• Welcome to The Forum for Gauge 3 Model Trains.
 
The Gauge 3 Society       2.1/2 inch Gauge Association       Cookies and privacy HOW TO JOIN: to request forum membership please click here

Gauge 3 Society members must be logged in to view the Society section
  G3 Clubroom

Welcome to the G3 Clubroom. This is the friendly online forum where members share ideas and inspiration, suggestions and advice, modelling tips, pictures and drawings, and general chat about our fine hobby of Gauge 3 railway modelling. A warm welcome, and enjoy your visit here today.

Constructing [5"] Wagons - Doug Hewson - HMRS

Started by IanT, Jun 19 2017 16:32

« previous - next »

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

IanT

Well my copy has just arrived (a few days later than some other G3 folk got theirs it seems) and after a very cursory inspection, I have to say that I am delighted with my purchase.

I think I was generally expecting this book to be a slightly updated version of Doug's articles that appeared in serialised form in Engineering in Miniature (EIM) a few years ago. Whilst this wouldn't have worried me too much (they were very good articles in their own right) - this seems to be a complete update - with many more colour photos and some really nice line drawings to illustrate the text. The book comes in a solid presentation box together with sixteen A2 (double sided) wagon plans - each sheet being of a different wagon. These drawings look roughly half size for 5" (so about G3 scale) but will need to be correctly scaled before use (I would probably use the wheelbase dimension as a baseline and convert other dimensions from that).

So why am I so pleased about this particular volume? Well, so much that is published in terms of "railway modelling" is for the smaller scales and whilst much can certainly be 'enlarged' - here (for a change) is a book that looks much more closely at how to build (in similar materials) something very close to the original prototypes. Maybe not all of the techniques shown will 'halve' in practice but I'm sure that many can be used (or at least adapted) for use in G3.

For anyone wanting this book, I'm afraid it will now cost you £50 (plus postage), so I suspect that I'm not the only one here feeling pleased to have been an early supporter who purchased it 'pre-publication' for just £30. Even so, if you value each A2 wagon plan at £3.00 each (which seems a reasonable price), then you get a high quality (316) page book for just £2.00 plus postage. That sounds like a great deal to me.

Regards,

IanT         
Nothing's ever Easy - At least the first time around.

MikeWilliams

Ian, Please don't get tempted by the detail you can include in a 5in gauge model.

Mike

LankyTank

Ian

When I ran a measuring stick over my copies the drawings came out slightly smaller than 17/32 but there is a table on page 200 with conversion factors & the claim that the drawings are dimensioned at G3 - half 5" gauge, (if I read it correctly - I may have misunderstood/had a senior moment...!!!).

Barry

IanT

I guess it's about what you want to achieve Mike. Most G3 folk don't model the full framework on their wagons (because you can't see it in use) but there are a few people who do - I guess because they like to know it's there...?

I don't have them to hand (so cannot recall the authors name) but there was a really great series about wagon modelling in the early days of MRJ, where the guy talked about why it was important to understand how a 'real' wagon had actually been built before you could model it correctly (and he worked in 4mm). I've tried to research lots of railway related stuff in the past (both locos & wagons) and looking at photos and reading a general description only gets you so far. So anything that helps me understand what I'm trying to model is a great boon. So I'm not sure "tempted" (by the detail) is therefore quite the right word - "understanding" (the detail) might be a better one in my case.

Barry, I think the drawings probably were drawn to 17/32nd but some very small changes have occurred during the print process - e.g. a 10ft wheelbase = 134.867mm (at 1:22.6) and on my 'A' drawing its 134 mm (so very slightly under) - I haven't checked too much further and verticals may be out (e.g. distorted) more. For the 5" model, the same 10ft wheelbase dimension is given as 10 5/8" (269.875 mm) - which has been very slightly rounded up by the use of fractional measurements I suspect (269.875/2 = 134.94). But you could probably just use the dimensions given, halve them and not be very far out in practice... detecting the odd 0.5 mm difference (in 134) here and there is pretty tricky...

Anyway - just wanted to give this book a mention. I've delved a bit more this evening and there's lots (for me at least) to learn from it, so hopefully a useful way to spend my morning coffee breaks over the next week or two.

Regards,

IanT
Nothing's ever Easy - At least the first time around.

Geoff Nicholls

My copy arrived yesterday. There's lots of lovely detail that I, at least, only aspire to reproduce.  But I think knowing how a wagon is built and how the parts function in real life, do help me to produce a good model. A bit like a sculptor attending an anatomy class before carving slabs of clay on a metal armature.

And on page 5 there's a photo of a GCR fish van with a body built using exactly the same method as a Candy/Williams flexikit with a note stating "I would defy anyone to tell the difference between the original wooden ones...and those moulded in resin" Quite a pragmatic attitude.
Geoff.

IanT

I see some enterprising soul is selling wagon drawings from the DH book for £18 a sheet on eBay - probably the ones he doesn't want....

Regards

IanT
Nothing's ever Easy - At least the first time around.

Doddy

"You don't know what you don't know"

LankyTank

Hmmm, just had a look.

It's just the book - no hard copies of the drawings included - however, a CD/DVD will be included with them as an e-file. Still a good book for £30.

Doddy

If HMRS have done a good job aligning the drawings in the scanning process, that should make importing them into CAD packages easier - at least thats what I am hoping for.
"You don't know what you don't know"

LankyTank

Stated on the website to be supplied as PDF's.

Doddy

"You don't know what you don't know"

Jon Nazareth

I purchased mine pre publication and received it months and months ago.  In fact, I've looked inside the book just now and it states that it was first published in 2017.  My only disappointment is that it doesn't have any early wagons.

Jon

IanT

Maybe should have started a new thread for this - but this link popped up on a G1 Forum this morning and I thought others might like some of these RCH wagon drawings (that can be downloaded as PDFs). I couldn't download the .zip file so just selected the more useful ones for my wagon 'archive'   :-)

Of course, it's also quite possible everyone here has already seen this stuff and will tell me it's old-hat - but just in case, here is the link:

http://www.cs.rhul.ac.uk/~adrian/steam/RCHWagons/index.html

Regards,

IanT




Nothing's ever Easy - At least the first time around.

Doddy

No. quite new to me. A valuable resource for which I have no current use - but you never know about the future.

Many thanks Ian

Bob
"You don't know what you don't know"

MikeWilliams

New to me too Ian, thank you.  I have an almost complete set of 1907 drawings but these 1923 ones are very useful to have all in one place.

Mike