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For those unnacustomed to Iron Pigs and that means all except Trev and myself a short history. We have this absurd idea of an individual style of railway in the garden which uses standard basic components. Much internet surfing and a local (for me anyway) expedition to Buzzrail resulted in numerous pictures of Motor rail Simplex machines being gathered together ending with picrures of much beloved Tin Turtles. Later a steam tramcar came to light which confirmed our fears that it has been done before. We have dubbed the project as Iron Pigs.
The heart of these is a common chassis that can be fitted with electric motor, steam, ex R/C car infernal confusion engine (nicked from the son's car) or even sail if there is enough wind. Said Pigs it is thought will have a cast chassis of the general proportions of the Simplex and need minimal machine work to be done to get it rolling on something like 30 mm wheels and to be about 7/8n2 scale (2 foot on 45 mm track).
Progress to date is a basic chassis drawing suitable for me to cut the foam patterns using CNC machine. A slight pause is needed since I am upgrading my machine and if anyone can give me a 12 mm diameter by 3 mm pitch Trapezoidal thread tap the sun will shine for ever more (they cost about £100 new) and the pension will then allow us to eat for another few weeks. Having got this far I will now stop since I cannot see how to attach a photo of a typical Porcus Ferrus nor a Tin Turtle or any other of these narrow gauge machines.
Too wet to go to the workshop so a nap instead.
John (G)
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