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Darstaed Mk1 coaches for 7mm.


RandyWales
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Gentlemen,

Thank you for your comments.

 

1. Re coach height. Can Class 27 please measure exactly hoe much our coach is higher than he diesel loco in the picture ? As the buffers line up it would look like our body does not have the correct dimensions but all body dimensions have been taken from the Parkin book. So this is a mystery.

If he coach height offends then I could simply make a new set of springs for the C/W bogies so the whole caach will come down accordingly but then he buffers will be lower too.

Are we sure that Heljan got it right ?

2. Regarding the decals of course we can make them, no problem. The Q is how easy is it to take the printed word "guard" off ? Also the font is different as on the B/G livery only the letter G is capital and the other letters are minusculi whereas on the earlier liveries all letters were caps. So just making a decal the same size but in white to cover the print wouldn't do as the letters wouldn't be covered.

Please comment.

 

3. The end gangway shield tooling is being made now, shortly I will know when we have produced them. Probably April.

 

Cheers,

Andries

 

Andries,

 

I thought that your coach looked too large over all, but that could be down to lens and/or camera angle, especially if the dimension were checked and double checked.

 

If the coaches were lowered slightly such would also make quite a difference.

 

Regards,

 

CME

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Gentlemen,

Thank you for your comments.

 

1. Re coach height. Can Class 27 please measure exactly hoe much our coach is higher than he diesel loco in the picture ? As the buffers line up it would look like our body does not have the correct dimensions but all body dimensions have been taken from the Parkin book. So this is a mystery.

If he coach height offends then I could simply make a new set of springs for the C/W bogies so the whole caach will come down accordingly but then he buffers will be lower too.

Are we sure that Heljan got it right ?

2. Regarding the decals of course we can make them, no problem. The Q is how easy is it to take the printed word "guard" off ? Also the font is different as on the B/G livery only the letter G is capital and the other letters are minusculi whereas on the earlier liveries all letters were caps. So just making a decal the same size but in white to cover the print wouldn't do as the letters wouldn't be covered.

Please comment.

 

3. The end gangway shield tooling is being made now, shortly I will know when we have produced them. Probably April.

 

Cheers,

Andries

 

Hi Andries. Thanks for your responses to the issues raised.

 

As regards the incorrect decals on the BSK, I personally have no concerns about removing them using a cotton bud and the requisite mild abrasive cutting compound that would normally be used for renumbering locos or any other rolling stock. A very light ‘blow over’ with the airbrush to weather the vehicles (which I would carry out anyway) should effectively mask any potential fading of the blue paint.

 

The word ‘Guard’ is indeed fairly small, but these vehicles are also convincingly produced in OO, so I’m sure you’re more than capable of creating the new decals in O!

 

Kind regards

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Gentlemen,
My apologies for late reply.

 

1. re coach height : Class 27 would you be able to establish how much is our roof higher than the Heljan diesel loco ? We have taken our coach dimensions from the Parkin book. As you can see the buffers line up so the bogie should be correct too. What can be easily done to brringthe coach down somewhat is make the springs in the C/W bogie a bit shorter so that the whole coach comes down but then the buffers will come down too.
Has it been established that the Heljan diesel dimensions are correct ?

2. Re the gangway end corridor shields the are in the same tooling as the next 4 single coaches we are doing now, they should be available in april. Of course we will supply them as a free upgrade.

 

3. Our next model, to be announced in may, will have screw link couplings so these will be available in near future. For the moment you can purchase MTH ones from Ellis Clark and Bob Wyatt.

 

4. Re Guard printing on B/G : It is no problem for us to rectify this and make decals. However not only the colour is different but also the font as on the earlier liveries  was with caps and the word "Guard' on the B/G and IC has only the letter "G" in caps. So a decal could not cover the  printed word. I am open to suggestions.

 

Thank you all for your input,

 

Cheers,

Andries

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If the body height is dropped by reducing the bogie height then this will impact the Kadee coupling height as well.

 

So the packer that was mentioned to drop the Kadee down to the right height for use with the track magnets will have to be changed as well.

 

Great support, keep up the good work and I look forward to receiving more of your coaches. Set B please in B&C.

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CME

I'm with you on this

The actual measurement is very minimal it does seem to be an optical illusion

buffer heights are generally good the coach pictured has a slightly drooping buffer

I have no idea how good the Loco heights are, but for what it is worth I have checked it with a Dapol 08 and the measurements are more or less the same

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Perhaps Heljan havent got it right? Wont be the first time, their MK1s, with a certain retailers' 'help' are a case in point. Extra wide fuel tanks etc etc. too.

 

Many Eg. Lima OO locos sat too high on bogies. Heljan locos dont appear to suffer from such-or do they?

 

Did anyone work out the height above the rail and height above ground datum measurements relative to the production model MK1s?

 

The review in MR wasnt much help to those like me, still sat on the fence.

 

I do like Darstaed's attitude, very proactive....

 

ATVB

 

CME.

Edited by CME and Bottlewasher
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Gentlemen,

My apologies for late reply.

 

1. re coach height : Class 27 would you be able to establish how much is our roof higher than the Heljan diesel loco ? We have taken our coach dimensions from the Parkin book. As you can see the buffers line up so the bogie should be correct too. What can be easily done to brringthe coach down somewhat is make the springs in the C/W bogie a bit shorter so that the whole coach comes down but then the buffers will come down too.

Has it been established that the Heljan diesel dimensions are correct ?

2. Re the gangway end corridor shields the are in the same tooling as the next 4 single coaches we are doing now, they should be available in april. Of course we will supply them as a free upgrade.

 

3. Our next model, to be announced in may, will have screw link couplings so these will be available in near future. For the moment you can purchase MTH ones from Ellis Clark and Bob Wyatt.

 

4. Re Guard printing on B/G : It is no problem for us to rectify this and make decals. However not only the colour is different but also the font as on the earlier liveries  was with caps and the word "Guard' on the B/G and IC has only the letter "G" in caps. So a decal could not cover the  printed word. I am open to suggestions.

 

Thank you all for your input,

 

Cheers,

Andries

Hi Andries

I think some confusion is creeping into the decal part of this conversation. I’m really pleased to note that you’re happy to produce the correct ‘Guard’ decal for the B/G sets, but as I said in my earlier reply (message 229) the incorrect decal would be completely removed before application of the new item. Therefore your comment/concern at point #4 in message 230 is not an issue whatsoever.

 

Thanks again for engaging with us all in this thread. It gives me confidence that the various issues will be overcome eventually!

 

Kind regards

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Dear Airport,
Thank you for your post.
The GUARD lettering on the coach is printed, not applied by decal. After printing the printed object goes in the oven and will be very difficult to remove.Therefore the image has to be covered, not replaced, by a decal. Tomorrow I will try.
Making a decal with a blue back ground with an exactly matching blue is virtually impossible as the paint used for spraying on metal is different from the paint used to make the decals. Therefore two different paints from different paint makers are involved.

Therefore the only thing I can do is make decals that cover exactly the image in place now but that still means that the font will not be correct.
Cheers,

Andries

Edited by Darstaed
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Dear Airport,

Thank you for your post.

The GUARD lettering on the coach is printed, not applied by decal. After printing the printed object goes in the oven and will be very difficult to remove.Therefore the image has to be covered, not replaced, by a decal. Tomorrow I will try.

Making a decal with a blue back ground with an exactly matching blue is virtually impossible as the paint used for spraying on metal is different from the paint used to make the decals. Therefore two different paints from different paint makers are involved.

Therefore the only thing I can do is make decals that cover exactly the image in place now but that still means that the font will not be correct.

Cheers,

Andries

Hi Andries

OK I’ll go ahead and attempt (entirely at my risk) to remove one of the incorrect items and see how I get on. I’ll post a pic on here of the result.

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Hi Andries

OK I’ll go ahead and attempt (entirely at my risk) to remove one of the incorrect items and see how I get on. I’ll post a pic on here of the result.

Dear Airport,

Thank you for your post.

The GUARD lettering on the coach is printed, not applied by decal. After printing the printed object goes in the oven and will be very difficult to remove.Therefore the image has to be covered, not replaced, by a decal. Tomorrow I will try.

Making a decal with a blue back ground with an exactly matching blue is virtually impossible as the paint used for spraying on metal is different from the paint used to make the decals. Therefore two different paints from different paint makers are involved.

Therefore the only thing I can do is make decals that cover exactly the image in place now but that still means that the font will not be correct.

Cheers,

Andries

Hi again Andries

The complete removal of the incorrect decal took me less than two minutes as per the attached pic. Please go ahead and issue the correct replacements to us B/G modellers.

post-24851-0-38017900-1522164329_thumb.jpeg

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Gentlemen,

 

re Guard : I have removed the word guard with a liquid that we use at the factory for cleaning paint excess.It is a mixture of  N-HEXANE and and agent to was screens use for screen printing. The latter is again a mixture of xylene / ethylene glycol ether acetate / kerosene.
I do not know where such a concoction would be available but I am sure one of the experienced decorators on the forum will.
The important thing is that the word can be removed and I shall make a decal in white colour with the word "Guard" in the correct font. As the word is very nearby the white line I will also make a decal of the white line in case of too enthousiastic cleaning.
One should pay attention not to rub too much otherwise it will become gloss like one polishes his shoes.

Cheers,

Andries 

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Gentlemen,
 

Re coach height : I also measured two of the coaches under production, a B/G and a Maroon one. The B/G is 0.8 mm higher than the Maroon coach not only at the roof top but also at the buffers.
What I will do is make new springs for the C/W bogie that are 0.8 mm shorter so the B/G coaches are the same height as all the other coaches that have BR MK1 bogies.

Would it be possible for some one to take some measurements of the Heljan diesel locos and measure he height of the roof and height of the centre of the buffers taken from the top of the rail ? 

 

Cheers,

Andries

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Gentlemen,

 

re Guard : I have removed the word guard with a liquid that we use at the factory for cleaning paint excess.It is a mixture of [/size] N-HEXANE and and agent to was screens use for screen printing. The latter is again a mixture of xylene / ethylene glycol ether acetate / kerosene.

I do not know where such a concoction would be available but I am sure one of the experienced decorators on the forum will.

The important thing is that the word can be removed and I shall make a decal in white colour with the word "Guard" in the correct font. As the word is very nearby the white line I will also make a decal of the white line in case of too enthousiastic cleaning.

One should pay attention not to rub too much otherwise it will become gloss like one polishes his shoes.

Cheers,

Andries 

Thanks Andries for ‘buying in’ to the issue and offering your own solution.

For the record, my coach was treated with a product called T-Cut colour restorer (which will be familiar to many on here) and a regular cotton bud. It had no impact at all on any adjacent decoration as I was careful with the cotton bud, but it was most certainly not difficult by any stretch of the imagination!

 

Kind regards

Phil

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I admire Darstead's approach towards continuous improvement-to be applauded.

 

I shall be curious to see the outcome of height issue.

 

Can I also be bold enough to say, as a critique, from the photos, that the waterfillers look over scale, the pipes etc look fine. Is this an optical illusion or are they bigger?

 

Kindest,

 

CME

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Dear CME,
Thank you for your post.
Re the water fillers it is very difficult to gauge their size as we cannot find any drawing for them.
The genesis is that we wanted the water pipes going into the filler caps and initially we designed it that way. So the caps had t be large enough to drill a hole in them. Then when we made samples we found that it is very hard to take the water pipes out of the filler cap, this has to be done when removing the roofs. In order to save our customers a lot of agony and annoyance we decided to make the water pipes vanish inside the roof as near to the filler cap as possible and that is wat we did. What we did not do was reduce the size of the filler cap.

If any of the members has the correct size for the filler caps please let us know and we will alter the tooling right away.

Cheers,

andries 

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Hi Re coach I had one in my hand yesterday and after a good look I thought it looked brilliant I especially liked the steps no breakages going on here. truss angles good 'bogies brilliant couplings solid' corridor connections Brill sides crisp lighting nice no were to put your cup on the windows lol all in all a brilliant job height who gives a shoot if I was to make a remark lack of door bangers but a quick fix and a bit of strip round the dyamo 9 3/4 out of ten

Edited by Trigger123
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Dear CME,

Thank you for your post.

Re the water fillers it is very difficult to gauge their size as we cannot find any drawing for them.

The genesis is that we wanted the water pipes going into the filler caps and initially we designed it that way. So the caps had t be large enough to drill a hole in them. Then when we made samples we found that it is very hard to take the water pipes out of the filler cap, this has to be done when removing the roofs. In order to save our customers a lot of agony and annoyance we decided to make the water pipes vanish inside the roof as near to the filler cap as possible and that is wat we did. What we did not do was reduce the size of the filler cap.

If any of the members has the correct size for the filler caps please let us know and we will alter the tooling right away.

Cheers,

andries

 

Hi Andries,

 

Thanks, I appreciate the issues involved and your pragmatic approach, as Ive built a few coaches and drilling fine castings or mouldings can be a challenge.

 

Hard to gauge the WF size in terms of scale, so the modellers' art comes into play along with the MK1 eyeball and what looks 'right'. Scale sizing may be too small practically speaking.

 

Kind regards,

 

CME.

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Well and truly enjoying my set A blood and custard and have set B and four singles on order.

 

The brake end corridor blanks will finish off the set nicely.

 

They will all look good behind my Finescale Brass Brit that should arrive mid June.

 

Keep up the good work.

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