Brettell Road, 1960s black country (ish)

Chromium browser on Linux Mint17 OS. No picture issues here, or anywhere else on W.T.

 

Attention has moved the the under frames of my DMU project. As I mentioned when building my class 114 the easy option for the 103 would be to stick with the 110 under frames and I would expect most people wouldn't notice. However as per my 114 project that wont really do.


The DMBS. Its easier to start with a center car chassis than a power car as when you cut off the Hornby details it gives you a flat floor to work on rather than just a hole. The battery boxes are from Replica and most of the other (black) bits are spares from a Heljan class 128. The white bits are scratchbuilt and the buffers are from Lanarkshire model. The heating ducts on a class 103 are quite distinctive as is the way the exhausts are routed past the inner bogie.


The DTCL


For the class 129 the obvious thing to do would be to mount the body on a Bachmann class 105 chassis. However the class 129 chassis is a bit different to a normal cravens unit and shares some parts with a class 108, especially the distinctive battery boxes. So most of these one came from a Bachmann 108 with again some scratchbuilt parts Buffers and their stools again come from Lanarckshire models.

With all these there is still a little more to do before paint, namely bogie steps, air horns and lamp irons.

 

Hi all.

I’ve tried something different with the file names for the images of my last post. Can everyone still see them? And those that couldn’t before is there any difference now?

cheers

jim

 

This is what I see

 

Sorry Jim, nothing showing in Chrome.

Mike

 

Nothing here, Jim. I'm on Android, at the moment.

 

I am seeing all images, no glitches at the moment, on my Mac, using MacOS 10.14.6 Mojave and Safari browser.

 

Nothing for me in Jim's original posts either - but I can see yours, Adrian, which is curious.

Steph

 

Seems the problem might be I don’t have an SSL certificate. Problem is my hosting company charges £50 per year for one.

I guess I’ll need to add the link back to my site on each post as a compromise

 

I've seen all of Jim's photos on my Amazon Fire.

 

I'm now seeing all the text OK but none of the photos. When I first opened the post there were one or two photos accompanying the post but ever "Refresh" didn't get me all the photos on the page.

Brian

 

Not only seen all on my Fire but also on my PC with Windows Edge.

 

Hi Jim,

Impressive work - once I've clicked through to your site though the images appear on my phone (Safari on the iPhone) but not on the laptop (Windows, Chrome).

Adam

 

Adrian, I can see your pictures, but Jim's just show as a little logo with the top right corner cut off and

 

Hi all

Last night I found a cheaper way to add an SSL certificate to my site which it appears may have fixed the problem

I wonder if this bit of the topic can be split off as it might be handy to someone else and the chances of them stumbling across it here is remote?

Jim

 

I've got them, now Jim.

 

One of the things that struck me as a bit weird with the pics of the class 103 underframes I showed last time was that the bogies seemed to be too far inboard from the ends. The class 103 (and class 110 for that matter) have bogies centres of 40 feet but Hornby have them set closer to 38 feet. This is not something I've ever seen mentioned before with regards to the Hornby 110.

On the trailer and the none powered end of the DMBS, because i had used Brassmasters bogies it was simply a case of moving the bogies out. Originally the mounting plate sat neatly inside the moulding (although raised by some 100thou evergreen strip. Now they sit outside of the moulding by 20thou as can just be seen in the picture. At the powered ens U opened out the floor at the inner end and simply bent the forward clip of the bogie to push everything back (the sideframes aren't the best fit to the power bogie and were way to stiff before anyway!).
The bogies have been backdated with bits of wire and microstrip.

Happier now. With that, some paint, the seating modified and some LEDs, aside from some windscreen wipers I can call these done.

Class 103


The roof vents were kindly printed for my by my friend John Chivers and I extend my thanks.




Class 129





And finally both units together.

 

Very nice models, Jim, and well worth the effort.
I didn't like DMU's at all when they first appeared around Manchester because they displaced the lovely Stanier/Fairburn/BR Standard 2-6-4 tanks from the local passenger trains, plus they rattled and stank of diesel fumes. Still, you could get an almost driver's eye view of the railway - unless he had the blinds down that is.
Quite like the early ones now, though.
Dave.