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A Tale of Two Westerns

D869

Entry posted by D869

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blog-0367952001332270620.jpgI noticed during the first of our St Ruth test days before Nottingham that we were having to do rather a lot more loco swapping and sharing between trains than I was comfortable with. This prompted me into a re-evaluation of my gloat box to see if I could scrape together some more motive power... pronto. The first thing to make it out was a Farish warship - Hermes. This was a really minimalist conversion - wheels turned down by the Association's wheel turning service (the warship has a smaller gear than most locos, so there are no drop-in wheels available) plus some DG couplings and away it went in time for our second test session, but that's not what this post is about.

 

The second 'new' loco involved rather more work - I had been taking a look at a Poole Western (Courier) that had been languishing since new. I had the wheels turned down for this years ago but had done nothing else to it. On putting it on the track I found that it was not running properly at all and the usual remedies weren't working, so my attention moved to another gloat box resident - a China made BachFar Western (Fusilier) that I picked up in a moment of rashness on eBay a couple of years ago. This had had literally nothing done to it but on transplanting Courier's wheels I found that it ran pretty happily so there was my starting point.

 

I could have just turned out Fusilier as a minimalist conversion, after all the BachFar product is a significant improvement in terms of the paint job over the early Poole offering, but somehow I just couldn't bring myself to accept the moulding lines, the cab windows sticking out past the roof and most of all the split front skirts to accommodate 'N' gauge curves.

 

Back in the dim and distant past I converted another Farish (Poole) Western to 2mm with some upgrades for the worst aspects of the Poole product. This is D1051 which you can see in the photos, chosen based on the nice double page portrait of 1051 at Laira in the Bradford Barton 'Westerns' book. I decided to upgrade Fusilier along the same lines, but using a second hand (green - yuck!) body as the basis so that I could keep Fusilier's body in reserve just in case I didn't finish in time.

 

To cut a long story short, the new loco was ready to roll on Thursday evening in time for the setup day at Nottingham. By then it had transfers but no actual identity because I needed to pick up name and number plates from Shawplan when I got to the show. After getting home that evening I still had to fit the engine room glazing and said name and number plates in time for Saturday morning.

 

The Farish interpretation of the class 52 is noticeably too long, but if that was going to be fixed... well... I wouldn't start from here. The changes involved cleaning up the moulding lines, replacing the glazing (including the engine room glazing that isn't glazing at all), lowering the body, correcting the middle skirts and cutting proper apertures for the various fillers plus handrails, lamp brackets, headcodes etc. Probably the biggest change is to the front skirts - new ones were fabricated from Plastikard with the 'T' shaped recess for the buffer beam and couplings that is such a feature of the front end... and that is the one thing that makes this upgrade a bit tricky...

 

The problem with fitting new skirts is that the ends of the bogie want to be in the same place. Shortening this end of the bogie is not a good option because the keeper retaining clips are right at the end. For 1051 I solved the problem by turning both bogies around. The other end of the bogie is shorter so this gives enough clearance behind the skirt. The motor magnet was also reversed to make the loco run in the expected direction. This was not an option with the Bachfar mechanism because the gear tower is offset towards the end of the loco. I noticed that the bogie pivot on the Bachfar chassis is moveable - there are several notches in the chassis block that give a choice of positions for the pivot. Turning the pivot around gives more options. The main snag is that if you move the pivot then the plastic driveshaft is too long so I made a new driveshaft from brass tube and brass rod and found to my surprise that the chassis still ran just as well with this installed. My modified chassis has bogie centres 3mm shorter than the original. This is spot on for the Western but there are plenty more dimensional issues, so it's a minor victory. It does mean that the front skirts are correctly proportioned from the side view, which is something that is not quite right on 1051.

 

The paint job involved spraying the fronts white and then yellow, followed by masking the warning panels and an overall coat of maroon. I used Precision maroon but added some Humbrol 153 red to lighten it a bit because I think that the Precision colour looks a bit too dark when compared with most photos. Transfers are resurrected Woodheads again.

 

The loco ran well at Nottingham... considering that it consists of bits of 4 different locos bodged together in a hurry. The wheels are a very mixed bunch because I'd already stolen four of Courier's axles for my class 25 and didn't want to take the 25 apart again just before a show. Some of them have also had split gears replaced and are a little bit wonky as a result and only two of them have the faces profiled as they should be. I might treat it to some new drop-in wheels as a reward, but then again I might just get its original wheels turned down and save the extra pennies for Mr Dapol. There are still some jobs left to do - like a cab interior to hide the rather prominent worm gears, the fillers that didn't get done in time and some brake rigging on the bogies, plus some fiddly painting to represent the window pillars. I'll also weather it, but not too much because I intend to represent the loco in a pretty clean condition.

 

Oh, the identity... I wanted a maroon loco with small warning panels to fit in with the mid 60s nominal date for St Ruth but I also wanted one that stayed in this scheme for a long time. My first choices were Western Lancer or Trooper and I emailed Shawplan to ask them if I could pick these plates up form them on the Friday evening. To their credit, they did indeed sort out the plates that I asked for... and then left them back at their base. We also both managed to leave behind my email with the list of choices but I remembered that third choice was Western Talisman which was still maroon in July 1969 and finally came to a nasty end in the Ealing accident in 1973. Shawplan had the Talisman plates on their stand, so the decision was made. I'm not sure if the maroon Talisman and the blue Ambassador could really have stood next to each other, but there is only a year between two dated photos that I have of them in those liveries, so maybe.

 

No doubt my efforts will be eclipsed soon my Mr Dapol, but his new release will be too late to have helped our motive power situation at Nottingham. I'm not sure if it's fate but I seem to have developed a nasty habit of building models that are the subject of releases by the main manufacturers - the sleeping cars and the Western were both done knowingly, but I also have an incomplete Mark 2 FK and you can probably just see a maroon CCT in one of the photos - both recently announced by Farish.

 

Some more pictures of Talisman and Ambassador lined up side by side on South Yard. I must dust that platform though.

 

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bcnPete
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An enjoyable read Andy.

 

I must say I am mighty impressed at the work you put in, despite the much talked about Dapol offering being on the horizon. For all the Farish's faults those mods do improve it and I am sure a Western sits very at home on St Ruth...they look good on South Yard too.

 

Do you think if you do a similiar number on your class 25 next, Bachmann might bump that one up the queue for re-release? :yes:

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D869

...they look good on South Yard too.

Kinda big for such a backwater, but I did deliberately plan the release crossover to just clear the Farish Western's wheels if the loco is hard up against the buffer stops. The Class 46 has no chance though.

 

Do you think if you do a similiar number on your class 25 next, Bachmann might bump that one up the queue for re-release? :yes:

Oh, I did the repaint and flush glazing job on the 25 yonks ago and it hasn't had that effect yet.

 

I still need to finish the cab side window glazing on that one though so maybe...

 

I must admit that for all its remaining faults, I get more pleasure from looking at Western Talisman than I do from looking at Hermes, which rather makes me wonder whether we may be losing something with all of these nice new releases.

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D869

Do you think if you do a similiar number on your class 25 next, Bachmann might bump that one up the queue for re-release? :yes:

 

Thinks... the old 25 actually sounds like a class 25 without the need for any fancy sound decoders. I bet that a new release won't.

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bcnPete
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Thinks... the old 25 actually sounds like a class 25 without the need for any fancy sound decoders. I bet that a new release won't.

 

Funny that...my old 25 sounds like a bag of nails too...the newer one sounds far too silky smooth...

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Kelly

Enjoyed St. Ruth at Nottingham. Lovely looking layout, but sadly with it being 2mm and curving away like it does, the barriers felt too far away to do it justice.

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D869

Enjoyed St. Ruth at Nottingham. Lovely looking layout, but sadly with it being 2mm and curving away like it does, the barriers felt too far away to do it justice.

 

Ah - I was thinking that some people probably didn't like the barrier distance (others did). This is certainly something that we need to think about, but it's a bit tricky because the station end of the layout is a foot closer to the barriers than the two middle boards. The front edge of the fiddle yard also sticks out, so putting the whole layout on a slant is probably not the answer. We need a balance between not being too far away to see but still being able to see the sweeping curve of the sea wall and the tracks behind it.

 

One possibility might be to move the barriers closer and put some perspex onto the front of the station board to avoid the finger poking, but perspex is not ideal in itself.

 

Anyway, glad you enjoyed the layout - albeit at a distance.

 

Regards, Andy

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bcnPete
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Interesting point that on the barrier...which is why I raised it in my first post.

 

Having had the luxury of seeing the layout at the 2mmFS Golden Jubilee exhibition (without a barrier I recall), one of the things that Bryn and I discussed at the time was the way the curve of the layout 'pulled you in' closer to the atmosphere and made you feel part of it.....I am guessing the barrier sort of kills that somewhat but I can equally understand the need to avoid prodding fingers.

 

Am with you on the perspex not being ideal though...as you say, perhaps a compromise may offer a better solution...but what that is, who knows...how about a big stick waved at prodding fingers... :laugh:

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Bryn

How about a curved custom barrier? To follow the outline of the layout. As Pete mentioned, it's great to stand in the centre and swing your head left to right to get a great panoramic view. I know it's a pain carrying extra stuff to a show, but it'll be useful for those shows that don't provide barriers.

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D869

Thanks for the idea but have you ever seen this done? I can't really picture something that would be portable enough to transport and strong enough to withstand folks leaning on it

 

The only thing I can recall having seen was some springy poles mounted on the front edge of a baseboard with some cord strung across their ends, but that was pretty flimsy and didn't look good at all.

 

Regards, Andy

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