Mountain Goats Train Thread.

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And to quote an infomerical classic, "But wait, there's more!"
(and most of it not yet finished)


Pretty neat.
Ah, do know from reading some UK-published model railway books which were released here in US between 1970s and current that both those manufacturers go back some time from today and are UK classics for that kind of thing.
Dapol just popped in to memory as a UK model railway manufacturer.
Will have to play in Google to see if they are still around.

Thanks.

A Simple Wooden Waggon.

Great progress photos, MG! Both you and kites are inspirational with your layouts and craftsmanship on both scratchbuilt and storebought models. I have one scratchbuilt wagon near completion, with others using Dapol couplings finished. Just need more spare time to work on a home-made 1940s petrol station, lumber mill and RAF base.

Y'all bring to mind that while not everyone is in to scratchbuilding trains, doing so is a joy to we who are.

And mentioning RAF base brings to mind that when having driven to the city to go to Hobby Lobby they had in stock THE classic British plastic model airplane kit, Airfix's 1/72 scale Spitfire.



Aww, thanks!

And speaking of those projects ... am looking forward to making some more progress on modifications to some Bachmann HO scale 0-6-0 switchers tonight.
And I say tonight meaning literally in the middle of the night; my body has cycled to keeping hours like the several times when healthy enough to work I had overnight jobs.
A few days ago I was up and working on these at 3 and 4 am.

Due to 90% chance of snow I skipped going to our weekly creative writers group meeting Saturday morning and since I simply could not stay awake while the sun was up, ended up sleeping all day.
But, man, shortly after it got dark it was, Hey, I'm awake now, "Let's git going and git 'er done!"

Here's what's on the table, literally!, for this week's model train projects;
(NOTE: red on dome tops is filler to smooth out mold join marks)



Though not the primary thing I'm going to be doing this week, a primary goal is modifying the front end to take a working coupler - Bachmann has been manufacturing these switchers, shunters for y'all who speak UK English, for enough decades now that one would think they would have reengineered the engine to have a working front coupler.
Oh well, though messy health often interrupts progress it is fun I get to have, the kind of fun which is almost but not quite the result of annoyance.

Last edited by kitesandtrainsandcats on 06 Feb 2021, 9:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I know that Bachmann and others make their own buck-eye style couplers. Do they work with Kadees? On the real railways here our old passenger coaches had buckeyes combined with screw link couplings. The locomotives pulling rhem needed to use the screw link couplings similar to the 3 link couplings, so we would drop the buckeyes to a vertical position and extend the buffers out and place metal collars over the tops of them to couple to a locomotive. We also had to connect the electric train heating when coupling up so we had to make sure the driver had turned it off or it was bye bye me! It was a scary job and one which many people had been killed. Oh. Almost forgot. Couple the air hoses (Or vacuum hoses on older coaches) and do a brake test.
When we needed to couple a coach to another coach we had to take the collars off the buffers and push them in, and then raize the buckeyes and while they were raized to a horizontal position we had to slide the pin that held them up into position. We had to do all this on our own and our depot were not given the special tools to help us lift the buckeyes like the other depot had, so it was not an easy task to do.

Here is something interesting. Narrow gauge industrial track designs.


http://www.penmorfa.com/Slate/trackwork.html

Yes, several manufacturers now make couplers which will interface with Kadees.
Have used some brands of them but I still prefer a good, solid, all-metal, Kadee.

Bachmann have, I think, 2 styles of those couplers, one which has a coil knuckle spring like the Kadees and a cheaper style which has a plastic finger instead of coil spring. That plastic finger "spring" has in my experience universally failed in short order.

Man, that coupling work sounds like REAL work!

This is a brilliant thread showcasing manufacturing building , assembly and innovation ...
You got skills MountainGoat, from parts casting to detailing creating trucks and entire passenger cars and passengers in Narrow
gauge .. Impressive detailing , including passengers even .. Viola ... Brought to life by MountainGoat production and fabrications .

And there's how you cut a freight door in to the wall of a structure kit you assembled about a decade ago to use on your section of the club layout, then decided not to use after all; then decided to use elsewhere and repaint, then before finishing the painting decided not to use it for that purpose; then decided to repurpose it as a l.c.l., 'less than carload' freight shed on your little bitty layout at home.

Good thing it turned out I hadn't glued the roof as securely as usual!

I was looking at this old Jouef Playcraft tanker and I had an idea. It was one of those items that I tried to sell bt no one wanted it. Now my idea is that I can dissasemble it and cut it and I will have enough parts to build two little narrow gauge tank waggons for bringing diesel fuel from a lorry up to the depot in. Ideal as I have the main structure with a lid and I can use the wheels. Ideal!

This sounds exciting ..... if you have a method , you can interface some imaging devise and show parts of your layout here . The RAF base soundly wonderful....and a petrol station .

Very inventive ..... hope you get these thinks to work together well . You have the creative ability .

Sounds like a plan!

And speaking of Jouef and wheels ...
The 1970s and 80 photos of their HO trains that I saw commonly showed what could be termed "Pizza Cutter" wheel flanges even larger than AHM/IHC's.

Ah, you have reminded me, if one is going to have an RAF base in 4mm scale and the close but not quite identical 1/72 scale, then these guys must be included!
https://uk.airfix.com/products/raf-personnel-a00747v

(Airfix are also known for their railway-related plastic model kits)

And since I know it exists, I feel compelled to mention Plastic Soldier Review's conclusions about that set, which was designed and released in 1972,
http://www.plasticsoldierreview.com/Review.aspx?id=46

Uhmm. I have hardly started yet. The start is the dissasembling of it.