First attempt at renumbering in N gauge

[millerhillboy]

Thank you for your thoughts and kind words. As to North Star, the name plates were not cut from the etches in that point, but rather at the ends, which I did file before use; I think that beneath the "T" must be a speck of dust or similar.

 

Good stuff, yeah could easily be a bit dust or something. Good stuff then, that's a great job, nicely and cleanly done and straight as you like.

[millerhillboy]

In relation to the NSE liveried class 47, I have managed to clean it up somewhat at the front end:

 

20180720_111542.jpg

 

The reason, if I recall correctly, that the masking tape became ragged around the edges is that I had applied it before I had used the glass fibre brush to try to abrade away the black paint, and that brush had caused this damage to the edges of the masking tape.

 

You've tidied that up pretty well I have to say. Right I see how it got that ragged way. I guess you wanted the tape to protect the rest of front whilst you used the fible brush. I have to say I wouldn't have proceeded to the spray stage without redoing the masking I'm afraid. You would have got a less stressful finish by redoing the tape.

 

Saying that you may well have still ended up with a hard edge, albeit a lot tidier than what you ended up with. The edge of the masking tape would have left some sort of line.

 

What I do carefully is dip a cotton bud into thinners and very very gently run the cotton bud across the line and it eventually softens and removes the hard edge. Its a very precise job and obviously if you are too harsh you'll remove the paint you've just sprayed but if you are very careful you can 'soften' the line and make it disappear.

Edited July 20, 2018 by millerhillboy

[millerhillboy]

You've tidied that up pretty well I have to say. Right I see how it got that ragged way. I guess you wanted the tape to protect the rest of front whilst you used the fible brush. I have to say I wouldn't have proceeded to the spray stage without redoing the masking I'm afraid. You would have got a less stressful finish by redoing the tape.

 

Saying that you may well have still ended up with a hard edge, albeit a lot tidier than what you ended up with. The edge of the masking tape would have left some sort of line.

 

What I do carefully is dip a cotton bud into thinners and very very gently run the cotton bud across the line and it eventually softens and removes the hard edge. Its a very precise job and obviously if you are too harsh you'll remove the paint you've just sprayed but if you are very careful you can 'soften' the line and make it disappear.

Other than that its good match on the colour.

[Steadfast]

The yellow looks to have cleaned up nicely after the little tidy up. The only way to prevent overspray on the inside of the glazing is either to remove it before painting or to mask the inner face. Overspray gets everywhere! When doing a partial respray or some weathering, I always mask up the inside faces of the model

 

Jo

[jamespetts]

I have now applied the decals and reassembled the body:

 

 

 

I was a little concerned about whether the lights would continue to work in view of the damage to the transparent plastic light conductors when disassembling it, but they do seem to work for the most part, albeit there is a little light bleed that I do not believe is present in an unmodified locomotive:

 

 

 

 

I have yet to apply the varnish as I wanted to check the model on the track and see that everything is in order first. I think that I may take it to the Model Railway Club for further testing and review before varnishing. I also need to touch up the paint on the buffer beams as some yellow still shows through.

 

The lighting in these photographs is not ideal and conceals some of the imperfections in this work, but I think that it looks acceptable from normal viewing distances at least.

 

I should be grateful for any comments at this stage. This has been a particularly challenging renaming project, but at least an educative one.

[jamespetts]

Here are some clearer pictures taken in daylight:

[jamespetts]

I have recently taken delivery of some lovely custom transfers from Railtec for which I had been waiting since July, which are intended to go with Class 121 DMUs. I have had the desk replaced in my study with a lovely antique desk (my old desk will go in the model shed when the fitting out has finished), and I am reluctant to use Brasso on the antique desk, so I am limited in what I can do in terms of renumbering at present. However, adding these custom transfers does not require removing numbering already on the body, so I can make a start.

 

The transfers consist of destination blinds and "C1"/data panels, the latter of which were applied to the guard's end of the class 121 (I am not sure why Dapol omitted these from the base model).

 

The destination blinds are especially tricky, as they have to be applied from the inside so that it gives the appearance that one is looking at the destination through glass.

 

Here is the finished result:

 

Dapol class 121 with custom destination board transfers by James Petts, on Flickr

 

Dapol class 121 with custom destination board transfers by James Petts, on Flickr

 

and here is the prototype for this particular unit (albeit in 1988, rather than 1989, so I am supposing that NSE branding has been added to the side and NSE style destination blinds have replaced the original destination blinds shown in this picture by 1989):

 

Class 121 124 55024 Slough by Tony Walmsley, on Flickr.

 

I will not be moving the overhead lines warning flashes to their correct position at the top of the windscreens, since the windscreen wipers are in the way, and it is a bit much to get special custom reverse transfers just for these.

[jamespetts]

I have now completed work on the first of two NSE class 121s, adding the destination blinds and also no smoking stickers which for some reason were absent on the NSE version even though present on the blue/grey version of the base model.

I have also replaced the numbering as, although I wished to retain the unit as 55028/L128, which was the factory printed number, it is apparent that the factory printed number was far too large and coarse compared to the numbering on the real unit. Further, I had to move the Network SouthEast logo, as it was in an unusual position on this unit, part way down the body side rather than under the guard's compartment window, and was also slightly larger than that on the base model.

Here are some photographs of the unit as modified:

Dapol class 121 with custom destination and other decals added by James Petts, on Flickr

Dapol class 121 as modified by James Petts, on Flickr

And here is a photograph of the real thing at Reading in 1990:

 

It is just a shame that the Dapol class 121 in NSE livery comes with the marker light, which was not fitted for most of these units' lives in that livery. However, I think that removing that is a step too far at this stage.
 

Edited November 8, 2018 by jamespetts

[jamespetts]

Here are some pictures of the 121s on the MRC test tracks yesterday evening:

 

Dapol class 121 by James Petts, on Flickr

 

Dapol class 121 by James Petts, on Flickr

 

Dapol class 121 by James Petts, on Flickr

 

Dapol class 121 by James Petts, on Flickr