Jordan Hardy's Workbench

[Bearwood West Yard]

Seems fitting to make my New Years Resolution this year to be more proactive here on RMweb so I've started a thread on my workbench. So, on the eve of January the first 2020, I present the opening of this thread with... you guessed it, what's on the bench!  

 

So, as can be seen below I have five wagons on my bench tonight, these being a BDA bolster, MHA, ZCV, JZA and Porpoise.

 

The bolster is undergoing the butchers knife for conversion into an under-sized Salmon flat before being given panel supports and transformed into an Osprey. With Cambrian's Salmons becoming rarer by the day and not having the time nor patience and money to hunt down and purchase the last one from half a dozen stockists, it was much easier to buy the next closest model. The ASF bogies for the salmons, another kit by Cambrian, I was lucky to get hold of six pairs from three different retailers. It was then that I opted for the butchery approach. The finished models look the part and its hardly noticed that they are 20mm or so short.

 

The Coalfish and Clam are new in as of a New Years Eve delivery, weathered and rusted throughout the first afternoon of the year (though only one side of the ZCV has been done so far). Another 6 MHA's to weather before deciding whether I fancy a couple more. 

 

Now for the special cases and YouTube celebrities, the JZA and Porpoise. Porpoise has been on the bench for four months at  the time of writing and is 90% of the way there. All I will say is that the hard work to get the chassis profile correct has paid off even if it has created some minor issues. I will write up another post in the near future going into more depth about the build, but I think I've lost count of how many problems I've created for the sake of accuracy. For starters just to make the chutes I had to take out the coupling bar swivel limits. All fun and games lol. Then the JZA, that's the simpler of the two with custom manufactured steel mesh and plasticard being the main additions to the ready to run model. For both units I used ready to run models as bases but I will produce CAD renderings if I produce the more complex components in future.

 

Jordan  

Edited April 22, 2022 by Bearwood West Yard

[KDG]

Hi Jordan

 

Great work on the wagons.

 

If you're still looking for Cambrian salmon wagons, there are at least 10 currently on ebay.  They don't all come up if you look for salmon. Also look under cambrian C88. Kitlady has 6 listed....

 

Hope this helps

[Bearwood West Yard]

Its been a while... or four months I should say and the progress has been slow like a snail but with the lockdown measures in place, things have started to move forward a bit.

 

Porpoise most notably has received her roof and various wire guarding's. I have re-worked the operators 'tri-window' using clear styrene sheet to a standard I'm happy with and have begun to fill any unsavoury gaps on the model. Currently the operator's-left mesh guard is being reworked. Previously the intermodal flat base had only received a single coat of paint and will be subjected to another coat. Any detailing such as rusty rollers will be subject to Mr Maskol. The roof will also be sprayed at the same time with varnishing not long after that. I have also started on designing and scaling down transfers. At some point I plan on adding the operator's hydraulic rail guiders for discharging rail in the four foot or six foot/cess position, though this will most likely be the final detail to be added.

 

JZA roller and clamping bank flats have all been bought, blasted and sprayed up into primer and their basic black. The original JZA in the first post has been reworked due to the flimsy nature of the mesh and is ready with seven others to take the middle gratings. The side mesh grating was prone to damage and made the wagon manhandle-able by the bogies only. I'm working on CAD's to phase this mesh out and replace it with laser cut grating made from a thicker, more rigid material. All the roller banks were laser cut by a local company, having only the tiny pieces of rod to glue in by hand over several weeks - now airbrushed and awaiting roller painting. Clamping banks have been designed and are waiting to be sent away with the grating.

 

Two final YKA Ospreys as well have just been sprayed Engineers Olive, with further work holding on until the JZA's are completed.

 

Pictured is a panoramic view of the layout's scenic section with all the JZA flats on the 'Up' line. The Manipulator and Porpoise are in the 'down' platform just to give an idea the vast scale of the project. This is also the first time that all the wagons have been together as well as pictured on the layout, When running the full prototypical 13 wagon trainlength, it will very much be a case of close to tail chasing, and for stabling the wagons in the yard the 'under-bed' crossover will be more than useful as entry/exit and using the up main as a headshunt for yard operations..  

 

At present, I am experimenting with various materials and a resin cast extrusion die to make the rails for the train, as standard manufactured steel/alloy rail is nowhere near flexible enough. Most test materials are on order, though testing with bathroom silicone as the first did not end well.  I suspect Newplast Animation Clay could possibly work, however I remain hopeful on pigmented mould making silicone, with a theory of leaving to stand for 1/3 to 1/2 its 'pot life' and then extruding it while it is liquid enough to be workable but has cured enough to retain the extruded dimension. I live in hope.

 

As follows are the pictures. Due to the 10MB limit only three were attachable.

- Updated view on the Porpoise

- Panoramic of all wagons as previously mentioned

- The rather illusive and little known about 'Under-bed' crossover to give yard operations that bit more flexibility with marshalling and longer trains. 

[Bearwood West Yard]

On 02/01/2020 at 09:04, KDG said:

Hi Jordan

 

Great work on the wagons.

 

If you're still looking for Cambrian salmon wagons, there are at least 10 currently on ebay.  They don't all come up if you look for salmon. Also look under cambrian C88. Kitlady has 6 listed....

 

Hope this helps

Thank you for that info. I think for now I'll keep to the conversions, mainly because I'll constantly be looking at the size differentiation between the wagons  

[Bearwood West Yard]

Well, its been six months since I last reported from the workbench and things have moved on a little bit. Majority of wagon work was completed before i went back to work in August, and i lost the mojo between going back to rotating shifts and the time of writing.

 

Throughout Lockdown 1 and my time on furlough I managed to complete the Porpoise to a reasonable standard. I completed the model in July, making my own waterslide transfers with the help of Microsoft Paint and Clear/White transfer papers from Mr Decal Paper on Ebay. Such an easy process that the only transfers I bought was the orange cantrail stripe for the roof, sourced from Railtec Transfers. The only details that I've not yet added are the hydraulic rail positioners, though these will be very flimsy so will require 3D printing when designed.

 

- Porpoise, JZA Clamping Bank and Salmon on Bearwood West Yard.

 

On the JZA side of things, all the roller banks have been airbrushed into Railtrack cream. The Clamping Banks were successfully laser cut and 3D Printed, taking 4 hours per bank to assemble. These join the roller banks as painted components. More work is required such as sorting the guarding on one side above the clamping banks and fixing all of the roller banks down. It was found to be uneconomical to laser cut or 3D print the gratings so the original steel mesh design was brought back to the table and used on all 11 rail carrying vehicles.

 

Although the sides remain in black for the time being, I am planning to draw up some grating on Paint and make grating decals for the edges to make them look semi-realistic. No effort has been made on the Manipulator or Gantry as of yet, with the aim of getting all the rail carrying modules completed and off the bench, ready to start that long slog!

 

Between August and October I bought 7 ex-LSWR 58' coaches as well as a short framed M7 tank with intentions of conducting resprays - Urie Green for the M7, matching that of 245 at te National Railway Museum, and the coaches to go into Salmon and Brown. I also bought two packs of Hornbys re-run of CDA Clay hopper's. Three of those have spent time in Isopropyl Alcohol and await spraying into EWS Maroon when the warmer weather of Spring comes along. 

 

On the Ospreys, work resumed but immediately stopped. I sprayed 5 more ex-Bachmann BDA flats into Engineers Olive and then the relevant yellow schemes. 3 of these were cast off as Salmons with two remaining as Ospreys. Originally the middle stanchions and end trusses were quite time consuming to produce from the various shapes of styrene strip and now that my skills with AutoCAD have improved significantly since completing my L2 NVQ, I took the plunge. 

 

The middle stanchions took under an hour to draw, whilst the trusses caused a whole afternoon of headaches and grief, to say the least! I got there in the end and expect the first batch of printed samples to be produced in January 2021. YouTube did spark some commercial interest and if the demand would be there then I would potentially produce a batch for sale. Supplied as a five part kit for one wagon, or painted and assembled into three parts for a small extra premium. Since these CAD developments, I am looking into tooling my own Salmons from resin though only for personal use as Cambrian's C88's seem to pop up whenever I'm not looking for them.. Having changed my profession of learning from fitter to pattern maker/tooling maintainer, the knowledge is transferable and the opportunity is there for a very distant project.

 

Lastly, I took on a new development in the run up to Christmas of building an LSWR brick bridge inspired by those in the Bournemouth area. by means of a 1.5mm Greyboard structure and 1mm thick laser cut bricks to my own CAD design. So far I estimate time spent to be about 24 hours, as each brick is applied independently of the other. The lack of uniformity with bricks at changing angles is what makes this for me. Not doubting the brickie's, but embossed card looks too neat, uniform and over or under scale in some cases. Each brick is 3x1x1mm and half bricks are 1.5x1x1mm, standard of the rough cut 9"x3"x3" imperial bricks of the day. Not all of the bricks were laser cut perfectly which adds to the 'within tolerance but not perfect' cutting of Victorian era bricks.

 

I've attached images of the yard line up and the brickwork progress. I will upload CAD pictures of the Osprey components in another post when I send off the CAD files for commissioned printing. 

 

That's all from me at this time,

Jordan

[Bearwood West Yard]

So, this weekend I’ve been rather busy! Finally got ahold of a Cambrian C88 kit and decided to have a proper go at learning resin casting. I have previously delved into this quite lightly with the JZA wagons as the buffers are very brittle and made of several pieces that don’t take well to dis-assembly. 
 

Given that I’ve been after a load of C88 kits for some time to replace the BDA conversions, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to learn. Although there’s nothing wrong with the BDA to YSA/YKA conversions, they are a little unconvincing when put against Network Rail Falcons and Autoballasters. They will be given a new lease of life once I make some MXA boxes, part of the reason I’ve decided to resin cast a true Salmon. 
 

So, getting straight to the point, I’m using Polycraft GP-3481-F silicone rubber from MB Fibreglass in Northern Ireland for the moulds in a 1:10 ratio with the catalyst. For large moulds like these, I wouldn’t recommend anything less than the 1.1Kg silicone kit. I have ordered a 2.2Kg kit (£40) for the other moulds as I had just enough to complete today’s moulds. Each half has used approximately 350g of silicone. 
 

The patterns are the salmon cross beams and using Evergreen plastics 4x3.2mm styrene strip as the runners and risers for the mould. Having changed my professional occupation from industrial fitter to toolmaker, I’ve learned a few things about runner and riser design.

 

The founding box for the silicone mould is 1.5mm greyboard, commonly used in model making as the rigid material in house and structure scratchbuilding/card kits. The box is stuck together externally with sellotape while the interior of the box is liberally painted in neat PVA glue to seal the porous material, providing support and leak prevention on the joint lines and to enable trouble free de-moulding from the box.

 

The patterns are suspended as square as physically possible from an overhead ‘gantry’ of superglued greyboard and 4x3.2mm strip styrene. I also glued in some locating dowels so the mould cannot be put together incorrectly. 
 

The first silicone pour was made up to the bottom of the patterns, in the end I made a primary bulk pour and two adjustment pours to achieve the required level. With the pattern not square, the box had to be angled with a table coaster to ensure the silicone did not level itself at an opposing angle to the pattern. 
 

Although the cure time is 6-8 hours, I gave the mould five hours to cure before pulling the location dowels out and de-flashing any silicone set in places it shouldn’t be. The support gantry was removed and after 7 hours and multiple checks over, the top half was poured. At the time of writing, this is still curing. 
 

Providing this is successful, I will produce a tutorial on Bearwood West Yard’s YouTube on how to produce resin castings. Below are images from after the first pour with the gantry and runner cup to riser vent support bars, and after the top half’s pour. I have also included a picture of the silicone kit I am using. 

[Bearwood West Yard]

Its now February and things have moved on a bit! I have on block release to college from work for the lase three weeks, however due to the lockdown this is all now remote from home. It has had its benefits especially when using my old commute time for extra modelling activities.  

 

The mould in the last upload from the 10th of January was not successful and I have shelved the exercise to resin cast salmon parts, mainly due to allocating resources elsewhere. More to come on that later.

 

3D Printed YSA/YKA Osprey Stanchions:

I mentioned these in late December 2020 and since then, they are currently sat with my commissioned studio for 3D printing. The initial samples quote for just 8 wagons worth was more expensive than expected, however that does not necessarily rule out a production run. It may just require a change of production method. I have attached some conceptual imagery on a base made to look like an Osprey. More on that when I receive the samples.

 

Resin Cast MXA Boxes:

Something I mentioned in the last update was the plans to convert my Ospreys into MXA's as they were based on Bachmann BDA's as 3cm to short donor wagons. With a lack of dimensions publicly available for the boxes, I put my Welded Rail Train skills of trial, error and a metric tonne of photographs in to action. It was a relatively simple build, with dimensions based on a Bachmann BDA, with box overhangs and height/spacings proportioned from photographs. For a 'rivet counter' such as myself, I'd consider it as close as I'll get! Well... I might have made more than one attempt...

 

MXA box sales

Anyway, I produced the one box to save my precious plastic sheet and strip. I will be using this box as a master so I can resin cast the 7 boxes I need. The silicone moulds will have a life-span of 50-60 castings before they start to perish, so there is scope for these to be saleable. I may even tool a second mould if they prove popular, though I would only sell these as raw castings. Mainly as I lack the appropriate facilities to conduct batch painting, as well as keeping costs minimal and affordable. More on this when my laser cut mould containers are picked up and the silicone casting commences.

 

Cambrian Salmons

I have purchased the first of two batches of 4x Cambrian Salmons for Osprey conversion, though these will most likely take a while to arrive as the Flangeway ready to run Salmons have just landed are in the middle of a catastrophic under-size scandal. With the return of these models and lots of Cambrian orders placed, I'm not expecting the salmons to arrive any time soon. 

 

The Bachmann BDA's I had previously resprayed into Salmons are now going through a jar of IPA to strip all the paint, fresh for respray into MXA's. The first model will probably be complete some time around early March to showcase the first MXA and the quality of the castings as well as how well they take paint.

 

Thats all for now.

- Jordan

[Bearwood West Yard]

Update on the MXA boxes and Osprey Stanchions:

 

Last night I received the laser cut pattern boxes and plates, so I spent yesterday evening making them. Made from 5mm Perspex and to my own specification, they should be robust to last a good few years and will save me a lot of time and effort in preparation work. These have been superglued together for the time being. The pattern plates have been cut to take a 0.3mm clearance. I need to order the Aluminium plate and round bar that will be used to make the ejection rig.

 

Anyway, I've taken a few pictures of the two mould boxes sizes to give an update as to where I'm at. I plan to pour the first silicone half tonight.

 

I have also received the Osprey Stanchion samples and I'm rather pleased with how they have turned out. These are printed in 3 parts, with 5 required for each wagon. 

 

I have lined the samples up against less accurate scratch built versions from about 18 months or so ago, using what I had at the time. Unlike the MXA box, I have not quite yet prepared any samples for an initial resin cast.

 

Thats all for now

[Bearwood West Yard]

August Update:

Its been a busy year so far but a lot of work has been done behind the scenes.

The Osprey wagons have all been completed, with the 3D printed stanchions painted and in place on Cambrian salmons. Four of the five salmons have become Ospreys, with the final wagon modelled as a YSA salmon with steps. After some running in, its fair to say that these will remain static in the yard as they haven't taken too kindly to the pointwork at the station throat. Derailment has been commonplace in shunting and main line running - also a factor of the lack of weight that the models have. Nevertheless, they look the part.

 

Other than this, the gantry crane wagon for the welded rail train has come on leaps and bounds. Very little trial and error compared to the porpoise due to the number of reference points available from the donor KFA in comparison with pictures of the real thing. Although most of the works have been from various styrene strip, sheet and rodding. Hydraulic cylinders were initially trialled in styrene rod but it was far too fiddly. 2mm Brass rod turned on my miniature lathe provided a suitable substitute. A few other parts were also turned on the lathe, including the large guide wheels and the crane arm columns, column bushes and pivots, these being turned from 5 and 10mm Aluminium respectively. The lathe was invaluable for turning these components and to such tight tolerances of 0.02mm in some cases, a challenge even on a miniature machine.

 

Once i'd made a start on the crane itself and it ran along the wagon problem free (yes you read that correctly), I then fitted the base hydraulics and airbrushed the base into a single coat of Railtrack Buff Enamel. This came out nicely and I fitted the 8 wheels (pre-primed in Humbrol 90 and painted in MiG medium rust acrylic paint) with superglue. I then touched up all the rollers on the wagon with MiG old rust. 

 

Other than this, I have started stripping my BDA's of the Osprey/Salmon paint schemes ready to receive the MXA boxes. For the time being, I have given up with resin casting the MXA boxes. The previous fast cure PU resin i was using had a pot life of about 3 minutes and i have bought some slower curing resin to have a go with. I have also bought some more styrene strip for the ribs, so i can scratch build the boxes instead of casting them if I give up for good. Anyway, that is where the workbench stands at this time.

[Bearwood West Yard]

Things are coming on nicely as I head into October. As mentioned in my other topic Bearwood West Yard I have moved house and as such, work has stalled a bit until I get the facilities all set up in the new place. As i have moved out of the 'family home', all of my workbench kit is still there but should be here by the end of the month. I have made some progress on the weekends i have stayed there.

 

The LSWR bridge in the cutting has been scrapped as it just wasn't a feasible build and replaced with an SDJR style bridge made from Slater's embossed sheets. This was inspired by imagery of the surviving bridge at Charlton Marshall Halt, south of Blandford Forum. It took four days to build over two weekends, with the 2mm greyboard superstructure to the same specifications as the original LSWR bridge build. The embossed sheets were cut into sections and glued on with Rocket card glue, superb stuff! The half bricks above the arch were cut from the sheet in single rows and then the row cut every 4th brick. These were glued on before the large brick sheets, which have accommodating notches cut in. Some gaps were left between brick sections and half bricks but these were filled in using Vallejo Plastic Putty and will be unnoticeable once airbrushed and weathered.

 

I have done more work on the JZA Manipulator wagon. I fabricated the concrete counterweight and the side guard railings, with these and the gantry module and arms being sprayed into Railtrack Buff in mid September. Once sprayed up, I fitted the floor meshing to the gantry with superglue and the small meshing's to the railing tops before fitting to the side of the gantry module - fiddly work! I then added the counterweight on the rear of the module. I have made the roof, though this needs some refinement as I'm not totally happy with it - but it gives a good impression of what the finished roof will look like once assembled. 

I'm now at the stage of drawing up the transfers for the module. Given how enclosed the gantry is, it will be difficult to place the transfers accurately with the roof in place and the rear guard meshing's in place, so I've opted to do the transfers while its less difficult to do so. I am also in the stage of hand painting the KFA chassis 'worn tarmac' as these appear to be a dark grey. Once weathered with frame dirt etc it should look the part. 

 

Other than these, I now have 6 BDA and 2 OCA wagon bodies paint stripped ready for respraying. The BDA bodies I mentioned in the last post are destined for converting into MXA wagons. I plan to have 6 of these, 1 with a red chassis and the rest as standard. I'll return the rest back into BDA's for Steel Billet - I haven't researched liveries yet. The two OCA wagons were released in weathered and graffitied Railfreight red, but are 'destined for dutch' in a heavily weathered modern state - likely to end up at the back of the MHA spoil rake.  

In the JZA pictures, there is a dis-assembled DB BYA in the background. I am planning to strip and respray 5 of the 6 BYA's back into EWS BRA's as the DB liveried wagons never visited Hamworthy. Keeping 1 model in DB would be enough, or selling it to free up train length for the BDA's but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

[Bearwood West Yard]

As normal, its been a while! Since I posted 5 months ago, I've been on the back foot with the hobby having moved house and the focus being elsewhere. I managed to get some form of light facilities sorted out in early November, which enabled me to progress the JZA to a presentable state before its debut at a railway related Christmas Party - nothing exciting like a model exhibition although some members did bring along their portable layouts for the afternoon and both JZA and YEA were well received! Next time I plan to get a picture on a diorama that isn't my layout!  

Transportation went rather well, using their old Hornby KFA intermodal wagon boxes with cutouts in the ice cube to allow for clearance of the heavy modifications. In time they'll get their own built to suit packaging but that'll be when the whole consist is complete, including the rail carrying wagons - a long way off yet. 

 

Since Christmas, things have picked up a bit more. I've made 3 MXA boxes from styrene sheet - a far cry from the planned resin casings. I bought a spray booth with extraction from Amazon last month for about £70 and it was worth every penny. Noisy, but it enables me to airbrush and rattle can in the bedroom, vacate and the room to be free of paint odour in 35-45 minutes. Being portable, I can take it outside on a sunny day but also spray up indoors if the weather is less than bright. I have primed the 3 MXA boxes (not including the resin casting master), BDA and OCA wagon bodies in Rust-Oleum all surface primer. 

Planning to get these all done in the next month or so to free up the workbench before I continue with the JZA and put the test train coaches into a container of IPA.  That's all for now! 

[Bearwood West Yard]

Topic End & Amalgamation

 

I've decided that due to the overlap in content between my layout and workbench, I will amalgamate the two topics into titled posts on my layout thread which can be found at:

 I will keep this thread up but I will lock replies. I am happy to answer future replies from this thread on layout thread. Main reason for amalgamation is to save cross referencing between threads and to save time explaining things multiple times.

 

Happy modelling,

Jordan