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Modbury


Ian Smith
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1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I'm a fan of fixed, correctly tied, sheets, having indeed used Ian's artwork for GW sheets. But I think depicting the sheet ties might be a bit of a challenge in 2 mm scale - but what's that scale for if not challenge? At 4 mm scale, I use sewing thread; for 2 mm one might have to unravel the thread and use separate strands. 

 

It's increasingly my feeling that one has to plan the model as a complete unit: wagon, load, and sheet; rather than regarding the load or sheet as an afterthought. (Not that I've consistently practiced what I'm preaching there.) An advantage of this approach is that one can often dispense with some detail on the wagon body!

There are plenty of very fine sewing threads, certainly fine enough to represent sheet ties in 2FS, around but you may have to look for a specialist shop to find them in the UK. (Here in Belgium, where women are still adept at sewing, etc, such shops are commonplace and one would probably even find suitable threads for sale in a supermarket.)

 

Before the Great War, sheeted opens were (almost?) more common in ordinary goods trains than vans.

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5 hours ago, Mikkel said:

 

That's superb, Ian. What's your position on sheets (tarpaulins) ? I'm ambivalent about them.  Aesthetically I prefer my trains and wagons without them, but we know what the prototype looked like. So far I have a halfway-house solution with a handful of detachable sheets at the ready, but that means no roping. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Mikkel,

In 2mm scale I feel that having removable sheets would be a step too far! So I am happy to have wagons permanently sheeted.
 

Checking the stock that I have for Modbury reveals that only 4 of my company opens are sheeted (I have 5 others that are unsheeted with a brace of those having fixed loads of barrels that are roped down).


For the ropes I use thread designed for  model ships rigging (0.010” thick I think), which is somewhat overscale but has the advantage of not being “hairy” like some cotton thread.


Below is a photo of my 4 sheeted opens, in time I need to increase the number of opens that I have, and some of those will also be permanently sheeted (some with sheet supporter bars too)

704AC415-4370-4B73-9A20-F154F52DB842.jpeg.abb485dca2b6a32a594053dd35c05be1.jpeg

Ian

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They do look good Ian, as do Stephen's creations. 

 

I'm working on some of your wagons sheets as we speak, for my provender wagons. It just annoys me that, having built them, I now have to cover them completely :).

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10 hours ago, bécasse said:

Before the Great War, sheeted opens were (almost?) more common in ordinary goods trains than vans.

Proportions vary depending on the type of service but as a rough indicator, the GW built around 9,000 iron minks and 24,000 4-plank opens in the period 1887-ish - 1902-ish, if I remember the numbers correctly. It may be that covered goods wagons, being scarcer and reserved for more high-value (or at least hydrophobic) goods, may have achieved faster turn-round and higher utilisation than opens.

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15 hours ago, Coal Tank said:

Hi Ian 

  Very nice indeed 

John 

 

I agree - The sharpness of your lining around the windows and panels is superb. I think that the satin finish helps to achieve scale colour and any perceived blemishes adds to the realism for me. Very nice.

Would there be any slight weathering on the roof Ian?

Steve

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19 hours ago, Ian Smith said:

The photos are rather cruel close ups as the finished model is a mere 56mm long.


Yes, the wonders of modern cameras and the web rather disguise just how small 2mm scale models are in shots like this. Wonderful stuff. I am particularly taken by the underframe section and the mansell wheels, the bolt heads showing up quite clearly thanks to the colour of the centres. Although this has been about the body finish I do think the lower aspects help to make a good counterpoint for it and the overall look wouldn’t be the same without.

 

Izzy

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4 hours ago, 2mmKiwi said:

 

I agree - The sharpness of your lining around the windows and panels is superb. I think that the satin finish helps to achieve scale colour and any perceived blemishes adds to the realism for me. Very nice.

Would there be any slight weathering on the roof Ian?

Steve

Steve, thank you for the kind comment. As for roof weathering, I tend to brush paint the rooves in a dirty grey after the satin varnish has dried, as Mikkel says the coaches would have been outshopped with white rooves which would dirty over time to grey (how much time is often debated!) In reality railways were dirty places and the coach sides got pretty mucky too if you look at some Edwardian period photos but the sides at least got washed regularly so that’s my excuse for having relatively pristine coaches, although the coat of varnish does at least knock back the freshly outshopped look!

 

4 hours ago, Mikkel said:

That is exceptionally good Ian. I think the roof is already weathered, in that is is grey not white?

Thanks Mikkel, I do find rooves difficult as they are always the last thing I paint, I may experiment one day by brushing with weathering powders to see if I can improve the result.

 

1 hour ago, Izzy said:


Yes, the wonders of modern cameras and the web rather disguise just how small 2mm scale models are in shots like this. Wonderful stuff. I am particularly taken by the underframe section and the mansell wheels, the bolt heads showing up quite clearly thanks to the colour of the centres. Although this has been about the body finish I do think the lower aspects help to make a good counterpoint for it and the overall look wouldn’t be the same without.

 

Izzy

Izzy, thank you.  The mansell wheels are the normal 7mm coach wheels with the Association etched mansell centres. I chemically blacken said centres before giving them a thin coat of brown (usually before glueing in place). I don’t think there are any bolt heads etched on them though. I have some very old Association mansell wheels with what looks like phosphor bronze tyres that were moulded with that level of detail but the axles are a bit short, they will almost certainly stay in the gloat box as the Association have recently introduced new wheels with mansell centres.

Ian

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A rather general query: would the oil lamp covers be the same colour as the roof, after a period in service? I think I understand the process by which a white lead-painted canvas on timber roof would discolour but (a) were the metal lamp covers painted white and (b) would they not be subject to different sources of discolouration, i.e. soot? Whilst this photo of Coventry station is LNWR and 1880, it illustrates my doubt, having the same combination of oil lamps and initially-white roofs.

Edited by Compound2632
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I too much prefer a satin finish on my coaches and locos as it much 'softer'.

 

On coach roofs, it wasn't just that they became dirty, but that the white paint used was lead based and so reacted with the oxygen and sulphur in the air, turning grey.

 

Jim

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2 hours ago, Caley Jim said:

On coach roofs, it wasn't just that they became dirty, but that the white paint used was lead based and so reacted with the oxygen and sulphur in the air, turning grey.

 

On a point of chemistry, sulfur dioxide hydrogen sulfide, a common airborne pollutant produced by burning coal [See @bécasse's correction below].

 

It Another byproduct of burning coal is sulfur dioxide, which can also react with water to form sulfuric acid, hence the acid rain damage to Norwegian pine forests in the days of British coal-fired power stations.

Edited by Compound2632
Chemistry corrected with thanks to @bécasse.
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1 hour ago, Ian Smith said:

 The mansell wheels are the normal 7mm coach wheels with the Association etched mansell centres. I chemically blacken said centres before giving them a thin coat of brown (usually before glueing in place). I don’t think there are any bolt heads etched on them though.

 

The etched ones from recent years (last 10-15 at least) had half etches that you could punch with a pin if you so desired. I sometimes punch them out and other times don't remember. Those illustrated on my horseboxes (see second picture down) were punched. 

 

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1 hour ago, Ian Smith said:

I don’t think there are any bolt heads etched on them though.

 

Ah, the power of suggestion. It's a wonderful thing, and very useful in 2mm it seems!

 

Izzy

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Sometimes the mind sees what it thinks should be there, even though it isn't!  Someone once commented that my CR Jumbo had 'brakegear and sandpipes', though it doesn't have the latter!

 

Jim

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1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

A rather general query: would the oil lamp covers be the same colour as the roof, after a period in service? I think I understand the process by which a white lead-painted canvas on timber roof would discolour but (a) were the metal lamp covers painted white and (b) would they not be subject to different sources of discolouration, i.e. soot? Whilst this photo of Coventry station is LNWR and 1880, it illustrates my doubt, having the same combination of oil lamps and initially-white roofs.

The problem with looking at views like that and comparing "grey-ness" is that upward facing surfaces tend to reflect the sky above them. If you don't believe me just look at the upper parts of the boiler of the adjacent steam locomotive, I doubt very much whether it had ever been painted white!

 

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1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

On a point of chemistry, sulfur dioxide, a common airborne pollutant produced by burning coal. It can also react with water to form sulfuric acid, hence the acid rain damage to Norwegian pine forests in the days of British coal-fired power stations.

It wasn't sulphur dioxide (or even sulphuric acid) that turned white lead paint a dark grey. The villain of the peace was hydrogen sulphide (H2S) which turned the white lead carbonate to a darkish grey lead sulphide. Hydrogen sulphide, albeit in minute concentrations, was an escapee from the manufacture of coal gas, then a common process in small as well as large towns and cities, but which was also produced naturally by decomposition processes in marshland. The rate of the colour change would have been dependent on the extent to which the white paint was exposed to the gas leading to a situation where the roofs of goods vans often stayed white-ish longer than the roofs of carriages.

 

It is as well that the concentrations of the gas were tiny as it is extremely poisonous. When we were allowed to work with it in fume cupboards there was a strict rule that as long as you could smell it (bad eggs) you were safe but that the moment the smell went, you, and everyone else in the laboratory, evacuated immediately.

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14 minutes ago, bécasse said:

The problem with looking at views like that and comparing "grey-ness" is that upward facing surfaces tend to reflect the sky above them. If you don't believe me just look at the upper parts of the boiler of the adjacent steam locomotive, I doubt very much whether it had ever been painted white!

 

A valid point but one also has to consider the reflectivity of the surface. The locomotive boiler is polished; the lamp tops and carriage roof are matt. 

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2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

A rather general query: would the oil lamp covers be the same colour as the roof, after a period in service? I think I understand the process by which a white lead-painted canvas on timber roof would discolour but (a) were the metal lamp covers painted white and (b) would they not be subject to different sources of discolouration, i.e. soot? Whilst this photo of Coventry station is LNWR and 1880, it illustrates my doubt, having the same combination of oil lamps and initially-white roofs.

On the two coaches that I have built that are fitted with oil lamps I have painted the vertical face of the pot slightly darker (although the current coach roof is quite dark to start with so the variation on this coach is not quite so noticeable). On the real thing the lamp pots had many vent holes around the vertical face to vent the smoke produced by burning the oil so I guess would account for the pots looking darker in photos.

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Just now, bécasse said:

It wasn't sulphur dioxide (or even sulphuric acid) that turned white lead paint a dark grey. The villain of the peace was hydrogen sulphide (H2S) which turned the white lead carbonate to a darkish grey lead sulphide. Hydrogen sulphide, albeit in minute concentrations, was an escapee from the manufacture of coal gas, then a common process in small as well as large towns and cities, but which was also produced naturally by decomposition processes in marshland. The rate of the colour change would have been dependent on the extent to which the white paint was exposed to the gas leading to a situation where the roofs of goods vans often stayed white-ish longer than the roofs of carriages.

 

It is as well that the concentrations of the gas were tiny as it is extremely poisonous. When we were allowed to work with it in fume cupboards there was a strict rule that as long as you could smell it (bad eggs) you were safe but that the moment the smell went, you, and everyone else in the laboratory, evacuated immediately.

 

Yes, you are quite right, I was mis-remembering. Mea culpa. I am amending my post.

 

The mention of sulfuric acid and acid rain was intended as an aside, not connected with the darkening of white lead paint.

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20 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

A valid point but one also has to consider the reflectivity of the surface. The locomotive boiler is polished; the lamp tops and carriage roof are matt. 

 

True but the tops of the lamps look very different to the sides.

Don

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1 hour ago, mike morley said:

Ian, how do you scrape the paint off something as delicate as grab handles without distorting them?

Mike,

The grab handles are etched brass ones from N Brass.  I solder them onto the mouldings of the coach so are actually very secure (any that aren't will come adrift in the cleaning process before any painting occurs).  But the scraping paint off is quite a delicate operation anyway - it has to be as the last thing you want to do is allow the scalpel to slip off onto the paintwork that you want to keep :lol:.  I tend do do it under good light and magnification too!

Ian

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