1/32 Future of 1/32 spun out of NFS brake van thread

David Halfpenny

Western Thunderer
I suggest we meet at Noon by the Organiser's Office
And so we did. It wasn't so much a Round Table as a series of small conversations involving eight members of this Forum - though we did see a ninth weaving through the crowds. No names, no pack-drill - you all know who you are.
We also had illuminating discussions with traders old and new.

The main thought I took away from the day is that Business Models are changing.
- Far Eastern brass is on the wane. It's still viable for runs of thousands at wagon prices from £150-ish, but that isn't going to furnish a small number of fans with specialised yet varied rolling stock.
- Similarly, plastic injection moulding requires huge investment per mould, let alone per product.
- At the same time, traditional British lost wax foundries are closing as people retire because the jewellery trade is going 3D.
- The tactic of sending production to a Low Wage Economy is as valid as ever, but with Koreans now driving around in cars and Chinese hoping to, the most promising Low Wage nation to look to for the future is probably Britain. New cottage industries are popping up, staffed by people between redundancy and retirement, working as much for love as money.
- We could also see more work-sharing between enthusiasts, using a mixture of bought-in and self-made parts. Combining skills and equipment could well see scratchbuilding made much easier, especially if we share components we make for ourselves.
The next thought is that technology is changing in favour of low investment and low volume.
- Former coach builder David Leech was over from Canada with a couple of eye-opening trial 3D body prints from his Makerbot Replicator, made without the ghastly failure rate I'm used to in cheap home Squirty printers.
- friends are getting equally astonishing large-component prints from agencies in China, at prices much lower than Europe.
- The loss of Craft lost wax foundries is balanced by the rise of jewellery-driven 3D printed lost wax. It remains viable even for one-off components.
- Besides, lost wax may soon be overtaken by laser-sintered metal; straight from drawing to metal part with no hand-crafted pattern, no rubber mould, no wax, no tree of sprues, and no highly-toxic investment dust. I'm already delighted by sintered steel and aluminium parts, and I'm looking forward to a material equivalent to pewter or brass - both cheap and readily solderable.
- There are ways of cutting sheet metal that don't involve investment in a photo-tool. Laser cutting is too familiar to need description, and water-jet cutting is a significant improvement on that. Meanwhile, there is scope for laser-printed, laser-cut or CNC-cut masking for low-volume home etch.​

I had an interesting chat with Steve Golding, whose story comes over on his website www.stevegoldingmodels.com He faced the same scale dilemma as everyone else and chose 10mm scale partly because it dominates kit-built live steam, and mostly because of the availability of key bought-in components. (He also does some 1:29-ish scale to go with all those Class 66s.)
Naturally he's had his ear bent about 1:32, and had his answers ready:
- he'd need to recover the cost of additional etch photo-tools, typically £200 per etch for a wagon-sized vehicle.
- he'd need to make new patterns and moulds for his many self-made resin parts,
- he'd need to check whether his stock materials scale correctly (though things like little bass angles make no difference),
- he'd need replacements for certain key bought-in components, notably the standard etched compensation cradles he uses under all his four wheelers (I'm sure we could sort that readily, either for him or for ourselves.)
- wheels.​

Ever-energetic Dave Bowden told me a lot more about his creative ways round things for his GWR stock, and they're best described by Dave himself.

A chat with the guys manning St Petroc, the only two-rail layout I spotted, was illuminating. Their locomotives are all 1:32, and so fortunately is some of their rolling stock. They mix and match 10mm and 1:32 open wagons, avoiding glaring clashes by careful placement in the trains, but would like to be all-1:32.
Punch Line: the big problem for them is Vans.​

I collected a set of eight Northern Finescale 1:32 coach wheels to play with.

Finally, a G1MRA committee member sought me out specifically to express strong support for G1MRA action on 1:32 Scale.

David
 
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