Hod Carrier

You're kidding!!! Ha ha!! Now that is some weird timing. I did notice that this was a very common occurrence from the photos I'd been studying, but I put that down to them probably having been taken during warmer weather. I probably could model it with open doors on the two unpowered coaches, but not on the motor coach. I presume you mean the motor coach...? Yes it is a wee bit wobbly, although I'm unsure exactly why. It's the heaviest car of the train and yet it's the only one that wobbles. Whether that's something to do with having motors onboard, the fixed wheelbase or whether it's meeting resistance through having to push/pull the rest of the train I shall have to try and find out. There may be some scope for adding weight but not much. It looks like I might have to now. Ha ha!!

It certainly is still operating. I believe it has the title of the oldest electrically operated pier railway according to Guinness World Records, although I don’t think it’s a very large field with much competition in it. The trip is stated to be 2100 feet / 640 metres.

Entries assembled.

Thank you gentlemen. Yes, those 3 wide windows really came to my rescue with this build. Without them the design would not have been right.

What can I add that hasn’t already been said? That’s a fantastic loco even without the added features, but the light and sound effects just give it that extra. Congratulations on a fabulous build.

Oh boy, have we got some great MOCs to enjoy this weekend. This shows your usual high standard of build and finish. Getting the front of these trains right must have been a real pain, but it looks like you nailed it as usual. Building in dark orange also must have made things really difficult in terms of part selection. Congratulations on a fantastic build and for getting onto the front page too.

Thanks, Benn. I wanted to try and get a compact pivot arrangement for the body and this really was the only part for the job. It looks pretty good too. It's a shame that it will all be hidden. There is also a roll of paper on the third wall, but including that would have made photographing it quite hard. Thank you so much. Strictly speaking, the Honey Bucket is standard gauge and the Trevithick doesn't run on compatible track, but I'll see what sort of cavalcade I can sort out. Thank you, sir. Yes it's quite a mixed collection of different types, none of which would ever have been seen together in the same space. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's getting tight to the deadline now, but the final issue left outstanding has been dealt with. Luckily the postman brought me the parts needed to correct the problem I'd discovered with the tipper mounting point. If they hadn't come today I would have been sunk. The tipper body is still supported on the handrails as before, but the handrails themselves are attached differently to the chassis. Rather than being attached to the sides they are now attached to the ends and are a bit closer together than before. With the geometry now corrected, everything lines up as it ought without stress or parts being out of line. With the tipper body now in place the build is complete!! My WIP journey is now complete. All the builds are finished and just need to be properly photographed so that they can be entered. As always, I've had a real blast with OcTRAINber and, after an unpromising start, things have accelerated towards the finish. I've loved researching unusual prototypes so that I could bring you something different to see and have thoroughly enjoyed all the excellent feedback that the builds have generated. I may not have stuck very close to the "quality over quantity" mantra and haven't produced models to the same high standard as many others being entered, but I have had a blast and enjoyed myself hugely. For me it's been about participating and just having fun. I hope you've enjoyed the journey as much as I have and if anything I've done has made you smile then I will have achieved my aims. Best of luck to all competitors in all categories. It's been a classic year this year and I hope next year will be just as good.

Lastly but not leastly, it's the turn of the rail tractor. As with the other builds, I started with the chassis and build upwards. It's a fairly vanilla concoction of plates and tiles as usual. Building up from the chassis there is a layer of jumper plates to give an offset for the cab and bonnet. There's also a wooden deck at the back for work equipment. Just to prove that there actually is a tractor underneath everything, a quick shot or two before the detailing and other greebles go on. From the opposite side. It does show how basic the conversion was for these rail tractors that so much of it's former identity is still on show. And now with greebles. An enclosed chain drive takes power from the tractor's existing gearbox and rear axle down to the rail chassis. Plenty of work equipment stowed on the back for when the need arises as well as a tool chest up at the front. The design of the tractor took a bit of tweaking to get right. There were aspects like the position of the axles and the height at which the body needed to be mounted that took a while to nail down before arriving at this design. However, a lot of the other aspects of the design were dictated simply by the parts available to me. Once I'd got the cab sorted out everything else had to scale to that.

Time at last for the design that probably got the biggest reaction on Flickr. A very simple plates and tiles chassis for the Honey Bucket. These rolling out-houses are very lightly constructed as they don't have to carry much weight (usually), so it was important to keep the chassis as slim as possible. The trans-clear plates in the middle are the attachment point for the Honey Bucket itself, as there is often a clear gap between the chassis and the base which needed to be replicated. The interior of the Honey Bucket has not been forgotten. All mod-cons have been included. There's a nice comfy seat with a lid, a dispenser for hand sanitiser and even a loo brush for, erm, debugging the system. The completed cubicle on it's chassis. Plates with door rails were used at the corners to hide the gaps between the plates and to give some continuity to the external shape. This design is actually v1.1. The original version stood on a 4x4 plate with sides 8 studs high, but it quickly became apparent that this was going to be way too large to scale correctly. The answer was to make it 3/4 size on a 3x3 plate with sides 6 studs high. This seems to work a lot better. No prizes for spotting the mistake at this stage of the build. Yup, I put the cubicle on the chassis the wrong way round so that the door was at the opposite side to the step. Doh!! Step now on the correct side and the cage built up. The cage is not there for any safety reasons but to provide a lifting point so that the vehicle can be attached to a crane and lifted. Presumably these conveniences are taken to the worksite access point on the back of a truck along with any other road-rail equipment and then hauled to the worksite itself by some other piece of self-propelled MOW equipment. The reverse side of the cage. Not sure what the orange cone is for, but they all seem to have one. Any ideas...? This has been a really fun build which I enjoyed immensely. I didn't want to build anything too serious, and this suited that brief perfectly.

Next up is a lot of people's favourite. The bobber caboose. The very basic chassis for the Kiso Forest Railway logging caboose. Jumper plates are used on top to give the offset for the cabin which keeps the whole model nice and short. The chassis is built up with the base for the cabin, the chassis sides and steps. Not all the components for the cabin can be fixed in the conventional stud-to-stud manner. These side pieces have to slot in between the central sections and be held in place by the rest of the construction. The two halves have plates with lamp holders and are joined using a 1x2 tile before slotting into place. Quite a pretty face, don't you think? The profile bricks give a hint of wood panelling. I was unsure which colour to use as, like many defunct prototypes, there are few if any colour photos. These cabooses are frequently modelled in various scales by narrow gauge enthusiasts who generally paint them in a shade similar to reddish brown, but I wanted something a little more classy and, having checked availability of parts, opted for dark red. Roof on and handrails added, and the tiny bobber caboose is just about done. This particular build has been an absolute joy and I'm thrilled with the model I have ended up with. There was a minor amount of head-scratching needed during the design process to make sure that everything looked as it should, but it actually turned out to be a very straightforward process in the end which lead to a simple and satisfying build. So that's two down, two left to go.

Construction of the Guinness tipper wagon has started. The first place to start, as with many builds, is the chassis. This needs to be as flat as possible so that the tipper body doesn't sit too high and smooth enough so that there are no obstructions to it tipping. The underside of the chassis is reinforced to deal with the weight of the tipper body being carried on the handrails, which are in turn attached to the chassis sides. With the handrails now attached it's clear to see why the reinforcement is needed. The tipper body coming together well. The ends and sides are quite sturdily built. One half of the support structure for the lid is also shown here. The completed tipper body awaiting lid and small details. I did wonder whether or not to make the lid hinged but I decided against it on the basis that I am unsure whether or not the original wagons had hinged lids. I decided that they probably didn't because there are photos showing wagons running without lids, which made construction of the model a bit easier. The completed tipper body with lid ready for mating to the chassis. Ah. Oops!! I seem to have got my design wrong. The geometry of the mounting isn't right, which is something that I failed to spot when designing the wagon. I think it's time for a speedy redesign. I just hope that the additional parts I shall need won't take too long to arrive. Next up: Well, wait and see.

Not sure how I missed this build, but it's really good. That's a lot of functionality squeezed into a small package. Congratulations and best of luck in the competition.

Things are about to get a bit busy on this thread as the deadline approaches. There was a bit of a delay due to an incomplete order, but I've had the last of my Bricklink orders arrive and I'm ready now to tackle the Great OcTRAINber Polybag Challenge. Four bags - four builds. Which one should I tackle first?

That's a fantastic presentation and a great demonstration of your model's capabilities. Congratulations on squeezing a quart into a pint pot and getting the detailing right too.

LOL!! Go Katy, go!!! Who sir, me sir?? I'm a strictly 90 degrees kinda guy. Everything I build is square. I've a looooong way to go before I become a Jedi Master.

As predicted, that's one helluva Kof II. You've got to be happy with the results of all your hard work. It's clear that you're not prepared to settle for just "good enough" but keep pushing for those alterations to make it right. Congratulations!!

That's some great progress there, Sven. She's looking realistically massive and ungainly. I hear what you're saying about colour variation. I guess it's unavoidable but it is a pain in the neck if you're trying to get a uniform finish. Some colours do seem to be worse for it than others, but I'm surprised that regular blue seems to be made up so many shades.

I don't think you need any more convincing, but I'll also add my vote for dark red with dark green as a close second.

Thanks for the encouragement. The tractor I've designed is a bit of an amalgam of various different examples, none of which are entirely the same. The photo I linked was not the one I was working from primarily and shows a very "clean" design without extras, used presumably primarily for haulage rather than any additional duties.

That's a very clever technique to get a perfectly curved roof with overhang. So simple and yet effective. I think sometimes we fixate so much on getting studs to line up and making a secure physical connection between all parts of a build that we can be blind to these elegant solutions. Kudos to you, sir (cash value $0.00001). Your example has set us free.

Absolutely!! It's amazing to see the fast progress made from announcement to realisation. Well done @Paperinik77pk and @HoMa for bringing such an unusual and unique loco to wider attention. And if that wasn't enough, we also have our resident poet @Toastie riffing on the subject of metal foils. It may not necessarily help, but here's a bit more reading on the subject and it's less conventional uses.

Brilliant detective work!! Well done, that man. I'm glad that it's a real thing and not just something that someone dreamed up. Thanks for all the wonderful feedback. @Feuer Zug I think that probably is about as small as you can realistically go with a caboose. I certainly haven't seen anything smaller online, even on other narrow gauge systems. @zephyr1934 Do you think I've over-greebled the tractor? Looking at the renders it's a bit hard to even see that there's a tractor hiding in amongst it all. Part of that is due to LEGO parts being oversized (e.g. the exhaust), but I do feel as though I've thrown the kitchen sink at it. Maybe I'll rein it in a bit when I come to assemble the model. Part of the issue is that I've yet to find any photos of the rear of any of these Bord na Mona, erm, locos.

Someone has been reading my mind again. I'm going to have to get one of those tinfoil hats, I think. I'd also been aware of this crazy machine for a few months since reading about it online and was idly considering building it, but I hadn't made any start. You've done a fantastic job of capturing it's shape as well as keeping the essence of the 12V aesthetic. Will you be building it for real?

I do. It's a very comprehensive description of the design and build. Congratulations on getting it all finished. Best of luck in the competition.

Congratulations on getting your build finished. She's a handsome thing for sure and you've done an excellent job on capturing the shape and the detail too. Dark red is a very classy colour and suits the style of the loco very well. Best of luck in the competition.