Entry posted by D869
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This is a catch up installment on D604... and quite a long one. I was quite keen to get it into a presentable state so that I could use it at TINGS, so that meant no mucking about on RMWeb for a little while.
In the last installment the basic shape of the bodyshell was completed but the detail was yet to go on. There is a lot less to add to the class 41 than the class 22, but there was still some work to do.
The roof has most of the right things in the right places. Unlike the 22 there is no overlay so the panel joins are etched into the main body shell. The snag with this is that the underside of the roof is etched with lines to make rolling easier. Where the two etches cross we get a hole. This means that the panel joins show a sort of morse code effect. I tried to fix this by filling the underside with solder but it needed a lot of cleaning up and tended to fill the whole panel join in places. After doing two joins I left the others in the hope that the paint might fill up the holes. The other thing that needs to be changed is the boiler top in the centre of the loco. There seems to be a misapprehension about what was on this panel. My old Ian Allen drawings book shows a circular hole with a grille mesh. This is what Allen provides, as does the Etched Pixels detailing pack. All of them are wrong. Photos show that there was indeed a circular hole but that this was almost completely filled by a solid disc with just a narrow gap around the edge. I used some dividers to mark out two circles and then filed out a disc that was a little smaller than the hole with some 'spokes' sticking out to the edge of the hole. This needed careful filing and fitting but was eventually soldered in place. As you can see in the photo it now looks just like a broken etched line but I hope it will look better when fully painted and weathered. The photo also shows the morse code in the panel joins.
There was not too much work to do on the sides. For the boiler filler doors I used the parts from the Etched Pixels pack. The vertical louvres for the upper cooling group intakes were made from Evergreen car siding. This has very fine lines moulded into it, intended for American match board sided vehicles. Even so, the lines were too far apart for my needs, so I cut enough out to do all of the vents and then carefully scribed an extra line down the middle of each 'plank'. The results aren't perfect but I'm reasonably pleased with them.
And so to the ends. I had chosen to model the loco in a form that was a close match for the etch in the kit. I used the oval vents provided by Allen and kept the horizontal handrail holes. One of the vertical handrail holes was drilled out to take a lamp bracket and an extra hole marked for the middle lamp bracket. The brackets themselves were cut and filed from 5 thou N/S strip and soldered in place. The (tail?) lamp on the right hand door had a surround added using 5 amp fuse wire wrapped around a drill and then cut to make a stack of circles.
I changed my mind a few times about the headcode discs but in the end went for having them removable. The discs themselves are from an Etched Pixels etch and have a piece of 0.5mm brass wire soldered perpendicular to the back. The nose is drilled to take these wires, hopefully as a push fit. Three of these holes go in the middle of etched circles. The fourth goes at the bottom of the left hand door (Allen only provides an etched circle on the right hand door). The discs were then stuck into a piece of blu tack and painted. Each closed disc is different, depending on where it sits on the nose, so the result was like a little flower bed, as you can see in the photo.
The buffers on the class 41 show a rather higher degree of design thought than most later locos - they have neat fairings to give a smooth transition between the buffer body and the nose. Naturally there is nothing off the shelf to suit this so I cut some short lengths of brass tube for the buffer bodies and opened up the holes to be a push fit for some oval plastic buffer heads that I bought years ago (I think they were labelled 'Lima' but don't know if that label was accurate). The surrounding area was then built up with Milliput and filed when set to give a smooth transition. One of the buffers lost its Milliput during filing, so I stuck it back on with super glue which seemed to do the trick.
While doing the other nose detail I was getting increasingly uneasy about the oval vents. They just looked too long compared to the real thing but I didn't have any great ideas for how to make better ones. In the end I decided to bite the bullet and have a go at fixing them. I unsoldered them from the nose and then cut them in half with a string knife. I then filed down the cut ends until I thought that the reduced height looked right. Then I soldered them back together... easy to say, not easy to do. After trying a few ways the best way seemed to be to place both pieces on a flat card in the correct alignment and then trap them under a second piece of card to hold them still. Then add plenty of green label flux and apply the iron. This approach had a reasonable success rate without too many burned fingers. The reassembled vents were then cleaned up with a file and scraper and stuck onto the nose with super glue (there was no way I was going to attempt to solder them on).
While out for a meal just before the body went to the paint shop I remembered that I had not done the 'eyebrow' vents. Once back at the workbench these were added using very thin slivers of 5 thou plasticard super glued in place.
Next to the paint shop. The first task was to chuck the body into a bowl of warm water and scrub using an old toothbrush with Flash floor cleaner to de-grease it. This is also a good test to see if any bits fall off. After a rinse the body was given a blow dry with the hair dryer before being mounted (using gloves) on a block of wood and put in its Ferrero Rocher anti-dust cabinet. I noticed a few flakes of Milliput lifting from the roof area when drying the loco so these were carefully removed before going any further. The body was then sprayed with Halfords grey primer before being put aside to dry.
On inspection a few hours later the results were not quite what I had hoped.Many of the places where the Milliput had been sanded to a feather edge had lifted a little leaving the edges of the filler looking quite obvious. Drawing on past experience with hairs in the paint on my sleeping cars, I got some wet and dry paper and used it wet to smooth down the blemishes. This was followed by another blow dry and a second coat of primer. This time the results were much better. The next coat was Humbrol matt white on the ends, followed by Humbrol signal yellow. At this stage the loco looked like it was in the old BR 'dutch' livery. Here's a photo, but you don't really get the full effect.
Next the warning panels were masked (Tamiya tape) and the loco sprayed with Precision BR green. I mixed in some white again, but made sure it was a new tin on this occasion so there were no problems with white flakes in the final finish. I sprayed on quite a warm day so used plenty of thinners. I gave the loco a fairly decent coat, hoping that a smooth finish would allow neater lining. After a few hours to allow the paint to set but not fully harden the masking was removed. I'm always quite disappointed at this stage and wonder whether the end result is going to be at all convincing. Here's a photo.
I scraped the paint off cab window frames before the green had fully hardened. This might or might not be good practice but it was probably motivated more by wanting to see something relieve those huge areas of dark green.
The last paint job (after the green had properly hardened) was to mask around the roof panels and wrap the whole body in paper and then spray the roof grey. Once this was dry came the lining - a 2 day job using the Bob Moore pen. I have to say that the results weren't quite as good as I had hoped given the improved smoothness of the green finish.
The transfers are a mixed bunch. I'm still relying on resurrected Woodheads for the BR totem and the electrification flashes. I'm running out of numbers on this sheet so I ordered some new numbers from Cambridge Custom Transfers. These came with D600 and D603 ready made up, but sadly not D604 so some degree of cutting and fiddling was needed.
The CCT instructions recommend against using decal setting solution but I was not convinced. I did an experiment on a test panel and I thought that the result was better with Micro Set than without, so I used it on the loco.
Regular readers may recall some difficulties with varnishing and Micro Set. I had resolved this problem last time around by a simple time saving expedient - just don't bother with the varnishing. The Woodhead transfers (in combination with liquid decal film) seem pretty tough. The CCT instructions and advice from others were, however, pretty clear - some sort of varnish is required.
After discussing this question on the 2mm VAG I was recommended to try Testors Dullcote. This turned out to be tricky to track down but eventually I managed to buy a tin from a wargaming shop on the Internet. I gave it a try on a test piece and the result was very matt indeed. Although I intend to weather D604, I didn't feel ready to dull the finish to this extent. In the end I decided to go back and try the Tamiya varnish again, but making special effort to keep the coat thin. The photo below shows the result. Oh dear!
Looking at this in reflected light it seems that the milky white deposit has a very matt finish in comparison to the unaffected area, so I think that rather than being a chemical reaction it might be something to do with Micro Set's surface tension affecting properties preventing the varnish from forming a smooth layer.
I wasn't too downhearted this time because I'd managed to fix this problem on the Hawksworth coach. I did the same thing on D604 - using a fine brush and some well thinned Precision green I managed to erase the white deposits where they were most noticeable. I also tidied up the ends of the lining and a couple of slightly ragged edges as well as touching up a couple of paint chips on D6309. By now it was the Thursday night before TINGS and I was starting to be quite pleased with the result.
By Friday lunchtime when I left to load St Ruth I still had no nameplates. I'd been asking Shawplan for these for quite some time but Brian had been away. I rang him when he returned on Wednesday and he promised to put them straight in the post. When I got home on Friday evening they had indeed arrived. I quickly fitted some windscreens cut from 10 thou glazing fixed with Formula 560 Canopy Glue and finally added the nameplates. I've always had kittens when gluing nameplates on, having tried epoxy (too slow and messy) and super glue (too fast and sometimes also messy) in the past. Since the Canopy Glue was to hand, I thought I'd give that a try. I found it ideal - applying a couple of small dots with a compass point and then putting the nameplate into place I could just see the glue squeeze to the edges. It also gave me enough time to make adjustments and after a short rest was sufficiently well set to allow me to do the other side without too many worries. The only real problem that I had was very odd indeed - for some reason when I did the second one everything had become statically charged and the nameplate is so small and light that when I put it on the loco side it stood right up on its edge and jumped away from the place where I wanted it. No amount of touching radiator pipes or other earthed conductors seemed to help but fortunately the Canopy Glue was stronger than the static electricity.
Here's a photo of D604 ready to go to TINGS where it successfully started to earn its keep.
Cossack is still far from finished. Most notably the chassis detail owes far more to a class 47 than a class 41 so this will be the next job on the agenda.
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