MAP66

Well, I'm still in the land of sillyness by continuing to entertain the idea of modelling the backhead. I'm not quite at the stage of inserting pencils up my nostrils and wearing my underpants on my head but todays modelling stint has brought me dangerously close and I feel that the men in white coats are getting closer to dragging me away! That's the silly bit over and below is how the backhead looks at the moment, as you can see my sanity was tested by attempting to model the water gauge and the steam brake. I'm still smiling though and that's the main thing. The water gauge was filled with Glue n Glaze which has dried clear and before this, all the insides where given a coat of brass colour paint. For the steam brake, I enlisted the help of a couple of very small signal pully wheels. I found a better and faster technique for making the tapered handles using Glue n Glaze instead of attempting to file to shape. I am now working out how much further I can go before I add the black paint, then some pipes and then pick out all the copper and brass work... The water gauge is a bit crude, but still better than the cast whitemetal one. It's not glued to the boiler front as yet as some more bits need to be added. I had a quick count up and so far there are about 58 separate pieces to the backhead which all required some sort of fettling before fitting. There's probably at least another 30 separate bits to go and then of course, the rest of the cab interior. Starting the water gauge by carving out the sight glass space on two pieces of plastrut angle. Just out of shot to the right are my underpants and 2 pencils on standby.

That's looking excellent , I knew you had it in yer Rob, just needed rooting out 😁 If your done with the wire, I would now suggest adding the sea foam next before the washes as the stalks will need grafting onto the wire using superglue gel and an accelerator. The join is then disguised by smoothing over with more gloop (filler). When all that's done give the white filler areas and all the florets of seafoam a dusting of grey primer. For my Oak, I then used a combination of rattle can chaos black (Citadel) and a very dark matt green and matt brown and sprayed the seafoam and some of the finer branches. Then, For the washes as dark as you can get them. I use 2 colours german black brown and a very dark grey (almost black) and dilute them to consistency of milk and then load your brush and let the paint flow down the trunk and thicker branches starting from the top and working downwards. You may need several coats, the idea being to reach a stage where you can see all the bark detail nicely detailed with the paint in all the crevices. It's fine to use the brush to work the paint in as well if any parts are getting missed. For the finer branches you can just paint them starting from the tips and working back towards the trunk using the same colours straight from the pot or only slightly thinned down. Whatever method you adopt, when it's all dry you can see if you want to add any further detail in places on the trunk or larger branches buy adding small blobs of filler, good for broken branch stumps, larger cracks, crevices etc or more root detail. I try to have a good colour reference photo of the tree I am modelling to refer to. If your happy with how it looks after the washes, then you can start adding in the various colours using paints working mainly on the raised areas, try and keep the recesses darker where the washes have collected. I used dry brushing, normal painting and weathering powders to get the desired effect I was after.

Moving on from the last post, Ibuprofen could be the answer, not just for aches and pains but also for modelling chequer plate. You are also more likely to have a packet of these in the bathroom cabinet. Grateful for your opinions, I think I prefer the foil pattern on the Ibuprofen tablet strips over the previous lot. You get 3 strips in a pack, the red section highlights the useable bit which is about 72 x 14mm, so quite a bit. For comparison, the first version above and the Ibuprofen version below. I have experimented with a sooty look. Going back to the cab interior and continuing with detailing of the back head. I have been adorning it with further embellishments, mainly old bits of plastic sprue filed to shape. We now have the manifoldy bit which sits atop the boiler front, complete with valves but still minus the gauges. There are a couple of important assemblies still to attempt, that being the water gauge to the left of the regulator and steam brake to the right. Both are mounted on the front of the boiler and then the various pipes can be added. I will need to paint it all first though before I add the pipes. Slowly getting there!

I thought this deserved further investigation, so I took a rummage through the medical supplies and found that there are subtle differences in the relief on the foil strips. Obviously differs through manufacturer and type of tablet. I found a potential candidate for the chequer plate, that being Irbersartan 150mg tablets. You can get a couple of a 3cm square pieces of foil from each strip which is more than enough for the chequer plate sections of the cab interior. I was intending to make the floor again anyway, the first version was really just a trial piece to see how it would all fit together within the body shell. I will definitely need to grind more off the motor spindle to allow some room to install the flame effect led. I intend to build a tiny enclosure on the back of the fire box opening to house the led and deflect the glow into the cab. Anyway, below is the foil painted up to look a bit rusty, I think it can definitely work as chequer plate in a cab interior and possibly other applications as well. When I use it for the cab, it will be a coal black colour with some gun metal dry brushed over the top. Thanks again to @phil_sutters for the idea.

Thanks for the idea Phil, we have tablets in the house' I'll check tomorrow to see if any of the foil can be used. If it can then that's a great tip.

I managed a little more on the cab interior today, not a lot as it was high concentration stuff and I chose to stop on a high after fitting the regulator handle. Yes. it was good to give the brain a rest after todays stint, oh for a mini lathe and all the filling it would save. It wasn't all modelling though, half the time spent was hunting for stuff which I could use to resemble pipes, handles, dials and all the other gizmos and gadgets found in the cab. So in summary, at the end of todays mini session, I managed to extend the handle to the fire box lever mechanism, add a representation of the shelf above the fire box opening (the one the billy can sits on) and of course the regulator with handle. I made the regulator by filing down to shape a scrap piece of brass fret onto which was glued a shaped piece of plastic micro rod for the handle section. Regulator fitted, the rounded hump on the regulator shaft has a hole through it on the prototype as this is where the linkage bar is attached which then connects the regulator to all the rods and gubbings below deck and eventually back to the cab in the auto coach. I will be attempting my version of the linkage bar 🤪

Thanks Bill, I try and keep it light humoured where possible and its good to know that my wit puts a smile on your face (hopefully others too) 😄

Thanks Rob, that's a nice message to read first thing in the morning, You know, my first train was a painted block of wood with cotton reels for wheels, I'm smiling while typing this, I like to think that my interpretation of realism has moved on since then 😄

I’ve been carrying on with the cab interior and have now made a start on the back head, using plasticard and other bits. I do have the ‘Mainly Trains’ backhead MT325 which is a cast white metal part. However, the fire box doors are shut on this and I wanted them open to show the flame flicker! This maybe another foolish endeavour but so far, its proving to be way more enjoyable than fitting wipers to wheels. I’m also banking on a good coating of paint to disguise a multitude of bodges within the confines of the cab. The first WIP image of my attempt of modelling the backhead with fire box doors open. The Mainly Trains cast part is shown on the left for comparison. I have adapted some MSE point rodding cranks to resemble the lever mechanism for opening and closing the fire box doors. This still needs extending upwards on the left for the handle. Still lots more bits and bobs to fabricate and add on.

To follow on from the last post (which means I’m back in 2024 for another year of modelling – Happy New Year folks) but alas, it was not a good start for the electricals. I found that the wipers for the front drivers where not a success. This was due to the pb wire being too short, meaning I could not get the required contact tension with the wheel rims. So, scrap that and turn to Plan B. Which would involve going top side again and finding a solution for attaching the wipers for the front drivers similar to that used for the rear drivers. Between the drivers, I glued a small piece of pcb strip onto the outside of the side frame. Onto this, I soldered a length of pb wire with its end providing a bit of contact tension onto the top of the front drivers. From the pcb strip I then soldered on a length of wire cable back to the first pcb strip. This would now allow electrical pick up from wheels on all three axles. Went to test it, more disappointment! The rear driver is now suffering from wheel slip and loss of traction. The culprit seemed to be the electrical wire connecting the two pcb strips which was preventing the driving wheels on the motor axle from being in full contact with the track. Somehow, the middle axle bushes were no longer dropping to the correct level within the horn block guides. I put this down to the tension introduced by the electrical wire either pushing or being in contact with the free vertical travel of the gearbox. I was fed up fathing about with trying to resolve this, so instead I removed the front driver wipers and electrical wires and the traction improved. There is no Plan C! as this one has beaten me, so electrical pick up will be confined to the rear driver and trailing wheels and unfortunately not the front drivers as originally planned. I decided to take my mind of this disappointment by tackling the bodyshell instead. A change of scenery and where better to start than the cab interior. It was about time I started to look at where and how to fit a sound decoder anyway and the only two space options available seem to be within the bunker or under a false cab floor. Testing the false floor option first, I quickly made up a cab floor from embossed styrene sheet and trial fitted within the cab. This eliminated the under the floor option as there was not adequate room for the decoder. So, the decoder will be destined for the bunker then! Start of the cab floor, the closer edge is the fire box end and the wall at the back forms one side of the bunker. The other side of the bunker is the body shell itself and when fitted together there is a void for the sound decoder. Cab floor inserted, showing the bunker space available. I didn't have any proper chequer plate for the cab floor sections near the doors, so I used a couple of drain covers . From this angle you can see that the motor spindle almost encroaches into the cab and a little more may need to be ground off to allow the backhead to fit. The motor is at its lowest position and the spindle still clears the floor, so that's all good.

Happy New Year Rob and Miss R and all the best for 2024!

Happy New Year Chris and all the best for 2024!

Hello folks, I trust you all had a good Christmas day and are still enjoying the festive Season? I popped back to the workbench today as I wanted to crack the electrical pick up problem with a satisfactory solution for the wipers and where best to site them on the chassis. While looking at the chassis again, I took the opportunity to touch up the chipped paintwork around the wheels and parts of the chassis and to glue on the wheel balance weights. Now here’s a thing to ponder while munching on yet another mince pie. Does anyone out there have an effective solution to prevent the paint from chipping off, which they wouldn’t mind sharing? Especially from around the wheel rims where it’s particularly vulnerable to chipping. I also found that just general handling of the chassis was enough for any raised areas of paintwork to rub off very easily. Before any painting, I had previously prepared all NS and brass surfaces by giving them a thorough wash and rinse and when dry a coat of etch primer. Still didn’t help though, the paint still comes off, even after a coat of matt varnish. I have used acrylic paints, should I be using enamel paints on metals instead? Going back to the electricals, I found some pcb board, copper clad sleepers and a few lengths of phosper bronze wire 0.35mm diameter and I got to work. I found that I could glue a strip of pcb board vertically to the side frames in the gap behind the rear sandboxes. I dealt with the trailing rear wheels first and soldered a length of PB wire to the pcb strip which had a slight bend introduced to provide a little resistive tension against the tops of the rear wheels. Next, the rear drivers. Another length of PB wire was soldered to the same pcb strip above the previous length and slightly below the top of the rear driver wheel. The other end of this length of wire then rests on the top of the rear driver wheels with enough resistive tension to remain in contact with the wheels through its vertical movement. A different approach was required for the front drivers and I decided to fit the pick ups from the underside of the chassis. Two pieces of copper clad sleeper were glued to the underside of the front spacer, onto which was previously soldered an angled piece of pb wire. The pb wire acts on the inside edge of the inner rim of the wheel. Next, I will need to test each wheel pick up separately to see if they all perform without any issue, progress pics below… Balance weights glued on and crankpin nuts have had a drop of blue threadlock applied. Note the pcb strip glued in place behind rear sandbox. PB wire soldered to pcb strip. This takes care of electrical pick up for the trailing wheels and rear drivers. Closer view of underside showing pick ups for front drivers using a combination of cut down copper clad sleepers and short lengths of angled pb wire. The lower assembly is still being clamped down until glue cures.

Seasons Greetings to all, Certainly, for the autocoach, the HO 1/87 passengers are a better fit for the interior seating and for the standing driver. I had already ordered seated 1/76 scale passengers before I decided to try the smaller 1/87 scale, they will now be saved and used later for platform seating etc. ModelU are quite expensive and I found a few appropriate seated figures from the following site https://www.scale3d.co.uk/ which are considerably cheaper, some of the figures are also available in 1/87 scale and 1/76. Here's a link to a couple of them but there are a few others, but mostly male figures https://www.scale3d.co.uk/products/dsp178-male-sitting https://www.scale3d.co.uk/products/dsp188-older-female-with-basket-sitting . I find the print quality to be pretty good as well for the price. I hope you don't mind but I have included a couple of images below from a modern era park diorama showing their figures. Judge the print quality for yourself, I think its pretty good. The female in the first image is even wearing glasses, amazing really! I have no affiliation with Scale3D, just a happy customer who has saved a few quid.

Merry Christmas to you both Rob and all the best for 2024 🎅🐺🍾

Thanks Gents, Very much appreciated words of encouragement, which have raised a smile on my previously panicked face.

Well, I finally succumbed to tackling the brake gear. It was not long into it that my trepidation of taking this stage on was realised. As, this has proved to be the most testing and tedious stage of the build. Even more so than the gear box and even more so than the inside motion. This is not the fault of the HL kit, far from it. This is me, not entirely mastering detail soldering and handling small parts simultaneously. In hindsight, a finer tip on the soldering iron for the in and out quick soldering technique would have been a huge advantage. However, after much fiddling, re-soldering and fettling everything to within an inch of its life… I finally managed to assembly it all and do a dry fit. Some final tweaking is still necessary but overall, I think I’ve gotten away with it. Just some final soldering to do once everything is correctly lined up. Just in case your wondering, as this was mentioned earlier, the whole brake gear assembly is designed to be removable. I therefore need to ensure I don’t solder the wrong bits after all that hard work! Once final soldering is complete and locating rods cut down to size, it will be removed for painting. View from the underside. Locating rods for brake hangers and stretchers still require cutting down to size. Soldering is a bit blobby on the middle stretcher, lucky its not visible! A view showing a better idea of the workings. Side on. On the tracks, side on. Next I will be looking into possible locations for installing the wipers for electrical pick up. I will be aiming for electrical pick up from both driving axles and the trailing axle.

A few posts ago, I mentioned that a solution was required to attach the front of the chassis to the bodyshell. I keep on finding excuses to put off the brake gear assembly! In my defence, securing the chassis and body shell together securely but not permanently is important and something which really should have been sorted by now and certainly before I start dabbling with the brakes. The idea I’m using is taken from a 48XX HL chassis build over on the Scale4 forum. We start by using a spare part from the kit and in my case it’s the front spacer for a 00 scale build. This is cut down to size and a nut is soldered to one side. The adapted front spacer etch for a 00gauge model which is spare for my build with soldered on nut. Some plastic material is filed away at the bottom of the removeable smoke box section, enough for a flush fit of the adapted front spacer. The spacer is superglued in place being careful not to get any glue on the main body shell, otherwise the removeable smoke box and boiler section will be bonded to the main bodyshell. Here we have the same front spacer, showing the opposite side and now glued in place to the underside of the smoke box. When the glue has cured. The chassis is offered up to the bodyshell, the rear lug is located and the front of the chassis is swung up into the bodyshell. Next the bolt is lined up and screwed into the nut, which had previously been soldered in place. Nice and secure and simple to take apart again. Back at Tyteford Halte again, weird to see daylight under the boiler on an Airfix model. This shot makes me think that poor old body shell is going to need some serious attention very soon.

A little more jiggery pokery with the chassis was required at the workbench this morning, which became evident on fitting the bodyshell. The crankpins would indeed foul against the lower valence of the body shell. This was resolved by winding them in a few more turns and gently filing down flat the excess length of the pins themselves. This was followed up by another rolling test under power and thankfully all went well. I next wanted to check the ride height at the front and back of the loco, using the buffer height as a reference. This is a well designed chassis and provision is there to adjust ride height up and down at the front and rear of the loco independently. As this loco is destined to live out the remainder of its days permanently coupled up to the autocoach, it made sense to check the loco's buffer height up against the autocoach. Both vehicles just about fitted on the test track together and again, testament to High Levels design, I found that no height adjustment was necessary as the buffers lined up perfectly. An underside view with bodyshell temporarily fitted. This is before the crankpins were screwed in further and then filed down. When the brakegear is finally fitted, it will give me an idea of how and where to install the wiper assembly for electrical pick up. Good chassis design meant no further height adjustment was necessary to match the autocoach. I used the driving end of the coach to test ride height as the end which would be coupled up (luggage end) has lots of wires coming out of it, which were in the way. I think, when coupled up to the luggage end, with steam and brake hoses connected with auto coupling rod and whistle chain attached it should look the part. Well, it better had after all the time I've spent on this 🤪

Nice work Rob, there must have been a lot of tea drunk since the last post. When your happy with the filler and bark detail on the main trunk and larger branches, I found it easier to then give it a base coat of paint. My two go to paints for this are Vallejo German black brown and they do a black grey colour, sorry, don’t have the name of that one. Dilute both colours down to consistency of milk and with a suitably sized brush, load it well and working from the top branches and top of trunk let the paint flow down the tree towards the base and it will highlight and pick up all the textures and details as it flows. I normally apply a couple of coats like this and when dry it makes it easier to see if any further detailing or filler work is needed. When that stage is completed, you can think about adding any extra finer gauge copper wire to represent the smaller branches and twiggy stuff or going in straight with the sea foam? Either will work or a combination of both, once attached use more filler to blend in to get a seamless join. For the sea foam, I try and keep most of the tufty florets facing upwards with the odd one or two facing down on a few of the lower branches as it looks more natural and tree like for the Oak I did. Basically, just work from a reference photo of an Ash tree and go from there. I’m telling you how to suck eggs here Rob, you know what your doing. 👍

I have decided to fit wiper pick-ups, which means I can get the wheels on and work it out from there. However, as always there is always something nagging me which needs sorting first. That something happened to be the rear wheel set on this occasion. I had painted the inside frame after dropping out the wheelset and managed to get paint where it shouldn’t be, which resulted in the rear wheel set hornblocks binding instead of sliding smoothly up and down. So, it all had to come out again, to allow access for a file to remove the paint. Some time later, I had it sorted and it was back to the main wheels. All crank pins had been fitted and I paid attention to ensure that all screw heads were well countersunk into the rear of the wheel boss to prevent them from catching on the side frames. Rightly or wrongly, I super glued them in place. The chassis kit includes axle washers of 2 different thicknesses (0.2 and 0.4mm). I opted for 0.4mm and slipped one over the front axle with wheel already attached. The axle was then pushed through the axle bushes and a second washer placed on the other end. The opposite wheel was lined up onto the axle, quartered by eye and pushed on by hand. So far, so good but now was the tricky driver axle which needed to engage the gearbox drive! Much fiddling, balancing and choice words later the driver axle was in with gearbox engaged. The axles opposite wheel was then pressed on, once again by hand. I then fitted the coupling rods, some more fathing, fettling and choice words later I had one side fitted and thankfully the opposite side went far more smoothly. Then it was testing time. The rolling chassis was placed on the test track and power was supplied from a Bachmann basic controller. Crocodile clips went from the track rails to the motor terminals and I turned the controllers speed dial a few notches, then watched and listened intently. The moment I was hoping for happened, a promising sound and the turning of wheels resulted in motion with no sign of spluttering or stalling. A satisfying moment indeed, time for a Doombar or three. Here she is, after just completing the electrical test. There is still some general tidying up to do around the chassis, some rods to cut down to size and the crank pin nuts need to go on further and the pins cut down. Then, I can go back to the brake gear and do my best get that fitted correctly.

Nice work, its already looking very good indeed, are you having fun?

By the way Rob, your wire tree armature is looking absolutely superb. Most of the trees I’ve made started as plastic tree armatures with wire and sea foam grafted on. I have however, made a couple of trees using just wire for the armature and it looked exactly like yours at this stage. You’re probably thinking, as I did, that how can this twisted lump of wire turn out to be a convincing looking tree? Don’t worry or be deterred, it’s meant to look like that at this stage and it WILL turn out absolutely magnificent in the end. Keep on following Gordons book and keep the progress pics coming. 🌳

I now have the gearing mostly assembled and the motor coupled up to the gearbox. The final drive gear is fitted when the driver axle is fitted. So, for now and without the final drive gear fitted, I hooked the motor and gearbox up to a 9V battery supply via crocodile clips and spun the motor in either direction for a few seconds. Everything seemed to work fine with no pops or plumes of smoke. With that test completed, I used a 2 part epoxy resin to glue in the drive shafts as it’s the gears which rotate and not the shafts. The next step will be to attempt to get the driver axle in with final gear and press on the second wheel. However, I read further on in the instructions where you are advised to fit the plunger pick ups before wheels are fitted! So, some more research required as I’m not sure what’s best, plunger type or wiper pick-ups? Wiper pick-ups can be fitted after the wheels go on. Any ideas or advice on either method, would be much appreciated. Gear box and motor become one. The final gear is shown to left of gearbox, the driver axle will eventually pass through the central axle bush and then through one side of the gearbox bush through the driver gear, out the other gearbox bush and finally the opposite axle bush. Easy eh!!! Close-up of the worm drive, showing gap between teeth. I think I have the gap correct, the instructions state there should be daylight between the teeth but with minimal backlash. The blobs on the frame casing are epoxy resin, holding the drive shafts in place. Too risky to solder in place as the plastic gears are only mm's away.

Depends on the tree your modelling, but I have found that masking tape wrapped tightly around the trunk and some of the larger limbs of the armature helps smooth out and disguise the wire profiles. The filler or gloop can still be applied over the top. For the final bark detailing and for other detailing such as broken off tree limbs and scarring etc. I use a much stiffer mix as its better to work with using sculpting tools or your fingers. That broken off tree limb on the image below is just moulded filler. If you’re a tea drinker, save the dust you get from the bottom of the box of tea bags as its very useful for sprinkling onto stiffer wet filler to add extra bark texture. I use it at the junction of main branches where it joins the trunk, like in image below (it’s the brown stuff). That’s the same Oak I showed earlier, before the extra wire and sea foam was added. Once fully dried, the tea dust reacts well when overpainted with thinned down acrylics and helps give the effect of bark textures. When you get to the painting stage, something else good to have at your disposal is MIG sun bleach filter, I use several coats of this as a final stage to painting and weathering to give a mossy green tinge effect to certain areas of a tree. Just for reference, the paler textured areas of the trunk and branches are the result of applying deep gap filler by hand from the tub with a small amount of dilute pva which helps it adhere to the plastic armature. This method was used for the main trunk and larger branches. I found that it dries with that texture which is very helpful. I used a slightly more dilute filler mix and applied by brush to the smaller type upper branches and upper trunk.