A simple home made wheel pusher to adjust tight B2B's simply and easily.

A guest post from Terry Smith, with details of a useful device to move wheels on axles. 

I've made a wheel pusher from a plumbing fitting. 

Basically, I've have removed the olives from a compression ring union fitting (8mm pipe), done up the nuts tight and then cut a 3mm slot straight through one side with a small angle grinder. This allows me to use the fitting without having to take the wheel sets out of the truck.

I then undo one nut so that it gently holds the fitting between the wheels, allowing me to centralise the nuts on the wheels. I can then use spanners to hold one part while gently turning the nuts and pushing the wheels apart. 

Simply by chance, one full turn of the nut gives a back-to-back setting of 1.132" which is a figure I settled on a few years back as an aim for re-working wheel sets that needed it, for my operating circumstances. 

This fitting works much better with more and finer control than my previous method of removing the wheel sets from the trucks and using a NWSL HO sized wheel puller/pusher. It is much quicker as well.

Guest Blog: Train Trax

 

My name is Ian Miller. Phil has kindly allowed me to tell you a bit of a story about me, KATO and Train Trax.

 

At the end of 2021 I was fed up with my old IT systems job and decided it was time for a change. The prospect of an approaching 40th birthday made me think that life would be more fun if it could involve more trains, and more independence.

 

I have been a dabbling modeller in OO gauge for quite a while, with a quite conventional, unfinished, British outline freelance loft layout. In addition I'd been buying, cleaning up and selling models online to help fund the hobby. I found this almost as rewarding as running trains.

 

I had some ideas about how I could make this a full-time occupation, but in the end an accidental discovery led me along the journey to acquire the Train Trax website (www.traintrax.co.uk) in January. Train Trax exclusively sells KATO products in Ngauge. Keith, the previous owner who had run it for 14 years, had decided to take a long overdue retirement.

 

So I collected a very full van load of N gauge stock from Surrey. Included was a mass of Kato Unitrack, Japanese trains of all types, North American locos, wagons, buildings and all the accessories. On arrival at my brand new HQ in York I had to make sense of it all - I had dealt with very little N gauge or KATO stock previously!

 

I was first drawn to the trains which I was familiar with in real life: the Class 800 in LNER and GWR liveries, the Eurostar and TGV. My first impression was how intricate and good value they were. Once I'd had a good play with those I then explored the rest of the range of trains. They always find that they work straight out of the box - pop them on some Unitrack and off they go with no fuss.

 

Unitrack was probably the biggest revelation to me. It just clicks together and is ready to go. Fantastic Japanese precision engineering. There's no need for fettling of joints or soldering, and it can be re-configured repeatedly. The aesthetics of it might not suit the finescale purist, but for me reliable running beats that, and it's still perfectly possible to ballast and weather it to blend it into a scenic layout. I wish I'd known about it before I'd laid my own track, as I could have avoided a lot of hard work and frustration!

 

The previous owner of Train Trax recommended that I join the N Gauge Society, and I'm glad that I did. I found the local area group a friendly bunch, and by co-incidence found that they were experimenting with T-TRAK - a modular layout standard that relies on Kato Unitrack. One thing led to another, and now I'm retailing the laser-cut module kits that the group has designed.

 

Seeing the variety of stock that the group runs - UK, European, Japanese and North American has reminded me that one of the best things about the world of railways is the variety of different ways of doing things around the world. From very little previous interest, I now find myself researching the history of different North American loco liveries on behalf of my customers!

 

It's been a fun journey with Train Trax so far, but not without its challenges. Along the way I've learnt about global logistics and search engine optimisation. I now find myself running a small business in an incredibly difficult economic climate, so support from all the loyal customers that have continued to buy while the business was transferred is particularly valued. What next for Train Trax? KATO continue to have an interest in the UK market, via partners Gaugemaster and PECO, and are releasing new products every month, so there's plenty of excitement still to come.

 

If you want to follow the latest updates from Train Trax, follow me on Facebook and/or sign up for fortnightly emails.

Ian Miller

www.traintrax.co.uk

www.model-railway-magic.co.uk

Phil: I've not been paid for this blog post, but I'm happy to host it as a way of helping out people in the hobby. It appearing here in no way counts as an edorsement of the company. For all I know he's operating a Victorian sweatshop with small children being forced to do all the work. I doubt it, but I'll admit I haven't checked. I do like Unitrack though - used it in the past and it's great stuff.

The joy of a Model Railway

Today, we enjoy a guest blog post by James Hilton.

Over the years I have been lucky enough to have had a number of model railways that could be considered (nearly) finished, as in they were scenically and operationally complete, perhaps leaving space for improvement or extra detailing. These have varied in subject and scale, but they have always offered one thing, the joy of just ‘playing’ trains…

Now that might mean different things to different people and I’m not writing about any style of operation in particular, I have built and operated continuous run and more prototypical layouts. What I mean though, the joy that comes from seeing trains move in your miniature world. However, what I wanted to talk a tiny bit more about is the absolute key, accessibility.

My childhood layouts were permanent fixtures, both in outdoor, unheated garage or shed like buildings. This meant that I could run trains whenever I liked, at the flick of the power switch, watching the fluorescent tube flicker on and the miniature world wake up before the layout came to life as I operated perhaps a GWR branch train, modern image freight or North American mega freight. Later, when I re-discovered the hobby in my 20’s I built a layout in my garage again, and this was available to run, whenever I was… did it get used? No, I couldn’t leave the stock out, so it just sat idle most to the time. More recently I’ve build exhibition layouts and micro layouts that live in boxes, these are great fun to work on and build, projects that can be completed in a relatively short period but their storage means they’re just not used, and so as a result there is little joy.

Fast forward to C-19, and I notice the small shelf the length of my workbench, usually filled with particularly completed models, tucked under the current exhibition layout stored above it on a shelf could perhaps be used to build something… a plan was born for a tiny self contained slice of industrial standard gauge set in the early 1980s in South Wales. Progress was swift and I enjoyed building the layout. However the main point here is the joy this has brought… not only do I now have another layout that for all intents and purposes can be called ‘finished’ but, I can leave the stock on it so it is ready for operation at the flick of a switch, like the layouts of my childhood.

This is the key to me, a complete layout yes, but one that is ready whenever the mood takes me, or requires me to run some trains and loose myself in a miniature world of my own creation. Wonderful layouts that are locked away in boxes or only taken out to exhiitonts can be fun to design and build, and do provide the joy when they’re out, but the rest of the time they’re locked away from reality. My latest project shows that even the space starved have room for a project, and even better, one they can use whenever they need. This revelation has changed my opinions about railway modelling and caused a big re-think about my layout plans for the future. I can see a culling of the boxed micro layouts I have built, and a hunt for a home for an ‘always ready’ layout home in my house, workshop or garden. 

 

James Hilton

James is a professional model maker with over 30 years experience, in addition he is a kit designer and has produced kits for Planet Industrials, Narrow Planet, EuroNG and 6point5 Minimium Gauge. He keeps his own blog regularly updated, here: http://paxton-road.blogspot.co.uk 

If anyone is interested in writing a guest blog poston any topic, drop me a line.