Pick-ups (still!)

Does anyone know where I can get hold of the right sort of material to make decent pickups?

The phosphor bronze strip I was intending to use proved to be too stiff and not springy enough, and ended up breaking after only a couple of adjustments!

The Bachmann pickups are obviously made of a decent material (copper I presume) and they're pretty springy and allow for quite a bit of adjustment without breaking. But where can I find a source copper strip of the right thickness etc? Can anyone help?

Sorry!

Once again, my 'Blog This!' browser bookmarklet has proved that sometimes the very tools that are intended to increase efficiency can serve the opposite purpose. If you subscribe to my RSS feed, then depending on how frequently the RSS feed updates, you will have probably just got 2 posts intended for my other blog. I've moved them to their rightful place now. My apologies!

I was planning on somehow re-using the original baseplate from the Bachmann chassis, but decided it would be simpler to just make a new one out of 1.5mm styrene. Here it is temporarily fixed in place with the original spring mouldings roughly placed in position but not fixed yet (they'll be attached to the baseplate so the whole assembly can be dismantled when required).


The next job is to make some new pick-ups for which purpose I've bought some phosphor bronze strip from Mainly Trains. These will be attached to the back of the baseplate (there's a gap between it and the bottom of the chassis thanks to the screw holes in the chassis block being raised, and extend through the existing gaps in the spring mouldings either side to make contact with the backs of the wheel rims.

45xx conversion progress

Here a few photos of the Bachmann 45xx chassis with the new Ultrascale P4 wheels temporarily in place with the Bachmann coupling rods and motion. I've added plasticard overlays to bring the 'frames' out to something a little closer to prototypical dimensions as I just couldn't live with the scale 18" gap behind the wheels that there would be otherwise!



When I originally mentioned it I thought there was a problem with the crank pins on the front wheels fouling the motion brackets. What I hadn't realised at the time, which is pretty obvious now, is that the protruding ends of the crank pins require trimming once the rods and motion are in place. So there isn't a problem after all!

More photos when I've made a bit more progress.

And then there were two!

More turnout pics

Thought I'd upload a couple of pics of the turnout with check rails added...

Masokits tie bar

I made one of the Masokits tie bars this afternoon. I managed to break one etching in the process (wiggling one of the tabs too much trying to get a good fold made it snap off!) and all things considered it was probably the most fiddly thing I've ever done (I can see why they're called 'Masokits' now!) but it was also extremely enjoyable (there's nothing better than being completely absorbed in making something) and the end result looks pretty neat (although the photos are cruel to say the least - the actual size is about half the size it appears in the thumbnails below!). Next job - installing it.