Jump to content
 
  • entries
    93
  • comments
    685
  • views
    144,708

A West Country Hero - Part 3


D869

1,225 views

blog-0860917001370281588.jpgWith a little less time pressure, I thought I'd take the time to write a catch-up installment of the account of Grenville's build.

 

We left things with the windscreen frames and most of the front end ironwork fitted but with a remaining question mark over the access panels on the cab sides.

To finish off the ends, the lower lamp brackets were sliced off and used as a guide to drill 0.5mm holes. Into these holes were pushed some brackets cut from 5 thou N/S strip… these are probably a lot easier to make than they sound. Then a couple of squares of plastikard were added to represent the parts of the brackets that are flat against the nose.

 

And so to the access panels… after some indecision I decided to bite the bullet and try to improve these. I wasn't too keen on trying Milliput here so instead I filled the Farish grooves with some 10 thou round styrene rod after first scoring the inside of the grooves to expose the plastic. After leaving these for 24 hours to set I scraped and sanded them smooth. New panels were added using 5 thou plastikard sheet using the outline of the original panels as a guide. The result is far less obtrusive than Farish's interpretation but I will probably use 10 thou next time and thin it once dry because there is some bubbling on some of the 5 thou panels.

 

The cab side window frames fitted quickly with very minor fettling of the plastic. Normally I find cutting the glazing (from 10 thou clear sheet) rather a time consuming job but with the frames separated from the body it's pretty straightforward, although the windscreens still took some time and care due to their almost complete lack of straight lines. I test fitted all of the glazing by using an amazing (and environmentally friendly) temporary glue that I discovered. It's called spit and it does an excellent job of holding things in place for long enough to check the fit.

 

blogentry-9623-0-72943400-1370281380_thumb.jpg

 

Looking at the Farish skirts, I'd say that one side is better than the other. The asymmetric side looks pretty reasonable but things are a bit more suspect on the other side. On this side I drilled and filed away the opening containing the fillers because these are very two dimensional. I also used the styrene rod trick to fill in the panel grooves on either end of the central skirt but left the battery box covers alone. I also fitted the front ends of the skirts that come in the box with the loco.

 

blogentry-9623-0-26531900-1370281397_thumb.jpg

 

The cab interiors needed some attention. Farish seem to have got the general shape right but they have made the top edge of the control console about 1mm too low so it is not very visible through the windows in the way that is so characteristic of the real thing. I solved this by adding 40 thou plastikard to the top of the Farish moulding and filing to shape. I also added some plastikard to make the face of the secondman's console vertical (which it certainly is in the photos of Greyhound kindly provided by Brian Hanson). The seats are too high and too far forward so I chopped them off and just added a representation of the top of the seat back which is more or less in line with the back edge of the side windows. Finally the drivers console is a bit undersized but rather than scrap the whole thing I extended the rear edge a little towards the crew using some microstrip. The console and rear bulkhead were painted light grey with black for the false floor. Some of the 'controls' were then picked out using a fine tipped black marker. I thought I'd taken some photos of these before I glued them back in but I was wrong.

 

And so to the paint shop…

 

Some will have read most of this sorry tale elsewhere already.

 

After unsuccessfully trying meths and T-Cut to shift the painted on nameplates I eventually resorted to 1200 grit wet or dry on one side. I left the other side alone after figuring out that the etched plates would cover it anyway.

 

The whole body was then given a scrub (using gloves) with dilute Flash and an old toothbrush, followed by a further scrub under the hot tap. The body was then mounted using Blu-Tack on a suitably shaped block of wood for painting.

 

I have rather an aversion to yellow paint due to its poor coverage so I decided to take a short cut with the warning panels. I just masked off the shape using Tamiya tape after checking which shape was correct for Grenville (it had a fairly rounded top with higher corners rather than the variant that rises to a more obvious 'point' under the central headboard bracket).

 

In spite of not actually needing to, I removed the headcode inserts before painting. This was probably a mistake because it damaged the fine beading around the opening on one end and needed some touching up of the yellow. Some yellow painting was of course needed around the new lamp brackets.

 

I was also very keen to avoid filling the fine roof detail with paint so I also masked off the roof panel… I probably won't do this again.

 

The whole lot was then sprayed with Precision BR green (no messing with the colour this time) and I was very pleased with the finish achieved when the tape came off.

After 48 hours drying I masked around the roof panels and sprayed Humbrol 27. The first two bits of masking tape came away just fine but then disaster struck. On peeling back the tape from the first body side a whole lot of the green paint came away with it. Because the green had a masked edge it also pulled away some of the edge of the grey paint on the roof panels. You can read all about this over on the painting forum.

 

I decided to try to fix it by some careful sanding to feather the edges of the remaining green paint (which didn't really want to be feathered), brushing in the small damaged areas of grey and then (after drying) masking the roof and ends and respraying the damaged area from directly above. The result was better than I had hoped. You can still see some of the damage if you look hard for it under strong lighting but you would not notice it unless you knew where to look. I think it was a better bet than a full strip down and respray. There was also some matting of the sides from overspray but (after more drying) a rub with a cotton bud improved matters.

 

The photo below shows the side that was repaired. Most of the upper part of the side at this end was showing rail blue before the repair. I really must brush the dust off things before getting the camera out though.

 

blogentry-9623-0-77008100-1370281432_thumb.jpg

 

The lining was done with a Haff ruling pen. Dealing with the line ends was a bit of a puzzle. On the class 22 and 41 I just drew the line a bit over length and then chopped off the ends by painting over it in green but I was less keen on that approach with more prominent waist level lining. Instead I tried putting a 2mm vertical strip of masking tape lined up on the handrail recess to define the ends. This worked reasonably well but did disturb the pen a little at the ends of the line so I think I might look for another approach in future.

 

The numbers were done with CCT transfers (as used on D604). I must admit that I'm not too happy with these. They seem a bit 'fuzzy' compared to other transfers but they are still the least bad green diesel numbers that I have now that the Woodhead ones have pretty much run out (in comparison, some of the numbers on the Fox sheet are barely legible). I might order some Modelmaster ones now that I've joined the N Gauge Society and see if they are better. The BR crests are from a Woodhead sheet and the OHLE flashes are from Fox. After problems with fogging the varnish on previous builds I avoided using Micro Set on the transfers and stuck to plain water… which left the transfer carrier edges looking very obvious, especially on the numbers which also showed some silvering.

 

Once the transfers were dry the whole thing was sprayed with Tamiya varnish. Given the dodgy appearance of the transfers and the previous problems with paint fragility I opened up on it rather more than usual so the loco is now pretty shiny and will need some careful toning down when it comes to weathering. As expected, avoiding the Micro Set meant that I had no issues with fogging of the varnish.

 

The windscreen frames were cleaned with a fibreglass brush and then sprayed with Halfords primer followed by Precision BR Green. Once dry the paint was carefully scraped away from the window frames, including the inside edges. The side window frames were left completely unpainted.

 

Assembly

 

Most of the reassembly process was (in the immortal words of the Haynes manual) 'the reverse of removal'. The tricky bit was fitting those windscreens. I was in two minds about how best to do this. In the end I tried both ways. Both are pretty darned difficult.

 

The first way is to glue the glazing to the frame before it goes onto the loco. I did this by fitting the glazing 'dry' and then adding spots of canopy glue to fix it in place. Getting the glazing to stay in place was very fiddly this way and I didn't get it positioned quite accurately enough. The result was that the whole assembly was a slightly less than perfect fit onto the hole on the loco body.

 

For the other end I tried the other option - fitting the frames to the body first and then fitting the glazing from behind. This was also very tricky and I needed to trim the glazing a bit further to make it fit so clearly either my test fitting before painting was wrong or else there was enough paint and glue to mess up the fit after assembly.

For both ends the frames were fixed in place by running some super glue along the join on the corner pillars. I am intending to tidy this up with green paint but I haven't got round to doing that yet. I also added some spots of Canopy glue from inside the cab to give some support in the middle of the frames. Adding some plastikard cubes to support the centre pillar before painting might have been a better bet but I forgot to do it (this would probably rule out the 'frames first' assembly option too).

 

For the side windows I tried a third way - putting tiny spots of Canopy Glue onto the corners of the frames (off the loco) and then carefully dropping the glazing into position. I think this was a better option and the side windows went in very easily indeed.

 

Handrails were done using Albion Alloys 0.2mm N/S rod as recommended to me in the discussion on part 1 of the build. This looks a lot better than 10 thou N/S wire… although it is surprisingly stiff and a bit tricky to form into a curve.

 

The cab handrails are factory fitted wire jobs so these were carefully scraped clear of paint.

 

Couplings were rather a pain. The quick and easy answer (as I've done on my other Warships) is to leave the front skirts off and glue some DGs to the top of the Farish coupling mount. As I've fitted the front skirts to Grenville I decided to do it properly. Unless I've misunderstood something I can't see a way to have the front skirts on without attacking the bogie mouldings with a knife, so that's what I did. The DGs are soldered to some 15 thou brass strip which is bent to pass below the skirts and super glued to the bottom of the bogie keeper (after scoring both surfaces). The hard part is making this strip so that the coupling sits in the right place in all three planes. I was a bit worried about the strength of the glued joint but after trying unsuccessfully to shift one that I wasn't completely happy with I decided that they were probably strong enough.

 

The final job on the night before RailEx was to fit the nameplates… and I managed to mess one of them up when trying to clean up the etch tabs so Grenville appeared at the show with just one nameplate on the public side. I think I was treating them like nickel silver… which they are not. They are stainless steel and a lot harder. I picked up another set of plates at RailEx where Brian Hanson recommended sharp scissors as the best way to separate the nameplates from the etch.

 

Still to do

 

There are a few jobs left. I still have the red route availability dots to add. The main job is weathering. I intend to keep this fairly light - some crud on the skirts and sooty deposits on the upper surfaces. I found a photo of Grenville in November 65 which shows the paintwork in pretty good nick but with a fair bit of road spray on the lower parts of the bodywork. It's always summer on my railways, so I will skip the road spray.

 

I'm pondering the ride height. It does look a bit tall so I don't think that a little bit of lowering would go amiss. I haven't looked to see how feasible it is yet though.

Apart from that the only other things missing are some fillers to go in that hole in the skirt - another job that didn't quite get done before Railex.

 

So What?

 

This has been a very experimental build and one which I fully intend to do again because there is plenty of scope for more D800s in my fleet. I am very pleased with the appearance of the new window frames but the fit of the windscreen frames has room for improvement - partly this needs some small adjustments to the curve of the bottom of the etch and partly I think it's a matter of being a bit more bold in filing back the front edges of the corner pillars to allow the frames to fit a little further back into the recess.

 

I'm also intending to try out a 'minimalist' upgrade on Hermes to see what can be achieved in a shorter space of time and without resorting to major paintwork (or put it another way… I don't have any way to replace those ship's crests on the cab sides).

 

As evidence of my lack of forward thinking, the next 'full' upgrade is planned to be on another maroon 'Druid' (picked up brand new for a very reasonable price) which I intend to respray into… blue.

  • Like 5

5 Comments


Recommended Comments

Guest oldlugger

Posted

Excellent work D869. I have two Farish warships (green and maroon) and they certainly capture the look of the prototype well. My only real criticisms about them are the wheels. The central boss is way over scale and spoils an otherwise fine looking model; why this was necessary I don't know. I wonder if it's possible to reduce the size of these somehow without damaging the wheels? The distinctive holes in the disc wheels would have been nice too. One other thing that needs addressing is the ride height; I think the body sits too high off the bogies making the wheels look too prominent.

 

Cheers

Simon

Link to comment

Excellent work D869. I have two Farish warships (green and maroon) and they certainly capture the look of the prototype well. My only real criticisms about them are the wheels. The central boss is way over scale and spoils an otherwise fine looking model; why this was necessary I don't know. I wonder if it's possible to reduce the size of these somehow without damaging the wheels? The distinctive holes in the disc wheels would have been nice too. One other thing that needs addressing is the ride height; I think the body sits too high off the bogies making the wheels look too prominent.

 

Thanks. The boss does look a bit big in the photo. In real life it doesn't really bother me. The wheels were turned to finescale by the Association's wheel turning service which also involved a restoration of the face profile. I suppose that the profile could have been different but I suspect that there is a need to make sure that there is sufficient metal remaining in the boss to prevent the wheel getting out of true on the axle. Having had coaches and wagons with wobbly wheels, I certainly don't want the same on my loco, particularly when it's impossible to get replacement wheelsets (I have asked).

 

I must admit that I've never paid much attention to the holes in the wheels but looking at some photos now they seem to be variable in number, sometimes with a different number of holes on different axles on the same loco. Thinking back to a posting on the BRCS Yahoo group about coach wheels, I wonder if the same explanation applies - namely that the holes were drilled to mount the wheels on a wheel lathe, so their number and location reflects the wheel's history of visits to the lathe.

 

Regards, Andy

Link to comment
  • RMweb Gold

Lovely stuff Andy - that close up photo looks terrific.

 

The new windows, detailing and paint finish really were worth the effort and time you put in.

 

One last thing on your 'to do' list though...paint the DG black :O

 

Failing that a black permanent marker is a good short term solution ;)

Link to comment
  • RMweb Gold

Evening Andy,

 

Glad to see a further write up on 'Grenville'

 

A really great piece of modelling that shows the finesse of 2mm nicely. 

 

Some ingenious solutions to a few conundrums as well. The custom windscreen etches really lift the model and the finish is excellent even taking into account the problems you encountered.

 

What's next on the workbench?

 

Cheers,

 

Mark

Link to comment

Lovely stuff Andy - that close up photo looks terrific.

 

The new windows, detailing and paint finish really were worth the effort and time you put in.

 

One last thing on your 'to do' list though...paint the DG black :O

 

Failing that a black permanent marker is a good short term solution ;)

 

Thanks Pete. The couplings were chemically blackened but I agree that they could be blacker. I have lots of things on my waiting list for crud coloured painting. The snag is remembering what they are when I have paint on the brush.

 

 

Evening Andy,

 

Glad to see a further write up on 'Grenville'

 

A really great piece of modelling that shows the finesse of 2mm nicely. 

 

Some ingenious solutions to a few conundrums as well. The custom windscreen etches really lift the model and the finish is excellent even taking into account the problems you encountered.

 

What's next on the workbench?

 

Thanks Mark. It was good to see you at Railex.

 

Your workbench question rather overlooks the quantity of work that (in spite of turning a wheel at Railex) hasn't quite made it fully off my workbench yet, so I'm still putting finishing touches to three coaches as well as Grenville.

 

I'm also starting to think about getting a few wagons shifted from my gloat box, but then we have the Expo coming up in a few weeks, plus 4 coaches on order from Mr Higgs, so... plans are flexible at this time ;)

 

Regards, Andy

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...