Creating a Class 159 in South Western Railway Livery - I had some help with the painting!

Introduction

I was in conversation with Andrew of Cairns Road Works regarding some First Great Western repaints and got talking about an SWR repaint.  So I decided to jump onto eBay and find a used 3-car 158 and set to work.

There are no transfers available for the SWR livery at the moment so Andrew got in contact with Railtec and got an agreement in place.  Living at the right end of the country meant I was to provide some detailed photographs.

I am also going to upgrade the lighting on the 158 to include prototypical LED marker/tail lights, saloon lighting & bodyside indicators - I'm also planning on adding some roofing detail where I can to better reflect the current prototype.

Most of the information here will be about the lighting and detailing as this is the part of the project I am completing - I want to make it nice and clear that the credit for the painting doesn't rest with me!

Research

The research from my end consisted of hopping on a train to Salisbury and hoping to find a unit in the correct livery,  as it happened, there was one on depot and one stabled in the station so I spent some time taking some photos before getting some lunch and heading home again.  Easier than I had expected.  The photos can be found at: https://fredboniface.co.uk/railphoto

Lighting

After disassembling the bodies and removing the original lighting boards I found that the holes in the cab end were 2mm holes - perfect for some 2mm tower LEDs.  I've sourced my LEDs from DCC Concepts - I have tried cheaper LEDs but none of the Bi-Colour LEDs are of the correct polarity and none of the 'headlight' LEDs are of the right tone.  I am going to fit a headlight on each side of the cab so I can use a night running headlight or if the prototype ever gets fitted with the new type of 'dual' headlights I can easily model it!

For the bodyside indicator 'hazard' lights, I am planning to use DCC Concepts Micro LEDs stuck to the body with the wired fed through a 0.5mm hole drilled through the body.

The internal lighting will either be formed of 12v LED strips or individual small LEDs mounted on the roof.

This is one of the early versions of the Bachmann 158, the front cab piece is molded in clear plastic and painted rather than glazed, this means that I needed to paint the inside and the inner surface of the LED holes to prevent the entire front of the train glowing as it does in the original model.

The LED's are held in using a replacement lighting board made with Veroboard, I will attach a 4 pin & a 2 pin (I don't have a 5 pin) micro-socket to the board to facilitate easy removal of the body in the future, I bought my micro JST connectors from RailwayScenics for £0.65 each.  The board doesn't protrude outside the bodyshell as much as the photo suggests so a quick trim should keep it inside.  I will use a short jumper wire to join both common tracks together and then use the top strip to connect the marker light tracks together.

I've used the space available towards the bottom of the board to fit resistors for the tail lights.  I have only fitted 10K resistors so this will need testing before I make the board for the other end to save switching too many components around.  Due to the improvements, the new board is quite a bit bigger than the previous board which means I will need to carefully construct a cab interior around the board.  The board is also a little bit thicker than the previous which will mean the glazing unit behind the cab will need some minor adjustment to fit back in place.

I wired up the lights for a quick test using 1K resistors for the marker & headlights.  I have dimmed the marker lights and the tail lights through the decoder.  I am happy with the tail lights, but, not the marker lights.  I will swap out the resistors on the marker lights for something a bit more resistive.

Marker Lights, Tail Lights, Day running, Night running. (Click on any of the photos for a larger view).

I now need to make up a lighting board for the other end before moving on to the next stage.

Next, Part 2: Disassembly & Interior Detailing