Airfix Chops

[relaxinghobby]

After a fruitless search for my box of chimneys and domes a J72 body somewhere is now missing it's chimney. Don't worry there are plenty of these bodies around as the old Bachmann and Mainline split chassis designs often failed, the pancake motors and the nylon wheel centres would become a little bit k-put.

 

 

So it now has a chimney, dome and safety valve cover, a Craftman's MR Johnson type catalogue number 33, sort of upside down funnel. I used a piercing saw to cut around the bases of the plastic dome and chimney, then used a couple of half-round files to shape the underside to the boiler. A coarse file is very good for this job of grinding plastic, as fine files quickly clog.

 

A bit of Plastruck tube to make a new buffer.

 

I opened out the front windows, my way to do this tricky task is to use a set of new drills, nice and sharp the ones I never let anyone borrow. Slowly starting with the smallest drill bit held in the chuck of a hand drill I slowly turn the drill bit. if the hole is off centre I can then use a pointed knife to slightly trim the hole on the side of the hole I want to open out. Then gently turn the next biggest drill to cut a new larger hole, Never use power as it would just jam. I slowly worked my way through the drills until I got to the largest the 6.5 mm, someone had borrowed the 6 mm and not put it back. I seem to have got them level and matching in size.

[relaxinghobby]

 

 

 

 

 

Smoke box door this is using the moulding from an Airfix/Dapol City class

 

I need to file off the circular backing rim leaving the small dome centre with it's hinge detail intact. This will provide a small door suitable for this little tank loco.

 

One of the most useful home made tools is this elephants nail file or emery board, good for filling flat thin plastic or white metal castings. It's some rough sand paper glued to a length of 2 x 1 inch timber. PVA white glue is ideal.

 

There is a finer grade grit paper glued on the other side.

 

 

The nail file is laid flat and the detail item is rubbed across it changing directs so wear is even, this is a bit hard on the finger tips so a small piece of soft balsa wood is used to push down on the smoke-box piece and in a few minutes the unwanted parts are carefully ground away.

 

The background is the puzzle page from a Telegraph newspaper, whether you agree with their politics or not they are still a broad sheet providing large pieces of paper on which you can do messy work on making it easier to clear up.

 

 

 

 

More detail has been added. I robbed the handrails from that poor old J72 body and the filed down Airfix City kit smoke-box door. Just a little to small so added a rim by gluing a very thin disc behind. Taka-way coffee cup lid plastic which is very thin and a set of compasses to cut the disc.

At the back I'm in the process of adding rims to the spectacle plate, some very thin slivers of plasticard then formed around a rod or screwdriver blade and glue into place to finish.

I'm using the cone end of a sharpened pencil to centralise the rim whilst gluing.

 

 

[relaxinghobby]

What size where Westinghouse pimps? The air pump for train break systems common in the early days of railways. If this loco was built in the 1880s that is after automatic train breaks where a legal requirement and an operational help with better stopping. Some railways went for the vacuum break and others for the Westinghouse air break. My model represents a loco on an air break system so requires a pump. In the photo above it is on the front of the water tank here I put it on the side of the smoke box Isle of Wight style.

 

In an old drawing by F C Hambleton one is show at just over 12 mm tall which matches the ex Tri-ang one, which is good

 

 

The pump moulding was cut from a Tri-ang Caledonian body years ago and never used, or maybe from the M7 body, can't remember. It is a half depth moulding and has plasticard stuck to the back, then filed round to give it more depth.

 

Couplings added, this was easy as I could use the two fixing screws already on the chassis which where the right height. I've got no Bachmann small couplings at the moment my usual standard, I usually buy them at exhibitions so until that social side of modelling starts again I used some older style, chunkier ones, not a 100 % compatible but a good stand in.

 

That loose swing bogie is a devil to get on the rail tops.

 

Still having trouble to get the body sitting down properly.

 

 

A graph of how I find modelling, it goes along at a slow pace with several models in progress, some get abandoned, some new ones started but when one gets near it's completeness I have more attention for it and modelling increases, maybe even spend too much time doing it. At this point there is a good chance the model will be finished but also a danger of too much time being spent and modelling burnout happens putting a stop to any progress. Depends if some other events occur in ones life and there is no time or energy left for modelling.

I've tried to show this in a graph.

Can I get this done before burnout?

 

[Charlie]

Westinghouse pimps? Well I guess it depends if they were Snoop Dogg or Harvey Keitel wannabes 

[Gibbo675]

On 13/08/2020 at 15:05, relaxinghobby said:

What size where Westinghouse pimps? The air pump for train break systems common in the early days of railways. If this loco was built in the 1880s that is after automatic train breaks where a legal requirement and an operational help with better stopping. Some railways went for the vacuum break and others for the Westinghouse air break. My model represents a loco on an air break system so requires a pump. In the photo above it is on the front of the water tank here I put it on the side of the smoke box Isle of Wight style.

 

In an old drawing by F C Hambleton one is show at just over 12 mm tall which matches the ex Tri-ang one, which is good

 

 

The pump moulding was cut from a Tri-ang Caledonian body years ago and never used, or maybe from the M7 body, can't remember. It is a half depth moulding and has plasticard stuck to the back, then filed round to give it more depth.

 

Couplings added, this was easy as I could use the two fixing screws already on the chassis which where the right height. I've got no Bachmann small couplings at the moment my usual standard, I usually buy them at exhibitions so until that social side of modelling starts again I used some older style, chunkier ones, not a 100 % compatible but a good stand in.

 

That loose swing bogie is a devil to get on the rail tops.

 

Still having trouble to get the body sitting down properly.

 

 

A graph of how I find modelling, it goes along at a slow pace with several models in progress, some get abandoned, some new ones started but when one gets near it's completeness I have more attention for it and modelling increases, maybe even spend too much time doing it. At this point there is a good chance the model will be finished but also a danger of too much time being spent and modelling burnout happens putting a stop to any progress. Depends if some other events occur in ones life and there is no time or energy left for modelling.

I've tried to show this in a graph.

Can I get this done before burnout?

 

Hi There,

 

I am impressed by the graph, some of the low activity sections of a graph that I might draw could last upwards of twenty five years duration for some models that I have nearly started. Strangely diversion projects get rattled off in double quick time, there is no sense to how I go about it all.

 

The 4-4-0 tank engine is looking very good and recognise it from the Pug-bash thread. Your parts bin selection process has worked out rather well producing a balanced look to the whole locomotive.

 

What happened to the tender engine built from the Prairie tank or is this project subject to the burnout section of the above graph ?

 

Gibbo.

[relaxinghobby]

 

Well thanks for the enquiry Gibbo, the 0-4-2 project has not got any further, mainly because I can't sort out the tender drive. And other problems like the chassis is warped, it has been elbowed down the waiting list by other projects like the 4-4-0 on the right and the 4-4-0t which I shall concentrate on.

 

 

First coat of paint evens out all the different colours of plastic and shows up the imperfections,pass the filler. Whistle cover wonky, those spectacle rims need improving. These close-up pictures are cruel critiques.

 

 

A quick size comparison, 2 Nellies on the left and a J94. Left hand tank on green shows up the drill holes.

[relaxinghobby]

Some changes since the last picture, a coat of paint showed up all these faults. I've remade the spectacle frames and aligned the tops of the front footplate join just behind the cylinders.

A bit brutal but careful manipulation of the outer edge of the footplate, that's pressure applied with the fingers.

 

 

This step has taken ages to begin to make and glue on sceptical frames. Using the materials shown in the picture. Some electrical wire was stripped of it's plastic cover then wrapped around a drill bit, held in place with cellotape and then with a very sharp knife cut through to give copper rings. Two attempts gave the ones shown here. Then the best two are selected for care super-glueing on using a pointed thing like the knife and a sharpened pencil, the cone of the end helps centralise the ring onto the hole, but be careful not to glue the pencil to the loco like I did.

[relaxinghobby]

Some more work on reducing the old Mainline 2P into a small Victorian era 4-4-0

 

Much chopping, cutting and filing, cut and fit, cut and fit, cut and try again but with all that work not much to see mainly because everything is only done in tiny steps.

 

 

Which seems to be the case with this RTR modification the initial cuts produce big obvious changes but as time goes past and it all needs more fiddling about to get this and that to fit and look right changes get smaller and less obvious.

I've been trying to lower the boiler tube to reduce that gap under the boiler. Its a pen body now I've cut away too much underneath just ahead of the wheels so probably need to use a new pen body and make another.

Big problem is trying to hide the joint between boiler bottom edges where I've cut it and the original molding, the black plastic parts you can see are the old Mainline 2P body.

I've cut down the cab height and am trying a side sheet on the cab as well to get that vintage look.

 

 

Reduced to kit form.

[33C]

Use cereal packet card or similar to make mock up parts before you cut plastic. Roll a boiler tube to the diameter your happy with then unroll it with all your pencil marks on it( splasher clearance/ motor cut out etc) and lay on a sheet of plastic, cut out and then when you roll the plastic up it should be a snug fit. Plus, you can experiment with cab sides (style/height etc) and when finished, put it all back in the recycling from whence it came! I make a silhouette of the profile of the loco in card to gauge buffer height/motor clearance/cab height and where the wheels sit in relation to the splashers. 

[Londontram]

Brilliant work and what a smashing little loco, you've managed to capture all the charicture of the original in the model, definitely one to be proud of.

[relaxinghobby]

 

Time to get some measurements. I'm struggling to get the loco to the right shape and size, the biggest problem is how much space under the boiler and the shape of the cab. I've super imposed a picture of a small loco side view over my generic diagramme.

 

In an effort to get the right impression I've made the superimposed picture above

 

The loco is an Irish type I think of a  Kilkenny Bogie, a J17 I believe. Could be wrong not very good at remembering these things.

 

I've used several image and drawing programmes to get to this. GIMP the open source free Photo Shop to cut down the size of the photo just to the part I'm interested in and Inkscape a graphic artists programme to match sizes and overlap the two pictures.

Edited December 9, 2020 by relaxinghobby
Improvement

[relaxinghobby]

 

 

Still a bad camera day, some how after wiping the camera's memory card clean I did it a second time, I think I know why I was down in the menus trying to change the WB or white balance to an artificial light setting clicking away down there in a sub-sub menu, like fumbling around a dark cellar and got hopelessly lost. There was no intelligence to it, in effect a mad monkey pushing buttons at random until something happens, well I got a result and had to start again. After all the modern digital camera is really a computer in a box with all the attendant gremlins and a zone where Murphy's law applies doubly.

 

So that's  the sorry story of how the dog ate my homework and so here are the photos redone.

 

So which paint scheme ? Any green looks nice so I'll try a medium green, somewhere between Great Western dark and LNER Flying Scotsman light. Here it is in Humbrol 80.

 

 

 

Still need to reattach the motor wires and add some weight inside the body.

 

Edited December 20, 2020 by relaxinghobby
spelling

[relaxinghobby]

So these HMRS lining transfers seem to be past their best, they are the water based type and have cracked and fallen apart. Are they past it, can they be revived or am I being too mean, should they be binned?

 

 

 

 

[33C]

Bin 'em. Use sticky back plastic, cut to thickness and length. Lay 2mm white then 1mm red in the middle of the white for a B.R. steam era livery plus the more it's handled, the better it sticks or get a cheap bowpen @£3 and a steel rule and do it by hand. Another cheat is to lay sellotape on glass or tile, paint your colour, cut to thickness and length when dry and lay on the model. And it bends to corners! 

Edited January 2, 2021 by 33C
added detail

[relaxinghobby]

Thanks 33C, I don't know how old they are, no date on them, you don't know how long they have been in the shop.

 

I've used the sticky tape cut into strips for boiler bands but too thick for lining, I have a cheap bow pen and also an old fountain pen nib tapped to an old brush handle, using it as a dip pen it works well with ink or paint, I'll have to wait for a steady hand moment, it varies day to day.

[33C]

10 hours ago, relaxinghobby said:

Thanks 33C, I don't know how old they are, no date on them, you don't know how long they have been in the shop.

 

I've used the sticky tape cut into strips for boiler bands but too thick for lining, I have a cheap bow pen and also an old fountain pen nib tapped to an old brush handle, using it as a dip pen it works well with ink or paint, I'll have to wait for a steady hand moment, it varies day to day.

I hear you........

[relaxinghobby]

This series of photos shows my progress so far with the small 4-4-0. I've run out of solvent glue and so have been continuing with superglue, the type that comes in small tubes with a spout that makes you think you can control the amount that comes out. It's not true it is easy to squeese the tube a little too hard and whoosh out comes a flood. Luckily it ran off without leaving puddles before it set the only aftermath being the long bit of scrap plasticard I was trying to fill a joint with and a little bit of mopping up tissue. The fumes were strong so I had to shove it outside for the night and could not know the damage until next day.

 

 

The underneath showing all the little bits of plastic slithers and inserts.

 

 

Side view shows the shape of cab and height of boiler, at last I've got a profile I'm happy with.

 

 

The cab. The boiler backplate is recycled from the LMS 2P one, the square corners of it's Belphaire firebox rounded off with files and a middle section cut out to lower it.

 

Edited January 14, 2021 by relaxinghobby
Spelling & gramma

[33C]

8 hours ago, relaxinghobby said:

This series of photos shows my progress so far with the small 4-4-0. I've run out of solvent glue and so have been continuing with superglue, the type that comes in small tubes with a spout that makes you think you can control the amount that comes out. It's not true it is easy to squeese the tube a little too hard and whoosh out comes a flood. Luckily it ran off without leaving puddles before it set the only aftermath being the long bit of scrap plasticard I was trying to fill a joint with and a little bit of mopping up tissue.

 

 

The underneath showing all the little bits of plastic slithers and inserts.

 

 

Side view shows the shape of cab and height of boiler, at last I've got a profile I'm happy with.

 

 

The cab. The boiler backplate is recycle from the LMS 2P on, the square corners rounded off with files and a midel section cut out to lower it.

 

Looking good. Put's me in mind of something M.G.N.R........

[relaxinghobby]

Thanks 33C, small railway backwater loco is the effect I am after.

Cambrian Railway or the Irish GSWR. Or the Great North of Scotland Railway or my favorite rural railway the Waterford and Limerick.

Like the East Anglian Midland and Great Northern railway they would probably just buy one loco at a time, off the shelf from one of the independent manufactures or cobble a home made engine from scrap parts and spares.

[relaxinghobby]

So to the tender-drive unit.

 

Very fiddly getting the gears back in the right order, this was probably why this loco was going cheap it didn't run, it was all there just needed to be put back in the right order. I found Hornby service sheet number 225 Class 2P 4-4-0 locomotive useful. So after about an hour of fiddling and trying to place the 3 tiny gears inside the motor housing end, in different combinations. Got it running finally, this photo was taken in the middle of all the fiddling.

 

 

 

Sorry it does not show well in the photo, it's all black on black. This loco was also painted blue see the edge of the tender footplate another reason it was a very cheap second hand thing.

Edited February 5, 2021 by relaxinghobby
Make gramma great again.

[Poor Old Bruce]

If you are struggling with superglue flooding all over the model, I put the 'flood' onto the top of a milk bottle screw cap or foil cake dish (anything really) and transfer some of the glue to the job with  a dressmaker's knob pin, sometimes with the end 2 or 3 mm bent to an 'L' shape to access the joint better, and held in a pin vice (a cocktail stick may do just as well). The blob of superglue stays workable for quite some time so you can transfer the stuff a bit at a time into the joint. The superglue I usually use comes in little plastic bottles, three or for at a time, from a Pound shop. Some include fine nozzles as well for better control of where it goes.

 

Hope this helps.

[relaxinghobby]

Thanks Poor Old Bruce for your advice on applying super-glue with the end of a wire, something I usually do but this time, because the glue came with a long thing spout or birds beak seemed to suggest controlled application.

 

So I thought I would be able to apply it to where it was needed. 

 

I thought I could get a reasonably large amount delivered exactly where and how much I wanted. Oh no how wrong I was, the little metal tube needed just a little bit more of a squeeze and whoosh, out it came, stank of glue fumes so I stuck it all outside, moped up a little with tissue and waited hours whilst it dried out as most of the glue seemed to be where it was needed, I could not see it well for the glue fumes so left it to harden in the yard.

 

Turned out sort of OK. The apply the glue with a wire method was taking too long for what was a gap filling process the parts where already glued in place i needed to flood the remaining gaps. I got lazy tried a short cut and barely got away with it. I could have entombed the loco cab in a glue lump

.

[relaxinghobby]

 

A bit of a David and Goliath situation here,

 

Although in terms of 20th century locomotives this little 4-4-0 is small. But when this new format of engines was introduced from the end of the 1870s they where big, very big a good step up from the previous generation. Big powerful express engines.

 

Obviously bigger than this little shunting loco it was the new best thing in 1880. Meanwhile the shunter that I just can't seem to get to sit with its footplate level to the railhead, is one based on a small Barclay type fireless loco or flying thermos flask.

 

Also the blue bogie won't settle down onto the rail either.

 

 

Here the 4-4-0 is compared to a standard mixed traffic type of the 1860s, it is much bigger. The 0-4-2 is a model of the first loco sent out to Australia from Britain.

 

 

The fireless Barclay loco and mixed traffic 0-4-2 are both static models intended for a scrapyard layout, both made on a whim out of bits and pieces. The 0-4-2 is the front half of an Airfix prairie tank chassis and the Barclay has more Airfix parts, City of Touro cab-sides, a Bachmann Thomas spectical plate and roof and an Airfix pug rear cab plate and footplate and sits on some old bogie frame from something deep down in the scrap-box.

[relaxinghobby]

 

Meanwhile back at the 2P to 1P or maybe 1 and a half P.

I've got to the stage of this build of trying out chimneys and domes.

Taking the standard maximum height of UK chimneys under the British Loading Gauge as 13 feet 2 inches above the railhead or 52 mm in 00 land.

I imagined a nice tall narrow chimney for this loco but to get under 52 mm I've ended up with a much shorter chimney. Does it look right?

Problem is the footplate is very high on this loco due to it being built from an LMS 2P which pushes the boiler higher.

The dome is I think meant to be for a GWR 14XX quite a big dome for the 20th century and seems to have become my standard size. It's a nice big size that I like.

No that is not a second chimney  a in front of the cab, it's going to form the base of a safety valve arrangement.

[AdamsRadial]

It looks Ok from where I sit