The construction of a Comet GWR long prairie chassis continues.
As mentioned in the last entry, I had to order a new wheel to replace the wrong one in the set, which had an incorrect crank throw compared to the others.
The new wheel didn't take long to arrive (thanks, Wizard Models for the excellent service) but in the meantime the delay allowed me to crack on with assembling some of the other parts of the chassis such as the coupling and connecting rods, slidebars, cylinders, pony truck
Although there are still a few bits to be done on the S15 and C2X (not to mention the on-going saga of the Dean Goods) I felt sufficiently flushed with success to press on to the next "big" project, a pair of GWR long prairies. I have three RTR ones - an Airfix era model which is no longer a runner, and has a somewhat damaged body, plus two later Hornby versions, neither of which I would rate as being particularly smooth performers. However, after seeing a real one at the Great Central Railway s
Funny how the last few details seem to take forever ... or is it just me?
Cab interior painted, crew added, cab windows glazed, vacuum pipe added and a lamp fitted - buffer beam number on. What's left? Wheel balance weights, but they weren't in the kit so will need to be made out of thin plastikard or something, which I envisage being a bit of a fiddle. And the tender could do with more coal so that it's visible from the side...
As with the S15, the one detail that's eluding me is c
As mentioned in an earlier post, the C2X was stripped down and re-detailed in readiness for repainting into Southern black. Here's the state of play - still some final touches needed, but not far off being done - and I've even put coal in the tender.
As my first kit, there's a lot that's not quite right with this model, but I'm very pleased with it nonetheless and I like the splash of colour from the Southern lettering, compared with the rather dull BR look which it had before.
Mean
The Airfix B-set model was one of the first RTR carriages which purported to be based on a real prototype, and they were a real boon to GWR modellers after their introduction in 1976. I've got three pairs - two in GWR livery, of Airfix vintage, and a more recent pair in BR crimson bought when they were reissued by Hornby. Other than the couplings and wheels, I don't think there's much difference between the models despite thirty-odd years of production. They are a basic model but easy to disasse
As mentioned earlier on this blog, my DJH C2X has been scheduled for a repaint into Southern black for quite some time. It's not that there was anything wrong with it in BR condition, but when I built it I didn't make much allowance for a decoder, and looking at it now, it's hard to see where I could add one. The boiler's full of lead, the motor and gearbox fills the rest, and the tender is a sealed unit. As all my pre-nationalisation models are DC only, the easiest solution was simply to move i
On the home stretch now, with the olive green on and most of the lining.
I sprayed the model using a Railmatch aerosol of dark olive green, over several coats of primer, with a lot of careful rubbing down between coats. The black areas were then brush painted.
I lined the boiler bands using waterslide transfers - Modelmaster, I think - and the tender and cabside lining using acrylic ink in a bowpen. The numbers and Southern lettering were from an HMRS pressfix sheet. I chose an S15 that
Here's a little something I knocked up during a spare few hours over the weekend...
If only! It's actually a pre-made Mallard models kit for the corridor clerestory all third, and was bought second hand from Lord & Butler at their stand at the Bristol show. There's a label on the bottom with what I take to be the builder's name on it, Peter Bradley of Taunton, and a build date of 1993. It's constructed and painted to a very high standard, with a superb rendition of the fully li
Anyone who's followed my blog for a while will know that there's a bit of a recurrent theme, that of taking older models and seeing what can be done to tart them up, press them back into service and so on. Sometimes this is a relatively speedy process ... other times, it can be a bit more protracted.
A case in point would be this overhauled Lima model of D1000 Western Enterprise, which has been on and off the workbench for the best part of ten years ...
A bit of history might not be
Despite what I said in the last blog entry, I couldn't leave well alone. So last night I did a partial strip down of the valve gear, which wasn't as painful as expected. I eased out the hole in the coupling rods for the end axles, and this has lessened the tight spot quite a bit. It's still noticeable as a slight hesitation when starting off slowly, or running at a dead crawl, but it's not there at all when running at even the slow plod of a non-fitted goods train. So I'm going to call it quits
On with the last few parts in the DJH box - all boiler fittings now in place, along with tender details and smoke deflectors, and I've painted the chassis.
I'm not normally one for taking a chassis apart once I've got it running (I have enough trouble as it is) so I usually try and paint everything in the assembled state, which can be a fiddle, as well as time consuming.
I might have to, though, because over the running trials I've noticed an annoying tight spot which either wa
The loco is nearly done barring fine detail and of course painting. I've not done the handrails yet because I don't want to use the split pins supplied with the kit (I think DJH supply proper turned handrail knobs now) and I've either misplaced or run out of my Gibson ones for the time being.
I anticipate a bit of a struggle with the smoke deflectors as they don't sit terribly well on the frames at present.
Over the weekend I built the tender. As mentioned earlier, one of the castin
On with the cab roof and some of the boiler fittings. I test-fitted the Urie stovepipe chimney but it clobbered my footbridge, so pragmatism dictated that I used the other one supplied with the kit, which appears to be a representation of the U1 chimney fitted to members of the class.
I then ran into the first minor snag of the body, in that the front of the boiler should be flush with the point where the inside part of the frames drops down, but is in fact set back by about 0.5mm. This mean
These pictures could form the basis of one of those "spot the difference" competitions in a newspaper...
Here's another thrilling angle on the S15, but with one crucial change compared to last night's installment:
The brakes are all on! It won't win any neatest soldering awards, but it should all look fine once painted; I tend to notice when brakes are missing from an engine but I don't spend too much time looking at them once they're in place; they just become part of the mass of d
Over the weekend I finished the valve gear on both sides of the S15, and I'm pleased to report that all went well. I've still to add the slide bar support bracket on this side, but as it needs to be cut down drastically so as not to foul the bogie, it's easily done at a later stage. Now that I'm happy with the running, I soldered the return cranks into position.
The next stage, as mentioned in earlier entries, was to consider adding brake gear. The kit makes no provision for brakes, but the
Here's a tale with a happy ending, of sorts.
I've only ever owned a few Lima models, most of which were bought during my early teens. At the time they were a welcome addition to the variety of RTR prototypes available, and the painted finish was a step up from the raw plastic on Hornby items of the day. The mechanisms weren't regarded as being particularly awful, either - certainly my first Lima model, a Western, was a marvel compared to my grindy, sparky Tri-ang Co-co, which was the only ot
After looking at pictures of Urie S15s, it struck me that I was using the wrong motion support bracket. I'd originally folded up the right one, then put it back in the box as it didn't look like the one in the chassis instructions - there were two brackets supplied. I'm guessing that the chassis instructions are generic for S15s, and it's left to you to figure out which bits are specific for the Urie variants. In any case, the correct bracket looks a lot better, although it needed a massive amou
I ordered some longer M1 bolts over the weekend which arrived today, meaning I could push on with the valve gear. Tonight's work involved the assembly of the crosshead, union link, and combination arm. I used rivets which I've always struggled with a bit, but (at least for me) I think the trick is to start off with very small taps, rather than one big whack.
I tested fitted the piston valve rod into the cylinder - it's all loosely in place here, but (phew) does work, and there are no clearan
Following a brisk bit of hillwalking to blow away the winter cobwebs, I spent a couple of hours soldering up the final cylinder assemblies. I was a bit puzzled by the kit's intentions, but after some head scratching I worked out how the slidebars were meant to function, and once "trapped" by the cylinder end castings, the final design seems pretty robust and quite neatly thought out.
I tack soldered the cylinders in place and tried a simple running test with the connecting rods loosely in pl
Previously on S15..,
I'd struggled to get the chassis and body to play nicely together, with a whopping gap between the top of the cylinders and the underside of the footplate. After much examination of various photos - of both the prototype and other DJH models - I decided that the cylinders are correct(ish) but that body has to be lowered by about 1mm. The only problem with that is that something - either brass or white metal has to go.,,
Anyway, on with today's installment:
After
On with the Urie S15. I've eliminated shorting from the front bogie against the frames, with a lot of filing and grinding, and now the loco traverses all my pointwork (including a couple of reverse curves through Peco curved turnouts) without hesitation or sparking.
I test-fitted the cylinders, and had to remove a lot of material from the front profile to avoid shorting against the bogie wheels on curves. A similar amount will need to be removed from the rear cylinder plate casting when I ad
With the Dean saga hopefully drawing to a happy conclusion - touch wood - I thought I'd crack on with another loco build while I was in the right frame of mind for a bit of soldering and swearing.
Having built several six-coupled locos with either inside cylinders or GWR outside pattern, I thought I'd best bite the bullet and tackle something with actual valve gear. This DJH Urie S15 has been in my kit collection for at least six or seven years, being purchased as an almost complete kit at a
Despite my best intentions to put the troublesome Dean Goods project aside for a bit, I couldn't resist taking it out again for another session of tweaking. If you've been following the complicated saga, the latest thrilling twist was that the new gearbox seemed to be wearing out a bit prematurely - ie, over one weekend. Eek!
In the comments on the earlier thread:
http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/257/entry-15636-dean-goods-the-saga-continues/
it was suggested that the
When I look at layouts at exhibitions, I often end up admiring those layouts that have a consistent, toned-down look to them, even if the individual elements aren't necessarily modelled to the hightest accuracy. For me that elusive "finescale look" is as much about that overall picture as it is the track standard, the brake gear or the chimney profiles. Sometimes the two go hand in hand, in that a layout can be superb on all fronts. When I looked at the pictures of Hemyock in the recent issues o
The Bachmann model of the Highley yard crane is quite an attractive little model, but let down by the solid resin castings of what should be spoked wheels. The computer generated pre-production images showed the wheels as properly spoked, but by the time the model came out the decision had presumably been made to do them as rather crude solid wheels. Incidentally there isn't a lamp growing from the top of the crane!
My initial plan had been to cannibalise some replacement wheels from on
