Haphazardous 00 modelling. A slow workbench topic

[Trains&armour]

Bottom row, in the middle, on the wall. Can't see the other one.

Clue: The second one isn't an Airfix model

[Trains&armour]

Well, not much happened on this thread since December! But it is a slow topic...

To tell the truth, and serious illness in the family robbed me of all will energy (and time) to do any modelling. But things are starting to look up!. 

So, A few weeks back, I started some therapeutic modelling again, and decided to practice some basic weathering skills on stock I was planning to sell anyway.

Nothing lost, and it might even make them better sellers (I hope..)

 

First I sprayed the wagon underframes with matt varnish. After letting this dry thoroughly I then proceeded with adding a simple enamel wash overall. This was left to dry for a few hours, and then I did some further weathering with powders, the earlier applied matt varnish and wash acting as a key.

Below are some of the results. Which do you like best, the unweathered or the weathered version....:

 

 

And some more, serious, examples:

 

 

What do you think?

[Castle]

Hi Sierd Jan,

 

Those are some really nice models there - they all have that elusive sense of weight and purpose that very good weathering such as this lends to a project. I look forward to seeing the next batch!

 

All the best,

 

Castle

[micked]

Great stuff! I particularly like the hopper, with its dust and rust

 

Mick

[Mikkel]

Sorry to hear of your troubles Seird, I hope the modelling can provide a bit of breathing space.

 

The weathering has really transformed the wagons, my favourite is the GWR loco coal (surprise!).

 

Apart from featuring on the wagon, did the whiskey play any part in the weathering mix? 

[Trains&armour]

I fell in love with these:

 

 

And after some cutting, bending, soldering and assembly you end up with this:

 

 

After thoroughly degreasing them, I put them in a photoetch blackening fluid.

Forgot to take a photograph of the results, but they looked great!

 

Now for a wagon to fit them to...

 

(preview: the blackened Dingham when fitted)

 

[Trains&armour]

... but which wagon to use?

Not the GWR four plank, that still needed a lot of work.

Something simple and cheap, one of my old RTR wagons would do fine . But modelling is never simple! Rummaging around in my parts bin for a totally unrelated project  I found this.

 

 

Or, to be more precise, only the body, without even the door springs. And it made me think of this photo:

 

 

Why not try to replicate this?  

An underframe wouldn't be a problem, as I bought a couple of  Dapol underframes for this type of wagons a while back. Bought those to upgrade my fleet of steel 20 ton wagons with Nem shafts. Which I never got around to, and now I would not need them anyway, because I fell in love with the Dingham couplings. Nem shaft are so yesterday...

 

So, in the space of a couple of minutes i went from a simple experiment with the Dinghams to a total rebuild of a binned wagon. 

[Trains&armour]

As to underframes. This is a new Dapol underframe with Nem shafts:

 

 

And this is an orginal Mainline underframe (nicked from another 9 plank wagon)

 

 

Why did I buy those Dapol underframes in the first place? The Mainline ones are much nicer. Well, except for those horrible couplings, that is!

Something had to be done...

 

[gwrrob]

As to underframes. This is a new Dapol underframe with Nem shafts:

 

 

And this is an orginal Mainline underframe (nicked from another 9 plank wagon)

 

 

Why did I buy those Dapol underframes in the first place? 

 

A good question....

[Trains&armour]

Well, acquiring some mainline underframes proved to be relatively easy.  I bought a rake of Mainline 20 ton MOT hopper wagons off Ebay for next to nothing  Swapped the underframes with the Dapol ones, and will put them up for sale again, upgraded with the latest Nem underframes and weathered (see post above... )

But even the Mainline ones aren't good enough!

Next stage of my simple project  . This is what you start out with:

 

 

These wont be needed:

 

 

Don't need attachments for the couplings either, and the moulded on brakegear is off-putting. It had to go!

( the tiebars were removed temporarily, they got in the way!)

 

 

After a lot of cutting with very sharp blades (outch..)This is what you end up with:

 

 

After the bleeding had stopped, I decided to clean up the orginal brakegear, in a (misguided?) attempt to use as much of the original parts as possible:

 

 

Next, stage two, reassembly!

[Trains&armour]

And this is what you get after fitting the Dingham's and the brake gear and some detailing:

 

 

But it still needs a body. And that can be improved as well:

 

 

At this stage I got carried away, and forgot to take more 'in progress' photo's. After a few hours of therapeutic work, this is the end result:

 

 

And this is why I love Dinghams:

 

 

You must admit, that looks far more realistic than the 'Horrible Hornby's' or even small tenson lock couplings, whether with or without Nem shafts

 

 

[Trains&armour]

Final musings. How does it compare?

 

 

My wagon compared with another 9 plank Mainline offering.

 

 

And with the original source of inspiration.

 

Not really  satisfied with the weathering. The Mainline printing started to dissolve in the enamel wash I normally use, so I hurriedly removed the wash, but some damage was done. Tried to repair/hide it with the powder weathering, but the end effect, although acceptable, is not totally to my liking.

And I did make a small error while reassembling the wagon. Can you spot it?

[57xx]

And I did make a small error while reassembling the wagon. Can you spot it?

 

You put the body on the wrong way round, so the end door doesn't match with the correct side of brake gear?

[Trains&armour]

You put the body on the wrong way round, so the end door doesn't match with the correct side of brake gear?

Yes...  

[Ian Simpson]

As an example, a while ago I bought this:

 

DSC_0080.jpg

 

And you might be pardoned for thinking this has absolutely nothing to do with 00 or railway modelling.

But you would be wrong. (except for the 00 part, as this is 1-72.... But I chose to ignore that, close enough..). In a convoluted way, this has to do with my planned layout, Aberdovey and the Cambrain coastline in the period 1940-1945.

As it happens, during the war the Dovey estuary was used for training, among others, DUKW drivers. (http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/wales/archive/bbc-north-west-wales-tywyn-arthur-caley.pdf) And as mentioned, they had a LCT, landing craft tank, moored in Aberdovey. That did it, I wanted, no, I needed a LCT model. And this is the only plastic Injected model on the market in the (almost) correct scale.

Small problem, it's an American built and designed craft.

 

Not an expert on landing craft, but many years ago I did build the Airfix landing craft (see e.g. http://atpkits.co.uk/shop/airfix-lcm-sherman-tank/)  Would that be any good?

[BSW01]

Hi Chris

I do have several Airfix and other armour models...

stash-part2.jpg

Part of my stash. And a challenge: spot the DUKW. There are actually two in the picture...

 

The DUKW was a good model for it's day and, with a little care, can still be build into a nice model.  And indeed it has one huge advantage over it's more modern plastic siblings.. As you say, It's in 1-76 scale!

On the left of the door, 3rd shelf down, second column, 5th one up! I've got one of those myself! I thought I had a big stash!

[Trains&armour]

New Year's resolutions:

- Do more modelling.

- And if you do, post it!

- Don't forget to take in progress pictures

 

I did do some modelling last year, but not much of it railway related. And I forgot to take pictures...

But this is my new years tip*:

*(totally idiotic project)

 

 

 

Trying to turn one of these Hornby wagons into something resembling the prototype. These came with a batch of second hand railway items I bought a while back. Hornby fantasy cokewagons from the seventies. A typical Hornby compromise. Crude, simplified and fitted to an already available underframe. (because of which they now have two sets of brake handles….)

 

 

These wagons have been discussed before on RMweb, and Hornby probably based it's model on P4 and P5 hopper wagons originally build for the NER ( the first two wagons behind the engine).

Inside these Hornby models are NER hoppers desperately trying to get out. I felt I had to help these wagons. And the challenge I've set myself is to rebuilt one of these without using anything else than the wagon itself, into something resembling (from a distance...) a NER P4 hopper.

 

[Trains&armour]

Coke rails had to go:

 

 

They will come in handy as basis for the new solebars:

 

 

Almost everything on the underframe had to go:

 

 

Not easy to shape though, the soft plastic Horny used for their underframes.

 

 

To make room for the new solebars I carved away all the existing details, thereby reducing it to it's smallest possible width.

[Trains&armour]

Which enabled me to reduce the width of the body as well: ( I already carved away the extra brake handles):

 

 

 

[Trains&armour]

Turning the coke rails into solebars:

 

 

Glued to the body, with the underframe test fitted:
(The remaining coke rail parts were used to make the the rounded top planks)

 

 

 

[Trains&armour]

Further work on the underframe:

 

 

More body details:

 

 

Underframe cleaned and fitted:

 

 

[Trains&armour]

Current state of play:

 

 

Compare:

 

 

 

Next up:

Priming, filling, sanding, painting.

 

[Trains&armour]

Hmmm, the P4 rebuilt didn't generate much interest. But I have more projects. 

Quite a lot of them actually...

One of those is collecting 20 ton steel mineral PO wagons. First released by Airfix and later Mainline, these models are now made by Hornby as well as Dapol. The models do  show their age, but as a whole they are still passable representations of GWR  diagram N32  .Not the most common mineral wagon, but the GWR did have some 5000 of them build. I quite like them, not in the leastbecause they add some much needed variety to my PO wagon fleet. And they can be made into reasoanble accurate representations of the prototype with some weathering and detailing. As in the example below:

 

 

 

[Trains&armour]

And then I spotted this one on Ebay:

 

 

A limited edition. I just had to have it. So I bought it. And only afterwards I found out that  it should have looked like this 

 

(Thanks to the HMRS website)

 

Dissapointed!

But intrigued as well, as I hadn't seen this type of wagon before. More variation to add to my model fleet. Alas, not available RTR or in kitform (as far as I know of). Could I build one myself? Or better still, modify an existing wagon? Looking at it,  it could be mistaken for a cut down version of the RTR 20  ton steel wagon. And 20 ton wagons I have aplenty.

[Trains&armour]

A unpainted Dapol body:

 

 

Some work with a hacksaw:

 

 

Cutting of the ends and halving the body

 

(you actually need two Dapol bodies, because of the end door of the N32, which the low body doesn't have)

 

Now some sanding, to fractionally lessen the width of the main body. If done carefully, the iron capping and the ends should now stand just proud of the body. Test fitting:

 

 

Some more tweaking needed, but this should work.