OO gauge OLE

Hi Ed,

Looks very good to me. Some things have to be slightly overscale otherwise they last all of 5 minutes - this is one of them. I'm following closely, I have some catenary building coming up shortly (when I have the loco's running).

Nigel

Thanks Nigel

There are some excellent layouts around where people have made far more accurate OHLE than mine, interestingly the majority are modelling the West Coast main line.

I'm just happy with something hanging over the rails so that the AC locos don't look totally out of place.


Ed

The catenary is fine Ed. The photo above looks so natural and not out of place. You must be thanking your self for not modelling N gauge !

Keep up the great work. :thumbs

Cheers, Gary.

Thanks Gary. I can well understand why people doing this in N gauge just have the masts and skip the wires.

Ed

Iwould say job truly jobbed,looks fine Ed,so now sit back and enjoy,,
:thumbs;-):cool:
Owen

Thanks Owen, not sure about 'sit back and enjoy' though, you'll notice the loco still hasn't been painted Rail Blue although I've had the paint since February.




Ed

[user=1338]Ed[/user] wrote:

Thanks Owen, not sure about 'sit back and enjoy' though, you'll notice the loco still hasn't been painted Rail Blue although I've had the paint since February.




Ed

well we are all in that club eh?
:thumbs;-):cool:
Owen

To conclude, my version of a tensioning/anchor mast (if you can call it that).



It's a bit high as some of the post will go through the baseboard, but it's supposed to resemble this …

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.6611788,0.8354674,3a,27.8y,95.97h,89.57t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sbwjsYarA_-bTAht3Pe2V5w!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1

plus plenty of modelers license



Ed

that is as close as it gets Ed, neat
:thumbs;-):cool:
Owen

Hi Ed,

Excellent modeling, JLTRT.

Nigel

It looks the business, Ed.  :thumbs

Thanks chaps.

It should be strong enough to hold the catenary up at the end of the line, which is the main thing.



Ed
 

Once you put a decent attempt at mast/catenary (and yours look super) onto a layout it immediately says "electric overhead"… lay on Ed… I think it's going to make a big difference.
cheers Marty

Thanks Marty.

It's taking a lot longer than I thought to get any wires up though, as there are so many other things that need to be done first so that the wires aren't in the way :sad:


Ed

Definitely looks the part, good on ya, also like the new profile picture, had to double take it the other day as I though it was a period photo, had me fooled for a second.

Thanks Aaron.

I thought you were doing another class 31 detailing project, managed to get anywhere?


Ed

[user=1338]Ed[/user] wrote:

Thanks Aaron.

I thought you were doing another class 31 detailing project, managed to get anywhere?


Ed

Not yet, been busy with the garden and probably will be till the autumn, but its still on the to-do list along with everything else

Hi Ed well done. :thumbs
Here's a few suggestions based on my experience… 

For the posts I use code 100 rail as it's easy to solder, stronger than plastic and much cheaper than buying brass H section and TBH looks ok from a normal viewing distance. If you are making legs for gantries use 2 lengths of code 100 for the uprights and smaller N gauge rail for the cross sections. I use a small measuring stick (lolly stick with pen marks on) when building up a set of legs. To secure the posts to the baseboard I knock in a panel pin and then just solder the rail to it.  

The reg arms need to be brass as it is stronger than copper and less prone to bending when tensioned. Wrap some wire round one end before soldering to represent the insulator. 

Have a look in a dress making shop for some press studs they make good weights for the tension masts and also use for the pulley wheels. 
For the contact wire on wemblesden I used some old cat 5 cable that was stripped back to bare copper. Since putting up the 'knitting' I have discovered some stretchy rubber elastic 'stuff' in my local boyes store that is 0.5mm and looks similar to a product called EZ wire. I first herd about EZ wire on the MERG forum apparently you can superglue bits of it together so I will be looking into this as tensioning copper wire is a pain! If you are modelling the old mk1 system the wires look much more realistic if you paint them verdigris green along with the reg arms. The later mk3 stuff used aluminium so it would be light grey.    

Finally don't set the contact wire too high. If you look at pics of the pans on AC locos they only appear to be at half height (unless you are modelling the class 87's in Bulgaria!) 

If you are going for the fixed height pan you might want to have a go at fitting a 'pan flash' effect. Here's a link to my website explaining how I did it.. http://www.westcoastminiatures.com/panflash.html
Keep up the good work. :thumbs :cool: ;-)

Thanks Dave.

My efforts at present are purely cosmetic and although based a bit on Mk1 and/or Mk3, are just a mis-mash of gantries/portals, masts and (hopefully soon) wires, to represent catenary and stop the AC locos looking daft going around the layout


That said, if my current plan of hooking the wires over the appropriate point on the registration arms doesn't work and I do have to resort to soldering the wires, then code 100 rail may well be the answer for stronger masts and gantries.

I'm making cateneary wires up from stripped and hardened 1/0.6 hook up wire, but I wish I'd know about using CAT 5 before. Can't tell you how much I've thrown away as we've gone wireless :thud


Ed

With Wemblesden and Potters lane/trent valley before it I used jewelry making wire but half way through wiring Wemblesden I changed to the cat5 as I found it easier to solder especially when trying to replicate compound catenery. I intend to experiment with the stretchy stuff on the depot as I cringe now every time I watch the close up of the shed on the video I took at shildon as none of the overhead is straight! :roll: :sad:

http://www.westcoastminiatures.com/wemblesden.html