16mm loco IDRIS, by Martin Ranson

How can I get hold of the designer of IDRIS that 16mm loco?

I was looking back at this older back issue and i like the look of the locomotive with wood cleading etc. Make it bigger maybe

Anyone help me out here?

Hayden

Contact Martin via private message through this thread?

http://www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums/postings.asp?th=115482

Or message Neil and ask him for the email address for Martin?

There is a 16mm loco "IDRIS" on the 16mm gauge orgs site:

**LINK**

Is that the one you were thinking of?

Different Idris

A digital subscription would get you access to all the old back issues that covered the build.

Best to use a PM, Martin is an active forum member.

Neil

[This posting has been removed]

As I said above the Idris in question is a different design to the one by Dave Watkins, horizontal boiler for a start.

Edited By JasonB on 10/04/2018 16:56:03

Unfortunate bit of naming, having two 16mm locomotives with the same name, as it will lead to confusion until 16mm dies a natural death centuries from now. (I had forgotten about the ME IDRIS, having recently been going through files and looking at the "16 mm org IDRIS" build and plans)

Kind of like that machining fellow on youtube going by the name "Tubal Cain" - not the world famous machining "Tubal Cain" of ME fame, so confusion abounds.

Oh well... makes life interesting!

Edited By John Alexander Stewart on 10/04/2018 20:18:31

Well Idris is a bit of an obvious name for an engine, after Ivor...

Had to google that one - grew up with Beano, Biggles and Oor Wullie to name but a few - but Ivor the Engine is one that totally missed my childhood education.

One lives and learns - thanks for the hint.

By the way, my recently completed Shay is named "Cedar Grove", the next might be "Opeongo" then "Moose Creek", if I stick with the logging locomotive motif. Makes perfect sense to me, with where I live...

Jason B.

That's the one, but I would like it bigger, in terms of Sweet Pea or the like. Something about that wooden cleading as not many engines have it.

Dear I say it could even go electric or free lance. Have the Sweet Pea loco building book so there a start.

I might have the other issues but just need a .pdf of the loco outline. Will try to contact Martin via here.

Thank you .

Just read this and it cracked me up, having come from a 16mm scale background and knowing of Idris, and wild rose ect to Dave Watkins designs, i also find the naming a bit clumsy shall we say? Since the motor appears similar to that as used in the brick loco. Albeit atop of the frames than inside them.

The Tubal Cain reference was the icing on the cake for hysteria

To steamcoalnz please ... speak of the devil etc ... I am the person guilty of IDRIS ... I just enjoy building all sorts of things ... I usually spend most of my life in the "shed" ... sometimes things come out scale and sometimes they are just built for fun to see if I can get a certain idea to work ... IDRIS was one of the latter ... I was challenged to build a small loco instead of a steam boat ... I am sorry if I upset some of the purists but I just go my own way with things like names ... if you want an electric loco I am just completing one which I call LOKI ... similar size to IDRIS ... the electric motor is geared down by 45 to 1 ... the wheel arrangement is 0 - 4 - 2 ... once again there are no plans drawn in advance but it works ... I have also built a loco with a vertical boiler called MUSHU ... the wheel arrangement is 0 - 4 - 0 ... again no plans in advance ... most of my time is spent in the "shed" ... so looking at the computer is an afterthought ... if there is anything I can help with please let me know.

martin

Thats me Steamcoalnz, importer of the finest Welsh fuels for miniatures...and steamboats down under.

I must be like you as I have a steamboat half hull sitting on my desk as I type, but thats a project for well... some other time.

I am just after a GA drawing of the loco out line, something I can enlarge to 5" gauge at least and create a Super Size IDRIS. Its already named WENDY by the way, after one of the girls at my work.

Can you P.M me please?

Hayden

P.S You don't want a three drum steam boat boiler by any chance?

Martin, there is no offence taken whatsoever on my part. The loco looks quite like a hunslet with that cab, albeit with the higher boiler, it's quite a nice design it's just unfortunate about the coincidence in names, the motor well there's only so many ways to make and mount a twin occilator.

If people from the 16mm fraternity do take offence then they are missing the whole point of why the scale gauge combination was invented in the first place, which was to have fun. Outside in the garden with live steam, models built by their owners with whatever was to hand.

Keep up the good work 😊

Edited By Jon Cameron on 11/04/2018 13:12:08

Martin - no offence meant either, and much better to be in the shed than at the pub (at least most of the time - everything in moderation, my granny used to say).

Just got M.E. 4581 in this mornings' post with your FALCOR on the cover. (I'll google the name later - got a much needed education googling IVOR and IDRIS!)

I think you (and others) have the right idea with the smaller 16mm or gauge 1 locomotives; I used to think 3-1/2 was perfect and 4-3/4, 5, 7-1/4 too large, but my tastes are changing.

It seems to me that in these non-riding gauges, you guys/gals have fun; none of this dealing with passengers, or expenses of land lease, nor the club politics that seem to always come up. No issues moving them about; no complaints about the wrong colour or fictional rolling stock, and the list goes on and on and on.

Got Brian Wilsons' Steam Trains In Your Garden book sitting right under M.E. 4581 waiting for the working day to end, and we hope to have a Gauge 1 kit together shortly, and another one (A Q1) is ordered and should be on the way also.

Edit: when I was a teenager, the riding gauge clubs seemed to have fun with each other, now decades later, my impressions are these clubs focus on passenger counts and ticket money collected and courses on dealing with the public, and worrying about land leases, and about where to allocate (significant) construction costs and... Not much about actually building and running locomotives. That's a generalization, and only my opinion from what I see in the clubs I sometimes visit, of course.

Edited By John Alexander Stewart on 11/04/2018 17:34:06

Edited By John Alexander Stewart on 11/04/2018 17:37:08

TO STEAMCOALNZ ... sorry, but a GA drawing does not exist ... over the years I have tried many times to master the art of technical drawing ... I gave up years ago ... I just started to build things from metal, timber, plastic etc ... I have always been able to work things out from something solid, much better than a piece of paper ... my only drawings are the original copies of the ones existing in M.E. magazine starting at issue 4504 , 20 March 2015 ... unless there is someone living in the N. E. corner of england who is a high speed genius at technical drawing I do not know how to help ... I would really love to help you on this one ... perhaps someone out in the world might have a useful suggestion.

As an aside, a 3 drum marine boiler will not be tiny, I assume ... the largest boiler I have ever built was 9 x 3 inches with one centre flue for the burner ... my largest boat was a paddle steamer about 42 inches in length.

TO JOHN ALEXANDER STEWART please ... a lot of my models have been named by various children and grandchildren ... all my boats also ended up with a cat sat in the corner ... it kept everyone happy and as they are all female I decided it was safer not to argue ... the name Falcor came from a childrens film called NEVER ENDING STORY ... he was the good luck dragon.

TO JOHN CAMERON please ... I have seen some of the Dave Watkins designs ... he is much more skilled at loco building than I will ever be ... I would imagine his workshop has a lot more machinery in it than mine has ever had ... my "milling machine" is a hacksaw and a file ... looking at one of his engine drawings I believe he has machined an inlet and outlet port with only .008 inch between them ... I could not do that with a hand-drill.

nice to hear from you and John above ... we all have a love of miscellaneous bits of machinery ... even if we all go about things in totally different ways.

martin

Martin.

I thought you might have built BIG steamboats, Lake Windemere like ones. All steamboats are good steamboats but ones you can carry in the car are even better

Jon mentioned about the Hunslet look to IDRIS, I agree and I own a nice 5" NG Dinorwic Hunslet too so can confer with those thoughts. It would be nice to bring a bit of simplicity to a steam loco without too many complications. To me the Sweel Pea and those Stafford type engines are just a little industrial for my liking and that's why a bit of brass and a nicely wood clad boiler looks the part, much like in a steamboat as you will appreciate.

I will look at the issues that relate to the series and se if I can draw up something

Hayden

I haven't any access to 3D software yet, but this is my attempts at drawings on a different project using nothing more that a ruler, pen and blank paper. (Its the top of a water pump).

I'll give it a go plus not sure where in north east you are but I'm in Darlington so fairly north east

Jon,

I am just a bit further East than Darlington and to the south a tad, just beyond Australia in a place called New Zealand.

If you take a long boring bar you should come out just up the road from me, maybe 100 miles but thats pretty good. Just remember to turn the coolant on first

Most of my drawings are done on the back of an envelope but they are les common these days, so are the back of cigerette packets. Anything else is too complicated.

Just got a copy of the Don Young's Hunslet drawing so its a start, still looking for IDRIS though.

Hayden

Edited By Steamcoalnz on 12/04/2018 10:46:20