Sunday 6th April 2008: Most of my recent workbench activity has been focused on building a JLTRT Castle, but I fancied a change today. Fed up with removing cusps from etches and soldering bits of metal together, I decided to raid the cupboard and get stuck into some styrene instead.

 

I thought it was time to do some more to my Slater's PMV, which last saw the light of day last October. I had opted to bond the roof to the sides/ends, rather than fit it last. This enabled me to get a gap free fit, but meant that the body would need to be painted and glazed before fitting the floor and adding solebars and the rest of the underframe detail. I realised that I had only two buffers, two vacuum pipes and two steam heat valves to fit, before it could be given a coat of primer, so here it is with all the necessary castings in place....

 

 

And in close-up....

 

 

I decided to chemically blacken the castings as a sort of preventative measure against future paint chips....

 

 

Once that was done, it was time for a good scrub with some Ajax, followed by a rinse with cold water and a session with my wife's hairdryer. Now the model was nice and dry, it was out with the Halfords acrylic grey primer and here are some pictures of the results....

 

 

 

 

 

I particulary like these representations of the cast data plates on the ends....

 

 

 

It was only later when I was admiring my handiwork, that I realised I hadn't fitted the rainstrips yet! Still, shouldn't be too hard to retro-fit. The next job will be to airbrush it with Rail Blue, followed by some suitable transfers. I'm hoping to use the Methylated Spirit fix type (made by the HMRS, I believe), but I don't know if they actually do BR Blue stuff.

 

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Wednesday 16th April 2008: Following on from the last workbench session, I thought a little more work should be done to the PMV. In my eagerness to apply some primer to the finished body, I had forgotten to fit the rainstrips, so I thought this was a good place to start work. The rainstrips are simply injection moulded with the majority of the kit. Here they all are, the first one having been de-sprued and cleaned up....

 

 

One of them broke whilst trimming it from the sprue. This was annoying, but is easily repairable. I would have preferred the runners on the outside of the rainstrips rather than the insides though. Cleaning pips from the concave surface of a delicate piece of plastic is not fun.

 

The instructions stated that the rainstrips should be positioned 5.5mm from the roof edge. I took this to mean the extremities of the rainstrips, so I cut some strips of masking tape 5.5mm wide, trimmed them to the same length as the rainstrips, marked the centre lines and then applied them to the roof. One edge of the masking tape lines up with the roof edge, whilst the centre line is aligned with the gap between the doors. Here's a couple of shots....

 

 

 

Once this is done, each rainstrip is held in position by a couple of small pieces of masking tape....

 

 

 

Then, keeping light pressure on the mid-point of the rainstrip, some liquid adhesive (I used EMA "Plastic Weld"), is applied with a suitable brush. As the roof was already coated in primer, I decided something a little stronger than MekPak might be called for, hence the Plastic Weld. Once the middle part of the rainstrip has bonded to the roof, the small pieces of masking tape are carefully removed from the ends and more adhesive applied. Here's the finished result....

 

 

 

Some of the photos in my previous post highlighted a couple of dodgy areas - it's amazing what a coat of primer can expose. I had to scribe-in a couple of planks where they hadn't moulded properly and a bit of filler was needed here and there, on the corner strapping. With the addition of the rainstrips in bare plastic, I'll probably waft a little more primer over the model in the next day or so and then give the roof a lick of paint, probably with a brush. Once this has had a chance to dry, I might fire up the airbrush and give it a coat of Rail Blue. Stay tuned.

 

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Friday 18th April 2008: Having fitted the missing rainstrips to the PMV during the previous workbench session, I managed to waft a bit more primer over it yesterday. For todays session, I decided to give the roof a coat of Precision Paints "BR Roof Grey (Matt). This was applied by brush and for a first coat, gave a pretty good coverage. The majority of the paint dried to a nice matt finish, as would be expected when using matt paint. However, there are a few streaks that have a bit of a sheen to them, which I'm not entirely happy with. The biggest problem was that the paint was drying pretty fast and it wasn't easy keeping a wet edge to work to. Painting around the rainstrips themselves, was also pretty awkward. It will need a second coat and I think I'll do this with the airbrush, which with hindsight, I should have done in the first place. Anyway, here's some before and after pictures....

 

 

 

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Thursday 24th April 2008: Not being totally happy with the "less than matt" finish on the roofs after brush painting, I decided to give them both another coat today using my airbrush. I actually bought this over six years ago, but this is the first time I've used it. It says a lot for my modelling output, but I have to say, since defecting to 7mm, I seem to be achieving a lot more than I used to.

 

Anyway, after a bit of a false start, everything seems to have come out OK, so here are a couple of before and after shots....

 

 

 

The next jobs are a coat of Rail Blue, followed by lettering and glazing. Once this is done, I'll glue the floor in for good and crack on with the chassis.

 

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Saturday 24th May 2008: I felt it was time for an update. The main lack of progress recently has been down to a lack of airbrush. I bought my airbrush about seven years ago and used it for the first time to spray the roofs on the PMV and a Slater's Shoc Van. Having done the roofs, I stripped it down to clean it and then realised I wasn't really sure how it went back together, especially with regard to the position of the needle! (There were no instructions included either ). Anyway, I did what I thought was right, but next time I came to use it, I couldn't get it to work at all. I did obtain a rather spectacular fountain of paint as the air blew back through the paint cup, but couldn't get any to come out of the front of the airbrush.

 

A quick search on the Internet later and I found "The Airbrush Company Limited".

 

After a quick exchange of e-mails, I sent off my airbrush and eight days later it was back as good as new! Apparently, there was a hairline fracture in the nozzle so this was replaced as was the nozzle washer (I expect the original went down the plug hole when I was cleaning it ). The repair was less than ??21 and they even managed to find me a set of DeVilbiss instructions as well.

 

If anyone has any airbrush problems, I can certainly recommend this company - http://www.airbrushes.com

 

Anyway, back to the PMV - After masking off the roof, a pleasant 20 minutes or so was spent mixing some suitable paint. I used Railmatch products on this occasion and wanted the finish to look a little faded rather than ex works. I mixed Rail Blue (7 parts), Network South East Light Blue (1 part) and white spirit (2 parts) and here are the results....

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's nice to see the cast data plates are still legible after painting. The finish in the photos actually seems lighter than in real life, but I think I'm happy with the end result. I'll leave it in the airing cupboard for a week or so for the paint to harden off, then it's time for some transfers to be applied. Slater's make no mention of the lettering that appears on these vans in BR livery, but thanks to an exchange of e-mails with Paul Bartlett (thanks Paul), I now know what should be present on the PMV. I have a sheet of HMRS BR blue era transfers in stock and hope to make a start on this soon. I was also uncertain as to what colour the vacuum pipe should be - Paul to the rescue again:

"Dear Dan and others,

 

The colour of the steel work of vacuum pipes is not an optional extra! They are always red when the vehicle has vacuum operated brakes and white when it is only providing through piping without any automatic brake. They can, of course, get pretty dirty.

 

Regards

 

Paul"

 

Thanks Paul - duly noted. More updates as and when.

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Sunday 16th November 2008: It's been a while since any progress was made on the PMV, but this was the state of play after the last session....

 

 

In my previous post, I mentioned that the transfers would be going on soon. There is quite a lot of lettering on these vans and following an exchange of e-mails, Paul Bartlett very kindly sent me an excellent picture to work from (thanks Paul). I thought the required lettering would be included on the sheet of BR Blue coaching stock transfers available from the HMRS, but unfortunately, the only things I could use were the running numbers and the letters PMV. There is lots of information on the PMV regarding things like Width over Body, Extreme Width and Extreme Height. Although this kind of information was on the HMRS sheet, it was for the BR built GUV and CCT. The lettering on the PMV is condensed in places to fit with the confines of the diagonal strapping and the HMRS lettering was of no use on this model. I made enquiries with a couple of transfer manufacturers, but neither had suitable transfers in their ranges (though Fox did say they were hoping to do them next year).

 

I decided to get some transfers custom made and after an exchange of e-mails with Robert Kosmider (of Steam and Things, PO Box 277, Surrey Downs, SA 5126, Australia), I had an idea of the information I would need to provide in order to have some transfers made. Using Paul Bartlett's photo as a reference, I drew my requirements in TurboCAD, sent them off to Robert and yesterday lunchtime, the Postman came....

 

 

Here we see my original TuboCAD drawing, the finished transfers and a paper "black on white" proof, so you can see what you've got. My original drawing was done at 5x enlargement and the triangles you see denote the confines of the strapping whilst the red rectangles surrounding the text illustrate the extents of the text. The various scribbles are simply the dimensions of the rectangles and the distances between them.

The small blue triangle in the middle is actual size and, as it happens, I should have sent my dimensions actual size in the first place. Still, half an hour or so with a calculator soon took care of that.

 

Here's a close-up of the transfers - sorry, white on pale blue doesn't come out too well....

 

 

And here's my actual size TurboCAD version against the proof....

 

 

Before going to bed on Saturday night, I applied some gloss varnish to the areas where the transfers would be applied and then put the model in the airing cupboard for the night to dry off....

 

 

The eagle eyed amongst you might notice that the vacuum pipe uprights have received a lick of red paint. This was done several weeks ago, but I didn't think it warranted a posting just for that. The number and electrification flashes were applied at the same time, though the flashes are printed a bit off-centre and I think I'll cover them over with some better ones before long.

 

Custom transfers have now been applied....

 

 

 

I did have a bit of a senior moment when I did the original drawing - Paul's photograph is of a van with unequal width planks and the lines of text are laid out to fit within the confines of the particular planks. The Slater's van has planks of equal width, so when I laid the first transfer in position, some of the text was spanning the gaps between the planks and didn't look right at all. I decided to replace it and this time, I cut the replacement transfer into pieces to fit the planks. If Slater's (or JLTRT) ever bring out an unequal planked or plywood version, it would be much appreciated!

 

I'm well impressed with these transfers and I wish now that I'd had some running numbers made up too. The HMRS numbers seem to have a really intense whiteness to them and the characters seem a bit "rounded" (if you know what I mean?), whilst the custom ones have a sort of faded appearance I think. I'll have to try and tone down the HMRS ones at the weathering stage. Incidentally, the HMRS "PMV" branding I had applied to one side was removed, because I had already catered for it (and CCT), on my custom made versions. I really like these vans and might do the CCT version next time.

 

After sticking the model back in the airing cupboard again, the last job for today on the PMV was the window bars....

 

 

I had these etched a while ago and as I had some white primer to apply to another project today, I thought I'd chemically blacken these and put some primer on them at the same time. I didn't want the finish to look too white, so I just wafted the primer on and allowed the blackening to grin through a little....

 

 

Once the glazing and window bars have been fitted, I can think about cracking on with the underframe.

 

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Sunday 14th December 2008: It's time to make a start on the underframe. Here are a few things laid out for the day's session....

 

 

The springs, W-irons etc, need removing from their sprues and cleaning-up. The lost wax castings contain, amongst other things, 8 step board supports. Although the body is upside-down, the van floor is the right way up. The grey area is two strips of roofing lead - it weighs a ton!

 

Having cleaned-up the leaf spring assemblies, I thought I'd remove the web between the spring hanger and the mounting....

 

 

It wasn't that hard to do, but makes a big difference.

 

Not having any suitable etched W-irons in stock, I decided to use the ones that came with the kit....

 

 

The one thing I really didn't like about these was the retaining strip at the bottom - It's about 1mm thick, which scales up to about an inch and three quarters! I decided to remove them and will replace them with some brass strip of a more suitable thickness.

 

Several hours later, a lot of the parts have been cleaned-up....

 

 

I've drilled right through the axle boxes, so it's easier to get some glue on the bearing cups when I'm happy with their positioning. The holes will be hidden by the covers seen below them.

 

I didn't like the idea of gluing plastic step boards to the lost wax supports, so I made some new steps from some double sided copper clad paxolin. With the copper removed from one side, it's just the right thickness. I started to make a jig to hold the supports whilst the steps were soldered on. The supports are handed, so I went to the cupboard and dug out my reference photo, to see which support went where. I then discovered the van in the photo didn't have any step boards! I'm not sure how widespread this was (perhaps BR removed them?), but as it was the next one in sequence to my PMV, I decided mine wouldn't have step boards either!

 

Despite my best intentions, I didn't actually manage to stick any of this together today, but I'm pleased that a lot of cleaning-up and preparatory work has been done. I should be in a position to start sloshing some solvent around soon, but I also need to make a jig for drilling some holes in the wheels. I'll have to see how the mood takes me at the next session.

 

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Sunday 5th April 2009: Having been waylaid by other modelling projects recently, I thought it was time the PMV's underframe received a little more attention. However, due to the need to let things set after gluing, the only thing I could realistically do for now, was to attach the floor. Here it is, complete with a hefty portion of lead flashing for ballast....

 

 

The floor was glued in using solvent and held firmly in position to cure, with a wooden packing piece and some rubber bands....

 

 

 

I'll give it a few days for the glue to set before doing any more.

 

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Saturday 25th April 2009: Almost two weeks off work, but it wasn't until today, that I managed to do some modelling.

Anyway, I made a little more progress on the PMV today and concentrated my efforts on the wheelsets. As supplied, the Slater's wheels have no holes in them. Most, if not all, the disc carriage wheels I've seen, have at least a couple of holes in them (for lifting purposes?) and BR Mk1s seem to have four. As my PMV will be rubbing shoulders with some Mk1s and has the same diameter wheels, I figured they could well be one and the same and decided to make a drilling jig, to speed things up with this and any future carriage builds.

 

A friend is currently building an MMP Mk1 and he informed me that the holes were about 1mm diameter and 9mm from the centres, MMP having thoughtfully provided a drilling jig of their own. Armed with this information, the first job was to put a small offcut of fret waste into my GW Models rivet press....

 

 

Each turn of the handwheel moves the workpiece by 1mm, so it's pretty easy to use....

 

 

The idea is to emboss some rivets in the appropriate position and use the indents to centre the drill that makes the holes. I've just embossed the centre rivet and the one 9mm to its left has already been done....

 

 

Two more rivets and the job's done....

 

 

 

If you were actually wanting rivets, this is what you'd end up with....

 

 

The rivets made by the tool were filed off, then the workpiece turned over and the holes drilled 0.75mm....

 

 

I could have left it looking like this, but thought it would look nicer as a disc. A cut line was scribed using an Olfa compass cutter and the brass was carefully cut and filed to size. The final clean-up was achieved by mounting the disc in a mandrel and spinning it in my mini drill against an abrasive stick....

 

 

 

The outer holes are opened up to 1mm, whilst the centre one is enlarged so it will just slide over the axles.

 

The wheel backs are rotated a few times on some abrasive paper to remove any lumps and bumps caused by the moulding process and are now, in theory, ready for drilling....

 

 

 

However, I wanted the holes to be as perpendicular as possible and this called for another jig. A quick rummage in my box of brass sections and I found a suitable piece of box section. Two holes were marked out and drilled accordingly (right through), one for the axle and the other for the hole in the wheels....

 

 

The holes were then enlarged, the latter being made to accept some 1mm I/D brass tube....

 

 

This hole was also countersunk on one side, to allow the tube to be soldered in with a nice bead around it.

 

The tube is soldered in position & cleaned-up and having removed one wheel from the axle, it's time to drill....

 

 

With the drill inserted into the tube, the box section jig is slid over the axle and rotated until the drill drops through the appropriate hole in the brass disc....

 

 

The wheel is resting on a piece of wood and the protruding axle passes through a hole in the wood, enabling the wheel to sit down flat and steady. It's worth putting a small piece of tape from the disc to the wheel, to prevent it rotating.

 

The finished wheelset....

 

 

 

 

The first wheelset was drilled from the back, but I found it difficult to clean-up the front face of the wheels where the drill had broken through. The next wheelset was drilled from the front and this gave much better results, though obviously, the wheels have to be reversed on the axles....

 

 

 

I'm off to the ALSRM bash at Rivermead on the 9th May and having given it some thought (and having had some seeds of doubt sown by 28ten regarding the track holding characteristics of long wheelbase rigid stock), I've decided to buy some Slater's sprung W-irons for my PMV.

 

I've also had a change of heart with regard to the footsteps under the doors. It was my intention to leave them off, but having looked a few pictures of the prototype, I've decided they look much better fitted, so mine are going back on!

 

That's all for now.

 

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Sunday 10th May 2009: Having visited the ALSRM exhibition at Reading yesterday, I picked up some sprung W-irons for the PMV. Here's what you get in the packet....

 

 

Each unit consists of a W-iron, Spring, Hornblock guide and Hornblock. Once assembled, the W-irons are attached to the floor with a couple of self-tapping screws and these are also supplied.

 

I decided to make just one unit for now, to see how it went. Here, the parts have been cleaned-up and the rivets embossed on the keeper plate....

 

 

One of the plastic W-irons supplied with the kit can be seen in the background.

 

The parts are assembled and the Hornblocks slide up and down nicely....

 

 

The folds have been made and soldered....

 

 

 

Although pleased with the way it seemed to work, I wasn't keen on seeing the prongs of the Hornblock guide peeking out below the Hornblock. The prongs limit the downward travel, but I decided better idea might be to solder a length of wire underneath the Hornblock and then remove the prongs....

 

 

 

Having got this far, I'm now concerned that with the weight of the vehicle pushing down on the springs (causing the Hornblocks to move up in the W-irons), the wire will be quite noticeable! I have another idea, but that'll have to wait until the next session.

 

Before going to bed, I managed to glue the underframe moulding and solebars to the floor - I feel like I'm getting somewhere at last.

 

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Sunday 7th June 2009: Following on from the previous post, my attempts at adding sprung W-irons have been aborted on this project - the Slater's springs were bottoming out due to the rather large amount of roofing lead I'd put inside. I bought some stiffer springs from Eileen's Emporium and they bottomed out too. So, it's back to the plastic W-irons and a few days previously, I'd managed to glue a couple of these on....

 

 

 

Today's task was to chemically blacken the wheel sets before fitting these and the remaining two W-irons....

 

 

It was nice to see it trundling along my yard or so of track, but I thought I'd better put it back in the box to let everything set. In a few more days, I hope to start adding the rest of the underframe details.

 

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