was modified as the geared motor to drive the heart around. This was mounted inside the tunnel, just behind the control panel.

 

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On top of the tunnel, I skinned it with some metallic sparkle finish plastic.

 

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Some smaller pieces of acrylic square section were cut and polished and glued in place around the edge forming crystals emerging from the ground. Foliage was then glued in place around the bases of these crystals. The glue was still wet in this shot, so the foliage darkened down once dry.
 

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The rainbow LED's were wired up and then epoxied into holes in the ground. The legs of the Crystal Empire had some 5mm holes drilled in them to allow the Empire to locate on top of the LED's. It needed to be removable to store the layout in the wardrobe. The LED's cycle through multiple colours. The four LED's start synchronised but after a few cycles, start to drift out of sync, creating a rippling of colour changes around the building.

 

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The last couple of shots show the workshop lights dimmed and the LED's causing the Crystal Empire to glow. The light reflects up the polished surfaces, but is scattered along all the cuts where the acrylic was cut and wet sanded, but not polished back to clear.

 

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Hey Stephen, just found this remarkable thread: the lifetime memories you are making with your daughter, with this, are beautiful. She will will be telling her children about her MLP  kingdom she built with her dad, some time in the distant future. This is parenting done right and brings a nice warm, fuzzy feeling to my jaded soul🙂

 

Cheers and thank you

 

Anil

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Thanks. Sometimes doing something in a completely new direction to usual, brings challenges and techniques you wouldn't normally use. This was a bit of a whacky. novelty layout, but still presented some challenges to overcome. The thatched roofing with Milliput and a fork was an experiment, but it seemed to work well, so there's another technique to save away for future dioramas.

Nov 15th 2016 - I got the crystal heart fitted and working, plus some additional white LED's which shine up the small round towers, illuminating the tops. I found these LED's wouldn't switch off, either being very bright or dim. It took a while to trace the short to an internal one in the on/off switch. After swapping the switch, all was well.

 

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An additional white LED was placed on the ground, shining directly at the heart, causing reflections as it spins.

 

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Here's the base of the empire in all its colours.

 

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After school, we set the layout up in the workshop where we could get all around it, had a bit of a play. Most of the layout was now complete, bar a few details, but we hadn't addressed the rolling stock at all.

 

The Ponyville side of the layout.

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The Everfree Forest and Crystall Empire side.

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Have you ever taken this layout to a Model Railway exhibition?

If not you should! It would be a major attraction for the wives/girlfriends and kids who get dragged along to these things. It may even inspire some of them to catch the modelling bug!

Your daughter is a very lucky girl.

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Jan 18th 2017 - Due to illness, Christmas and a several other distractions, the layout wasn't touched for a couple of months. The next little job was a connector from the controller to the layout. Due to wanting the layout to fit in a wardrobe, the socket needed to be flush with the framework. 

 

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The loco I was modifying dated from the late 1970's. The original three pole motor ran, but wasn't great, so last year, a quick search on Ebay found a new five pole motor in an identical housing. The brass pickups from the wheels where they contacted the motor terminals had been very thin, and over the years of removing and cleaning the motor resulted in the brass splitting, and no longer gripping the motor terminals.

The new motor contacts were also slightly further forwards by about 1mm, so the damage brass was cut away and new contacts added. This slightly forward position also meant the lead weight needed to be trimmed to clear the motor. The contacts aren't particularly neat, but about as good as I can get with my fat fingers and without melting the frame with the soldering iron! At least the new motor works now.

 

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With the loss of some of the lead weight, and the longer chassis being light at the front, I filled the front of the boiler with some small pieces of lead, epoxied in place. This adds just anough weight to keep the front driving wheels in firm contact with the track.

 

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Here's the loco after a quick test run with the new motor fitted. I still need to finish the loco body and make an attachment point to keep it on.

 

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Feb 2nd 2017 - At the beginning of February, we had a clear out in the top of my daughter's bedroom wardrobe. This allowed the railroad to migrate from the workshop to its new home. The ponies ( in a box ) and tall parts of the buildings just lie on top of the front of the layout. The controller goes on the shelf above. A perfect fit, with just enough space to slide in and out. I added some felt pads on the bottom of the layout's timber frame to aid the sliding on the shelf. Just the loco and wagons to do now.

 

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Aug 21st 2018 - For the next 18 months, the railroad got used, but there was no further work done. I hadn't got around to finishing the scratch built loco ( embarrased!! ), but got back to it late in the school Summer holidays this year. Since completion, we've been using two off the shelf open wagons and a black 0-6-2 loco, which are seen in the following photos.

 

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The loco, which dated back to the early 1980's, had seen better days. Plastic fatigue saw two broken con-rods, the electrical pick-ups were badly worn and had already been modified to remedy the situation, and plastic fatigue had also caused cracks in the body shell around the front of the boiler and water tanks.

 

These factors pushed me into feeling that it had little value as a normal OO9 loco that could be sold on in future. Instead, I would give it an overhaul and repaint into a "My Little Pony Railroad" locomotive, hopefully to be joined by the scratch built loco.

Disassembly was fairly straight forwards, but it was filthy inside!

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The motor however, was very clean and ran well.

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Here's the electrical pick-ups and the funnel, which is also the screw to hold the body shell on. Looking closely, you can see where small brass strips have previously been soldered onto the original worn pickups.

 

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The chassis with the remains of the con-rods and valve gear removed. There was lots of fluff tangled up in the wheels and they were also spinning on the axles, allowing the wheels and con-rods to move independantly from the geared axles. This may have been the cause of stresses which resulted in the con-rods fracturing.

 

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After gluing and clamping the cracks in the boiler and water tanks, the shell was given a coat of primer.

 

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Based on a picture from the show, some purple/pink paint was mixed up and the shell given its top coat. It was then left in the airing cupboard to harden overnight.

 

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