Coulsdon Works

[thegreenhowards]

I recently showed my 7 car tourist stock rake over on Gresley Jn. Most of these rakes were in fact 12 cars with two more twin TOs and an extra buffet, and I acquired 10 very cheap (<£4 per coach) Mailcoach kits on eBay in shocking condition just before lockdown. They were misdescribed as Higland railway coaches which helped the price!

 

As you can someone has got fed up with painting Mailcoach sides and just gone for an overall spray - Presumably with the idea of removing the paint from the windows afterwards. It’s a shame as the insides and basic bodywork have been done quite nicely. There is no underframe but I would use MJT parts for that anyway.

 

My Question is, does anyone know a good way of stripping paint off the windows/ complete sides without leaving the windows opaque?

 

If I can sort them out I intend to augment the 7 car set and use some of the remainder for a post war mixed excursion set with a few probably going back on eBay.

 

Hopefully one of the experts out there can give me some advice.

 

Andy

[jwealleans]

I'd try Caustic Soda.   Up to now it hasn't affected any of the plastics I've tried it on, although I have to add that I haven't tried it on  Mailcoach sides.

[thegreenhowards]

That sounds drastic but I’ll give it a go - I’ve got plenty to experiment on!

 

thanks

 

Andy

[John Tomlinson]

It would be monumentally tedious to do, but you could drill and file out the window areas and re-glaze. Only if everything else fails.

 

John.

[Clive Mortimore]

21 minutes ago, John Tomlinson said:

It would be monumentally tedious to do, but you could drill and file out the window areas and re-glaze. Only if everything else fails.

 

John.

I was going to suggest that.

[Buhar]

1 hour ago, Clive Mortimore said:

I was going to suggest that.

Would you sort the glazing before or after you cut-and-shut it into some esoteric first generation DMU?

 

Alan 

[Clive Mortimore]

2 hours ago, Buhar said:

Would you sort the glazing before or after you cut-and-shut it into some esoteric first generation DMU?

 

Alan 

I wouldn't paint over the windows as a previous owner has done.

[Clive Mortimore]

Andy, before putting a paint stripper on the sides have you considered masking the sides leaving the windows un-masked and just applying the stripper to the windows.

[Alex TM]

Hi everyone,

 

This is another tedious approach: try a little Superstrip on a cotton bud; if successful it;ll begin to remove the paint after around a minute of rubbing.  It will work on car paint too.  If lucky a little weathering will hide damage to the areas you want painted.

 

Regards,

 

Alex.

[thegreenhowards]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I’m not precious about saving the existing paint finish as the green is the wrong colour anyway so I’ll probably repaint them. So I think I just need a paint stripper which won’t cloud the plastic. I guess I’ll experiment with some ‘strip magic’ which I have and caustic soda. If they fail then I may try the Superstrip which I’d never heard of but looking it up it does say that it may cloud plastic, so not promising.

[Buhar]

Dettol has been promulgated as a cheap, plastic-friendly paint stripper. 

Alan 

Edited May 22, 2020 by Buhar
Predictive text fail

[thegreenhowards]

The Mk1 RSO is now finished. I found some Southern Pride ‘P40’ seats in my stores, so decided to use them.

 

 

I suspect the ‘p38’ which has a low back would have been better, but I didn’t them and ordering from Southern Pride Is quite a fag, so p40 it was. Here is the finished coach.

 

 

 

[thegreenhowards]

Good news on the paint stripping front.

 

I couldn’t find any caustic soda and dettol didn’t work, but my ‘Strip Magic’ was very effective. It took all the paint off without damaging the plastic, but left a yellow look on the windows.

 

 

On further investigation, this turned out to be masking tape. So whoever had painted these coaches had very carefully masked each window before spraying all over. Why he had done that, and then don’t removed the masking, I have no idea, and I’m a bit annoyed with myself for not checking first! Anyway, this means that with careful scoring with a knife, I can remove the masking tape and leave a semi presentable coach as seen below.

 

 

It’s not perfect as I slipped with the knife a couple of times, and the paint is so old that it’s a bit brittle, so the edges of the windows will need tidying up. But the next big question is matching the colour. I show one of my existing tourist rake alongside it, and they’re very different. Both the cream and the green are darker on my existing ( finished) coach. Does anyone have a view on which is correct?

 

Andy

[Jon4470]

Hi Andy 

 

I know colour is a minefield but my instant reaction is that your Green and cream are correct. The green on the top coach looks much too lime green in colour. 

 

Jon

[jwealleans]

The top one looks like that livery they used in Scotland in the 80s.  The LNER colour was the same apple green as on locos.

[John Tomlinson]

At risk of sounding somewhat cold and irreverent, one wonders if something terminal happened to the person who painted the models, as otherwise it wouldn't make sense not to take the tape off.

 

I've wondered a few times in the past how an Executor would view my "in progress" models, probably chuck the lot in the bin I expect, not a cheery subject I know.

 

John.

[Clive Mortimore]

2 hours ago, John Tomlinson said:

At risk of sounding somewhat cold and irreverent, one wonders if something terminal happened to the person who painted the models, as otherwise it wouldn't make sense not to take the tape off.

 

I've wondered a few times in the past how an Executor would view my "in progress" models, probably chuck the lot in the bin I expect, not a cheery subject I know.

 

John.

Hi John

 

Wot about my collection of "maybe one day it will be finished", hopefully the kids will be able to sell enough off so they can hire a skip to take the rest away......perhaps I should have an envelope pinned to the baseboard with Skip Money written on it and some cash inside it.

3 hours ago, thegreenhowards said:

Good news on the paint stripping front.

 

I couldn’t find any caustic soda and dettol didn’t work, but my ‘Strip Magic’ was very effective. It took all the paint off without damaging the plastic, but left a yellow look on the windows.

 

 

On further investigation, this turned out to be masking tape. So whoever had painted these coaches had very carefully masked each window before spraying all over. Why he had done that, and then don’t removed the masking, I have no idea, and I’m a bit annoyed with myself for not checking first! Anyway, this means that with careful scoring with a knife, I can remove the masking tape and leave a semi presentable coach as seen below.

 

Andy

Hi Andy

 

I bet you didn't know if to cry or laugh on discovering the masking tape.

Edited May 30, 2020 by Clive Mortimore

[thegreenhowards]

14 hours ago, John Tomlinson said:

At risk of sounding somewhat cold and irreverent, one wonders if something terminal happened to the person who painted the models, as otherwise it wouldn't make sense not to take the tape off.

 

I've wondered a few times in the past how an Executor would view my "in progress" models, probably chuck the lot in the bin I expect, not a cheery subject I know.

 

John.

John,

 

The paint is pretty old, so I suspect a combination of a large roundtuit pile (We all have one of those!), a drop in faculties and then perhaps an estate sell off. Given that I snapped them up some months ago and took a while to get round to tackling the problem, it could be that they have been via a couple of other ‘roundtuit’ piles since the original owner!

 

Andy

[thegreenhowards]

14 hours ago, Clive Mortimore said:

Hi Andy

 

I bet you didn't know if to cry or laugh on discovering the masking tape.

Indeed! Initially I thought I’d damaged the windows, so just rubbed harder. Then came the dawning realisation and initially a ‘you stupid boy’ thought, but then relief that I will have some pretty useable coaches.

[thegreenhowards]

14 hours ago, jwealleans said:

The top one looks like that livery they used in Scotland in the 80s.  The LNER colour was the same apple green as on locos.

Thanks Jonathan, so if I use Railmatch/ Precision Paints LNER Green that would be OK? Doncaster or Darlington?

 

The cream seems darker on my finished (bottom)  coach than on the newly acquired ones. Any views on that?

 

Andy

[jwealleans]

It must be at least fifteen years since I built my one and only Tourist car.   I think I used Precision Cream for that.   The Halfords colour I used to use is no longer available off the shelf, so Precision is probably the way to go. 

 

I'd use Doncaster green for the lower half.   I believe these were mainly or all built at Doncaster and I don't like the shade of what they call Darlington green.

[thegreenhowards]

With this hot weather, my loft is unbearable which is where my layout and workbench reside. So I’ve been concentrating on outside jobs. This includes gardening of course, but also modelling which I can do sitting under a sun shade and without all my tools which I can’t be bothered to carry down from the loft.

 

Recently,  as well as the Mailcoach coaches above,  I’ve been tackling an obvious omission on Gresley Jn which those of you follow that thread will probably have noted - the lack of an empty coal train. That is partly because of lack of fiddle yard storage and partly the more obvious lack of wagons! I’ve been collecting mineral wagons slowly over the years whenever I can pick a decent one one up for under £4 (that is my rule of thumb although couplings and wheels make a difference). I now have enough for a decent length train of 35-40 wagons when combined with the empties of the gas trip working - not long by GN standards but enough to look like a proper train and to fit the available storage. The combination with my gas trip empties neatly solved both problems of lack of storage and insufficient wagons.

 

The work so far has involved coupling rationalisation and removal of fixed loads (which had been fitted by previous owners). I have been converting the train into fixed sets of five wagons coupled using the James’ Train Parts 3 link couplings which fit into NEM pockets. I know they’re not everyone’s cup of tea, being slightly chunky and lower than they should be. But for me, they work well, are easy to fit, look much better than tension locks and give the realistic ‘take up’ as the train pulls away. As a solo large layout modeller, speed is more important than ultimate finesse, so they fit my needs. I have use his ‘type 1’ couplings (https://jamestrainparts.com/shop/couplings/oo-gauge-fixed-link-wagon-couplings/) - no connection etc.

 

 

These work on either the higher or lower NEM pockets supplied by Bachmann over the years and I have put my wagons into fixed sets of five wagons (the most I can fit into a stock box for transit) with tension locks at the ends. I have kept these homogeneous in terms of NEM pocket height, but you might be able to mix them as there is some slack in the coupling - I just haven’t needed to try.

 

So the sets of wagons look like this.

 

With the older mainline couplings which screw into a mount with two holes for location, I use an after market NEM pocket sold on eBay which seems to work well and, while clunky, is not readily apparent in traffic.

 

I now need to go through the whole rake bringing the weathering up to a reasonable standard. My question (having concentrated on full wagons up to now) is what should the interior look like. Bachmann seem to have varied between grey and bauxite over the years, but my guess is they would look black from coal dust, with a little coal left in the corners, a bit like this.

 

 

Do people think that looks reasonable?

 

Andy

[thegreenhowards]

My latest project is this recent eBay purchase of a Nucast V2.

 

 

The body has been nicely constructed, but the valve gear has come apart on one side, which enabled me to get the price down (£60). The chassis is a rather basic old Nucast lump and it’s powered by a 5 pole X04 lookalike.

 

Work so far has been a general service and cleaning all the pickups. It now runs smoothly, if not the quietest and will pull fairly well - I’ve had it up to 13 coaches so far which slows it down, but it keeps going. I think that’s close to the limit, but that will be plenty.

 

The work programme wI’ll include:

- valve gear repair;

- replacing the incorrect late emblem on the tender - it should be an an early emblem for a black V2;

- lamp irons; and

- cylinder drain cocks.

 

l may also try to add some brake gear, but that looks more difficult.

 

Can anyone see any other obvious omissions?

 

Andy

 

 

[jwealleans]

Is the joint in the running plate where it curves down at the front starting to fail, Andy?

[davidw]

1 hour ago, thegreenhowards said:

My latest project is this recent eBay purchase of a Nucast V2.

 

 

The body has been nicely constructed, but the valve gear has come apart on one side, which enabled me to get the price down (£60). The chassis is a rather basic old Nucast lump and it’s powered by a 5 pole X04 lookalike.

 

Work so far has been a general service and cleaning all the pickups. It now runs smoothly, if not the quietest and will pull fairly well - I’ve had it up to 13 coaches so far which slows it down, but it keeps going. I think that’s close to the limit, but that will be plenty.

 

The work programme wI’ll include:

- valve gear repair;

- replacing the incorrect late emblem on the tender - it should be an an early emblem for a black V2;

- lamp irons; and

- cylinder drain cocks.

 

l may also try to add some brake gear, but that looks more difficult.

 

Can anyone see any other obvious omissions?

 

Andy

 

 

I almost went for that. But I'd have had to do a full repaint to BR green.