Painting locomotives without (much) paint.

[kirtleypete]

The brakes didn't take as long as I'd expected and being plastic at least they won't cause any shorts. I had to make six - the trailing wheels had brakes too!

 

 

The Westinghouse pump has been painted now too....I really must get that cab roof fixed in place!

 

 

 

Now she needs a Zimo sound decoder with a Terrier sound on it, that's about the closest I'm going to get,

 

Peter

[ianmaccormac]

I am amazed at this! I will have to have a go on my D1.

May I ask what the gearbox is please?

Thanks

Ian

[kirtleypete]

It's a Slater's unit Ian, I only used it because I'd got it here and it saved buying a new one. It's too big really, I had to remove some of the backhead in the cab though fortunately it doesn't show. They do run very well, I've used them before. If I was building it again I'd use a smaller gearbox. 

 

Peter

[kirtleypete]

Three final pictures, at least until the plates arrive. I've fitted the Salter safety valves so that she now really looks like a Stroudley engine. I'd been looking for castings for these but in fact you get two etched parts and the instruction to fabricate the rest out of wire and tube - I wasn't impressed. I used the etched parts for the top levers and stole the nice brass pieces from my Vulcan Terrier for the pillars. 

 

I've also improved the ends of the handrails alongside the smokebox, but these are only there until the correct sized brass tube arrives. The cab windows need glazing using Microscale Krystal Klear, as used by aircraft modellers; it's a thick white liquid that you put into the opening on the end of a piece of wire until it fills the space, then it dries hard and clear - much easier than cutting little discs of clear plastic.  Clack valves need adding too, and they are on order. The ones in the kit were OK but have you tried drillnig a 1mm hole in a tiny brass casting using hand tools to make a hole for for the wire? Meteor do them with the wire cast in, much easier. 

 

 

 

The cab roof has been fixed in place, and I replaced one of the side panels so that it was the same height as the one adjacent to it. I think the cab roof is too high - it looks like a white duvet! - but I'm not sure I can build a repalcement from scratch. Maybe one day..............

 

 

Peter

Edited June 22, 2015 by kirtleypete

[BG John]

The first plastic was cut in my effort to scratchbuild something to try this "painting" technique on last night. Hopefully the second bit will be cut sometime today! Mine will be a rather more subdued colour though!

[ianmaccormac]

Hi Peter

Looking very good indeed.

Hobbyhorse.co.uk for the safety valve castings, also the front lubricators?

Looking at the roof, are the parts around the edge folded down or up? They should be folded upward so forming a gutter sort of thing around the roof. I can't quite see if you have folded them the wrong way which would make the roof sit higher?

Cheers

Ian

[kirtleypete]

Well spotted Ian - I did! The trouble is then if I try to fold them back they'll just snap off. I still think the raised part of the roof is too high, though, even allowing for that. I'll get inspired to do something about it one day.

 

John, I'm delighted you're having a go. No idea what you mean about the colour, though!!

 

Peter

Edited June 22, 2015 by kirtleypete

[ianmaccormac]

Hi Peter

Also, looking at the loco in grey primer, I have just seen that the two side strips above the doorway should be folded horizontally. The combination of those two modifications should allow the roof to sit much lower! Hope you can manage that as it is a brilliant and very fast build. Inspiration to get on with mine!

Cheers

Ian

[kirtleypete]

I know, but I chickened out of doing it as there is no metal at all left in the middle over the opening.....it's too late to do it now, as with the side strips around the roof, trying to change things would cause too much damage. The tops of the brass window surrounds would have to be reduced too - I should have done it, cowardice triumphed over doing the right thing. 

 

My concern about the roof isn't the height from the track - frankly I don't really give a damn if that is too high or low by a mm or so - but the rise of the raised section in the middle compared to my Vulcan Terrier which has a nice cast roof. The whole thing is much flatter. Sadly, the Terrier roof won't fit the D1 - I've tried! 

 

The answer is to make a new roof from scratch, probabaly in plastic as I'm much more comfortable working with that. Watch this space.

Peter

[kirtleypete]

Sometimes you have to be shamed into doing the right thing! 

 

 

On the left is the cast roof from the Vulcan Terrier - a superb item, I'd have used it like a shot if it hadn't been too small. In the middle is the etched roof from the D1 kit, and on the right is the plastic one I've just made. It's much shallower, and it looks right. 

 

Unfortunately trying to photograph something white is a waste of time, but hopefully these pictures might give the impression of how it looks. I've levelled off the top of the cab with a disc in the Dremel, (without damaging anything!), and it should all now be the right height. 

 

 

 

The edge looks a bit rough, mainly because the paint was still wet. 

 

 

I think it looks much more like a Stroudley cab roof, so I'll know what to do with future kits. 

 

Now.........I really must get back to work!

Peter

[Quarryscapes]

A very good result there I think, Certainly looks the part! 

[edubs]

Great looking D Tank Pete.

[ianmaccormac]

Well I didn't mean to shame you into doing anything Pete, but that is a superb result!

I will keep that in mind.

Well done, an even better result!

Cheers

Ian

[kirtleypete]

I'm glad you did Ian - now I've got a much better model.  I imagine trying to draw a Stroudley roof in two dimensions when you are doing the artwork for the kit isn't the easiest thing to get right. Seemingly he designed them like that so that they didn't vibrate and irritate the crew - at a time when a lot of designers didn't even give the crew much of a cab!

 

Peter

[Nick Holliday]

Very nice looking model. I have always thought that the Albion roof solution, whilst making the best of trying to form it using a flat etched sheet, required a lot of work and never really captured the look of the real thing.  A good casting would be a better solution, as Peter K provided in his Stroudley Single and D2 kits. I imagine that the real roof was beaten out of a sheet (in two halves) using a steam hammer and a skilled operator, who used his eye, rather than a drawing, to get the required shape, which is why there were variations between locos, although it might be possible that there was a shaped block onto which the sheet was pressed, if there was enough production volume.

One minor point on your model - recent discussion within the Brighton Circle eGroup showed that the upstand angle around the roof was painted in the dark green edging colour, and did not appear to have been white, which would reduce the impact of the white of the actual roof.

[James Makin]

Great idea and some cracking results there, I've been dabbling in this for a while now, mainly to wagons and buildings so far, it's so much easier for the fiddly items and good for printing white vs DIY transfers - just print the whole side as paper.

 

This is my most recent printing project, the Ford 'blue train' the entire side is varnished photo paper, then with more layers of plasticard and weathering on top where appropriate -

 

 

I'm lazy and I do most of my wagon data panels this way as well, better choice of stencil fonts and sizes, and of course so much easier than lining up tiny transfers!

[kirtleypete]

Nice one James! There are more of us out there....

 

Nick, thanks for the tip about the roof edges - I'm all in favour of things that are as easy to put right as that. I must join the e-group, I hadn't realised there was one,

 

Peter

[Caley Jim]

Looked at this thread, out of curiosity, on my tablet while up in Perth for the show there.  This is an interesting concept and the photo shows my only attempt at it, albeit printed on plain 80gsm paper, hence not as sharp as it might have been on photo paper.

 

 

The pantechnicon is a Shirescenes  etch, sitting on a 2mm scale association etched kit for a GE lowmac.   The siding it is parked on will eventually serve an end loading dock, hence the absence of a buffer stop.  The livery is entirely fictitious.  Each panel was drawn out separately in AutoCAD, cut out and fixed in place with cyano, and then varnished.

 

Jim

Edited June 30, 2015 by Caley Jim

[kirtleypete]

That works really well Jim; anything flat sided is ideal. 

 

Peter

[richbrummitt]

I've been trying a similar thing with my buildings - using real bricks cropped and sized from photographs to build up the wall with exactly the shapes/types of bricks used and then printing the resulting 'kits' on sticky labels and wrapping them over card substructures. It is time consuming assembling all the bricks on the computer though, and the files get big fast for larger buildings!

[kirtleypete]

I'm sure if Roye England has been starting Pendon now he'd be doing exactly that rather than painting them all by hand! 

 

Peter

[James Harrison]

I'm coming at this from a slighly different direction.  My printer/scanner/copier has been out of commission for a few months, so I've been experimenting instead with different papers and mediums for hand draughting panels for loco tenders and cabs. 

 

The best results I have yet achieved have been on detail paper (a rather light, almost translucen paper- can be bought in art shops and stationary suppliers and is more generally used by designers as a sort of tracing paper), using artist's inks applied using calligraphy pens.  Calligraphy pens I find have a very fine nib which allows fine lines to be drawn in quite easily- easier at any rate (I have found) than using bow liners or other specialist lining tools.  I'm working on the cab and splashers for a GCR 'Immingham' at the moment and hope to have something worthwhile showing soon.   

[kirtleypete]

That sounds interesting James - do share it when you've made a start on the model. It just shows there's more than one way to skin a cat. 

 

Peter

Edited July 4, 2015 by kirtleypete

[alastairq]

I don't know whether the link below will be considered 'relevant' or not...I saved it many years ago now, as a piece of 'inspiration.'

 

 

http://www.hafenbahnhof.de/modellbahn/selbstbau/gueterwagen/elsass_s.htm

 

 

Above is a piccy from the above site, I hope the owner doesn't mind me resurrecting it [i saved all these pix from here many years ago now]....but the wagon [body] is card, overlaid with printed wood, etc....

Edited July 4, 2015 by alastairq

[kirtleypete]

Superb! That just shows what's possible with this technique. 

 

Peter