What is on the bench was previously in my head !

[Gibbo675]

Hi Folks,

 

This evenings work has involved fitting the door locking bars to the Ford Containers I have also been checking around them for defects and remedially repairing them. The repairs were to things such as small gaps at the tops or bottoms of the ribs that were filled with slivers of plasticard and then filled back and also checking all the edges that had been filed did not have ragged or burred edges.

previously I fixed all of the ribs that make up the roof profile from .010" micro-strip, this was a fiddly job and was done in batches due to its tedious nature. All that is required now is to fit the ISO corner castings to the roofs and the sole plates and they may be painted.

 

Two of the eight ford boxes shewing the door and blank ends.

 

Gibbo.

[Gibbo675]

Hi Folks,

 

I've finally got around to finishing the Ford boxes, I seem to have run out of steam with container boxes and as it has been sunny I've been working on my motorbikes as well.

 

The boxes were primed with Halfords grey primer and then given two coats of RAL 7047 that I had mixed again at Halfords. The grey used by Ford is silver sand, the blue being Gentian Blue which is RAL 5010 G.

The Ford name boards are by Retro Decal and are self adhesive, I stuck them onto .010" plasticard before sticking them in place with styrene cement. I made sure that I got them in the right spot this time as my first attempts that have since been rebuilt I positioned them wrongly by on rib too near the end of the box.

 

Four of eight of the Ford 30' containers.

 

Gibbo.

Edited March 28, 2020 by Gibbo675
Annotating of caption.

[Gibbo675]

Hi Folks,

 

I have at last got around to painting my DC kits DMU's.

 

First they had a coat of white primer over the cab fronts which was then masked off for some grey primer for the body sides. Once the primer was dry I applied two coats of Rail Match BR Blue to finish coat the body sides. I didn't paint the ends of the units as I only had one can of blue for thirteen bodies so I didn't want to run out, the ends will be brush painted later.

 

As I do my spray painting outside, the reason for such a delay on the job, there are risks involved and a fly decided to assist in the painting of one of the Cravens 105's as shewn below.

 

I calculate the fly's wingspan to scale out at approximately three feet and six inches !

 

Gibbo.

[AlfaZagato]

Must be one o' them horseflies.   I hear they get pretty big.

[Guest Half-full]

25 minutes ago, AlfaZagato said:

Must be one o' them horseflies.   I hear they get pretty big.

Dunno, looks like a bluebottle to me 

[Baby Deltic]

I reckon its a mayfly or a sciaridae. Look at the long slender body and long legs.

[Gibbo675]

2 hours ago, Half-full said:

Dunno, looks like a bluebottle to me 

It's not a blue bottle because it was removed before the second coat.

 

1 hour ago, Baby Deltic said:

I reckon its a mayfly or a sciaridae. Look at the long slender body and long legs.

I bow to your superior knowledge upon such matters.

 

What is the difference between an etymologist and an entomologist ?

 

An etymologist knows what an entomologist does !

 

Gibbo.

[Gibbo675]

Hi Folks,

 

I've been busy painting DMU's again, the blue has been finished off, the roofs painted and the yellow first class stripes have been applied.

Painting the roofs on all but the class 101 Metropolitan Cammell were painted by hand running the brush into the edge of gutter, the class 101 had to be masked off as there are only small rain strips over the doors. The yellow stripes were all masked off before an undercoat of white followed by two coats of yellow.

 

Newly painted body shells awaiting transfers.

 

With the exception of the Gloucester 100 all of the above DMU's are built from DC Kits. All were second hand from eBay and mostly good however the Derby Lightweight was missing four bogies and underframe parts and one of the Cravens kits was missing two and a half bogies and had warped roofs due to poor storage previously. (I couldn't complain at less than £15 for the pair !)

As such the engines from one of the Cravens 105 went to the Derby Lightweight, the roofs for one of the Cravens 105's are made from Triang Mk1's, and bogies not used due to using Lima power bogies were swapped about to make up other kits. The upshot is that one of the Cravens 105's has been built as a power twin so that the DMCL may run with the Gloucester 100 and the power twin has scratch built underframe details.

I also have one bogie short for the Derby 108 which is a dummy unit, in hind sight I should have built one of the Cravens 105's as a dummy unit instead of the Derby for I have three two car Cravens 105's. The Gloucester 100 is based upon a spare Hornby 110 centre car underframe and a spare Hornby mechanism from building a Park Royal 103 previously.

 

If anyone one has a DC kits bogie going spare I would be interested.

 

Comparison of kit supplied and scratch built underframe details of two of the Cravens 105's.

 

Gibbo.

Edited May 4, 2020 by Gibbo675

[Northmoor]

Seeing your production line Gibbo shows just how wrong so many of us were about DMUs in the BR Blue era, "They all look the same!".  The variety of classes (and within them) was amazing compared to today; Cravens and Metro-Cammell units with/without route indicators, Gloucester Units which sort of looked like Calder Valley units but without headcode boxes, etc.  I thought your Class 108s might actually have been 107s which had the headcode box, but no, some of the 108 had them as well, instead of the usual roof destination blind.

 

My own Class 101 from a Tri-ang unit is almost finished - as far as I'm bothered to go anyway - with just some buffers and hoses etc. still to do.  I know it's incredibly crude (and too short) but modelling for me is as much about nostalgia for the models of my youth as making 100% perfect replicas of the prototype.

[Baby Deltic]

How did you do the class 100? I've seen people use etched brass sides and resin or cast ends.

[Gibbo675]

17 minutes ago, Baby Deltic said:

How did you do the class 100? I've seen people use etched brass sides and resin or cast ends.

Hi Lloyd,

 

I decided to go down the cut and shut approach and in doing so I made life quite difficult for myself. he body is a shortened Hornby Triang Mk2 with the windows form a Hornby 110 spliced into it, lots of glue and lots of filler. considering that I went via such a convoluted method it doesn't look too bad. The beginnings of it are a few pages back somewhere.

 

I may make a start on the underframe detail later today after looking at photographs on RAILCAR.co.uk

 

Gibbo.

[Gibbo675]

23 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

Seeing your production line Gibbo shows just how wrong so many of us were about DMUs in the BR Blue era, "They all look the same!".  The variety of classes (and within them) was amazing compared to today; Cravens and Metro-Cammell units with/without route indicators, Gloucester Units which sort of looked like Calder Valley units but without headcode boxes, etc.  I thought your Class 108s might actually have been 107s which had the headcode box, but no, some of the 108 had them as well, instead of the usual roof destination blind.

 

My own Class 101 from a Tri-ang unit is almost finished - as far as I'm bothered to go anyway - with just some buffers and hoses etc. still to do.  I know it's incredibly crude (and too short) but modelling for me is as much about nostalgia for the models of my youth as making 100% perfect replicas of the prototype.

Hi Northmoor,

 

I quite like the nostalgia aspect of my models, there is something about a toy train that makes it a toy train. I find that as much as I admire the super accurate and super detailed models that are available these days they somehow loose the fun of it for me by being just too good.

 

I like a Lima 47 that has a had a repaint and re-bogied Trix AL1's in the way my models were in the 1980's. As for DMU's, I couldn't stand the things when I was younger, my parents house backed onto the Wigan-Southport west of Burscough and that was pretty much all we got. The exceptions were 25/3's on the Southport coal working and the same on the early morning newspapers from Manchester Victoria, we got to see 47's on the bin liner to Appley Bridge that used to run round in the loop at Burscough, to tone green if we were really lucky ! Latterly class 45's and 60's were also used. Orangeman's day parades usually brought three trains hauled by class 40's making the house shake when clattering through New Lane with thirteen Mk1's at 90mph, we would then see the locomotives twice more before the return trip as they were sent to Springs Branch for refueling. Other excursion trains were occasionally hauled by 47's and for a serious treat a 45.

 

The only regularly diagrammed locomotive hauled passenger trains I remember were the so called club trains which usually had a class 37, or on a bad day a 31, hauling five Mk2's in Regional Railways livery in the late 1980's and early 1990's.

 

DMU wise on the Wigan-Southport and in order of commonality we had:

• 104 BRCW three car units in all blue from Newton Heath and Longsight, Blackpool white stripes and the Buxton's with white cab roof domes, some later reduced to single engine power twins.
• 107/108 Derby two car Newton Heath and Longsight in all blue, white with blue stripe and blue grey, both variety of head code box.
• 110 BRCW three car units from Neville Hill in all blue, white with blue stripe and blue grey, most of the blue grey ones were reduced power twins and were fast !
• 101 Metro Camm two and three cars in all blue, white with blue stripe and blue grey form Neville Hill and York.
• 105 Cravens two car units in all blue from Newton Heath, mostly power twins.
• 103 Park royal two car units in all blue from Chester these were rare and I would guess that they were in place of failed 108's.
• Even more rare were the Swindon 120 three car sets that appeared in the mid 1980's for a couple of years.

The Ormskirk to Preston line was served by:

• 107/108 Derby two car units Newton Heath in all blue, white with blue stripe and blue grey, both variety of head code box.
• 105 Cravens two car units in all blue from Newton Heath, mostly power twins.
• 104 BRCW single engine power twins in all blue.
• 101 Metro Camm two car units in blue grey form the mid 1980's.
• 116 Derby two car units in blue grey in the late 1980's because of 142 and 150 failures.

Thinking about all that I can just see the oily sheen on the external paintwork, the brown varnish on the insides of the windows, prams lined up in the brake van, water dripping in through the gangways on a rainy day, tatty curtains and faded moquette seats, and the vibrations caused by creating control vacuum before setting off all wrapped in the aroma of stale cigarette smoke and diesel fumes !

 

Proper trains could be seen at Preston and Wigan, Preston being preferred as there was more variety with locomotive changes to Blackpool, Liverpool and Manchester although the pie shops were better in Wigan ! By proper trains I mean trains with locomotives.

 

Preston in 1974 had classes, 08, 24, 25, 40, 47, 50 all of the above DMU's but best of all 81,85, 86 and 87. Occasionally there were classes 82, 83 and 84 but these locomotives mainly worked Manchester-London and a class 20 may venture north of Wigan.

 

Gibbo.

[Northmoor]

We never had that kind of variety West of Swansea!  It was 120s on most locals, but they disappeared early on (and I was too young to see the last of the Westerns and Hymeks), replaced by 101s then 108s latterly, transferred from the NW; the destination boards said things like Altrincham..... Some loco-hauled services survived until the late-80s, with 37s and 47s and for a few years in the mid-80s, 33s were regulars.  A couple of through trains a day to London were 125s, while freight was oil trains with 47s and the occasional 56, but they often ran in the middle of the night.  The Speedlink and military trains could run on odd days so I almost never saw them.

It's why I always enjoyed our holidays, if we were visiting family (with no relatives in Wales) we were elsewhere in the UK like Scotland or East Anglia where the trains were different, so seeing something like a pair of 20s or AC electrics was a thrill to me.  

Today's enthusiasts, who get excited about seeing a 66 from a different pool, don't know what they missed....  Like you I can still hear the rattle of the DMU luggage racks, the smell of the seats and remember how on stretches of worn rail, you had to shout to the person sat next to you!

 

Rob

[Gibbo675]

Hi Folks,

 

I have been working upon the Park Royal class 103 today, the job attended to has been the underframe details of engines and associated electrical boxes. The engines and radiators are left overs from DC Kits models and the battery boxes are from the Hornby underframe cut off and repositioned. Other bit and bobs have been made from plasticard and chopped up bits of the original Hornby underframe. Not 100% accurate but a fair representation, it will look better once it is all painted black !

 

In other news I found a DC Kits bogie in a box when looking for something else, quite how it ended up in there I don't know, but the Derby 108 has now got all of its wheels, bonus of the day there.

 

Right hand side details.

 

Left hand side details.

 

Gibbo.

[jessy1692]

7 hours ago, Gibbo675 said:

Hi Folks,

 

I have been working upon the Park Royal class 103 today, the job attended to has been the underframe details of engines and associated electrical boxes. The engines and radiators are left overs from DC Kits models and the battery boxes are from the Hornby underframe cut off and repositioned. Other bit and bobs have been made from plasticard and chopped up bits of the original Hornby underframe. Not 100% accurate but a fair representation, it will look better once it is all painted black !

 

In other news I found a DC Kits bogie in a box when looking for something else, quite how it ended up in there I don't know, but the Derby 108 has now got all of its wheels, bonus of the day there.

 

Right hand side details.

 

Left hand side details.

 

Gibbo.

Looking like Vic Berry's yard in the background of the 103 there Gibbo! Lots of good stuff here as ever, looking forward to seeing more on the 100 unit.

All the best

James

[Gibbo675]

On 05/05/2020 at 22:44, jessy1692 said:

Looking like Vic Berry's yard in the background of the 103 there Gibbo! Lots of good stuff here as ever, looking forward to seeing more on the 100 unit.

All the best

James

Hi James,

 

Without wishing to be overly dismissive of your knowledge of all things "bug crate" the 103 is actually a Gloucester 100.

 

Being 57' long, BR Blue with yellow ends and having three windows in the front they look nothing like each other at all, hence the wrong unit referred to !!!

 

Park Royal 103 DTCL.

 

Park Royal DMBS.

 

Should you look up 53355 and 53812 you will see upon what delights I rode to Preston when attending college, much better than the then new 142's by quite some stretch. You may also then work out why I am only building the DMBS !

 

https://www.railcar.co.uk/

 

Gibbo.

Edited May 13, 2020 by Gibbo675
Improper grammar.

[jessy1692]

25 minutes ago, Gibbo675 said:

Hi James,

 

Without wishing to be overly dismissive of your knowledge of all things "bug crate" the 103 is actually a Gloucester 100.

 

Being 57' long, BR Blue with yellow ends and having three windows in the front they look nothing like each other at all !!!

 

Park Royal 103 DTCL.

 

Park Royal DMBS.

 

Should you look up 53355 and 53812 you will see upon what delights I rode to Preston when attending college, much better than the then new 142's by quite some stretch. You may also then work out why I am only building the DMBS !

 

https://www.railcar.co.uk/

 

Gibbo.

Evening Gibbo, as you probably guessed my knowledge of bug crates in their various iterations is extremely lacking! I can pick out some but others are very much of a muchness, i fear if i start on them ill fall into a freightliner type rabbit hole and but i do like your idea of using a mk2 and 110 mashed together.

 

I think only being able to remember riding on pacers/150 variants i switched off to the world of units but as the gaps in the loco collections fill i may have to dive into the blue haze of 1st gen units...

Cheers

James

[Gibbo675]

13 minutes ago, jessy1692 said:

I fear if i start on them ill fall into a freightliner type rabbit hole

 

Cheers

James

Hi James,

 

This is certainly something you need to be aware of and I'm in deep with two single-cars, seven and a half two-cars, two three-cars and a four-car. classes covered are DLW, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 108, 110, 123, 128 and 129.

 

The only standard RTR unit I have is a three car BRCW 110, all the rest are DC Kits or scratched and bashed from other stuff.

 

Gibbo.

[jessy1692]

16 minutes ago, Gibbo675 said:

Hi James,

 

This is certainly something you need to be aware of and I'm in deep with two single-cars, seven and a half two-cars, two three-cars and a four-car. classes covered are DLW, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 108, 110, 123, 128 and 129.

 

The only standard RTR unit I have is a three car BRCW 110, all the rest are DC Kits or scratched and bashed from other stuff.

 

Gibbo.

Now that is a decent spread of units! That Railcar site looks a great resource like the search function. That hybrid N699 set will make a great little model, didnt realise they were still going into 1988.

Top work as ever Gibbo, looking forward to seeing more.

Now i best get some sleep and stop looking at DMUs, early start for trainspotting in the morning 6am will be a shock to system....

All the best

James

[Enterprisingwestern]

11 hours ago, jessy1692 said:

Looking like Vic Berry's yard in the background of the 103 there Gibbo! Lots of good stuff here as ever, looking forward to seeing more on the 100 unit.

All the best

James

 

 

 

Mike.

[jessy1692]

2 hours ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

 

 

Mike.

Cheers Mike, great song, cheered up a dull day at work!

[Gibbo675]

Hi Folks,

 

I am NOT to be trusted with eBay:

 

 

I now have 29 unfinished DMU vehicles and one that needs to be started, I shall then have a round 30.

 

I know work upon the class 82 has stalled somewhat at the moment along with all the other stuff but not to worry its sunny today and my friend Mike says my DMU collection will make Newton Heath's allocation look rather secondary.

 

Gibbo.

[AlfaZagato]

That doesn't look to be too involved a build, at least.   You could likely knock the shell together in a night.

[Enterprisingwestern]

3 hours ago, AlfaZagato said:

That doesn't look to be too involved a build, at least.   You could likely knock the shell together in a night.

 

My experience of DC kits is that it takes at least a couple of nights filling in the sink marks on the coach sides, cleaning up the window openings, rubbing down the mould lines and removing the door handles and handrails prior to re drilling them.

Unless I'm just unlucky?

 

Mike.

 

 

[Gibbo675]

1 hour ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

My experience of DC kits is that it takes at least a couple of nights filling in the sink marks on the coach sides, cleaning up the window openings, rubbing down the mould lines and removing the door handles and handrails prior to re drilling them.

Unless I'm just unlucky?

 

Mike.

 

 

Hi Mike,

 

I've just looked at all my DC Kits and have to say you must be unlucky as all of mine have been pretty flat to the point where any hollows that are apparent are so small that filling them would have likely made them worse. The only repair of any note to the latest contraption is that the sprue runners have damaged the gutters in two places on one side, I have had this before but that is how the roofs often are from my experience.

 

I'll sort the bogies and underframe tomorrow.

 

What the "Vic Berry" is going on at my house [or in my head] !

 

Gibbo.