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New Years Resolution; finish those half made kits.


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This little shed was started many years ago, probably aeons as it has had time to yellow with age. Made before the Evergreen period of moulded and grooved plastic-card to represent planks. Each grove and plank detail was laboriously scribed by hand. Probably why I never finished it the roof seemed even more a challenging difficulty. So it has remain just four walls and a floor ever since its beginning.

Until recently when I needed a lamp oil store for my little shunting layout and finding some embossed slate roofing plastic sheet at a club sales stool it seemed I had everything to finish it.

You have to cut out the stripes from the plastic and glue them on separately to get the tiled effect.

A door was made and fitted from a rectangle of grooved Evergreen sheet or siding as they label it, nail detail poked in with a sharp scriber to show the zigzag position of the inside framing and I found a window frame from a Cambrian Southern brakevan kit.

 

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I'll do anything it seems to avoid modelling problems so to avoid doing problem window frames for­ the signal boxes I got this loco out to finish its conversion. Its from the cheap H0 Bachmann range based on a USRA First World War period switcher. An Internet search shows prototype locos of this type from the American manufacturers Baldwins and ALCO built between 1913 and 1953 as switchers and short distance road engines. Such a loco could have ended up on a UK backwater industrial line especial if it was obtained as cheap war surplus.

 

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Cab enlarged downwards so 4mm crew can fit into it, Fred here is 21mm tall not including his paving slab.

The Lima Cronk now has buffers some  couplings need to be fiddled onto it likewise buffers and coupling for the steam switcher.

 

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The tender is from an H0 static loco of a French type, it's short and replaces the long bogie type that comes with this model. Some plasticard strips and rectangles glued onto the backhead as crude detail. My high-tech height gauges down on the left.

 

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Some strips glued under the cab for a bent paper clip U shaped draw-bar. Red and white plasticard cut to shape to make a new chassis for the tender.

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  • 2 weeks later...

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After taking all that to add backhead detail it is rather irksome to see it disappear under a layer of black paint. So using gel pens with metallic ink I've picked out the highlights. Although a little crude when viewed through the cab windows gives just a hint of the backhead detail.

 

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  • 1 month later...

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I'm working up this drawing with a mind to making a model. Its unusual but is a British type adopted for mineral haulage around the world. This model I'm planning will be of the Robert Stephenson and Beyer Peacock loco sent out to Australia in the 1860s and then further example of this long boiler type were found to be useful and also built locally.

I have a side elevation weight diagramme so the plan and end elevation are guess work, so a cardboard and paper pre-model or model of the model has been made so I can squint at it from all angles and see if the impression it makes is similar to the photos from Australia.

The diagram shows where details are being developed. The model has already had 3mm cut off the bottom of the cab as it looked too tall.

With the skinny boiler leaving few places to hide a motor it looks like first choice is going to be for a tender-drive mechanism.

 

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Problems apart from where to hide a motor an gearbox are; how wide should it be, what was the cab form as the prototypes carried many varieties, where about was the dome positioned and how close together can I model to two rear axles to each other?

 

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  • 1 month later...

Could not find these coach sides for ages, being at the flatpack stage it got lost under a pile of books where it was keeping flat whilst the glue set and hardened. Found it during a tidy up looking for something else.

 

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It's going to be a small workman's coach for a mineral branch line, the gaffer calls it a minimal price conveyance does that mean it was very very cheap to build out of leftover parts or it will offer extremely cheap fairs or both. Like most leftover concoctions it is a right dog's dinner. For their detail mouldings, it's made with Airfix cattle wagon parts in red, Cambrian Shark brake van in grey, doors are from some old H0 Wagon-Litts carriage and this mess is all dressed up with strips of plasticard to fill in the holes.

 

The wooden coffee stirrer is just being a straight edge so all the parts are aligned buy pushing their top edges up against it. It's temporary, it will be taken away at the next step.

 

The inspiration for this poor mans Pullman being some photos of the workman's train in the old Plymouth Naval Dockyards, there they had a train of converted wagons like mine and which look only slightly posher than garden sheds on wheels. One of which included a special compartment reserved for admirals.

Admirals only.

Dare not any humble workman or rating be found riding in it, especially a lowly leftenant or ordinary ships commander, how does a chief petty officer scream at an officer, “Get out of that compartment! Admirals only!...... Sir!”

 

On my mineral railway, everyone will be of the rank of Poor Admiral.

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  • 4 months later...

 

 

IMGP0083a.JPG.6f5f7e418a2d152f64b27b03579f8308.JPGWhen using drawings in the magazines, can we ask, how accurate are they?

These wagons, my current work in progress are from an old magazine, I blindly trusted the drawings and photocopied them onto some thin cardboard and started cutting. The ends did not fit they gave an over wide body. So some guess work and trimming needed to be done or bodging as it is also know.

Now they are on their wheels they seem to look a bit too big, old coal wagons could be very small, I think these would have been of 8 ton capacity.

So these are 55 mm x 29 mm long should be 14 ft long and 7ft 4 “ wide, that's the dimensions given on the drawing 56 x 29 mm, 00 4mm to the foot scale. This model has turned out remarkably accurate to the drawings for one of mine.

How do they look compared to an old Triang 9ft wheelbase wagon at 63 x 30 mm and an old Ks LBSCR round ended wagon. Also a butchered modern Hornby to make a 4 plank round ended from the half done pile.

 

 

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Either a Cambrian or Slatters 5 planker in the middle, in imaginary Ayre Valley Railway colours.

What I should have done on the cardboard wagon is carefully mark out the sides and ends and the different positions of fittings either on a computer drawing application and made a new cutting diagram allowing for the thickness of materials, if I was not in such a rush, before I cut any card it would have made the construction a lot easier and quicker in the end.

 

So what about cardboard as a material for making wagons is it any good or is styrene plasticard sheet better, I'm sort of half in favour, easy to print the drawings out using a normal household computer printer, on say 0.6 mm card which seems to be how A4 printer size sheets come from Rymans and other stationers. Allowing for the fact that for strength sides are glued multi layered and a strong basic box can be made. Details and strapping not so good the thin card tends to de-laminate so plastic micro strip and metal etched detail is better.

Plasticard tends to give an overall stronger model and surface detail can be scribed onto them more easily, and the layers can be glued together with solvent rather than trying to smear a thin layer of PVA white glue evenly on surfaces. Which of course always picks up stray lumps and dirt or sticks to your elbows.

 

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The biggest trouble with using plasticard is at the marking out stage, best method so far after carefully designing the sides, ends and other parts on the computer and then print them out on a thin sheet of typing or computer printing paper and glue it to the plastic with Pritstick or spray-mount temporary glues, I prefer Pritstick or one of the equivalent roll-on dry glues, eg from The Works and my favourite plastic is 20thou or 1/2 mm thick. Of course if I had a printer/cutter I could produce little bits of accurately shaped plastic in profusion far more reliably than I can by hand.

 

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The D shaped tank is a good shape for cardboard modelling, rivet detail is very fine, simply pressed through from the back with a needle point. The open wagon on it's side shows the walls are too thick, plasticard would have allowed them to be thinner. The van body is basically a good shape to make in card but all the details of the louvre vents are beyond my cardboard skills. The cattle wagon is plastic, 3 layers of 0.5 mm styrene to build up the timber frame.

 

When I find some more of my works in progress I post more pictures to illustrate my points of view.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Building a chassis for the roofless cattle wagon in the above post.

I always seem to have trouble with any sort of chassis, so here is a wheeze to get around it. Work on it as a separate sub-chassis the fix it to the wagon when it is rolling well.

Two lengths of 1mm x 4mm  plasticard strip, in this case built up out of 0.5 mm pieces because I had run out of 1 mm strip.

The white metal W-irons, already fitted with their brass top hat bearings super-glued on, as carefully as possible to get the spacing the same on each side.

When all the glue has set they are glued to a couple of strips f 0.5 the same length and about 10 mm wide.

Then using the wheels and axles as guides they will be attached in parallel with a couple of small cross pieces of card so they can easily be pulled apart it goes wonky, which often happens.

 

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This picture was taken with the low resolution option on the camera, an option for taking smaller pictures for reports, like an RMweb report?

Gives a very grainy result.

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2 hours ago, relaxinghobby said:

This picture was taken with the low resolution option on the camera, an option for taking smaller pictures for reports, like an RMweb report?

Gives a very grainy result.

 

I use the picture editor in Microsoft Office 2010. This has an option to compress pictures - I usually choose the "Document" option rather than the "Web pages" option as the former gives jpegs of about the right size.

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Here's the slow bit I don't enjoy so much, best done with a distraction like a DVD running not necessarily music could be a film.

Adding the surface detail on the white cattle wagon with detail going on in red, there is some white stapping there but difficult to see. Here the red styrene, namely a take away coffee cup lid a readily avaliable source of thin polystyrene.

Strapping detail, rivets made by pressing a needle point into the soft red stuff then carefully cutting rectangles or strips to glue on. It does not bear too close a inspection but for my fuzzy vision and impressionistic models it's fine.

Side one of 4 nealy done.

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8 minutes ago, relaxinghobby said:

Here the red styrene, namely a take away coffee cup lid a readily avaliable source of thin polystyrene.

 

 

Interesting "found" material. Does it bond well enough with whatever solvent you are using?

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As this thread is about finishing half done projects, these orange coaches are back.

 

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Another Thomas coach set.

 

Are they big enough, are they 4mm or 3.5 mm scale? I found a drawing of some six wheeler and the ends match the profile. So 4mm-ish but still seem a little small next to the Ratio 4 wheelers for instance. Stuck some strips of micro-strip on the ends where I had filed the faces flat. Noses and eyes gone.  I know to be a modeller you have to be bonkers but faces on coaches? They will be talking to you next!

Oh wait they do these days, have you been on a modern train, bus or car they all talk to you nowadays, telling you where they’re stopping next and please don't forget to take all your luggage with you. Hate to think what they gossip about in the sidings and bus depots across the land, what do they say if you leave a half eaten packet of crisps behind?

These two coaches can be a branch line set that the little blue engine will have to pull around as fast as he can so no one notices the windows are only painted on

 

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10 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Interesting "found" material. Does it bond well enough with whatever solvent you are using?

Hi Compound

 

My experience with coffee cup lids indicates to me they are standard styrene the same stuff as plasti-card and solvent glues work.

I have also used paper and aluminium foil for making wagon strapping and overlays as both are good at taking pressed in detail, but need super-glue for attachment.

Paper is good for large overlays where there are loads of rivets like these for a cardboard D shaped tank. Because you can print out plans directly onto it.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Sidetracked by yet another unfinished project. Fixing up this old metal Hornby-Dublo mobile crane.

 

I've added some gubbins of cable drums and cog mechanism to the empty space in the top of the rotating cabin part but left the toy hand winding gear alone so the crane can still be set up and posed for pictures lifting stuff and not just be a model to be towed around as an emergency train forever looking for an accident to attend. I'm aiming for a toy to model ratio of about 30% toy to 70% model.

Trouble is how do I keep the winding handles and get them cut down enough so they are within the loading gauge but still can be used to wind up the crane hook and jib. Here we see the Great Northern engine , courtesy of new 1980s plastic Hornby. It is vainly trying to get the old metal Hornby crane through the tunnel something seems to be stopping it ?

 

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  • 6 months later...

I always have trouble with Cambrian wagon kits with exact floor position or height in particular.

That is Cambrian's older design before the one piece floor and W-irons.

 

So when I thought I'd just do a quick wagon whilst the latest big loco project is drying after a wash and being prepared for painting.

 

Not so fast, parts missing I must have taken them for another project that's the trouble with kits that have been hanging around for ever, parts get raided for other projects and I forget so it's a surprise when starting some unmade kit it's not all there.

 

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It's a bit of a dogs dinner. White metal W-irons drilled and brass bearings fitted, then two sole bars of unequal length then the edge trimmed back to allow for the extra thickness of the W-iron.

See A,

 

Since it is all of an uneven width across the bearings and getting the wheels to spin freely I glue a strip of plastic to each sole bar to made two L pieces then they can be adjusted for width and fit of the wheels, Which I think are Dapol spares more unknown odd parts. After some fiddling about and re-gluing and it all runs well this whole sub assembly can be glued to the floor.

 

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The Body. The sides and ends of the body are prepared by joining a side and an end into 2 L bits, then joined into a rectangle. Again much fiddling about to get it a good fit around the floor.

The floor was just too short and two thin strips of white plastic glued on and filed back to get the right length.

 

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Then this contraption of clamp, lumps of wood and elastic bands is concocted to try and hold it all together and in position until the glue sets.

The bottom of the floor has to sit on top of the buffer beams and the solebars have to be parallel with the body.

 

 

>>>>>>>>>

Coal rails or rather coke rakes fitted as these are part of the kit. Such a wagon could be used for coke or other loose bulk material, straw bales, turnips or even sheep. I've run out of the small Bachmann type couplers so I've used some Ratio ones which used to come with those kits. These are very hard to glue together so no glue gets on the hook.

 

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Cardboard strips help keeping the raves at the correct height above the body, the card is the same thickness as the kit gap between the two raves. Stuck the sides first and them the next day when they were set added the ends between them, an elastic band holds it all together.

 

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