What About The Bee

@DarkRedCapeDuring the Range Release the Hornby Director of Engineering stated that the water droplets are generated by ultrasonics. There is no evaporative process. If memory serves me correctly, he stated 50 micron holes. So unless you are using silt laden water, you should be fine. Particles in solution will not clog the grating. Particles in suspension will. You will not go wrong using distilled water. Its just a bit of overkill. What will destroy ultrasonics is running it when dry. That's a swift death. Bee

I decided to go with @LTSR_NSE's recommendation for the armrests. I did some thinking about using etched copper or brass. Wire will simply look better. So off we go. Bending jigs are tricky. There are many pitfalls in the design of such jigs. First, let's take a peek at the result. That is, what does the Booth 2nd Class Carriage look like with the new armrests? I will be using 26 AWG wire. This results in a scale 1.2" armrest. You may observe how the armrest enters the base of the seat and crosses the back rest, in the detail insets of image 1. I think this looks very nice! Compare to the drawing in Booth, earlier in this thread. The side panels have been let in and the seats now have rounded edges, just slightly overhanging the shell. I tried to give an impression of intended colors, blue shell, brown seats, brown floor and black arm rests. That is, seats cannot be painted, the paint wears too quickly. Similarly the floor. Yet the shell could be painted, and since this is a 2nd class carriage, blue it is. Wrought iron, black. So how to make the armrests? In image 2, the neutral axis of the bends is shown in green on the left, with the wire armrest in that path on the right. Bending always occurs at the neutral axis, material at lesser radius in compression, material at greater radius in tension. The path around the backrest is particularly tricky, as the two bends meet at a point of tangency. There is a terrific amount of arithmetic and geometry going on, everywhere. Get one value wrong, and the jig will not function! So with the path established, we can make the bend. To bend material, we apply a force greater than yield, a function of Youngs modulus of elasticity and the cross sectional moment of inertia of the material being bent. A 3D printed jig, by itself, will simply fracture under those applied forces. As such, the wire is bent around commercially available brass rod. The sizes are imperial, because I live in the US, where materials are commonly imperial. Yet FreeCAD is metric. So lots of translation and weird numbers. Sorry about that. Making the jig In the top left, the arm rest is shown bent around the brass rods. To hold the brass rods in place, they will be glued into a handle, purple. I need to wrap the wire around the brass rods in a plane, perpendicular to the major axes of the brass rod. The red anvil is added to serve as the reference plane for the wire. The red anvil may be slid on and off the brass rods. On the bottom left, the wire is added. Note the wire is anchored into the side of the red anvil, made slightly transparent to make the anchor path easier to see. An important feature of the red anvil is the slight step, which prevents the wire from moving towards the center as it is wrapped. You will see the step in the lower right of image 3. But wait, there's more! In order to insure that the wire sits flat on the red anvil, the green press can be pressed on and off. One end is flat, but the other end of the green sliding press also has a step. This step prevents the wire from moving away from the center. You may just make out the step on the lower left of image 4, outside of the wire. On the lower right of image 4, the step heights are shown. The step height is just under the diameter of the wire, yellow circle. When the green press is pushed towards the red anvil, the top and bottom of the wire touches them first, and is therefore firmly made planar. The press and anvil never actually touch. The side to side of the step walls is slightly bigger than the wire, but forces the wire to be in the rectangular channel You may think of the rectangular channel as something which follows the bend path. In practice, the flat side of the green press will be used incrementally, as each bend is made. When all bends are in place, the step side will be applied, insuring the armrest conforms to specification, in all directions, to within a few thousandths of an inch, in all directions along the path. The red anvil and green press are then slid off of the brass rods. A few snips and the wire armrest is set free, ready to be glued into the seat. Whew! But why do the armrests have this shape? This bending jig design took an extraordinary amount of time to CAD. During that time, I pondered, why? Why does it have that shape? When putting the artful touches on the blue carriage shell, I thought to myself, that's odd. What do the passengers hold on to as they climb up? Where are the ubiquitous vertical bars next to the round apertures? There are none. My though is that the arm rest takes all these twists and turns so as to provide multiple hand grips to passengers. The floor is ~3 feet 6 inches (1.075 meters) above the railhead. The base of the seat is another 18 inches, or so. This places the armrest just at or above eye height. As a passenger climbs, the horizontal parts of the armrest serve as the cross members of a ladder! The curves can also be used as grips. Quite convenient and clever, actually! Finishing up The bending jig will be more expensive than the first 3D carriage print. But the bending jig will be robust enough for 100s of uses, amortizing my cost over multiple carriages. It will also permit me to experiment with other 26 AWG wire materials. I intend dead soft copper at first, but may go to steel, due to the higher tensile strength. Yeah, bending jigs are tricky! Bee

@RallymattWelp, you certainly caught me out. I thought you were being serious. Now I am not so sanguine about the investment. @MoccasinI very much want Hornby to succeed, independent of who is in the saddle. I have seen far too many companies hollowed out by venture capitalists. Bee

I'm always concerned when a moneyed interest, a venture capitalist, takes a stake in a business. All too often, it is to strip the meat off of the bones, only to sell the husk on to the next vulture. That Mr. Ashley is an enthusiast puts paid to that notion. Hopefully. Bee

I've done the YouTube + link method. Bee

There is a particular social media behavior this is intended to squelch. I will emphasize I have not seen this particular behavior here. Never. Yet the behavior exists elsewhere. Two persons, X and Y. X makes an assertion which is wrong. Y spends the time to explain to X why it is wrong. But X doesn't like being wrong, and so edits the post, to make themselves correct. Y is then left with a non sequitur argument. It destroys social discourse and polite conversation. It turns into accusations of post-editing and a consequent battle. ÷÷÷÷ I absolutely get your point Fishy. I think the edits here are honest and above board. At a minimum, I would appreciate the ability to attach a note explaining my error, if not permitted to edit the error away. I would like the ability to add to my post, explaining this or that point was MY ERROR. Being a bit fussy, I like all my posts to be free of typographical error. But most folks will accept a typographical error as just that, and not a black mark against me. It bothers me that my posts contain typographical errors, but that is not a compelling argument for unlimited editing. Anyway, I do hope you take this in the manner intended. I support unlimited editing in an honest forum. Bee

Hi 81F I'm 100% sure you checked this, but on the odd circumstance you did not... Shrinking the boiler diameter changes the internal clearances to the motor and chassis. Are they clear of the shell? Bee

On a lark, I selected a combination of words to search for interesting books. One of the books returned absolutely astounded me. Railway Carriages for Conveyance of Third Class Passengers at or under One Penny per Mile 27June1845 A collection of mechanical drawings of the so called Parliamentary Carriages. The carriages mandated by Parliament for the poor. Color me gobsmacked! I have discussed Parliamentary Carriages before. If you don't know what these are, you may find this interesting. Parliamentary trains are the reason why English trains had 1st class and 3rd class, but no 2nd class coaches. https://community.hornbyhobbies.com/topic/33593-railway-oddities/?do=findComment&comment=363132 Parliament required that the railways provide the plans of those carriages for approval. They were collected and published. The list of plans follows. In the interests of keeping this post reasonably short, I will only show the images I think relevant to my interests. If you see one on the list but do not see the image, just ask. Happy to add it. [GWR anyone? GNER?] Arbroath and Forfar Railway Brighton, Croydon and Dover Railways Bristol and Gloucester Railway Eastern County Railways Great North of England Railway Great Western Railway Lancaster and Preston Junction Railway London and Birmingham & Grand Junction Railways The London and Birmingham Railway was heavily influenced by the LMR. The Grand Junction Railway interchanged with the LMR, maintaining offices at the LMR stations in Manchester and in Liverpool. This Parliamentary Carriage held 40 passengers. The GJR provided the interior dimensions as well as the exterior. Length (17'4" outside, 16'11" inside). Width (7'2" outside, 6'8" inside). Height (5'8" outside, 5'3½" inside), which I presume is for the body, not inclusive of the chassis. London and South Western Railway Manchester and Birmingham Railway Manchester, Bolton and Bury Railway Manchester and Leeds Railway The Manchester and Leeds had a common station with the LMR in Manchester. 44 persons sat in a carriage 17 feet long × 7 feet wide. That's just a bit cramped for my comfort. Midland Railway Newcastle and Darlington Railway Newcastle-upon-Tyne and North Shields Railway North Union Railway The North Union literally converted the ubiquitous blue carriages found everywhere to Parliamentary Carriages. Seating 24, just as the LMR seated 2nd class passengers, without change. Sheffield and Manchester Railway Yarmouth and Norwich Railway York and North Midland Railway

I have found talking to moderators in private to be calm and reasonable. The face they present here is the same one you will see there. Just in case you do not know how to do it (skip if you do know): 3 bar drop down at top if your screen -> you see your avatar -> find the envelope -> click on that -> compose new -> select addressee, which in this case would be a moderator Bee

Earlier, I asked what the black semicircles were. I think I can answer my own question now. Firstly, I was wrong. The black semicircles appear to be the floor. The floor is just drawn very poorly in Booth. On to the model. First, I added the round bottom portals. As expected this raised lip would create a tripping hazard. My OO passengers could trip on this lip and do a header from a high above the rails. The floor surface needs to be elevated above the bottom of the round bottom portal, eliminating the trip hazard. Booth shows full carriages sides, we cannot see the ends of the floor planks in his plate. Therefore, I increased the thickness of the floor and set the floor planks inboard of the shell of the carriage. This immediately presented as the black semicircles. Unmistakable. Version 1.0 is just for comparison to the latest version, V1.5. Minor points. 1) Booth does not show individual cubby holes for each passenger under the seats, just one large volume. My error. The dividers were removed. 2) The seat backs are now the proper form. Only two cross members, not three. 3) I spent hours chasing an arithmetic error, arranging the seats and armrests to be symmetric and with uniform leg room. It may not have been visible in production, but it was there nonetheless. Still to go is how to do the armrests. I thought to print them in metal. It was ridiculously priced. They will be insanely fragile in plastic. I'm still leaning towards wire, but I will need a reliable method to form them. More to come Bee

@JJ73Based on the return address, I think it is a genuine Hornby download. And therefore, quite safe. Have fun! Bee

JJ, When I get an email from Hornby Hobbies Community, the return address is noreply@invisioncloudcommunity.com This should be the same for everyone. Check that the email address in the email sent to you has that EXACT ADDRESS. Letter for letter. Bee

Until we get to the bottom of this DO NOT DOWNLOAD ANYTHING Bee

Thank you @LTSR_NSE I did see that. I may just purchase some, although I already possess a fair number of Hornby's issue Bee

Same observation regards website behavior. When the expected season disappears, the arrival is impending! Looking forward to a review! Bee

Hi Dark Red Cape I must apologize. I lost all my mind reading skills, directly after my surgical operation🙃 Perhaps you are upset that you paid list price, and now Hornby has offered a significant reduction. The converse would be that you waited for a price reduction, and Hornby sold out. We have all been there. I comfort myself by acknowledging that I was happy with my purchase when it was made. That I supported the institution that is Hornby. Sure, I could have gambled on a price reduction. I didn't. I was happy then, I'm still satisfied now. Bee