Entry posted by D869
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I thought it was about time we had another Hydraulic on this blog, so here goes...
St Ruth is set in 1965 so by rights it should be overwhelmingly populated with Warships. No problem there, we have Cockade, Hermes, Druid and Zest of various ages, plus Cossack too of course. The snag is that in 1965 they should really be green. Maroon is a bit of a stretch - the first maroon repaints appearing in September 65 so we really need some green ones.
The first Farish Warship I acquired was a blue D822 'Hercules' shortly after they were originally released. For some reason it has never been favoured with a finescale set of wheels and has languished in its original box apart from the odd bit of test running. Hermes and Druid were both acquired secondhand, rewheeled and set to work with no other changes in very short order to address motive power shortages at our first outing.
Obviously livery is one reason why it has been on the shelf for so long but another is my dissatisfaction with the Farish model. The moulding quality is superb but for me it just doesn't say 'Warship'. I think that the biggest problem is the way that the windscreens have been done - and this is most obvious on locos with full yellow ends but there are other issues too so I've decided to bite the bullet and try to make it better.
At the same time, I will backdate it to green livery and it will get a new name. The name I've chosen is D820 'Grenville' which was named after an Elizabethan captain belonging to a famous Devon and Cornwall family... partly because this seems like a very suitable name and partly because I don't want to sign myself up (yet) for a bunch of other Warship detail changes by stepping outside the range D813-D832. Anyway a nice set of red nameplates was purchased from Mr Shawplan at Nottingham a few weeks ago.
Anyway, enough of all the waffle. Let's talk about progress. So far I've just been working on improving one end so that I can figure out what works and then copy the ideas on the other end.
The offensive glazing unit has been removed and I'm trying out some of the replacement windscreen surrounds that I had etched last year. These were an absolute pig to draw but thankfully they fit very well. In my (subjective) opinion they are a huge improvement on the Farish effort. I've figured out some further improvements to the etch but they will need to wait until a future build.
I've also sliced off the handrails and replaced them with 33SWG nickel silver wire. They aren't brilliant but slightly less bad than the moulded ones. This seems to be the thinnest handrail wire available these days - whatever happened to 36SWG steel? I started by using the 'shadows' of the Farish handrails to position the holes but wasn't very happy with the ones on top of the nose so I've moved the inner holes upwards and inwards which seems to give a nicer curve that follows the shape of the nose better.
The central headboard bracket has been sliced off and replaced by one fabricated from 0.5mm brass wire and 5 thou N/S strip in the same way that I did for D869 several years ago. The trick here is to file away half of the end of the wire to make a 'D' shape. Cut this off and make another piece the same way and then solder the two back together so that they overlap and trap the N/S strip in between. Then just cut off the bits that you don't want and bend to the shape of the bracket. It's a lot easier than it sounds.
There's still more to do. I'm intending to replace the lower lamp brackets with something more three dimensional and also deepen the undercut below the headcode box. The headcode box is not a great representation of the real thing either. Ideally I'd like to attack that too but I really can't see how to do it without throwing the baby out with the bathwater so I think that I'll live with it.
Other plans include smoothing off the rivets at the edges of the roof panels (go and look at some photos - the real thing has countersunk or pop rivets so they are invisible in most photos). I'll probably open out the fuel fillers to make them look less flat. The cab interior needs some work - the top of the control panel should be very obvious through the windcreens but Farish's version is too low.
The final puzzle (for now) is the two access hatches on the cab sides. For some reason these have been moulded by using a really obtrusive groove. The real things were flush fitting panels so Farish's interpretation is as subtle as a brick. I might have a go at filling the grooves and/or representing the panels with some 5 thou plastic but so far I haven't figured out how (or if) the Farish body is painted or whether it will take Mek Pak. Anybody know?
Finally, a note of thanks to Brian Hanson of Shawplan for sending me a CD with more close-up photos of D821 Greyhound than you can shake a stick at.
That's all for now... apart from some photos of progress so far, alongside Druid which is out of the box Farish.
First trial fitting - not too bad
Another one of the test etches - too small
Surgery underway on handrails and headboard bracket
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