tim4948

Hi Phil I have located the coach and I had the same issue with the comet gas tanks being too big and the cross members getting in the way I tackled it a slightly different way which was to build new tanks from scratch out of plastic tubing and then cut them to fit either side of the cross members which then meant that I didn’t have to touch the cross members. Hope this helps.

Hi Phil, Sorry for not responding sooner, haven’t been on here too much recently due to work commitments, glad that you have enjoyed looking through the thread. I’ll locate the model and take a picture to show how I achieved fitting the tanks with the cross bracing, hope it’s not too late to be of assistance to you. Tim

I have finally manage to get round to assembling and finishing off the buffet car so here is the finished coach.

I have now adjusted the shelving units behind the counter and have also painted them. Another job that I have been doing is creating the table lamps, these were made from 0.5mm brass wire bent into a U shape and one side trimmed down, I then cut some 2mm sections of hexagonal plastic rod and drilled a hole in the centre and then fixed to the short side of the brass wire. Here is a completed one ready for fitting. Once they were all made they were then fitted to the tables, next step will be to paint the brass wire silver. The sides have also been painted and have had the transfers applied.

Thanks for that Sandy, from your description I have come up with these to put behind the counter.Tim

The next project has now been started and is slightly smaller than the previous build, as I had recently purchased an 57ft LMS brake 3rd (pictured below) I decided that I would see if I could change it up a bit so after looking at various comet coach sides I settled on the LMS buffet car to diagram 1948, as it was the same length and something unusual. The first step was to completely dismantle the donor coach and remove all of the mounded details on the roof, sides and ends (apart from the steps on the ends), I then marked out where the new window openings are going to be. Once I had removed enough of the material from the donor coach the new sides were then offered up to make sure that everything was going to fit like it should. The roof was the next part to be tackled with the strips and vents added quickly followed by the rails from the ends Then it was onto the underframe where the battery boxes and mounded dynamo were removed and a new battery box, v hangers and dynamo were added. (plasticard has now covered the voids left from removing the original battery boxes) Lastly the interior was made and I decided to tackle the counter first as this was the most difficult bit with it being curved, first the shape was cut out of 1mm plasticard and 2 legs were added 1 to each straight side. Next a 0.25mm thick piece of plasticard was added to the sides to form the curve on the sides. I then built the rest of the interior out of 1mm plasticard and fitted it all together. It is basically now all ready for paint apart from the interior which according to the drawing that came with the sides there are 2 box shaped objects behind the counter surface but I have no idea what they are, I have looked on the internet and have only come up with 1 picture which is side on and shows them to be almost the full height of the interior, if anyone can let me know what they are it would be appreciated as I can then include them, I have circled the area on the drawing below.

I have finally managed to get round to finishing the cantilever set so here are some pictures and a video of its first outing (since being completed) onto Northwick.

It has been a long while since the last update (work getting in the way) since then the set of wagons have had their first outing on the clubs layout Northwick, here are some pictures of them whilst they were running. The main cantilever set consisting of 2 Protrol B's, 2 Flat Q's and the Weltrol N The Flat U And finally the Flatrol AA There is also a short video of the wagons running on the layout which hopefully shows how each part of each wagon moves when going round curves or through points. The set of 7 wagons are almost 5ft long and have 48 axles or 96 wheels in total!

I have been rather busy this week on the wagon building front. The securing rings were made using 2 different methods the first one was for what I call the D rings, the first step was to bend a piece of 0.3 mm diameter wire into a U shape round a file handle, then trim the 2 ends so that they are even. These were then fixed to the wagon and a section of 0.5mm diameter plastic rod was cut to fit across the top of the U section. The next step was to create the circular rings, for these the first step was to again take a piece of 0.3mm diameter wire and wind it round a piece of 1mm plastic rod. The wire was then slid off of the plastic rod. Then the wire was cut each time it did a complete rotation which then gave you a load of rings. As you can see in the picture above the 2 ends of the ring were not flush, so it was a simple case of pressing them so that the end were flush. These were then fitted to the wagons. I have also attached all of the brake wheels to the wagons as seen in the pictures below (Flat Q’s above) Weltrol AA. Protrol B. For the Flatrol N this did not require brake wheels but brake levers so these were made from 1mm x 0.5mm plastic strip and the fitted to the subframe. This basically completes these wagons (minus a few little things that need adjusting) and whilst building them I came across a picture of the LNER Flat U which was a 8 axle flat wagon and thought I would love to have a go at building that and so I decided that as was already building a set of LNER wagons then I may as well add this one in so that it can be painted the same time as the rest of them, couple that with the fact that the basic body structure was an elongated version of the Flat Q’s it made sense to me. So I have set about building it the body was the first to be tackled and was built in exactly the same way as the Flat Q’s. The bogies were then built up (these were parkside ones) It was then time to create the 2 subframes these were made from 1mm thick plasticard with 1mm square strip added for strength, 2 holes were then drilled (1 at each end) for the bolts to go through for attaching the bogies. A piece of 1mm thick plasticard was then added to the central section of the subframe and a hole was drilled through the centre for the wagon body to attach, the hole was enlarged on the underside of the subframe so that the bolt and nut will be hidden inside the frame when assembled. 2 of the bogies were tested with the subframe to make sure that everything was going to work like it should (and I can report that there were no issues). A small section of plastic tube was then attached round the bolts on the wagon body so that the ride height was correct. The rectangular headed buffers were then added. Then the brake wheels and the frame work for them to attach to the subframes were made up. And the whole wagon was then put together. This was then followed by creating more D shaped rings and attaching then to the sides of the wagon.

The good news is that all of the axel boxes and springs have now been fitted, here are some pictures of the wagons with them on, first up the 2 Portrol B’s Followed by the Weltrol AA. Then the Flatrol N Here’s the 2 of them together for a bit of comparison (Flatrol N on the left Weltrol AA on the right) The next step was to fit the spring dampeners onto each end of each spring (of which there are 80 springs) and each of the dampeneners are made from 3 parts so that is another 480 parts to add on to the bogies, so I set about cutting enough bits for all of the dampeners. The parts were then attached in the order shown below. It was then a case of repeating the process until all of the springs had had the same treatment, this took a little while but here they are. I also noticed whilst looking at more pictures of the Flatrol N that I had made the subframe too short, I should have made it long enough so that it is the same length as the end bogies, this would also mean that I would need to remove the buffer beam that is attached to the bogie and then reattach the buffer beam to the subframe. I set about rectifying this by creating an extension piece, first up was to create the basic framework from 1mm plasticard. The flanges were then replaced on the sides to help hide the joint and added top and bottom. Here is a before and after shot to show what has been changed. I have also started adding some extra bits that go between the dampeners on the bogies of the Flat Q’s, these have been made from a 3mm square by 1mm thick piece of plasticard with a piece of 0.25mm thick plastcard cut to shape added on top. Here’s a before and after shot showing the differences. The next step will be to add the securing rings to the wagons.

After a lot of thinking and looking at a few not very clear photos to work out how to create the links between the cantilever arms and either the Weltrol N/Flatrol AA I decided to give what I thought was the easiest way to achieve it, the main problem was to not only allow for backwards and forwards movement but also allowing for some up and down movement so that they won’t detach or cause derailments on rough track. The first step was to cut out some triangular pieces from 0.25mm plasticard, the ones that were destined for the cantilever arms had a 0.5mm hole drilled in them for the pivot arrangement to be fitted, the triangles were then fitted to a 2mm x 3mm x 1mm thick piece of plasticard. The picture below shows the cantilever arrangement to the left and the well arrangement to the right. The next step was to take a 1mm piece of round plastic rod and drill a 0.5mm hole down the centre of it, this was then followed by drilling another 0.5mm hole through 1 side of it, a piece of 0.5mm brass rod was then passed through 1 triangle, through the centre of the plastic rod and then through the other triangle. Once that had been done then another piece of 0.5mm brass rod was cut and stuck in the hole that was drilled in the side of the plastic rod. This then gave the backwards and forwards movement needed, here is a picture of it before fitting to the cantilever arm. This was then fitted to the end of the cantilever arm. It was then on to the far more simpler arrangement for the ends of the wells as all that these needed was a 0.6mm hole drilled through them for the rod on the cantilever arm to pass trough as this then gave the upwards and downwards movement, here is a close up of the arrangement at the end of the Flatrol N. This is when I finally came across a decent picture of the pivot arrangement on the end of one of the cantilever arms which showed a very similar arrangement to what I had created this showed that there was 1 major difference which was that the triangular sections on the cantilever arms were too short (top to bottom) so I set about rectifying this and cut out new longer triangles and fitted them. Here is a couple of pictures of the completed links between the arms and wells. The next job will be to fit 1 or 2 axel boxes and springs to all of these wagons.

Work on the cantilevers has progressed quite well, the first step was to cut out 4 side sections out of 1mm plasticard, once the first 2 were done I couldn’t resist placing them on top of the Flat Q’s and see what the total set was beginning to look like. As you can see the total size of the wagon set is going to be big and the thought came to mind of “i’m going to need a bigger siding!” Anyway back to the building of the cantilevers, once the 4 sides had been cut out I then set about assembling them, I stuck 1mm square strip around the edge of 1 of the sides and then stuck the second side on top - I decided that this was the easiest option compared to cutting out 3 sides per cantilever. And here are the 2 cantilevers once assembled, the lines on them are for where the flanges will be going. I then turned my attention to the pivots for the cantilevers, the first thing to be done was to countersink 2 more bolts into some 1mm plasticard and then cover the heads so that they won’t be seen (basically the same as I’ve done for all the others) The next step was to drill a hole in the middle of each of the Flat Q’s for the bolts on the cantilevers to go through. This was then followed by sticking on a square of 0.25mm plasticard over the hole This then meant that I would have to drill the hole through the 0.25mm plasticard again but I felt that doing it this way would help ensure that the plasticard was placed centrally, I then cut out 2x 2mm sections of plastic tubing to then stick on top of the square part. This was then followed by applying all of the flanges to the cantilevers along with the pivot on the bottom. This was when an unexpected but logical problem appeared. As you have probably noticed in the above picture the cantilever arm is heavier at the weight end than the other, to be honest this wasn’t something that had crossed my mind when building it but if I had thought logically then I probably would have thought of it. So I decided that I would leave that issue until I had added the rest of the details had been fitted on as I would be adding more weight to the weight end. The central flange that is different to the rest of them was then made and fitted to the arms. It was then time to move onto the weight ends of the arms, first the flanges for the top, middle and bottom were made out of 0.25mm plasticard and then fitted. This was then followed by the top weights being made out of 1mm plasticard, assembled and then fitted. Then the bottom weights were made also out of 1mm plasticard. Now that all of the weight had been added it was then time to correct the angle. After a bit of head scratching I came up with an idea of how to solve the problem of adding weight to the other end without it showing - the solution was fairly simple the first step was to remove the end flange. This was then followed by carefully removing the central 1mm square piece of plastic which then gave access to the central void in the cantilever, it was then a case of working out how much weight was needed to correct the angle - I used old scalpel blades to do this by balancing them on top until the arm came down level with the wagon (it took 7) they were then weighed and then the same weight was cut out of a strip of lead that was 1mm thick. The above picture shows the weights for the 2 arms - the top strip was cut in half ready to go in the arm and the bottom one will have the same treatment. Once the lead strips had both been cut in 2 they were then stuck inside the cantilever arms. The arms were then checked to make sure that they now sat correctly on the Flat Q’s And as you can see in the picture above they now sit at the correct angle so the end flange was then added to the arms which then hid the lead. The next step will be to create the links for between the arms and the Flatrol AA/Weltrol N.

The flanges have now been added to the subframes, these have been made out of 0.25mm plasticard. As this basically completed the subframe I moved on to making the Weltrol N, once the sides were cut out of 1mm plasticard I assembled them to make 2 H beams. This was then followed by cutting out the top and bottom flanges along with the floor (both out of 0.25mm plasticard) along with the 2 end pieces made out of 1mm plasticard. This was then followed by adding the parts with the pivots on to both ends. These were then boxed in and the rest of the details were then added between the well sides. As this completes the main structure of the well I have now moved onto the Flatrol AA, for this the sides were also cut out of 1mm plasticard. Small strips of 1mm plastcard were ten cut to go between each of the girders, it was then a case of stick the first set of strips to the girder the stick the second girder on and repeat until all 4 were together. Once the 4 girders were joined together it was then time to put the Flatrol AA together to see ow it looks. The top and bottom flanges were then added along with end box sections that contain the pivot. The next step will be to start on the cantilever arms.

The flanges for the bottom of the solebars have now been added along with the top floor surface that was cut 2mm wider than the wagon so that it overhung the sides by 1mm each side, both of these were cut out of 0.25mm thick plasticard and as you can see the bolt heads are now hidden. The details for the underframe were the made out of 1mm plasticard, 2 strips of wood were also added to strengthen the wagon along with making it more rigid. It was then time to move onto making the bogies, which meant that I would need to ideally decide if I am going to do with option 1 build the Weltrol N or option 2 build the Flatrol AA as the basic structure of the bogies are the same it would make sense to do it as a batch build. So after a lot of deliberation and going back and forth on decisions (can anyone tell that I can be a bit indecisive?) I decided that I would go with option 3 which is to build both of them as I would have most likely to ended up building the other one if I did choose one to build. This then meant that I would now be building the basic structure for a total of 12 x 6 wheel bogies, the first job was to cut the sides out of 1mm plasticard, here’s the bogie sides for 1 of the Flat Q’s And here are the sides for either the Flatrol AA or the Weltrol N, there is a slight difference which is that the top corners on 4 of the sides have only been cut off at one end - this is because the square ends will be at each end of the wagon and will have the buffers attached to them. Once the sides were cut out and the holes drilled for the bearings it was then time to cut out the framework for the bogies again out of 1mm plasticard. Here is a picture of 1 from the underside. Once the bogies had all reached this stage I thought it would be nice to take a picture of them all together. I have now moved on to making a start on constructing the subframe for the Flatrol N, this has been cut out of 1mm plasticard. The pivots for the 2 bogies to be attached have also been made (using the same method to hide the heads of the bolts as used for the Flat Q’s) and were then fitted to the subframes. The next step will be to add the flanges to the sub frames and then make a start on the well sections.

The flanges have now been cut out of 0.25mm plasticard and fitted to the wagons. The diagonal bracing was then made for the ends of the wagons and fitted. The next step for these 2 wagons will be to add the details - chains, rivets, axle boxes etc. These will be tackled once the whole set has been built. So the next job, make a start on the pair of Flat Q’s, the top, buffer beams and sole bars have been cut out of 1mm plasticard and stuck together. The holes were then drilled for the bolts to go for the bogie pivots. These were then countersunk so that the bolt heads are flush with the top surface and the bolts fitted. This was done so that when the final top surface is fitted the bolts will be hidden.