22nd January 2024
Having missed my target of getting the R/C system running for the AGM show, I was left with a backlog of essential house & garden maintenance that had been put off to give me time to concentrate on thr R/C system so that became my priority for October, November and December. Unfortunately I was then hit with a bad dose of flu that took up most of November and then again over Xmas.
This has all rather screwed up my production schedule for that period.
I apologise to all my customers waiting for their LMS 3F kits. I guess it is just one of the hazards of being a one-man business.
I am now back on working to complete the R/C system, but I have decided to defer the programming for customising the initial R/C setup. It will come later after I have sent out the kits.
The enforced rest has given me time to consider my longer term production objectives.
It is now obvious that the carriage kit market has become very competitive as far as laser cut ply kits are concerned. Consequently I will only be producing kits for the carriages that I have actually done all the research and 2D drawings for – see my list in the current price list here.
From now on I will be concentrating on the locomotive developments – again see the current price list here.
The RtR LMS 3F (one only) will be ready for sale after the kits have been sent out – needs painting and filming shunting.
23rd February 2024 – revised on 02/07/24
I now have 2 spare LMS 3F kits – available fairly soon.
I have revised my tank loco kit prices – small tank locos will now cost £1200 (an increase of £100) and larger tank locos will be £1350 (an increase of £150) – this is primarily due to in increase in etching costs. I will absorb those extra costs for tender locos (both kit & RtR) and RtR tank locos.
13th March 2024
I am moving on to Vinyl wraps instead of transfers for locos. Hopefully this should reduce the amount of painting (etched priming even) as the wraps can go on bare metal suraces (cleaned with wire wool or similar first). A wrap will be provided for the boiler cladding as well as all the panels on the loco. This should reduce priming/painting to just the frames and most of the black parts (and various others where the livery requires a large block of another colour).
The wraps will be tougher than transfers and hopefully easier to apply.
I will report back here on progress.
More detail added to the prototype section on the T9 page.
2nd July 2024
A lot has gone on behind the scenes with much development work and a lot of time spent on non-model stuff (you really do not want to know!).
Attention has now returned to the radio control system and becomes my main priority this month. I am now investigating getting wheels 3D printed in stainless steel for all those not available from Slater’s and Walsall Models. They continue to have square axle holes for easy quartering.
The LSWR T3 design is now almost ready – 3D design and mechanical design complete – just needs to have the etches designed.
All my tender designs have now been updated to the latest specifications using the latest version of my R/C system and NiMH cells for power – I ditched the previous Li-Ion cells for safety reasons. Tank locos will also revert to NiMH cells.
6th December 2024
Just checked my news page and discovered I have not updated it since July. I updated my Welcome page twice in September but the corresponding News page entries seem to have gone missing.
Actually on closer inspection those 2 entries seem to have been replaced by a duplicate of all the earlier entries for the year. Odd! Now removed. Sorry about that. Anyway here is a summary and the latest developments since the AGM.
It has been an extremely busy period attempting to get at least 5 prototype locos running in time for the AGM meeting in Swindon. Totally failed in that due to problems with completing my radio control system. The problem with that was that the chip manufacturer changed the code a couple of times but failed to document it soon enough, leaving me with compilation errors and trying to guess the changes required. Now fixed but I have not had time to complete the R/C system due to other problems (see below). That has also held up the delivery of the production LMS 3F kits – again apologies.
Since the AGM I seem to have run into all the usual problems of a one-man business plus a few others. Firstly having to complete the annual company accounts for HMRC – now complete. Then an operation for a hernia – successful but caused an unwanted infection – now recovered. At the last review on Tuesday of this week my hernia surgeon recommended a scan. Due to take place yesterday, the hospital phoned just as I was about to leave for there to say that the scanner had just broken!
My 105 year old mother-in-law died 10 days ago followed 12 hours later by my main CAD design PC (presumably not in sympathy). 3 days after that my email laptop refused to boot and in trying to recover from that my old backup PC (now used by my wife) also crashed. I will not bore you with more details.
Back to the modelling. Although the 3D printed backheads turned out more successfully than I expected, the same company trying to 3D print buffer stocks and heads ran into problems with them falling off the sprues – initially in stainless steel then in nylon. I tried strengthening the sprues, but same result. So it is back to turning my own from brass and nickel silver.
When I have all the equipment back in action (nearly there) I will complete the R/C and the LMS 3F kits. Next after that is getting the prototypes all running and testing them shunting on my “Inglenook Sidings” style track. I will film them in action and put the videos on YouTube with links from the relevant loco pages on this website.