STL's Desk: Now Presenting 009

[SomethingTrainLover]

Hello all, I've decided that I want to try and be a bit more active on this site. Some of you may recognize me, others may not, so here's the low down on what to expect on this thread.
Basically, you'll see a lot of RWS based models, reaching for accuracy of the engines seen in the books, with a blend of some more prototypical aspects and some personal touches and changes I've added. Of course, I also do have some other models I'm working on that aren't related to the RWS at all, so you'll be seeing some normal and modified normal models here as well.
Thoughts, comments, etc., are appreciated.

 

 

Edited April 25, 2019 by SomethingTrainLover

[SomethingTrainLover]

Right, guess I'll start off with the obvious. My first real kit built/bashed/project model that I built up was my RWS Thomas. Based on how Thomas appeared following a rebuild after meeting the station master for breakfast. Shell is an SCC E2-X bodyshell, available in WSF and FUD on Shapeways, but Sparkshot, aka Knuckles, is now offering them in Photon resin prints, a frankly much cheaper and superior material and print to the Shapeways versions. He is also offering other models in his range in this print as well. Anyway, the model was bought in WSF plastic, and modified to fit the Bachmann Jinty chassis. Now sadly, many of these early photos are lost, the server that had them being long since deleted. I have been able to recover one image, taken after the first modifications done to make the shell roughly fit the chassis were made.

 

After that I finished any mods left needed to make the chassis and body fit each other, then sanded it as smooth as I could before using filler primer to start filling in the rough texture, many coats were added and sanded smooth until I was happy with it. The great thing about filler primer is that it does just that, fills in and primes the model for painting. I used Tamiya X-14 for the main blue, with the rest of the paints being used being flat Testor pot paints. I also painted the cab.

Then started off finishing the painting for the rest of the parts, wheels, smokebox door, roof, etc.

Following this, I lined out the model using the thinnest line of Testors trim tape.

The splashers took sometime, for the straight bottom used a piece of testors trim tape, and then painted the curve by dotting the paint and cleaning it up.

And as seen above, I used sticker paper for the number, did try and use decal paper so i could print my own but every attempt, and there were many, failed.

Also used some spare tie wire after stripping it of plastic to make the rear window bars, was going to try and cut them to fit in the frame, but that was just too fiddly.

Some more time passed, modified the box the Jinty had come in to now take Thomas.
 

Finally added vacuum pipes, and got a snowplow so i could run him round my Christmas Village layout. And I also added handrail knobs and hand rails, these have since been replaced by less chunky versions. (sorry for the poor quality on this one)

And it just so happened to snow on the night I did all this...

Later on, I also added a full coal load:

(Yes, i did take care of that piece on the back of the bunker)
Also bodged some window glass, really should replace those actually, and got etched build plates

Also made his coaches using some Dapol Stanier Subs i got off Hattons, looked the part and were above all else, cheap.

And here's Thomas after getting the current handrails:

And also, headboard:

And this has probably gone on for long enough as is, so here's the latest pics of him. He's now got a bufferbeam number.

That's pretty much it for Thomas as of now. If you made it this far, thanks for reading and thoughts are appreciated.

Edited February 26, 2019 by SomethingTrainLover

[LNWR18901910]

What a nice model! It reminds me of something similar I made once. Does it run well?

[SomethingTrainLover]

Right, so next up is my RWS based Gordon. Model was built using the SCC G2 mid plate bodyshell, on a spare Hornby "Book Law" chassis, modified with Black 5 cylinders and valve gear, among other parts.
Started out as usual, WSF shell off shapeways, so filler primer coats were applied to do both of those things. Will say now though that i wish i applied a few more layers cause there are areas that didn't turn out near as smooth as I would like.

And then started the cylinders, the Black 5 cylinders were essentially cut and shut at new heights and distances from the original middle casting section

Test fitting the cylinders, valve gear and body on the chassis

Cylinders were then glued in place using the bodt and rods as a guide, mind that the chassis had a tender wire, and I hadn't yet tried to re wire this part yet to get it to run, this will matter later.

eventually the rest of my parts arrived, including the Fowler tender.

The dummy hook coupling and buffers were then removed, I then added a screw link and bashed my own sprung buffers, using a diesel's rectangular buffer heads and Bachmann LNER sprung buffers. These were glued in place eventually, and the tender was painted.

Painting had only started btw, didn't just leave it with the black showing through.

And then everything sort of went wrong, tried re wiring the tender connecting, thought maybe paint was on the contacts, and then the wires let go from the contact plate
It was a disaster.
I 

I still wanted the model to at least look the part though, so i through the chassis back together and did a mock up until i could get a new soldering iron to try and fix it.

The face I acquired was an old Hornby Gordon's and i needed to re-paint and the first attempt was...Let's just say he got some of that special coal.
Course eventually, I did manage to bodge the contacts and wires, soldered them back up, found the cylinders were too far back, had to cut the middle section of the cylinders to slide them forward, found the contacts were catching on the wheels, contacts horrible bent were bent even more, glued the contacts straight to the side of the plate. Had a decent running model I was happy enough with.

Course, that's not where this ends. Started trying to add a bit more to Gordon. Started with making an eccentric bracket, eventually replaced after Knuckles(Sparkshot) kindly made me some 3d printed replacements based on his, which were based on LMS brackets.


Finally painted the smokebox and added handrails to it and the cab.

And then, it went wrong again. My contact plate bodge kept giving out, requiring more and more glue to keep the wheels and contacts from interfering due to the bent nature of the contacts. Well, eventually the contacts ripped themselves apart. So I did what i should've done to begin with, ordered a new contact plate and fitted it.

This was about the time that i finally got rid of the jumpiness in the valve gear, found that the cylinders(which at this point are just 50% glue) were actual still too far back, moved them forwards and i haven't had any big issues YET after that. 

Edited February 26, 2019 by SomethingTrainLover

[SomethingTrainLover]

To continue from the previous post:
Moving forward in time again. Got him a headboard and both sets of builders plates, one are the original Doncaster plates, the other is the set of Crewe plates he got from his rebuild at Crewe in 1939.

Other than that it's just been the occasional additions and touch ups. Finally added a smokebox dart and lamp iron, also added a bufferbeam number:

AND, I swear this is of it right now, here are the most recent pics. I have another NWR engine in progress that i got a Mainline Fowler tender for. Now i thought it would be weird for this engine's tender to have a coal rail, cause it had one, but Gordon's too not. So i cut it off the mainline tender and modded it and glued it to the Hornby tender behind Gordon and I swear that's it for Gordon for now:

Edited February 26, 2019 by SomethingTrainLover

[SomethingTrainLover]

Right, next up, we'll be leaving normal OO gauge and taking a trip into the ever charming realm of 009 NG. A big foray into this scale, I bought a Bachmann Rheneas for less than $100 immediately when it came out late 2017, fearing a repeat of what happened when Skarloey was released. After some time, I finally got the NP Kit for the model and got to work on making my RWS Rheneas.

 

Started off by dissembling the model and went straight for that admittedly terrible funnel. Started by cutting off the funnel and then using a grinding bit on my dremel to get rid of the rest of it and the base, then drilled out a new hole. The funnel was fitted, with some excess of the model and funnel being chipped away at.

The model was then stripped completely and the new cab included with the kit built, This also required some grinding away at the coal load in the right hand bunker, which i chose to keep cause...reasons. I also primed and painted the cab, making sure that I liked the red I got to represent the Skarloey Railway's red in the books, it's darker in pics but in most lighting it's pretty bright. I also fit the etched smokebox front plate. The body then followed the cab in priming and painting.

Some of the paint did chip, as can be seen. I wound up stripping the bodyshell a few times, whether it be after priming and/or painting due to major chips, as you'll see.
I had acquired an Ertl Rheneas toy a year earlier at a flea market, and before this major conversion had already taken the face of the toy, given it's a far better representation of the character from the original TVS Season 4 models, and in turn the books. I also temporarily added the kit handrails and whistle to see how they looked.

 

Of course, would't be one of my builds without some sort of disaster...So here's a disaster: At this point, my general inexperience with assembling kits like this had started to go a bit wrong, this being the cab. I hadn't really added the roof correctly...at all. I glued the roof before actually bending it to the contour of the cab, so it wasn't exactly resting neatly, nor was the top vent and small traces of glue surrounding it. There was also the fact that I hadn't painted the roof, so i had to paint it black with the rest of the cab bar the coal rails being red. Oh and the coal rails dropped off at the rails and front section that bends near the front of the bunker. What was the real disaster was that it wound up crushed. Won't go deep into the details but some yelling was involved. However, the back section of the cab survived. So I got a bit innovative.

Yup, the rear tank was basically cut free from the remains of the back of the cab, so now I could have as built condition. You also may note that I had started painting the smokebox and side sections black as needed, along with the running board and cylinders now being painted up.
I even managed to salvage the bent sections of the original cab, with the generous use of a hammer. Used the original model's cab and the two other etched cab sides included with the kit to try and make an early cab, though this hasn't gotten very far even now.

 

Eventually, another Dolgochification kit arrived and learning from the first build, I assembled the cab fairly quickly, minus roof and vent, which were both carefully bent to the contour's of the cab and glued together and painted separately. It was at this point that I forced myself to add the kit splashers and remove the stock ones. the cab and splashers were quickly primed and sprayed red.

Compared to a stock Bachmann Skarloey

I also finally got some gold paint for the brass, given it looks like polished brass of course.

Eventually, January 2019 came and I finally made myself get back to work on Rheneas after about a month doing nothing on him. Granted i was away at University and then away for all of Christmas to New Years, but still, it was time. I managed to pick off another usable part of that Ertl Rheneas, the sticker nameplates. They were in incredibly good condition and at this point the Ertl Rheneas had given up it's smokebox for another project i was working on, and I'm not kidding about that. I also painted the cab window lenses brass and the coal rail black.

Then I started the part I had been holding off on...the lining. This was my first time ever using waterslide transfer decals. So I got to work. I also finished up the actual smokebox itself and added the cab roof proper.
\

 

And soon after I added everything else, bar the westinghouse pump, still need to get to that, from the kit and finished any paint daps and touch ups.
And so here he is; my RWS Rheneas:

 

From the start, he's been repainted completely, relined completely, had a new brass whistle, handrails, clack and injector valves fitted, a new cab, a back tank for cab-less mode, new splashers, new funnel, brass builders plates, and I made some, decent looking I think, Glazed windows for the cab. All he needs now really are numberplates...and a varnish to protect the paint and decals, want to see what finish i want and do want a brand that won't eat away at the paint or decals.

But yeah, this is him. Hope you liked it, at least the model. As always, comments, thoughts, etc, are welcomed.

[SomethingTrainLover]

After Rheneas was finished, I decided to just get on with Skarloey rather than just wait for for the NP slimline kit to come back in stock. First thing first, I needed to get rid of that bit of metal that blocks the forward cab windows. This was a simple job of just cutting with a cutting disc. the smokebox hand rails were then filed down and the molded knobs were used as guides to drill out holes for some proper ones. They're alan gibson short knobs with some wire off an HO engine. 

The model was then stripped, and using the molded tank handrails, I drilled out two holes for new 3D ones, the wire used also came from an HO engine.

After these holes were drilled out, the molded handrails were sanded down till the tank was smooth, bar the rivet detail of course.
The new handrails were carefully bent to length and shape, using pics of Talyllyn as a guide. I had noticed that others modeling Talyllyn using the Bachmann Skarloey have had a tendency to make the handrails stick out quite a lot, nothing against these models of course, these conversions almost always tend to turn out brilliantly, but I did want to avoid it. This meant constantly checking the length against the body and accounting for the tank weight that the body sits upon. After the handrails were firmly lined up and glued, filling putty was lightly added to the holes to fill them in and then sanded smooth.

The model was then primed and painted red.

The rest of the model was carefully painted through spray and brush techniques. Once the body itself had finished painting, it went off for lining. 

This was followed by using water transfers to represent the painted name, as in the books, this was a 4 hour or so process cause the letters just didn't want to stick and stay. 

Like Rheneas, the face was replaced by a far superior one from an ertl toy. And here he is. He's not done yet, and I finally managed to order an NP kit. Plan to add the full rods and cylinders.

"We ended up back to back, not speaking"

Now, this isn't the end, because I recently made a big step into the next step of Skarloey's upgrades. What I did was try and give him a cab interior. Now this went nowhere near to plan and in the end I shelved the original idea I had, which was to do what I did but add an actual interior made of brass sheets. Unfortunately, this didn't go well, and cause fitting issues. So what i did was I just painted the interior black which I was going to do anyway, and it looks fine honestly. I also bought a backhead off of shapeways, which isn't done yet, still need to add the water gauges, but I did add a rough handbrake wheel, made from an old Bachmann TTTE buffer head. Like I said before, he isn't done yet, still needs the NP slimline kit and him and Rheneas need to be varnished.

[SomethingTrainLover]

Alright, so Skarloey update: Found and ordered a NP slimline kit on dundasmodels.com and I assembled it over the weekend. I assembled the slidebar brackets, though have yet to fit them, because A) they need to be cleaned up more, B) needed modification to the running board, and C) they are known to short out on the chassis and need to have something added along the point where it goes into the chassis or painted heavily enough, and I had time for none of these things, so I started the cylinders. Cylinders were first taken and had the slidebar holes bored out gradually, using bigger and bigger drill bits in my pin vise. This was done until the slidebars were easy to put in, but still snug enough to not fall out with out a bit of force. Some of this drilling saw small lumps of the plastic bending out of the cylinders, these were sanded down along with the cylinder block, as I had noticed with other models made using the slimline cylinders, these hand't been sanded down to get rid of the small but noticeable print lines. 
The crossheads were assembled as per the instructions, though I took the liberty to expand the holes for the pin, as I did for any other pieces that had holes. Some solder leaked into one of the slidebar grooves during the final soldering of the crossheads themselves, some of this was removed with a small saw i went out and bought, but I wound up instead getting a fine point soldering iron head and using it to melt away the excess solder and clear the groove. Here is the cylinder block with one of the slidebars in place with the mock up of the main connecting rod also in place, this was done to see how much the piston rod hole in the block needed to be expanded out. 

The block was then given some final adjustments to the aforementioned slidebar slot holes and was given 2 coats of Tamiya TS-8, before being test fitted to the model itself.

I then soldered the crosshead, pin and connecting rod together as per the instructions and filed down the excess pin and solder flat. The original brackets were reused, and as it turns out somewhat unnecessarily modified to fit the new slidebars.
The final touches were then fitted, I painted one of the numberplates given with the model and fitted it to the back of the cab, and added the builders plates to the bunker sides. After making sure the model ran well, I lined out the cylinders. And so here he is, now actually pretty much done, my updated RWS Skarloey:

I will say that He's a bit jittery, but that's probably my fault, messed with the position of the axle gear, he runs but forwards is a bit jittery. He runs very well backwards so I know it isn't the new rods etc, have a spare wheelset though, just swap over the rods, which'll probably suck and take an hour but eh, gotta do what you gotta do. Otherwise, all he and Rheneas need is a coat of varnish and their side number plates, of which I've already ordered.

[SomethingTrainLover]

Got around to removing the Jinty brake linkage from Thomas, only nearly 2 years after starting but better late then never. 

[SomethingTrainLover]

So. Percy. Like with most of my other projects there's a lot to cover, so: Percy was made using one of 2A-Rail's Avonside shells, as Percy is stated to be an Avonside that was modified over the years with parts of other industrials, Hunslet and the like. The body was fitted to a Hornby L&YR Pug chassis and the model was painted up. And it look...alright. 

But I wasn't really satisfied, so after a few months, I decided last June that I would upgrade him to be more like his apperance in the books, i.e., how he appeared in Ghost Train which is, as most agree, the definitive Percy. This meant adding a tank flap, i had a spare Hornby one, and fitted it to the forward most dome, I roughly cut off the original pug bodyshell's dome and modded it for use to fit over the original mid-dome, and used spare plastic and brass safety valves to make the safety valve housing seen on the rear most dome. I also added handrail knobs, handrails and springs I got off a spare HO engine. 

This was then painted up...and then i stripped it and took it apart again to actually prime it, and finally get rid of all the print lines. I should mention that the area where the ladders are and the cab openings are is very fragile, I have removed so much material cause it's been glued so much the cab bends out and up at the back. I can no longer do this to try and get rid of the bending because I've removed so much material it's not really possible to safely remove any more. Now, this happened again, but this time, the funnel broke off, along with one of the buffer heads. The funnel was found but the buffer head was lost, so I chopped off what remained of the front buffers and drilled out holes in the bases, so now he has sprung buffers. I also sanded down all the pug windows off the cab to fit Percy's lens's, as well as adding cab handrails, also from the pug cab. And again, he looked fine.

But I still wasn't really happy due to the simple Pug motion at the crosshead, with it's lack of piston and generally looking ridiculous. As such, i took a note from Corbs's book, and modded some Bachmann Percy connecting rods, by trimming down the piston and connecting rods and drilling out a new hole. I also used some 16 gauge wire and made new slidebars that would be fitted to the modified pug cylinders, having holes drilled out for the piston and slidebars. 

Still not satisfied due to the lack of "sliming out" at the end of the connecting rods, I modified the original pug rods to be able to take the Bachmann crossheads. 

Here's a comparison between all the connecting rods carried so far:

And So here's Percy as he stands right now:

I do want to get a new version of this shell in future, and may get a Peckett chassis  to put under it. I also would like to use some finer scale parts, such as the vacuum pipe. 
Anyway, that's it for now. Thoughts, comments, etc., always appreciated.

[SomethingTrainLover]

Been a while, so straight to buisness. Got Skarloey running creamy smooth, and he can now really crawl at slow speeds.

 

I then decided that with the remaining transfers i had left, Skarloey would be the one to get them, and as such received lining on his rear cab sheet. Remaining lining was used to redo and tidy up the bunker lining.

I also decided that I would suck it up and make him a handle bar for when he was cabless, to get a rough "1864" form, course I need to do another bodyshell without splashers and handrails for that, and i will, but for now he looks fine. I removed the trailing wheels and he really is how he was described to run before he got his trailing wheels in the books; a Bucking Bronco. 

I recorded some back and forth of this before the trailing wheels were added back:

And just some miscellaneous pics:

Should have a small update covering a few other projects tomorrow as well. Thanks for reading and as always thoughts are appreciated.

[SomethingTrainLover]

Been quite busy over the past few weeks, mainly with NG stuff
To start, Rheneas at last had his sticker nameplates off an ertl toy replaced by proper transfer ones, matching Skarloey and the illustrations. 

I also completed a project I've wanted to do for a while, ever since I finished Skarloey's transformation., which was to make Skarloey in his 1864-65 condition. I bought a spare running board and shell off the Bachamnn parts store and got to work. The running board had the splashers removed, and the left hand sandbox taken off and filled in. The bodyshell underwent similar work as the standard "modern" shell, mainly in the cab department. The molded handrails were filed and sanded off, though only on the smokebox did separably fitted handrails get fitted, as Skarloey, much like Talyllyn, wouldn't receive tank handrails for decades. Other than that it was the standard painting and lining procedure although his dome would be painted brass/gold. The shell and running board are meant to be swapped out with the normal shell and running board, with an additional cab bar and the removal of the trailing wheel completing the transformation. And here he is:

[SomethingTrainLover]

So it's been a while. So about 2 years ago, I bought an unfinished bash of a 009 engine from a friend. It was bashed from an Ertl Lady with a brass funnel and dome, running on a 7000 chassis. It was meant to be an 0-4-2T, with the trailing set coming from shapeways.

Of course I did try to finish it...buuuut that quickly fell through with the chassis proving temperamental. Eventually I broke up the body for the plasticard, took most of the paint off and kept it in my draw of many bits. Cut to nearly a year later in the summer of 2018, I stumbled across a Bachmann US N scale 0-6-0 that was lost years ago. Suddenly, I had a bit of epiphany, and took the body off the chassis, and dug out the old bashed shell. To my surprise, I could make it work, but i would need to grind down parts of the body internally and I would need to do the same to parts of the chassis. Just so happened I nabbed a cheap dremel a few days prior, honestly the timing couldn't have been better. 
So I got to work, and within a few hours, and learning I would need safety goggles cause flying metal bits, she looked like this: 

I should also mention that the initial plan was to make her an 0-6-4, using the screw slot for extra motor support to hold a spare bogie set off a piece of N scale rolling stock.

However, there was one major issue: The body was limited to how far back it could go by the short smokebox, meaning the cab and bunker would be MASSIVE. But then I had an idea, using the Ertl Rheneas I had recently disassembled for its face (Look up the thread to see where that went), I could theoretically cut off the smokebox of both bodies and use the Ertl Rheneas smokebox on the Lady body...so I did. It wasn't easy, had to grind out a lot of die-cast from inside the smokebox and completely hollow it out and cut a slot in the bottom of it.

I also conveniently had the running board piece from an Ertl Lady i had had years ago. This was broken up, with the rear section and bunker being roughly made and sanded down to become the bunker and rear of the engine.

By this point, disaster struck with the wheels on the chassis de-quartering and I was unable to fix it. So I decided to look into a new one and discovered that the chassis block is shared between 3 different wheelbase variants, these varying in terms of pony truck and rear truck. So i decided to switch from the original 0-6-4 plan to making her a nice and far more balanced 2-6-2.

Other work done was the modification of the pilot to become the bufferbeam, one of the few pieces left over from the original unfinished model, the creation of a smokebox saddle, the tanks were starting to be expanded, and the cab and bunker were well under way.

Tanks were extended and the cab was closed up more, with filler putty being used quite extensively throughout.

Of course eventually, everything was smoothed out. and now it was time for final priming and painting. Decided to settle on a nice blue with red lining, and, after hyping myself up a bit, I decided that I would give her black borders all around. This was about a week of on and off work, and heavy use of my calipers to keep the thickness as even as possible. But at last, over a year and a half after initial purchase, she was done. I had settled on the name "Elise" when I had originally planned to finish her as an 0-4-2. So here she is:

Note that somethings have been changed since these pics were taken; The black bordering just above the rear bufferbeam was extended much further downwards to lessen the amount of red seen, among a few other things.

[Corbs]

Looks great, like you say really nicely balanced. Not dissimilar to the WW1 Baldwins and Hunslets in proportions.

[SomethingTrainLover]

On 02/10/2019 at 10:32, Corbs said:

Looks great, like you say really nicely balanced. Not dissimilar to the WW1 Baldwins and Hunslets in proportions.

Aye thanks. Yeah, that was the sort of vibe I was going for. Got a banged up Ertl Lady a couple months ago at a train show, so that's currently in progress. Plan to make that engine a sister engine, with a few alterations of course.

[SomethingTrainLover]

So for the few of you who actually look at this thread, you'll remember, and probably just scroll up otherwise, that I discussed in detail my RWS Percy. Since that post, Knuckles, aka SCC, created and released the Green Goblin range, for the W4 Peckett chassis and a eventually it's own specific chassis. 
I started by cut away at any remaining sprues, filling in the print lines and small gaps, boring out the handrail knob holes etc etc. Percy Mk2 is painted in the same color as the earlier MK1, Tamiya Park Green. It's fitted with Alan Gibson small knobs, handrails off a junked HO engine and of course, the chassis of a W4. The Green Goblin kits come included with cylinder shrouds that fit over the W4 cylinders to fill the gap between them and the running board and to beef them up a bit. Also included is a backhead, which I of course also painted and fitted.

The front buffers are Bachmann sprung ones out of those spare packs, mounted on modded 3D printed bases, which came from some old 3D printed buffers. The whistle is also from the SCC range, the vacuum pipe is a spare off an E4. The front coupling is a sprung screw link, shortened behind the bufferbeam with a new hole drilled out and using a cut down spring to still allow it to be sprung. Rear buffers are from the ones included in the kit. The chassis donor was one of the 560 Pecketts, with the red paint stripped off the rods as other examples of this kit on the whole have kept this, which while interesting and nice looking, is incorrect to the illustrations.

The number is a temporary one. It's a left over from the MK1, as I had lost my decal paper and as such had to settle with the sticker paper spare. As a result, the number is not entirely stuck on and is only applied to the seen side,

From here on, the only real plan for Percy is to add a rear dummy coupling, probably a Vacuum pipe as well, and I'm considering getting the spare motion off another W4 that has the motion entirely blackened. As can be seen there is quite a bit of contrast between the blackened crosshead and the connecting & coupling rods.

[LB&SCR 337]

It's is AMAZING. The level of detail on them is 100% in my book. Keep it up.