D16/2 blog entry 5

The D16/2 is now finished

As I've been in the UK without broadband I've not been able to keep this blog up to date, coupled with the fact that due to the black card I've been using not showing up well in photos it would have been difficult to show my progress. But, as always,where there's a will there's a way, so I'm composing a draught of this blog on my phone with the new Google docs app, hoping to upload it online at the local library.

The next stages of the construction consisted of layering and shaping the roof with sandpaper, fitting bracing sections inside and glueing on the roof. This really firmed up the body.

I had hoped from the start to finish this particular model using acrylic ink to try to get a nice fine finish, so I masked the windows with Marscol and gave it several coats of Windsor and Newton's FW acrylic ink. The finish was good but showed all the joins rather badly which had to be filled. It was at this point I found that the ink didn't cover the white filler very well, so, it was back to black acrylic paint, more filling and rubbing down, more paint, etc.

When the paint had dried sufficiently I applied two strips of masking tape 2.5mm apart, round the body and filled the gap using a silver metallic marker pen to create the horizontal aluminium coloured band around the black body, as was the BR diesels' livery of that. period.

When this was completed I gave the whole thing a couple of coats of satin varnish and applied the number transfers which had to be in white as I couldn't obtain any in silver, the early BR logo was from Replica Railways. I had a problem with getting the numbers perfectly straight as the last three numbers are on the doors and as these were only 6.5mm wide it was a bit of a squeeze.

I then turned my attention to the hand rails there are four horizontal rails, one on each corner, I felt that fitting the verticle handrails either side of the doors would have been too dificult due to the close proximity of the horizontal ones to the edge of the door so these have been ommitted. The feed pipes from the water tanks were also fitted at this stage and painted matt black, the handrails painted silver I added the roof access panels and cab vents by applying a strip of masking tape to aid alignment, finaly another couple of coats of satin varnish finished it all off.

Next came the alterations to the bogies, if you remember I had removed the existing couplings. I fitted the buffer beams made up earlier together with some Bachmann sprung buffers. These were painted red, I'm pretty sure the Black liveried locos had them, I know the green liveried ones did. On the class 45 bogies used there are no steps into the cab doorways so these were made in plastic from a length of 4mm channel with some strip to form the steps and attached to the bogies with epoxy glue. The bogies were then painted by hand with some Humbrol aluminium acrylic paint, which was a nice dark shade and not too flashy as I had feared silver paint might be.

In the next part I'll show you pictures of the completed model

bye for now.