Coulsdon Works

[thegreenhowards]

4 hours ago, jwealleans said:

Are you going to put the fire iron rack on, Andy?   It's about the only thing I know about these new locos, but having done one for a club colleague I always notice it when it's not there.   247 do an etched one or they're easy enough to make.

Thank you Jonathan, It’s just as well that someone is on the ball! I did scratch build this for one of my other Bachmann WDs.

 

 

I agree it a worthwhile bit of detailing but I completely forgot for this one. I think I may try the 247 etch - would you recommend it?

 

Thanks

 

Andy

[jwealleans]

14 minutes ago, thegreenhowards said:

I may try the 247 etch - would you recommend it?

 

It's the only one I've done, but it worked for me.

 

[thegreenhowards]

1 hour ago, jwealleans said:

 

It's the only one I've done, but it worked for me.

 

Looks neat but you could do with a fire iron or two resting in there! Mine was a bit of a fag, so I’ll give 247 a go.

[jwealleans]

I think the owner went on to do that (and a crew). 

[thegreenhowards]

The postman delivered a nice toy yesterday. It’s an O gauge C4 ‘Jersey Lilly’ Atlantic. What a beautiful loco!

 

 

 

 

It’s built from a Gladiator kit and seems to be nicely put together but the paint job, while acceptable, isn’t the best. I got it knocked down a little because it was short circuiting. But that was easily solved yesterday by resoldering the brake shoes in the correct position (they were rubbing the flanges) and putting shrink wrap on the pick ups (they were touching the underside of the boiler. It now runs very smoothly.

 

The backhead is nicely detailed, but does anyone know why it’s painted that yucky duck egg blue colour? Was that GCR livery for back heads? 

 

 

I plan to use it on our club ‘Minories’ type layout where it can haul a peak outer suburban train to Rugby or Leicester. A bit of  a stretch (?) but similar to what @31A does on Finsbury Square with trains to East Anglia. I assume a GC train could have used the widened lines from Baker St. to access our fictional terminus. The livery is correct (I think) for 1923 to 1925 when it lost the ‘&’ and was renumbered 5192. I may repaint it to late 1920s condition but don’t want to go into the ‘30s as they were black by then which is a travesty on such a beautiful engine.

[John Tomlinson]

I don't know the answer about the backhead, although I can't recall ever seeing a GC loco model with this colour.

 

"TBG" who contributes to "Wright Writes" may be able to help you. I think this stands for Tony Gee, and he is the custodian/ renovator of Buckingham, the famous layout based on the GC by Peter Denny. I talked to him at the Doncaster Show once, a very interesting and informative man who had some of Mr. Denny's locos on display. All scratchbuilt they weighed a ton, even the little tanks!

 

It's a bonny purchase whatever, and if you did do a repaint for the period you suggest, would it be too far fetched to do GCR passenger livery, not yet repainted by the relatively new L&NER?

 

John.

[John Tomlinson]

On 22/03/2021 at 19:41, thegreenhowards said:

Looks neat but you could do with a fire iron or two resting in there! Mine was a bit of a fag, so I’ll give 247 a go.

I think 247 will sell you a little fire iron set as well as the the rack itself.

 

I chemically blackened mine before installing, just a shame I haven't plucked up the courage to weather the locos!

 

John.

[thegreenhowards]

6 minutes ago, John Tomlinson said:

I don't know the answer about the backhead, although I can't recall ever seeing a GC loco model with this colour.

 

"TBG" who contributes to "Wright Writes" may be able to help you. I think this stands for Tony Gee, and he is the custodian/ renovator of Buckingham, the famous layout based on the GC by Peter Denny. I talked to him at the Doncaster Show once, a very interesting and informative man who had some of Mr. Denny's locos on display. All scratchbuilt they weighed a ton, even the little tanks!

 

It's a bonny purchase whatever, and if you did do a repaint for the period you suggest, would it be too far fetched to do GCR passenger livery, not yet repainted by the relatively new L&NER?

 

John.

John,

 

One of our club members, @wokois promising to 3D print some pre grouping 6 wheel coaches. If he could produce a GCR rake that would look fantastic with the Atlantic in GCR green (one for your ever lengthening to do list Rob!).

 

Andy

[woko]

39 minutes ago, thegreenhowards said:

John,

 

One of our club members, @wokois promising to 3D print some pre grouping 6 wheel coaches. If he could produce a GCR rake that would look fantastic with the Atlantic in GCR green (one for your ever lengthening to do list Rob!).

 

Andy

 

I would love to do some pre-grouping GCR carriages, especially any 4 or 6 wheel stock, just finished a series of L&YR 6 wheeler coach stock ready for printing 

[Tony Teague]

6 hours ago, thegreenhowards said:

 

 

 

Did the LNER ever put full stops after their initials on loco liveries?

I can't recall seeing that on any other region - or on an LNER loco for that matter.

Tony

[jwealleans]

36 minutes ago, Tony Teague said:

Did the LNER ever put full stops after their initials

 

Yes, briefly in 1923.  They fell out of use at the same time as the ampersand.

[Jon4470]

1 minute ago, jwealleans said:

 

Yes, briefly in 1923.  They fell out of use at the same time as the ampersand.

Just beat me to it

 

Also to add, that I think the LNER, in general, painted the inside of cabs the same colour as the exterior. Not sure if the back head would have been green or black though.

Possibly Darlington was the exception to the rule (again!) because Ken Hoole states that they painted the inside of the cab red - at least on Ex NER locos 

 

Jon

[richard i]

Yes lner did have full stops on the very early paint jobs in 1923.

the back head would be black but the cab inside might have to be gcr cab cream as sold by precision paints. Cream inside the roof and the top half of the sides. 
The 3d printed carriages look great. As Andy says, a gcr 6 wheel set would be great ( in 4mm as well) hattons are just too generic. 
richard

 
 

[thegreenhowards]

Another new O gauge loco - this locoholic thing is getting a bit out of control and I can’t even blame Gilbert’s incitement for the O gauge purchases!

 

This is a J11 in BR livery.

 

 

Don’t ask what the fireman is doing!

 

\

 

 

 

It had been on eBay for a long time and I took pity on it - with the help of a £50 discount!

 

It’s seems to be very nicely put together and painted from what I guess is the Gladiator kit and it works very smoothly but there are a few errors which I have spotted and I’m hoping some of the GCR experts might be able to help spot some more before I start tinkering with it. The chimney and dome are, I think, the GCR originals and would have been replaced by BR days. Plus the uncovered safety valves are clearly a recent addition (not yet painted) and seem to be wrong as the only pictures I’ve found of uncovered valves show 4 pot versions. The plastic coal in the tender is not well applied and needs replacing with bigger lumps of real stuff.

 

I want to backdate it to late ‘20s / early ‘30s condition but from what I can see in the green book I need to be very careful with loco choice given the tender/ dome/ chimney/ smokebox door fastening / safety valves/ lack of superheating etc. So my questions are:

 

1. Did these chimneys and domes carry on through LNER days into the 1930s on some locos?

2. What sort of tender have I got? The green book talks about 3,250 and 4,000 gallon tenders but I can’t see any difference in the photos.

3. Did any carry two pot uncovered safety valves?

4. Are there other issues to catch out the less GCR aware modeller?

 

I’ve ordered Yeadon which should help me answer some of the above, but I’d be grateful for any help.

 

Regards

 

Andy

 

 

 

[John Tomlinson]

Hi Andy,

 

When Yeadon arrives I suspect you'll discover that you'll need to pick a loco at a specific time and stick with it as the boiler fittings do vary.

 

The other thing that looks not quite right to me is the cab roof. A bit flimsy somehow. Again, as someone who never saw one of these my view is only formed from photographs, but the very clear and extensive illustrations in Yeadon may help. I know you should never judge a model by another model, but if you have the Bachmann 4mm example it might be an interesting comparison.

 

Looks like another great buy!

 

John.

[65179]

Hi Andy,

 

This is a bit of an odd one. I doubt it's a Gladiator kit as a number of the proportions look a bit off for a J11. The splashers look a bit low/small compared with the real thing, putting the relationship between splashers and smokebox, and splashers and firebox, out. The frame extensions area is wrong and there's too much running plate in front of the smokebox too. 

 

3250 gallon tenders are hard to distinguish from their 4000 gallon equivalents. They are just a bit lower. The difference being in the (tank) sides. There are loads of other variations irrespective of whether they are 3250 or 4000 gallons!

 

As you note the boiler fittings whilst quite chunky are more GC than LNER.

 

https://www.lner.info/locos/J/j11.php

 

Regards,

Simon

 

[thegreenhowards]

Thanks John and Simon for your replies.

 

John, I suspect you’re right about Yeadon and picking a particular loco - it’s worse than the Gresley Pacifics for detail variations! I do have a Bachmann version, although still in its box. I bought it to use the chassis for my Wills J39 but have not got round to it. I’ve compared the two and the cab roof looks fine to me, but I do see Simon’s points when holding them up side by side.

 

Simon, I see your points about the splashers and area in front of the smokebox. It makes me wonder if it’s scratch built as I’m not aware of kits other than the Gladiator one and it looks quite modern (Mashima motor and clean chassis area). That would account for the dimensional inaccuracies. I don’t think it will be easy to fix, so I’m probably going to have to live with the errors.

 

Andy

 

 

[richard i]

1. Did these chimneys and domes carry on through LNER days into the 1930s on some locos?

chimney and dome were big to start and then got changed for a smaller flowerpot chimney before getting a smaller version of the original chimney shape. It depends on your year and number chosen.

2. What sort of tender have I got? The green book talks about 3,250 and 4,000 gallon tenders but I can’t see any difference in the photos.

would need to measure for which, but it is not an ex ROD tender, nor has it a water fill scoop. Difficult to tell if it has coal rails plated over on the outside or built from start with plate sides. 

3. Did any carry two pot uncovered safety valves? Less likely they were being switched to Ross pop from end of gcr time. Again depends on date and number. 

4. Are there other issues to catch out the less GCR aware modeller? Missing the handle to go behind the wheel on the smokebox door. I will look for others, but I think as others have said it looks more scratchbuilt. Dimensions of cab etc. just seem a smidge off. 
Wish I could be more help.

richard 

[thegreenhowards]

Further to John’s suggestion yesterday, I decided to photograph ‘little and large’ together.

 

 

 

 

This shows the splasher and running plate in front of the smokebox issues quite well. It also shows there’s quite a bit of detail missing which does tend to suggest a scratch built effort. The tenders look the same which suggest to me that I’ve got whichever tender Bachmann chose to model. 
 

To me it still looks like a J11, so I will live with the dimensional inaccuracies as they’d be a lot of work to fix. I will sort out the various detail bits once I’ve chosen a prototype. 

I will report back once Yeadon arrives and I’ve had a chance to chose a prototype.

 

Andy

[thegreenhowards]

I’ve been doing some weathering over the weekend. This is my Hornby A2/3, ex 50512, now 60522 Straight Deal.

 

 

 

 

I’ve gone for a fairly dirty but not filthy look based on a photo on the Heart of Midlothian in Power of the A2s. So the lower boiler, tender and cab sides are reasonably clean with the top of the boiler and underframe looking very sooty.

 

I used three coats of Klear first to gloss it up, then a wash of Humbrol matt black and precision roof dirt, then weathering powders finishing off with some gloss oil stains on parts of the motion.

 

I think the green and lining colour problems can be ignored now!

 

Any comments welcome - I’m bound to have forgotten something!

 

Andy

[jwealleans]

I'm slightly surprised you managed to get any weathering to stick over the Klear.   Do you let it down with water at all?    Any time I've tried to do that, whatever I've used just slides off the glossy surface.

[thegreenhowards]

I think that powders sticking straight to the Klear would be difficult. But I use the matt wash of roof dirt/black and then apply the powders after about 3 hours. I.e. when it’s touch semi-dry but still enough tackiness to grip the powder.

 

It seems to work, but it may yet all fall off in service!

 

Andy

[thegreenhowards]

My second weathering project over the weekend was this 0 gauge J50.

 

 

 

I bought this off eBay (familiar story?!) in BR livery and backdated it to LNER livery last week. For a southern GN layout, loco choice has to be quite careful as there weren’t many down south until the ‘50s. But this one had a spell at KX in the late ‘30s, so that will do.

 

I had to do a quick repaint of the buffer housings yesterday after @LNER4479 pointed out on Write Wrights that those on my N1 should be black. I also had a go at toning down the weathering which is better but still too ‘streaky’. I think this one might be a victim of Jonathan’s point about weathering over gloss. I used a coat of Gloss varnish over the old paint to get the LNER transfers to stick and then sealed them with a coat of matt varnish (both Microscale) but it was still more glossy than the remainder of the loco and the weathering has not bonded as well to the area around the numbering. I’m going to argue that someone has cleaned the number and ‘LNER’ more recently than the rest of the loco. It actually looks fine in more gentle light as shown here.

 

So as it will be mainly used indoors, I think it will do. But I may give it a light mist of roof dirt when I fire up the airbrush. If anyone has any other suggestions, I’d be grateful.

 

Andy

 

[thegreenhowards]

The final bit of weekend weathering work was these three O gauge Parkside wagons which I managed to photograph today when I had the O gauge layout set up in the garden.

 

 

 

The two LMS wagons were built from Parkside kits, while I backdated the SR one from BR livery. I’m not too sure about the LMS lettering - every picture in my wagon book seems to have it in a different size or position!

 

Edited April 1, 2021 by thegreenhowards

[jwealleans]

13 hours ago, thegreenhowards said:

LMS lettering - every picture in my wagon book seems to have it in a different size or position!

 

Yep, that's about it.   I know different LNER works did their own thing  - every signwriter on the LMS seems to have been a law unto himself.