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ex LMS Diag D1912 Kitchen Car into BR Diag 1/551 Inspection Saloon


Ressaldar
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Now that the 4MT tank is more or less finished - (the water capacity plate arrived today and will be applied over the weekend) I can now return my attention to the Diag 1/551 Inspection saloon 'cut and shuffle' exercise that I started last year.

I decided that the way forward was to finish the sides and ends before the chassis and bogies on the basis that if the 'cut and shuffle' didn't work out then I had not wasted my time of the rest of the kit. So the Ersa was fired up this morning which has resulted in

 post-6951-0-19329400-1530361940.jpg

from this

 post-6951-0-16717600-1530361947.jpg

I built a jig that was long enough to take the full length of the side and peeled off each of the pieces from the masking/carrier tape in turn, cleaned them up, held B against A and against the jig, applied heat and moved on C to B, etc left it all to cool off, then cleaned the excess solder off with a scratch brush, brushed off the arisings and then sprayed a witness coat to check for any tell tale lines, which fortunately, they were not too bad. So stopper putty was applied which seemed to be going off in this heat as soon as it was out of the tube, that was then left to harden off.

In the mean time, attention was turned to the 'other side' which as you can see, needed two of the four foot windows to be reduced to two foot. I had cut out three pieces (includes a spare - 'just in case') when I had had use of the guillotine, which just needed to be trimmed to fit. The opening lights were removed from the four footers and the corners made square rather than radii. The new infill panels were then soldered in, cleaned up and again witness coated and stopper puttied and left to dry.

The stopper was smoothed down and again witness coated and the results are shown above. The ends are next up, a question of marking out and forming the three identical windows, unlike the ex LMS Diag D2046 saloons, there were fixed centre windows in lieu of droplights on these two conversions.

Hopefully, more to come soon.

regards

Mike

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This is the first 'chapter' in the build that I should have posted before the post above:

 

While waiting for the paint to dry on the D2046 Inspection Saloon, I decided to take the bull by the horns and try my luck using a friend's Metalsmith guillotine to chop up the sides of another Sidelines kit to hopefully end up with this:

LMS Inspection Saloon At Hebden Bridge (Michael McNicholas)

which is one of the two ex LMS 50' Kitchen car conversions that were carried out in 1959 and whilst similar quite similar to the LMS Diag D2046, do have quite a few differences - location and spacing of doors and windows, individual angled rainstrips over each of the doors and a fixed centre light in the ends as opposed to a droplight.

I had a couple of spare sides from the producing the EWS liveried coach so one these became the cut and shuffle 'Corridor' side for this build, together with parts from one side of the Kitchen Car kit and the other side is used for the 'Guards' side, just needing two of the four foot wide windows reducing in width and these 'infills' will come from the second cannibalised side.

I had marked out the main side to be cut up and checked that the sum of the width of the individual pieces came to the magical 350mm and not having previously used a guillotine I had a few practice chops on some spare etch and not having lost any fingers in the process 'went for it' resulting in 

post-6951-0-09337600-1530362303.jpg

the Guards side at the bottom, just needing two inserts to produce the right effect

 post-6951-0-04914500-1530362280.jpg

and the Corridor side made up of seven individual pieces with a sliver to file off at the end of piece G.

The plan is to solder a narrow brass strip (form the excellent Eileen's range) behind each join and then form the tumbleholme in the usual Sidelines manner. More fun to come whilst waiting for more paint to dry next week.

regards

Mike

Edited by Ressaldar
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Hi Peter,

 

Thank you for your kind comment.

 

I soldered the pieces together on the face side hoping that the solder would fill in the curves, then after cleaning off the solder with a scratch brush and some 1200 wet and dry, sprayed white ‘hibuild’ primer as a witness coat then went over all of the joints with Squadron putty and when that was dry repeated the cleaning up sequence, again followed by the primer.

 

I am still uncertain which livery to apply, retro ‘blood and custard’ being the favourite at present, but blue/grey or even Loadhaul are still contenders.

 

Regards

 

Mike

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  • 4 weeks later...
Now that the 4MT is out of the way, I have made some progress on the Inspection Saloon over the last few days, in as much that I have now fitted the centre fixed lights to the ends. I obtained a couple of blank D2046 ends from Malcolm Binns at Sidelines and using the etched D2046 ends from the kit as a pattern, drew round the inside of the fixed light window openings as a guide for the replacement fixed lights. Measured up the rectangular opening meant for the droplight and superimposed that rectangle over the previously drawn fixed light shape. I then milled out the new fixed light openings and then using a piercing saw, cut out the rectangle and then spent a couple of hours with fine files fetling them to be a good fit within the opening and then soldered them in place. 

 post-6951-0-17717200-1532758805.jpg

both ends - before and after, but before any cleaning up

 post-6951-0-89464100-1532758817.jpg

end 1 after cleaning up.

 post-6951-0-50847200-1532758825.jpg

end 2 from the outside and before cleaning up.

Next step is to fit sides to ends then make up the box and fit the roof - hopefully next week.

regards

Mike
 
 

 

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  • 1 month later...

....a week is a long time in model making as well as in politics!!

Much water has passed under the bridge since July and I have just about stayed calm, mainly sitting on the bank waiting for the mojo to float pass, and strangely, since that injection in the arm that is Telford, I have reeled it in and carried out the task in the last line of the previous postsmile.png having put it off for far too long - mainly because I do not like using Bostik.

The chassis and bogies were completed last week and the body ends screwed on, giving a good 'platform' for the sides to be added. The roof was then offered up to the box only to discover that my assumption that it was already cut to length was out by a mere 12mm and having put the vents and filler pots on, I thought that disaster was staring me in the face and major surgery might be needed, but thankfully, there was sufficient 'slack' at the small saloon end and the repair only required two vents to be removed, which as yet have not been replaced.

 post-6951-0-26820300-1536168707.jpg
seven into one will go - 1

 post-6951-0-55628500-1536168717.jpg
seven into one will go - 2

 post-6951-0-55396500-1536168727.jpg
the guards side with the two outer small windows formed from standard 4' windows

 post-6951-0-43746400-1536168736.jpg
revised end now with a fixed light in lieu of the droplight

 post-6951-0-44534200-1536168744.jpg
test run being propelled by 37193 on the inner circuit and no buffer lock.

The fittings on the ends and roof will be the next task, then inside the body and making the furniture.

I have decided to finish it in Blue/Grey and fit the Southern Region reporting panel at the bottom of the central fixed light with 'RT' at the leading end and unlit red panels at the trailing end. Transfers already in stock from John Peck at Precision Decals.

regards

Mike

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