First cut-and-shut attempt

[TangoOscarMike]

I hit a procrastination snag, as follows:
 

I decided to make a roof.

1. To match the original roof, I chose to use 1.5mm plasticard.
2. You can't bend this thick stuff round a form and apply heat - it's too stiff. I had to:
3. Put it in the oven, resting flat on the curved form.
4. Put a piece of thin card over it, weighed down so that when the heat softened the plastic it would be forced down over the form.

The form was a bottle (I poured out the dregs of the nasty plum liquor that came in it) with a few layers of thin card on top, to increase the diameter. This caper required several iterations, adding layers of card to the bottle until I was happy with the diameter (heating and cooling every time). But in the end I wasn't happy with the diameter - it's a little too big. After all the effort I was loath to start again, and unsure of how to proceed. So I did nothing.

 

Last week I picked it up again and decided to attach the roof. It'll do for now, and if it starts to annoy me I can always make another. So here it is:

 

 

 

Those end pieces are a snug fit, and they keep it in place pretty well. I might add a magnet, as per some of Nile's coaches.

 

 

If I shelve the lighting part of the plan, then I have only to add the rainstrips, ventilators and lamps. It might be done by Christmas!

 

Edited July 26, 2023 by TangoOscarMike
Restoring pictures

[Gibbo675]

Hi Mike,

 

Two thin layers of plasticard may be glued together over a former which when cured will hold its shape. I have used two sections of .010", it ought to be possible add extra layers to build up to a particular thickness.

 

The roof of the Y6 below was made in this way.

 

Gibbo.

[TangoOscarMike]

11 minutes ago, Gibbo675 said:

Hi Mike,

Two thin layers of plasticard may be glued together over a former which when cured will hold its shape. I have used two sections of .010", it ought to be possible add extra layers to build up to a particular thickness.

 

 

Tom, not Mike! As a teenager I knew two sisters of unparalleled beauty whose father had (I think) recently studied for some kind of radio license. He (practising his alphabet) gave me this nickname, and these days I use it in a couple of places on the Internet.

 

I did consider laminating thin plasticard. But my first roof was made of the two original coach roofs, cut to size and joined with a curved bridge of laminated plasticard. After the initial satisfactory gluing this ended up warping over time. I thought that this might have been caused by excessive use of solvent, and it made me wary of lamination.

 

But I'll probably try it if I make another roof (or if I make another coach like this - I still have an unused chassis kit).

 

[Gibbo675]

9 hours ago, TangoOscarMike said:

 

Tom, not Mike! As a teenager I knew two sisters of unparalleled beauty whose father had (I think) recently studied for some kind of radio license. He (practising his alphabet) gave me this nickname, and these days I use it in a couple of places on the Internet.

 

I did consider laminating thin plasticard. But my first roof was made of the two original coach roofs, cut to size and joined with a curved bridge of laminated plasticard. After the initial satisfactory gluing this ended up warping over time. I thought that this might have been caused by excessive use of solvent, and it made me wary of lamination.

 

But I'll probably try it if I make another roof (or if I make another coach like this - I still have an unused chassis kit).

 

Hi Tom,

 

I do apologise, I must be losing the plot and it doesn't help my gormless state that your user name has contained Mike within it.

 

Gibbo.

[Joseph the L&YR lover]

6 hours ago, Gibbo675 said:

Hi Tom,

 

I do apologise, I must be losing the plot and it doesn't help my gormless state that your user name has contained Mike within it.

 

Gibbo.

is the nato phonic alphabet for tom

[TangoOscarMike]

7 hours ago, Gibbo675 said:

I do apologise, I must be losing the plot and it doesn't help my gormless state that your user name has contained Mike within it.

 

Not to worry - this has happened before, so I'm inclined to think that it may have been a gormless choice of user name!

[TangoOscarMike]

I'm trying to imitate the style of the 4-wheel coaches' lamps and ventilators, rather than make something realistic-looking.

 

So, plastic discs cut with a leather hole punch, thick on one side and thin on the other:

 

Holes drilled through the thin discs all the way through the roof. I tried to get them vertical, rather than perpendicular to the roof.

 

 

And plastic rods through the holes. These were all cut somewhat over-length, then levelled with a piece of sandpaper stuck to a flat wooden block.

 

 

Rain strips next.

Edited July 26, 2023 by TangoOscarMike
Restoring pictures

[TangoOscarMike]

Rain strips. I think the curve is OK, although maybe it should be shallower. But I should have used thinner strips. These are 1mm square. And 1mm corresponds to three of those old fashioned inches, or 76.2 shiny new millimetres.

 

So they are more what you might call rain timbers than rain strips. I will try to reduce them with abrasives of some sort. I will also try to be more careful next time!

 

 

Edited July 26, 2023 by TangoOscarMike
Restoring pictures

[Gibbo675]

6 minutes ago, TangoOscarMike said:

Rain strips. I think the curve is OK, although maybe it should be shallower. But I should have used thinner strips. These are 1mm square. And 1mm corresponds to three of those old fashioned inches, or 76.2 shiny new millimetres.

 

So they are more what you might call rain timbers than rain strips. I will try to reduce them with abrasives of some sort. I will also try to be more careful next time!

 

 

Hi TOM !!!

 

Phew, I got it right this time.

 

Give those rain strips a scrape with a tip of a scalpel blade. With care you ought to be able to make them triangular in section rather than square which will reduce the edge that faces and help greatly with how they look.

 

I tend to use .020" square for rain strips as that works out a 1.5" which is probably a slight bigger than they should be as they are generally about an inch tall.

 

Gibbo. 

 

Gibbo.

[TangoOscarMike]

2 minutes ago, Gibbo675 said:

With care you ought to be able to make them triangular in section rather than square which will reduce the edge that faces and help greatly with how they look.

 

That's a good idea - a little bit of an optical illusion.

[TangoOscarMike]

Meanwhile, in other news, the parts of the 4-wheel luggage/brake  coach are ready for re-assembly.

I have:

• Filled some windows to make panels.
• Removed unwanted (or to-be-moved) glazing from the roof.
• Added plasticard to replace the material lost to the razor saw.
• Scraped away the beading where the duckets will go.
• Scraped away unwanted door ironmongery, and the moulded GWR crests.

 

The plasticard strips in the body are to help locate the panels when I glue them back in. Which will be tomorrow, if all goes according to plan.

 

It's rather bendy where the sides are missing. So as much a possible, for gluing, I will put the roof back on so that the glazing can hold the two ends in their correct relative positions.

 

Edited July 24, 2023 by TangoOscarMike
Restoring pictures

[Huw Griffiths]

All looking very neat. OK - I'm sure you will have done a certain amount of "tidying up" of the different pieces - but it looks like things should go together cleanly, without too much nonsense.

 

I hope you don't mind me asking a couple of questions - mainly because I'm hoping to do some "cut & shut" work myself, hopefully in the near future:

• Would I be correct in assuming that you're planning on putting some tape (most likely insulating tape or Sellotape) on the outside of the joins, before feeding in a moderate amount of solvent / adhesive from the inside?
   
• Also, what thickness of plastikard have you added to the ends of the bodyshell sections?

Sorry about the stupid questions - I'm trying to learn as much as I can from other people's builds (especially when I like what I'm seeing) before I start chopping up my donor models. OK - I'm being cautious - but that's always been my style.

 

 

Regards,

 

Huw..

[TangoOscarMike]

10 hours ago, Huw Griffiths said:

• Would I be correct in assuming that you're planning on putting some tape (most likely insulating tape or Sellotape) on the outside of the joins, before feeding in a moderate amount of solvent / adhesive from the inside?

Thanks Huw

 

I'm not completely sure yet, but something like that. I'll probably have two gluing phases per side - firstly gluing the bottom with the roof in place to hold the top, and then gluing the top.

 

There is a tiny bit of asymmetry between the two sides, and my top priority is to avoid a kink in the horizontal beading around the long bottom panel.

 

In any event, I'll use masking tape so that it'll come off easily.

10 hours ago, Huw Griffiths said:

• Also, what thickness of plastikard have you added to the ends of the bodyshell sections?

 

It's a 0.25mm (10 thou) on each side. It's still very slightly loose, and I could add another layer and sand it back. But I won't bother with that, because I know that I need to apply filler afterwards in any case.

 

10 hours ago, Huw Griffiths said:

Sorry about the stupid questions - I'm trying to learn as much as I can from other people's builds (especially when I like what I'm seeing) before I start chopping up my donor models. OK - I'm being cautious - but that's always been my style.

 

Nooooo! Don't be sorry about questions! The only stupid question is the unasked question! I wouldn't have attempted this without poring over the work of Nile and Corbs and many others here.

 

And caution is right and proper. I use mainly the cheapest RTR items (these coaches and the 0-4-0 tank engines) as my starting point. But although they're cheap compared to Hornby's expensive offerings (or compared to, say, a yacht) they're still not cheap compared to a loaf of bread. A little bit of caution keeps us from being wasteful.

 

[TangoOscarMike]

And this is what I did:

 

I used my set-square as a flat (ferrous) base, and held the body down with magnets.

 

 

The side-piece is held in place with tape (and trapped below the plasticard strip).

 

 

Glue applied on the inside, but only at the bottom (not very visible here).

 

 

The roof and more tape, to hold everything in place.

 

 

After the bottom glue had set, I applied some glue up the sides of the joins (on the inside), and then used an aluminium strip to keep the inside surfaces in one plane while it dried.

 

 

The aluminium foil is an attempt to minimise the effect of any leaks.

 

 

Edited July 24, 2023 by TangoOscarMike
Restoring pictures

[TangoOscarMike]

That was mostly successful, although a little glue did leak out, which will call for a bit more tidying up. So for the second side I glued on (then sanded back) another plasticard shim, to make a snugger fit.

 

This is the overall result:

 

 

I made different choices, on the two sides, of windows to turn into blank panels. It's nice to break symmetry once in a while.

 

Meanwhile, I have thinned down one of the rain strips on the roof of the 6 wheel coach, and I've started work on the other. I'm using masking tape to save the roof from getting scratched. I stick a piece of tape over the rain strip, then cut along each side with a scalpel and peel off the resultant thin, curved strip.

 

 

Edited July 24, 2023 by TangoOscarMike
Restoring pictures

[RedGemAlchemist]

40 minutes ago, TangoOscarMike said:

That was mostly successful, although a little glue did leak out, which will call for a bit more tidying up. So for the second side I glued on (then sanded back) another plasticard shim, to make a snugger fit.

 

This is the overall result:

 

 

I made different choices, on the two sides, of windows to turn into blank panels. It's nice to break symmetry once in a while.

 

Meanwhile, I have thinned down one of the rain strips on the roof of the 6 wheel coach, and I've started work on the other. I'm using masking tape to save the roof from getting scratched. I stick a piece of tape over the rain strip, then cut along each side with a scalpel and peel off the resultant thin, curved strip.

 

 

[LNWR18901910]

5 hours ago, TangoOscarMike said:

That was mostly successful, although a little glue did leak out, which will call for a bit more tidying up. So for the second side I glued on (then sanded back) another plasticard shim, to make a snugger fit.

 

This is the overall result:

 

 

I made different choices, on the two sides, of windows to turn into blank panels. It's nice to break symmetry once in a while.

 

Meanwhile, I have thinned down one of the rain strips on the roof of the 6 wheel coach, and I've started work on the other. I'm using masking tape to save the roof from getting scratched. I stick a piece of tape over the rain strip, then cut along each side with a scalpel and peel off the resultant thin, curved strip.

 

 

Blimey, I'm tempted to try this!

[TangoOscarMike]

Inching towards completion...

 

The second rain strip came off while I was thinning it, so I said "enough messing about", and went in search of 0.5mm x 0.5mm strip.

 

Instead of looking online, I went to the local craft shop then the local model shop (several weeks apart), neither of which had it.

 

So I said "enough messing about", and cut a strip off the end of a 0.5mm sheet. Here it is, glued in place (on the left). I'm not altogether happy, because of the asymmetry, both in the curves and in the strips themselves. But it's time to move on:

 

A piece of tube with a magnet in it and a pair of slits.

 

 

A slot cut into a compartment partition.

 

The magnet in position, prior to gluing.

 

[TangoOscarMike]

Magnets glued in place. Metal studs fixed to the roof with blobs of "green stuff" epoxy putty.

 

 

And it seems to have done the trick. The roof is held on firmly, but I can still remove it.

 

 

 

[TangoOscarMike]

Some projects get finished, and some projects don't. And on some projects, work stops when it reaches a satisfactory state. I've glued in the glazing, and I'm calling it a day. I might revisit this one day to add lighting and an interior, or make other improvements.

 

 

A rogues' gallery of GWR impostors.

 

 

 

This is why I did it: When I was 11-ish, my Hornby County of Bedford was my pride and joy. And my three 4-wheel coaches were my pride and joy as well. But I knew full well that between them they made a rather feeble train.

 

One fine day I'll make a layout and get my County running again. It'll be a small layout, so realistic-length trains are out of the question. And in any case, my Hornby 4-wheeler nostalgia has no place in a realistic train.

 

But I think that I've added enough length and variety to create the illusion that this is a "proper" train, whereas three identical 4-wheelers clearly aren't. Maybe I should add a horsebox, as a finishing touch.

 

Of course, I could have achieved a similar effect with two Triang clerestories or some Ratio kits. But that's not the point.

 

 

 

 

I have enough leftover pieces (including a complete Brassmaster's Cleminson kit) for another of these. Perhaps I will make a brake/luggage coach and paint it in a freelance livery. All in good time.

 

Edited July 24, 2023 by TangoOscarMike
Restoring pictures

[brumtb]

16 hours ago, TangoOscarMike said:

Some projects get finished, and some projects don't. And on some projects, work stops when it reaches a satisfactory state. I've glued in the glazing, and I'm calling it a day. I might revisit this one day to add lighting and an interior, or make other improvements.

 

 

A rogues' gallery of GWR impostors.

 

 

 

This is why I did it: When I was 11-ish, my Hornby County of Bedford was my pride and joy. And my three 4-wheel coaches were my pride and joy as well. But I knew full well that between them they made a rather feeble train.

 

One fine day I'll make a layout and get my County running again. It'll be a small layout, so realistic-length trains are out of the question. And in any case, my Hornby 4-wheeler nostalgia has no place in a realistic train.

 

But I think that I've added enough length and variety to create the illusion that this is a "proper" train, whereas three identical 4-wheelers clearly aren't. Maybe I should add a horsebox, as a finishing touch.

 

Of course, I could have achieved a similar effect with two Triang clerestories or some Ratio kits. But that's not the point.

 

 

 

 

I have enough leftover pieces (including a complete Brassmaster's Cleminson kit) for another of these. Perhaps I will make a brake/luggage coach and paint it in a freelance livery. All in good time.

 

Well done, those 4 wheelers may be looked down on by some but to me the 6 wheeler and brake coach look great.  I'm tempted to have a go myself.

[Corbs]

Looks fab! What I like so much is that it fits in so well with the others, one could be forgiven for thinking it was a rare RTR version!

[Sophia NSE]

After Hornby's coach announcement the other day they must have been watching this build!

[TangoOscarMike]

9 hours ago, Sophia NSE said:

After Hornby's coach announcement the other day they must have been watching this build!

Thank you!

 

If I was vain and foolish I would say that Hattons copied me before Hornby ever copied them! But I'm not those things (no, actually I am).

 

In any case, this piece of deft work by @Nilewas my starting point, inspiration-wise:

 

 

 

[Sophia NSE]

2 hours ago, TangoOscarMike said:

Thank you!

 

If I was vain and foolish I would say that Hattons copied me before Hornby ever copied them! But I'm not those things (no, actually I am).

 

In any case, this piece of deft work by @Nilewas my starting point, inspiration-wise:

 

 

 

I'm quite tempted to bodge together a couple of Hornby 4 wheel coach bodies and bung the result on a cct chassis. I also would mind creating an observation coach for my light railway