Tales from the Treatment Room

[Mike Boucher]

This weeks installment has the lettering completed on the cattle van, and a good amount of progress on the fruit van...

First, a picture of finishing up the lettering on the MR cattle van:

 

 

I've tried in the past to apply transfers onto other transfers, to try to get the numbering on the number plate attached to the solebar, with no success.  I've considered finding some waterslide decals of the appropriate height, but I'm not sure that'll work either.  Might just have to leave the number plate blank like I did on the other van.

The roof is not glued on yet, its just sitting there by gravity.  If you look closely, you'll notice that I've also glued in the internal dividing wall.  Can't do much more on this wagon until I get a few O scale cows (I've found a source, just have to order) and get some "hay" to put on the inside.  After that I can paint and attach the roof, add weight, and finish up with some weathering. Might be a few weeks before I get the cows...

The GWR fruit van is much closer to completion now:

 

 

When I started the day, I noticed the instructions said to install the roof first and attach the vents so they're up against the roof. I tried putting the roof on, and found that I glued on the 2 vents too high, they caused quite a gap between the roof and the ends.  So, I carefully cut off those two vents, held the roof in place, and glued on all the vents.  I then continued on and assembled the underside.

 

 

Did a few things slightly differently than the instructions say.  First, I use brass wire for the brake rod, I find that the plastic rod that comes with Parkside and Slaters kits is almost never straight, and brass is much less prone to damage from handling.  So I drill holes through all the brake parts, including the brake levers, and use the rod.  The other thing I was I diverged from the order of assembly in the instructions.  The instructions say to assemble all the brakes except the vacuum cylinder, then add the buffers, couplings, vacuum pipe, lamp irons, etc, before completing the brake gear.  I decided to glue on the vacuum cylinder and get the brakes finished.

Before my next session (on Thursday instead of Monday, as Monday is a US holiday), I'll blacken the screw couplings which come with the kit, and also fold, solder and blacken the brass steps, and glue in some weight.  Should be able to finish assembly next week and move on to start assembly of the next kit in the pile.  Until then, thanks for reading!

[3 link]

Hi Mike,

 

I'm enjoying the updates on the wagon builds they make good reading, I also built one of their fruit vans last year and also had to ( modify ) the vents for a tight fit.

 

Even with all the R-T-R wagons that are now coming on to the market, I still prefer to build the kits as they are so enjoyable to build. I must have around 8-10 wagons awaitting the paintshop now, but with the warning of the first cold weather on it's way the wagons will have to wait until spring.

 

Anyway keep up the good work, look forward to the next installment .

 

ATB,

 

Martyn.

[nzgresleyfan]

 

I've tried in the past to apply transfers onto other transfers, to try to get the numbering on the number plate attached to the solebar, with no success.  I've considered finding some waterslide decals of the appropriate height, but I'm not sure that'll work either.  Might just have to leave the number plate blank like I did on the other van.

Would varnishing over the numberplate before applying the numbers work?

 

Regards,

 

Rob.

[jamie92208]

Hi Mike,  Glad to see progress from the treatment room.  My friend Tony has now had his operation and hopefully his foot has been saved.   The problem yesterday was that he had run out of bits of brass fret to bend and form and isn't allowed a soldering iron so was getting bored.  After a frantic text from his daughter I was able to help by identifying the next set of pieces that need bending into shape.   So last night when i went to see him he we spent some time sorting out how the handrail stanchions are to be produced.  Hopefully he will be home soon and able to get stuck into putting all theese pieces onto the bridge girders.

 

Hope your treatment continues well Mike and keep those Midland wagons coming.   Just one tip,  I use a whole set of greys for painting mine on a random basis.  The story goes that the Midland bought a job lot of battleship grey paint after WW1 and the shade of grey depended on how much the paint shop foreman put in the mix each morning.

 

Jamie

[Mike Boucher]

Been a few weeks since I posted.  On the one day I went 2 weeks ago, got nothing done because I forgot the bag of kits as I went out the door running late in the morning.  Did catch up on watching a bunch of you tube videos, like a 1 hour one of British Industrial RRs posted elsewhere on RMWeb, but that was about it.

 

This week was the first 3 days of my 3rd cycle.  So Monday was a long day, and Tuesday and Wednesday were short.  On Tuesday, my two kids (9 and 4) and ex-wife came in for the treatment, to help acclimate the kids to the hospital, and so they see that each treatment isn't that scary.  So I didn't do any kit buidling on that day either.

 

But, between Monday and Wednesday, I just about finished assembly of the GWR fruit van, and did finish a Parkside GWR Diag 033 open goods wagon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The only thing left to do on the fruit van is to fold, solder, blacken, and attach the etched step which goes below the door, then add weight, paint, letter, and glue on the roof.  Most of that I won't be able to do at Dana Faber.

 

The open goods wagon just needs weight, paint and lettering.

 

At home over the past two weeks, I have done more work on finishing up the Parkside P.O. wagons.  I've added weight to the underside, getting them to just about 6 oz. 

 

 

I've also made the coal loads for the P.O. wagons.  All they need now is weathering, which I'll do in a batch once I finish all the 6 kits in the queue.

 

 

I also weighted the Slaters cattle van.  Still haven't gotten the cattle yet.  There's a few shows coming up between now and Christmas, so I'll probably look at those shows before I resort to mail order, where the shipping will cost almost as much as the cows themselves…

 

Next week, I'll start working on the Parkside GWR Container Wagon, and should be able to glue on the afore mentioned steps on the fruit van.  After that, I have to decide which of two projects to work on next.  Neither is British prototype, but might be interesting to some.

 

One thing I found interesting about this week is a LOT of people noticed I was working on these models and asked about them.  Not just nurses and other hospital workers, but other patients.  The treatment room is arranged where there are 6 chairs with curtains between them, but with how nice of a day Monday was, most people were leaving the curtains pulled back a little bit so they could see outside (I had a window seat) and that allowed them to see the table in front of me.  I was there for 6 hours or so, but the other chairs were mostly people getting shorter treatments, 1-2 hours, so there was a constant rotation of other patients.  Over the course of the day, I probably talked to 6 or 7 other patients about my projects, and got a lot of positive comments.

[Mike Boucher]

One thing I meant to ask in my previous post...

The GWR fruit van instructions say to put on the 3 link couplings, and the photo on the box shows 3 link.  That didn't make sense to me, as the van is vacuum fitted, and I thought they would be instanters at least, and probably screw couplings.  There were a set of screw couplings in the box (which I'll admit I might have put there myself when I got the kit and forgot), so I put those on.

 

Would there have been 3 link couplings on this vacuum fitted van?  Or instead of the screw couplings should I use instanters like on the D033 open goods?

And a word of warning.  I blackened the brass bits of those couplings, rinsed them off well in water, then let them dry overnight.  In the morning, I put them back into a small container (like an Altoids box) so all the pieces would be together.  A few days later, when I went to assemble the couplings, all the steel parts had developed a case of rust!  I was able to get them mostly together, but one of them wouldn't thread, to the point that I snapped the threaded part of the turnbuckle.  *#$%*#$%*@!#$!!!  There was enough left for me to superglue the parts together, I don't consider it all that important as I don't actually tighten the couplings!  So, I've learned to keep the blackened brass separate from the steel until after you get everything assembled!

[jamie92208]

One thing I meant to ask in my previous post...

And a word of warning.  I blackened the brass bits of those couplings, rinsed them off well in water, then let them dry overnight.  In the morning, I put them back into a small container (like an Altoids box) so all the pieces would be together.  A few days later, when I went to assemble the couplings, all the steel parts had developed a case of rust!  I was able to get them mostly together, but one of them wouldn't thread, to the point that I snapped the threaded part of the turnbuckle.  *#$%*#$%*@!#$!!!  There was enough left for me to superglue the parts together, I don't consider it all that important as I don't actually tighten the couplings!  So, I've learned to keep the blackened brass separate from the steel until after you get everything assembled!

For blackening steel for 3 links and buffers etc I use the heat and oil method.   Hold  the steel part in a pair of tweezers and put into a gas flame until red.  then drop into some oil (Car engine oil is fine)   They come out a lovely black and it's permanent and doesn't rust.   I'm not sure if it works with brass.

 

Jamie

 

Make sure that she who must be obeyed isn't in the kitchen when you do this as there may be a few sharp comments about the slight smell of hot oil.

[Miss Prism]

Mike - I think the Y8 Fruits were all fitted with screw couplings.

[Mike Boucher]

Today, I had a lot of people come to talk during my treatment; a massage therapist, a chaplain, and a councilor.  So, I only worked on kits for about 2 hours of the 5 I was sitting there for.  That was enough to finish assembly of the GWR fruit van, and start on the next kit.

First, the fruit van.  At home, I had folded, soldered, and blackened the small step.  All I needed to do was superglue it onto the solebars.  Bit fiddly to hold it in place, square, while the slow-drying superglue solidified.

 

All that was left to do was glue on the small door hooks (which I forgot on one side last week), and its ready for paint... 

 

 

The next kit was a a Parkside GWR container flat.  Got the "body" assembled, bearings assembled and wheels attached, and started on the brake gear.  On the side you can't see in the photo, the brakes are glued on, but not the safety straps, they're pushed over the brake assembly but not glued to the underframe.  And as you can see, the brass rod I use for the brake rod isn't cut to length.  I drilled holes in the V irons, and as the brake gear gets assembled, I'm constantly pulling that brass rod out, and then using it to make sure everything is aligned correctly.  Hopefully I should be able to basically finish construction on this next week...

 

 

Hope everyone over there in the UK is OK after the hurricane-force storm which hit hard a few days ago.  From the few news reports I've seen, looks like it was a pretty hard storm.

[jamie92208]

Thta's good progress Mike.  Good to see that your time is being used so productively.    As to the weather.  It's fine up here in the north but the south has had it bad.

 

Jamie

[marc smith]

Only just caught up with this thread, and glad I did
I've always thought that railway modelling can be therapeutic 
and a nice distraction during tough times

Well done to the hospital for allowing you to have your workbench
Great modelling at such a tough time Mike
Great positive attitude as well - so nice to see that

but most of all - good luck for the best possible outcome sir

Best
Marc

[Mike Boucher]

This week's update finds the construction of the GWR container flat pretty much completed.

 

A few things the sharp eyed viewer might notice in the picture...

 

1) One of the buffers is missing.  The kit contained 4 springs for the buffers, but one of them had a huge kink in it.  I was able to get it over the buffer shank, but once compressed, the friction between the buffer body, spring, and shank was greater than the "push" of the spring.  So, the buffer head would go in, but not spring back out.  I glued the body in place, and have to contact Parkside Dundas about how to get a new spring.  Hopefully they'll send a few spares to the US...

 

2) The brake levers aren't on.  The instructions suggest to paint and letter the area behind the brake levers before attaching them, as the "return to GWR not common user" is pretty much directly behind the brake lever, making it hard to apply the transfer.  So, I've drilled the appropriate holes, in the V hanger and the levers, and I'll glue them on with ACC once lettering is finished.

 

3) The "tie down loops" aren't installed on the container yet.  I want to blacken the brass before I do that.  Might do that tonight.

 

4) It has 3 link couplings.  Like the fruit van, the kit came with 3 link, but the prototype photos I've found online show screw couplings.  So, for now, I've installed the 3 link for now, but next time I place an order with Tower Models (my usual source for Parkside/Slaters kits, standard disclaimer applies) I'll get a set of screw couplings for this car.

 

5) The container roof is already painted.  Last week we had a warm day, so I painted the roofs for the MR cattle van, the GWR fruit van, and the container's roof.  Its not glued on, its just sitting in place.  I still need to paint the container body GWR brown, and then put some lead weight in it.  (I've decided that the container will be chained down, and non-removable, so its much easier to put the weight in there rather than in the underside like one the P.O. wagons and the open container wagon.)

 

Hopefully by next Monday, I'll have a coat of GWR grey on the 3 Parkside kits (fruit van, open goods, and container flat), followed by some glosscote, so I can work on the lettering.  I learned the hard way that transfers don't stick to flat paint, and the Humbrol I have dries VERY flat...

 

I've also decided on the next project.  I brought it in on Monday, but finished the container flat with only about 20 minutes left before the infusion finished, and didn't think it was worth starting with that little time.  Stay tuned next week and hopefully I'll have started on it!  

[N15class]

 

Been a few weeks since I posted.  On the one day I went 2 weeks ago, got nothing done because I forgot the bag of kits as I went out the door running late in the morning.  Did catch up on watching a bunch of you tube videos, like a 1 hour one of British Industrial RRs posted elsewhere on RMWeb, but that was about it.

 

This week was the first 3 days of my 3rd cycle.  So Monday was a long day, and Tuesday and Wednesday were short.  On Tuesday, my two kids (9 and 4) and ex-wife came in for the treatment, to help acclimate the kids to the hospital, and so they see that each treatment isn't that scary.  So I didn't do any kit buidling on that day either.

 

But, between Monday and Wednesday, I just about finished assembly of the GWR fruit van, and did finish a Parkside GWR Diag 033 open goods wagon.

 

 

Parkside GWR Fruit and open wagon 1.jpg

 

Parkside GWR Fruit and open wagon 2.jpg

 

 

Parkside GWR Fruit and open wagon 3.jpg

 

The only thing left to do on the fruit van is to fold, solder, blacken, and attach the etched step which goes below the door, then add weight, paint, letter, and glue on the roof.  Most of that I won't be able to do at Dana Faber.

 

The open goods wagon just needs weight, paint and lettering.

 

At home over the past two weeks, I have done more work on finishing up the Parkside P.O. wagons.  I've added weight to the underside, getting them to just about 6 oz. 

 

Slaters PO wagons weights.jpg

 

I've also made the coal loads for the P.O. wagons.  All they need now is weathering, which I'll do in a batch once I finish all the 6 kits in the queue.

 

Slaters PO wagons coal load.jpg

 

I also weighted the Slaters cattle van.  Still haven't gotten the cattle yet.  There's a few shows coming up between now and Christmas, so I'll probably look at those shows before I resort to mail order, where the shipping will cost almost as much as the cows themselves…

 

Next week, I'll start working on the Parkside GWR Container Wagon, and should be able to glue on the afore mentioned steps on the fruit van.  After that, I have to decide which of two projects to work on next.  Neither is British prototype, but might be interesting to some.

 

One thing I found interesting about this week is a LOT of people noticed I was working on these models and asked about them.  Not just nurses and other hospital workers, but other patients.  The treatment room is arranged where there are 6 chairs with curtains between them, but with how nice of a day Monday was, most people were leaving the curtains pulled back a little bit so they could see outside (I had a window seat) and that allowed them to see the table in front of me.  I was there for 6 hours or so, but the other chairs were mostly people getting shorter treatments, 1-2 hours, so there was a constant rotation of other patients.  Over the course of the day, I probably talked to 6 or 7 other patients about my projects, and got a lot of positive comments.

 

I use the GOG recomended 1gram per millimeter of length. So a standard size wagon needs to be about 150grams. It means whitemetal kits do not get any added, etched ones sometimes need more. Plastic ones normally need to be. I do not get any problems, I just think your train will be very heavy for the loco. Which means the loco has to be over weighted too. Which puts an extra strain on the motors etc.

[3 link]

Hi Mike,

 

I notice there is a photo of you operating a layout in the latest Guild News and a little piece regarding your USGONE group, are you aware of your 5 minutes of fame or have you not recieved the latest gazette yet.

 

I look forward to further updates and I wish you well,

 

Martyn.

[Mike Boucher]

I use the GOG recomended 1gram per millimeter of length. So a standard size wagon needs to be about 150grams. It means whitemetal kits do not get any added, etched ones sometimes need more. Plastic ones normally need to be. I do not get any problems, I just think your train will be very heavy for the loco. Which means the loco has to be over weighted too. Which puts an extra strain on the motors etc.

 

I'm not too worried.  If my math is right, 150 grams is just over 5 ounces.  So a 6 ounce car is only about 20% overweight.

 

If you look at the US NMRA specs, they say 5 ounces, plus 1 more for each inch, so these P.O. wagons would weigh 9 ounces if I kept to that standard.  So from one viewpoint, they're underweighted.

 

If my loco can't pull them all, I'll make a smaller train    

 

BTW - My US prototype cars are weighted to around 13 ounces, and I've pulled 20 of those with a single Diesel loco.  My 2-6-6-6 has pulled 50 cars up a 1% grade...

 

Hi Mike,

 

I notice there is a photo of you operating a layout in the latest Guild News and a little piece regarding your USGONE group, are you aware of your 5 minutes of fame or have you not recieved the latest gazette yet.

 

I look forward to further updates and I wish you well,

 

Martyn.

 

Nice!  I haven't gotten the latest yet.  I'll have to look in the mailbox when I get home.

[N15class]

Hi Mike

Hope all is going well with treatment.

I miss understood. I thought you had got 6 onces of lead plus the tare of the model.

[Mike Boucher]

Hi Mike

Hope all is going well with treatment.

I miss understood. I thought you had got 6 onces of lead plus the tare of the model.

 

Not a problem.  I'd be curious to see how you could GET 6 ounces into that wagon...

[jamie92208]

I've got a ,ot of Slaters wagons that ran on Long Preston.  I weighted most of them to 4.5oz's but the ABS ones weigh about 6 on average.  There didn't appear to be a problem as the wieghts weren't too far apart.  The difficulty was some of my friends stock that I needed  at exhibitions that wasn't weighted.  We either had to run it in block trains or make sure it was at the rear of the tran.

 

Jamie

[BR60103]

I think the NMRA weight standards date back to the days of cast metal car ends, sheet metal sides and solid wood floors and rooves.

A new standard might be feasible if it didn't have to be compatible with 70-year-old cars.

[Mike Boucher]

Over the past week, there were a few dry days, so I was able to put a few coats of Humbrol on the 3 GWR cars, and also two coats of glosscote, so they were ready for lettering.  Today, that's mostly what I did.  I only got 1 side lettered on the fruit van and container flat, but the open wagon has most of the lettering on both sides.  

 

 

 

 

Transfers and I don't get along very well, and these were no exception.  They were pressfix, but the first few the carrier paper (when separated from the thick backing paper) curled quite a bit, and I couldn't get them to stick down.  So, I took out the spirits I use for methfix, and treated these as methfix.  Also, if you look at the lettering on the boxes for the chains on the container flat, the lettering has some "waves" to it.  When I was pressing down, I invariably shift the paper slightly, and on a transfer that long, its very obvious.     I tried straightening them, but for once they refused to move after I pressed into place.   :mad: Looks like that van will get some heavier weathering to try to hide this.

 

Also, the methfix fluid seems to soften the glosscote just a little, so pressing down I leave slight fingerprint marks (you can see those if you look closely at the photo of the open wagon.  These usually disappear when I spray dullcote to seal in the transfers, but I'm always nervous that they won't.  I still can't figure out why waterside decals are so disliked by British modelers…

 

I also attached the brake lever on the container flat after the transfers were applied.  I should be able to get the lettering finished next week.  Also note that I haven't painted the container itself yet.  I just bought the paint for that, so hopefully I'll get it painted for next week.

 

While waiting for the transfers to "dry", I started working on the next project.  I've selected a 1975 vintage Quality Craft wood and whitemetal kit of a Chesapeake and Ohio wooden caboose.  How do I know its that old, its printed right on the box!

 

 

Here's a prototype photo (found elsewhere on the web).

 

 

I have a Sunset/3rd Rail C&O allegheny (Lima built 2-6-6-6 articulated beast) and I've needed a caboose for it for a while.  The only ones available that I know of are this wood kit, or Rich Yoder imported brass.  The brass one sold out quickly, and I didn't have the $$ for it when it was announced, and I had already bought this kit.  Even with the cost for extra detail parts, I'm still WAY cheaper than brass.

 

Here's the obligatory photos of the parts.  (note some were taken at home, others at the hospital, for some reason some of the photos were all severely out of focus, so I re-took them when I was home)

 

 

 

The instructions are sparse...  

 

 

Being 1975 vintage, there's not a lot of detail parts, but I plan on adding some additional parts.  I bought a set of extra sprue of Intermountain kit brake gear parts, which I'll use, along with wire, to model the brakes.  I'll also get some Grandt Line NBW parts for the ends of the grab irons, where necessary.  I've found a book about these caboose, which I've ordered but hasn't arrived yet.  I'll use that as a reference for detailing.  (BTW - note that I believe the plural of caboose is caboose, much like the plural of moose is moose!)

 

Couplers will be standard Kadee, trucks are still TBD.  I've found some photos showing "Bettendorf" trucks with leaf springs, but also other references that they rode on arch bar.  If I can use bettendorf, I have some Red Caboose trucks which will be suitable.  If its arch bar, the only source I've found are brass ones from Protocraft.

 

I'm doing things slightly out of order than the instructions.  The instructions have you build the body and roof first, and then work on the underframe.  I feel that its a lot easier to work on the underframe while everything is flat, rather than deal holding it upside down when the copula is on.  That's what I started getting done today.  I glued on the "inner floor", the bolsters and the "steel" girder between the bolsters.   The main purpose of the inner floor seems to be to keep the ends square and at the proper body length.

 

 

 

As you can see, the bolsters are longer than required.  Have to trim those to the width of the floor before I attach the sides.

 

I'm going to assemble as much as reasonable, so I can get the main structural wood pieces glued together with wood glue, and then apply a few coats of sanding sealer, so the body doesn't warp over time (or even when I paint it).  After that, I'll start glueing the whitemetal pieces on, and any additional wood pieces, with ACC.

 

Until next time...

[BR60103]

Mike:

The trucks on the prototype photo look like Bettendorf or equivalent.

A railway might have gotten away with arch bars on a caboose if there was no chance of it going offline.

I have a photo of a tender with archbars under it.

I think I have a slide of a PCC car in Boston with an archbar under one end!

[Mike Boucher]

Mike:

The trucks on the prototype photo look like Bettendorf or equivalent.

A railway might have gotten away with arch bars on a caboose if there was no chance of it going offline.

I have a photo of a tender with archbars under it.

I think I have a slide of a PCC car in Boston with an archbar under one end!

 

After some more digging, it appears that these caboose originally came with archbar, and on some caboose they were swapped out for bettendorf sometime in their lives as archbar trucks became "outlawed".  Walthers produced an HO plastic version of this caboose, and Division Point produced a brass HO version as well, both of which come with archbar trucks.  Cass Scenic Railway has two of these in preservation, one of which is on archbar, and the other on bettendorf.

 

Since this is going to be a steam era caboose, I'll get the brass arch bar trucks.  They're not cheap at $40, but that's still not too bad when considering the Red Caboose plastic trucks cost $15 when they were available, and metal Atlas bettendorf costs about $20.

[3 link]

Hi Mike,

 

Well you have certainly lost me with all this talk of " archbar and bettendorf ", being a Brit I think I will just keep to the good old BR Western region .

 

All the best,

 

Martyn.

[Mike Boucher]

Hi Mike,

 

Well you have certainly lost me with all this talk of " archbar and bettendorf ", being a Brit I think I will just keep to the good old BR Western region .

 

All the best,

 

Martyn.

 

Basically, they are two different types of "bogies" (or trucks as we call them over here)

 

Archbar are basically bolted together from bent steel, forming a simple truss arrangement

 

 

Bettendorf is a cast sideframe truck

 

 

There are other variations on cast sideframes, like Andrews or Barber, but most people use "Bettendorf" as a generic term.  (much like how we use "band-aid" or "Kleenex"...)

[highpeak]

I think what you are doing here is brilliant, and probably is going to have a positive impact on the outcome of the treatment. Good on the hospital for letting you do it. And good work too.

Those old wooden kits are a nice change of pace from plastic! I think my greatest achievement in modelling was finishing a MEC "Paul Bunyan" pulpwood rack, I think it was made by Northeastern. The kit was quite a bargain as there was enough wood to build two of them. Needless to say, the car's twin brother still resides in the box as raw materials.