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The "Look What I Made!" Topic.

DiogoJ42 said:
(go ask a railway modler what the difference between "scale" and "gauge" is.)

EDIT: Beaten to it.
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Scale is the model scaled down in size. i.e. 1" in a scale model = 1 foot in real size
Gauge is the size of the track, the distance between the two rails.

HO and OO scale trains both run on OO gauge rails. HO is the true scale for the track as OO is slightly bigger to accommodate the larger Hornby motors when they first made them many years ago.

OO can also be run on N guage if converted, so they then become narrow gauge railway.

The OO guage comes from the Hornby name Dublo which was shorten to OO.
 
Or to put it another way, HO is 1:87 scale, OO is just wrong!
Being an aircraft modler, it always wound me up that all the interesting stuff HO does is too small to match my 1:72 planes. How am I supposed to build a fun fair at an airshow at a disused WWII airfield‽
 
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Gauge discussions are always a good way to get a group of die-hard railway modellers foaming at the mouth. Some people overcome the inaccuracy of OO gauge (1:76 / 4 mm: 1 ft) by using a wider, more accurate gauge and re-wheeling ready to run models or building their own chassis; P4 gauge is the exact gauge to match the scale, while EM gauge is a sort of halfway house for those that don't have a tennis court sized space in which to lay scale radius curves.

The answer to your scale issue Diogo might be to employ a bit of forced perspective, with the planes up front and the rides at the back. British outline funfair support vehicles to go in the middle distance are available in 1:76 for OO model railway purposes. You might need quite a board depth though!
 
Right, I'm glad you've popped up in this topic, Cheese-me-old-china. Surely you must have some railway gubbins to show off? :D

Regarding model layouts; I only have room for one, and unfortunately Lego takes priority. Unfortunately it is a "town" layout first.
I've been thinking that next time I rejig things, I may consider not bothering with a "loop" of track, and just have the station tracks "passing through" my town. This fills me with sadness, however, and I will do what I can to ensure this does not happen....

..... TBH, these days, the only times I actually run a (L gauge) train are when I have a friend over for a smoke, and we set up a shunting track between us, with a freight loco pulling a wagon that has a foil ashtray to pass the spliff bewteen us.
Needless to say, this doesn't happen often.
 
Oh god, I stumbled into that trap didn't I? Well, not much, at least not that's finished. I can do the cutting, gluing, (electronics) soldering and bodging parts, but I've not got around to learning to paint stuff yet or making the fancy stuff like brass kits.

Here's one I've been thinking of posting in here; a Great Western Railway 'Manor' class 4-6-0. If you want a ready to run OO gauge model of one of these nicely proportioned but impressively noisy engines, your only option is an old, discontinued model made by a company called Mainline (or later Bachmann Branch Line) with an awful chassis and mechanism. GWR steam locos were relatively standardised in their construction though, so I realised that I might be able to use the chassis from a cheaply acquired Hornby GWR 'Hall' class (similar loco, but bigger all round) under a Manor body if I fitted smaller wheels and chopped the back off. The result, after lots more cutting, fettling and mental exertion than I'd imagined would be needed, is this:

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It should have a smaller tender. The one it runs now with is from the donor Hornby Hall (film star 5972 Olton Hall, better known as Hogwarts Castle in case you were wondering about the colour). No. 7802 Bradley Manor at the Severn Valley Railway has run with this size of tender, but the usual type for this class is lower and more in keeping with the size of the engine. I have one of these to use in future, but it's going to need rewiring first. Longer term, the aim is for this to be painted plain black and gain the fictional identity Drayton Manor. At least then if a company does announce a new top notch rendition of the Manor class, I'll still have something unique that I'll want to keep using!

My priority at the moment is a Digital Command Control system I've been building from electronics kits for the club I'm in (tells little chips in the engines what to do individually, rather than just varying the voltage supplied to their motors). I'll get some photos of this soon.
 
Ithankyousir!

I'm no expert, but DCC is the obvious way forward for layout control. Well worth the effort from what I've seen.

I'm curious as to your opinion of the latest Lego Hogwarts Express. I think the loco is the best one yet, (click here for comparison) but the tender is pathetic, and the less said about the so-called mark 1 corridoor coach the better.
... Will probably still get it at some point and mod the sh¡t out of it. ;)
 
DCC isn't for everyone, but I love the possibilities it offers. Locos with on-board DCC sound decoders are particularly fun as long as the set of sounds is convincingly close to the real class. :) Steam locos in general aren't there yet, but most diesels sound OK.

That Lego Hall is the best one yet, but when the previous version didn't even have driving wheels that's not exactly high praise. It is loosely Hall-shaped but could do with coupling rods and connecting rods, especially as the representations of cylinders mean it's not the usual 6-wide anyway. The tender and coach...oh dear. I think what probably bugs me most about the various sets though is the 4x4 dome(?) smokebox door. The headboard always has to be so huge that the smokebox number can't go above the middle where it belongs.

A six wheel tender that would go around normal Lego curves would be a challenge. I've thought about it for my Emerald Night a few times, and concluded that it'd probably need a sliding wheelset.
 
My plan for an enlarged tender is to have a motor bogie at one end, and a fixed third axel at the other (powered from the tender, as my layout still uses the good old 9V system). Not to mention lengthening the loco a good few studs.
Have to buy it first, of course. Then probably Bricklink parts for the remaining coaches. I think it should have five in total? (Correct me...)

Of all the things I could pick on, it seems odd to get wound up over the printing on that 4x4 dish piece. But when you think about it, it's just printing. Unlimited by bricks. There's no excuse for getting it wrong! :p
 
To put it back on track, i love this thread.
All my models of youth ended up more glue than plastic, and I still love making stuff, but I am limited with only green fingers, and ten thumbs.
Had a hand me down cheap Hornby set in the cellar as a kid, fixed on a large board, by the time teens arrived it was like the apocalypse...all the train fires, collisions and explosions, volcanoes and air crashes that had taken place.
I think it was a meteor fall that killed it off.
So I am jealous of all your talents, keep it up.
 
I realised I didn't post there, so here goes:

Hovercraft:


Angry Bee:


The hovercraft is just your basic hovercraft design, it's a tad too heavy for water, but it runs fine on a road or cricket pitch/golf course, Angry Bee is just that, bloody fast and bloody angry, I haven't clocked it but it must easily do 70+ and has almost unlimited vertical capability, if I stuck a bigger battery in, it would probably do over a 100mph and unlimited vertical no prob, it takes about 5 seconds presently to go from ground level to 1000 foot (it's exempt from the height regulations but could do so much more damage than a tiny drone lol).

The side force generators are there to give it stability at high speed, the original plane literally osselated itself to bits due to the micro vibrations at high speed. Both are made out of foamboard.
 
IanSR said:
I realised I didn't post there, so here goes:

Hovercraft:


Angry Bee:


The hovercraft is just your basic hovercraft design, it's a tad too heavy for water, but it runs fine on a road or cricket pitch/golf course, Angry Bee is just that, bloody fast and bloody angry, I haven't clocked it but it must easily do 70+ and has almost unlimited vertical capability, if I stuck a bigger battery in, it would probably do over a 100mph and unlimited vertical no prob, it takes about 5 seconds presently to go from ground level to 1000 foot (it's exempt from the height regulations but could do so much more damage than a tiny drone lol).

The side force generators are there to give it stability at high speed, the original plane literally osselated itself to bits due to the micro vibrations at high speed. Both are made out of foamboard.
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They look great, would love to see a video of them working. ;)
 
From onboard or off?

The Bee would be easier since I ripped the electronics out the hovercraft for something else.

Edit oh stupid me, there's already some available:
 
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All this talk of vertical climbing makes me want to build an RC English Electric Lightning, with proper mini tubojets (I'll reluctantly concede that afterburners won't be possible)...

..... in 12 inches to the foot scale.
 
Laser Maze
Sorry for the potato quality

As some of you may know I've been working on a laser maze system for the past few months (think Queen's Diamonds at EP) and I thought it was time I build a model to showcase the product. All just foam core on an A2/A3 base on a scale of 1 foot to 1 inch. I'll be adding some filler to the model in the next couple of days and also starting to add in the lasers and sensors so I'll post those when they're done.

I'll also be posting a DIY DMX controller that I built, with hardware specs, and showing off some of the code that allows you to communicate with it directly from USB. If anybody is interested in anything or wants to know anything about the build just let me know.

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