Leopold - a challenge

stockers

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24 Oct 2009
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CoggesRailway said:
Please keep this thread going as I intend a railway gun to be my next project. I have an rc bb gun mech which will mean I can fire it too. What is the availability /price like on the ideal lgb wagon Alan stockers showed?
Well over £100 unless your lucky. Mine came from ebay - Canada. £86 plus about £20 for SURFACE delivery, took 8 weeks.
 

ebay mike

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CoggesRailway said:
Please keep this thread going as I intend a railway gun to be my next project. I have an rc bb gun mech which will mean I can fire it too.

If you search on youtube for 'test Leopold spur 1 gartenbahn' there's a very short clip of a model actually firing. From the sound of it I would guess its air powered. The wagon appears to be made of brass and has a motorised gun.
 

Zerogee

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stockers said:
Well over £100 unless your lucky. Mine came from ebay - Canada. £86 plus about £20 for SURFACE delivery, took 8 weeks.

That was a very good price, Alan, even with the shipping - I've seen these easily fetch £150+. If you were VERY, VERY lucky I suppose you might find a rough one without its load, or otherwise damaged....?

An expensive item to cannibalise for the bogies, as I said much earlier - BUT it would save an awful lot of work, so it's swings and roundabouts..... ;)

Jon.
 

ebay mike

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A little progress. Sides cut out of 1.5mm plasticard. These will be braced with 10mm square balsa to keep the weight down. Playmobil coach chassis and barrel roughly positioned to give an impression of overall size. Steel rule is 600mm and the figure 1/24 Chinese import. The forward chassis has had the truss removed in readiness for installation of an underframe to carry the 5 axles and the rear buffer pockets trimmed.
 

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ebay mike

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Just been having a quick furkle in the garage for some electrical bits for the son and came across half a dozen or so of these, plus two Revel Unimog fire fighter kits complete with crews. Looks like they`ll be getting their call-up papers. A little remodelling of the helmet and a coat of matt grey and bob`s your uncle they`re in the Wehrmacht. Should be able to muster a crew of nearly 20, which although significantly under the real life allocation will do for my purposes.
 

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a98087

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Just to add a tiny bit of vaguely relevant info , the lgb version does come in at the +£100 mark. I should know I bought one 2 weeks ago :)

The Bogies and end handrails and standard lgb mouldings as widely used throughout their range, and are available as spares from dealers

Also if you need any photos of the lgb model just ask and I can provide you some.

And good luck with the build, please keep the updates coming

Dan
 

ebay mike

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Thanks for that Dan. I'm renowned for my frugality (tight, the wife calls it) and hope to build most of this from stuff knocking about in the garage and the spare bits box. I've parted with almost £15 of hard earned cash so far on a few sheets of plasticard plus a couple of lengths of balsa and hadn't planned on sticking my hand in my pocket again if I could help it. At worst I had hoped a score would cover it.
 

ebay mike

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Wet weather stopping me from getting on with outside jobs so jumped at the chance to do a bit more. Started work on the front half of the gun carriage.
 

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ebay mike

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Rained on and off for much of the day so more progress made than anticipated. Units posed together for overall effect.
 

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cbeckett

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That is going great!

Every time I look at the forum, I get big ideas - "I'd like to do similar" - just not enough time, or sometimes bucks in the wallet... :'(

Keep the pics coming please :happy:
 

Trainman58

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JRinTawa said:
There must have been a massive recoil when fired. Were they anchored to the track or some other "deadmen" type arrangement?
There is really interesting book written by Charles S Small about the Californian Railway guns that describes the recoil factors involved in firing these guns.

Trainman58
 

ebay mike

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After a week on lates finally got a day off yesterday. Some progress made with the bogie frames. Bearings installed and chassis now ready for the wheel assemblies before final detailing. Have decided to use pivoting bogies each end with a floating centre (fifth) axle. The bogie centres will be offset - so technically they won`t be centres! The whole lot will be masked by dummy side frames giving the impression all axles are fixed. Hopefully all will become clear once  in place and pics posted.
 

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ebay mike

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Have only had short periods where I could get on with this project so have been manufacturing components for the dummy side frames. Initially tried to carve the leaf springs from a single piece of plasticard but it wasn`t very successful. Had to bite the bullet and build up leaf by leaf from strip. One pivoting bogie is partially built but I want to make sure it actually works before posting a photo.
 

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CoggesRailway

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Looking good! Keep it coming
 

ebay mike

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Another day off allowed continued progress. After much head scratching, hacksawing and juggling of components a workable solution emerged. This has been tested successfully on R2 curves and worked faultlessly. The cradle for axle 3 is fixed but allows lateral displacement of up to 8mm. The bogies have the pivot points under axles 2 and 4. Vertical movement is available for axles 1 3 and 5, so in effect the wagon is balanced on the wheels of axles 2 and 4. This also means that they also bear the weight but as the gun carriage structure is much lighter than it appears this will not be an issue. When inverted everything is very much Heath Robinson but once on the track most of the blatant inaccuracies will be masked by the dummy side frames and somewhat oversize axleboxes. Will add photos later - tablet is playing up and must leave for work.
 

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stockers

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That's a pretty clever arrangement. Neat bit of work. :D
 

Rhinochugger

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S'nice :happy: :happy: :happy:
 

CoggesRailway

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this is awesome!!
 

ebay mike

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On 12 `til 12 today so time for a dry fit as weather nice for a change. Once together I was a little disappointed as my interpretation and selective compression have meant it`s lost some of the lean and long look of the original. Still, it`s a relative monster compared to my other rolling stock. Length over buffers is 820mm and then there will be the overhang from the barrel. I also intend to build supporting vehicles to make up a complete train.
 

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ebay mike

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Got a few days off and SWMBO has gone shopping so making hay while the sun shines (and it is too, for a change). Aluminium cradle constructed to absorb shock and stress transmitted through the bogie wagons. Inserted inside the shell and started to apply outer casing. Centre well for gun barrel has had inner walls added using short lengths of balsa as spacers. Looking forward to being able to slap some grey paint on this.
 

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