[Shaunthesheep]

Hi. I'm in the course of building a live-steam garden railway in 32mm gauge. I have a Roundhouse Lady Anne and a small number of goods wagons and am looking for a few coaches to form a passenger train. Sadly my kit-building skills are someway South of pathetic so I was thinking of maybe re-wheeling some existing coaches, possibly the LGB four-window coaches or Emily's coaches from Bachmann's Thomas large-scale range, to suit. Has anybody any advice on whether this is possible and, if so, how to go about it. Thanks.

 

[Dinwiddy]

Hi

Two possibilities, I remove the existing wheelsets carefully - many wheelsets are like the early Triang OO stuff as the wheels slide off the axle. They are spaced at the required gauge by the plastic sleeve each of them has attached. Very carefully cut 6.5 mm off the end of each sleeve and slide the wheels back on the axle, checking that they are now spaced correctly and then slide each sleeve onto the outside of the wheel to keep the wheels centralised on the axle.
I think Brandbright used to make all metal wheelsets for 32mm with long axles to fit into 45mm items. I have used both methods with no problems.
Regards
David Y

 

[Shaunthesheep]

Hi David,thanks for that. Brandbright are sadly winding down their business as the proprietors are going to retire and the only 32mm wheels they have left are 16mm diameter ones, which are far too small. As for the other method you mention, I now have a couple of LGB coaches and have checked them out regarding adjusting the wheel spacing. The wheels are indeed the old "Triang" type you mention but before cutting any material off the stub axles I tested a couple of the wheels for running qualities on my Peco SM32 track and found that the very deep flanges fouled the chairs on the rails, so back to the drawing board!. I measured the depth of the flanges using my digital micrometer-an extremely useful tool, if you haven't got one I would thoroughly recommend getting one-and they came out at 3.5mm, whereas the 16mm Assocation standard is for a flange depth of 2mm, hence the chair-fouling. Anyway, I measured the exle diameter and it came out at 3mm, and luckily Binnie Engineering do some wheels that are are a push fit on 3mm axles so I have ordered some. The LGB wheels are approx 31mm diameter whereas the largest Binnie ones are 29mm, but I can work with that so, fingers crossed, everything should work out OK.

 

[jcuknz]

Probably have the answers now BUT

Have you tried Roundhouse wheels they use for tenders to a couple of their locos.
33mm and 42mm insulated or not ...

http://www.roundhouse-eng.com/pdf/prices.pdf

 

[Mr N. Ladd]

Slightly off subject but may be helpful, when I was looking on youtube to see if anybody had cast wheels in resin (Before I gave it a go) someone had in a larger scale. The person had purchased little tyres that had been available seperately and resin cast his design inside the metal tyres. Now I do not know what scale it was but the finished wheel size was around 20 to 25mm diameter. I am not sure where the person bought the metal tyres from. The results however, were quite impressive.
I will say that casting ones own resin wheels does work but don't expect them to be as good as your precision metal wheels. Turning resin wheels in a lathe also has its difficulties. I have found it better to cast wheels in a single piece mould and sand the backs later rather then use a lathe. (Though I have a tiny Unimat lathe I have very little experience other then two weeks on a gigantic old lathe turning discs to make ramtrees (For the steel industry) and turning an item in a computerized lathe (That needed hardly any lathe skills but rather needed to work out programming. The program was tested on the computer first so as to make sure the program would work on the expensive lathe).