Adam's Workbench - Industrial Modelling and 3D printing

[Adam FW]

the test prints for the square tank Avonsides were assembled to check the fit and highlight any issues with the kit, @Corbs fully painted his one to go alongside a bagnall he'd recently worked on, which highlighted a few areas to improve

 

 

Meanwhile I mucked about with making a ghost train out of clear resin and concluded that clear resin in an absolute PITA to print with

 

 

At this point we decided something wasn't right with the model, but as anyone who's worked on something for a long time you tend to become blind to it's issues so got a bit of outside help from people more knowledgeable of the prototypes much like corbs is with portbury. This identified some core issues mostly differences with Portbury we had wrongly believed to be carryover between the Avonside designs. 

 

Of most importance was that the running board extended too far forwards of the smokebox, the cab and saddletank were too low, the safety valve too small and the bunker was too long. Some pretty major changes which was quite a set back having by now started the production prints for the round tank locos but I found time to make the improvements though having to redo the rivets was painful.

 

 

Finally this version was ready for test printing, it's not easy to see all the differences (and not all have been mentioned) as some are quite minor but I think they add up to a much better model overall compared to v1 though I did change the buffer beam even more after this print

 

 

 

Edited August 15, 2020 by Adam FW

[Adam FW]

I test printed a few of the generic square tank loco kits for test building and approval, @Ruston built one of these up in his thread, and in my opinion it looks great (a far better job of prepping and painting than I'm capable of)

 

 

However 1 kit does not make a range so I expanded from 1 loco to 3 just like with the round tank kit by altering some pieces that would be a pain to do practically but easy on CAD:

 

 

 

starting with the generic basis we decided to define it as St Dunstan, a Snowdown Colliery loco that is in preservation:

 

 

altering the cab windows and some cab details gave me St Thomas, another Snowdown loco with a cab modified by the NCB to have 'square' windows, again a preserved loco:

 

 

Finally removing the rivet detail and bands on the saddletank created a loco flush welded tank similar to that seen on Cranford in preservation, this loco most closely matches No3 from the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board, this loco was sadly scrapped in the 90s:

 

 

All of these locos can easily be modified to make other prototypes, for instance you can sand off the rivets on St Dunstan's saddletank and smokebox to make Earl Fitzwilliam or snip off the front steps to produce Robert.

 

 

That's enough of the design and printing stages, from here out it's all building and painting. I chose to do a St Thomas model, which means lots of wasp stripes (I must be a glutton for punishment), here it is waiting to be cut free

 

[Adam FW]

On with St Thomas, my test build of the square tank avonside. 
 

As with the round tank kit I designed and built some time ago this one is split into 3 major components, the running board the cab and the saddle tank along with a raft of separately fitted details (no photos of these unpainted sadly)

 

 

as you can see there’s a little bit of cleanup to do where the support material has left it’s mark but it’s minimal and mostly hidden. After sanding this back my first job was to drill out the handrail holes being very careful with the vertical cab ones, the holes are printed but some needed excess resin removing so it’s a quick and easy job

 

Unlike the round tank loco the square tank has optional front hand rail positions, two higher up closer together knobs for a straight hand rail and wider lower ones for a curved handrail. The holes are Capped off in the print so I don’t need to fill in the 2 I don’t need but it means I had to hold the part up to a bright light to see where to drill as the material is thinner where the holes are going and you can see it glow, the holes can then be marked. It’s far easier to do this before painting as corbs will attest to
 

 

St Thomas has a straight handrail so the middle holes were drilled out.
 

Now I bent and assembled the other handrails and loose fit them to make sure they looked right and trimmed them to length 
 

 

Next up I primed everything, let it dry and sanded back any obvious print lines

[Adam FW]

After priming and sanding the components for St Thomas I sprayed several thin coats of yellow on to the front of the smokebox and the bunker rear and sides for the wasp stripes. I then masked out the wasp stripes using Tamiya masking tape. I cut the tape into points on the model with a scalpel and forced it it the crevasses around the smokebox hinges using a cocktail stick. I then sprayed the black

 

 

I had to go over a few area with acrylic paint and a detail brush where the masking wasn’t great but it mostly came out nicely. I then had to mask the striped areas off ready for the blue paint

 

 

 

Edited August 22, 2020 by Adam FW

[Adam FW]

I probably should have shown the loco I'm basing my model off, since I don't own a picture of St Thomas I recommend looking at @montyburns56 70's Industrial Steam thread which has quite a few images from the Snowdown colliery on page 11 with a series of photos by John Stein.

 

 

In total I believe Snowdown had 3 Avonside 0-6-0ST's; St Thomas, St Dunstan and St Martin, all named after churches in Canterbury. All 3 had broadly the same livery of blue with white lining and wasp stripes on the bunker and smokebox front. I've only ever seen 1 image of St Martin which also had some yellow lining on the front as it met an unfortunate fate being left full of water that froze on a winters night and badly damaged it's tank. The other 2 survived into preservation.

[Adam FW]

I won’t bother going into detail on painting st Thomas beyond the stripes, suffice to say I painted all the parts separately before assembly and it was mostly spray painted, with just a bit of touch up work needed using a brush 

 

 

Here’s all the bits of the kit lined up and pre painted

 

I couldn’t resist loose fitting everything for a sneak peak at the finished model
 

 

as I want to weather this model I decided to add a wash to the cab interior as I won’t be able to access it easily once assembled, another benefit of this kit being in separate parts.

 

 

I could have added a crew as well at this point but didn’t have any to hand so I’ll have to fit them at a later date

 

 

 

 

[Adam FW]

Final assembly of the square tank avonside was a little trickier than with Portbury as theres an additional handrail between the smokebox and the running board which is fiddly to install.

 

I started by screwing the assembled running board onto the peckett chassis to help keep it flat then applied glue to the recesses for the saddle tank, I used a spare bit of handrail wire to get into the tight spots and spread the glue around

 

 

with the saddle tank in place I then added glue to the recesses for the cab to fit into and added some glue onto the back of the saddle tank where it meets the cab, this adds an awful lot of strength

 

 

the last job was to attach the final handrails and knobs, these run from the side of the smokebox down to the running board with a handrail knob at the top, I tried several ways to do this but settled on gluing the handrail and knob together, painting it, then threading it through the hole in the running board from above. I added some tape to the smokebox so I didn’t scratch the paintwork

 

 

the handrails were then glued into place and cut to length using snips

Edited August 26, 2020 by Adam FW

[Adam FW]

It's been a long time coming but here's the line up of my square tank (late) Avonside B4 3D printed kits.

 

 

There's 3 versions and all are now available on @Corbs Railway Mania website (links below) though I think I need to print some more of MDHB no3 as the first batch is already running low:

 

Snowdown Colliery 'St. Dunstan'  - standard round window cab with riveted 3 section saddle tank
https://www.railwaymania.net/…/avonside-b4-bodykit-st-dunst…

 

Snowdown Colliery 'St. Thomas'  - square window cab with riveted 3 section saddle tank
https://www.railwaymania.net/…/avonside-b4-bodykit-st-thomas

 

Mersey Docks and Harbour Board No.3 - standard round window cab with flush sided saddle tank
https://www.railwaymania.net/shop/avonside-b4-bodykit-mdhb3

 

 

I hope you like them and if you build one send me a picture, I can't wait to see other people's finished models as I'm sure many of you can do a far better job than me.

Edited September 4, 2020 by Adam FW

[Adam FW]

Over the bank holiday weekend I confess I bought more locos, the first to turn up was this beautiful Webb coal tank that I’ve been wanting for ages but I’d only ever seen the LMS and BR versions in person and only wanted the LNWR one. well Model Railways Direct has it on offer so I bought one and I’m glad I did, it looks stunning and runs nicely. It probably won’t be re-bodied as I like it how it is though that may change if I get any bright ideas.

 

 

I also ventured into games workshop to chat about weathering and bought some washes to try out as I’ve already got some powders and failed badly at dry brushing.

 

I like the side of the lowmac I weathered compared to the original but the top is too streaky and heavy for my liking

 

these 2 wagons I experimented with both heavily coating the wagon and leaving it to dry (blue) and also applying a wash then wiping some of it off to get lighter weathering (red). I think I prefer the latter but I’m still struggling to avoid streaking Or water marks on large flat areas

 

 

 

I’m going to head off to a local hobby shop later in search of a fibre pencil to have a crack at rubbing back the lettering on some wagons to make them look more used before adding a wash and see how that looks

[Adam FW]

So following a request from someone who bought some of the Railway Mani kits (thanks to everyone who has so far!) I've spent some time working on an alternative chimney for the St Dunstan kit to recreate it's sister loco and stablemate St Martin which had an unusual Stove Pipe Chimney

 

(click on the picture below it's a flickr link not an image and goes to Gordon Edgar's photos where he has plenty of great industrial loco images)

 

 

I think we've only come across 4 photos of St Martin 2 in colour, 2 black and white but luckily one showed the top of the saddletank which made things easier as it showed a nice, convenient cover plate so I didn't have to modify the saddletank only the chimney

 

This is the CAD so far, just need to add some rivets and test print it, seeing it in 2D on a screen is OK but having the printed part is far better to get an idea of the overall appearance.

 

 

[Adam FW]

Thanks to the joys of signed for delivery and no longer being at home 24x7 my other bank holiday purchase has only just appeared, the blue NCB Ryhope colliery peckett b2 from Hornby

 

 

It’s chassis is going to end up being used for St Thomas but I was hoping that it’s blue wheels and cylinders would be close enough to the blue of St Thomas that I wouldn’t need to paint them before weathering, no such luck it’s a far darker shade, so I would have probably been better off with another sherwood chassis, nevermind.

 

 

 

[Adam FW]

Well I fitted my avonside st Thomas body to its new blue chassis and it’s an impressively poor colour match, the NCB blue looks almost purple in comparison

 

its better than the old green wheels but definitely needs repainting,

 

does anyone know if the cylinders can easily be removed from the B2 chassis and how to remove them? 
 

I’d rather spray paint them off the chassis, mask off everything bar the boiler cladding and spray that blue as well to get a spot on match with the body then brush paint the wheels as they aren’t in direct contact with the body colour and I don’t like the idea of spraying the wheels at all

[Butler Henderson]

But how clean would the wheels have stayed, suitably weathered the difference could be far less noticeable to the point of being acceptable. An initial wash with a cyan colour ought to decrease the purple aspect.

[Adam FW]

1 hour ago, Butler Henderson said:

But how clean would the wheels have stayed, suitably weathered the difference could be far less noticeable to the point of being acceptable. An initial wash with a cyan colour ought to decrease the purple aspect.

 

From pictures of st Thomas the wheels were surprisingly clean but I agree they’d typically be filthy in industrial use

 

I’ve got some LNER garter blue paint somewhere so I might try giving them a wash with that, it’s a paler and greyer than the blue spray I used but as a wash it might work, it also appears the wheels were a bit darker than the body anyway, probably just because they weren’t in direct sun light so didn’t fade as much, doubt I’ll be able to match the lining though.

[Adam FW]

I’m very proud to say the the round tank Avonside B4 kit that I designed is featured in this months BRM magazine, you can find the build on page 78 and I think they made a very nice loco out of the kit

 

Hopefully we’ll get the square tank kit in a magazine in the future as well

On a separate note unfortunately for any potential purchasers the first batch of St Thomas kits has now sold out so I guess I need to print some more so they should be back on sale within a week or 2. I’m sure it’s  popularity is entirely down to the appeal of my expert build 
 

But whichever idiot (me) who thought St Thomas would be the least popular kit clearly didn’t know what he was talking about

 

[Adam FW]

I’ve spent some time recently practising my brush painting in particular I’ve been trying to get better at matching colours by mixing paint just for this job of painting a Hornby b2 peckett boiler, wheels and cylinder covers to match my spray painted Avonside B4 st Thomas 3d printed body

this is what it looked like before with the NCB blue wheels and cylinders

 

firstly I dismantled the b2 taking the cylinders off and Then primed the wheels in situ. After this I found that I could free the boiler casting from the rest of the chassis so I didn’t risk getting paint where I didn’t want it and I also took the wheels off to paint separately as well

 

 

after testing a lot of different colour mixes I was happy with the colour match and applied several thin coats 

 

 

I added a coat of gloss varnish to the cylinders as the Vallejo paint I used was matte and I’m going to be having decals on the cylinders so it needs to be a smooth glossy surface, and this was the end result:

 

 

Unfortunately after a bit of running the paint on the tyres had mostly rubbed off so I may need to redo the wheels with a different primer but I’m happy otherwise and think my colour match is pretty spot on 

 

 

[Adam FW]

it's been a while since I posted anything but quite a lots been going on, firstly St Thomas has been spending some time with @Corbsbeing the guinea pig for the new Railway Mania waterslide decals and looks better than ever. It's also been doing some modelling and now appears on the Railway Mania shop page

 

 

I'm seriously impressed by how good the decals look, far better than I could manage with painting or using generic lining sets.

 

 

However when Corbs got his hands on St Thomas it wasn't quite done, the wheels needing repainting after the original paint came away from the tyres and it was lacking coal, both of which have now been added along with a fresh coat of satin laquer to protect the decals and make it all the same sheen

 

 

All it needs now are some nameplates, builders plates and I need to cut down the mounting screws. Then I just have to decide whether to leave it pristine or get it weathered, add some more details (oil cans, poles, lights etc) and a crew. Decisions, decisions

Edited October 23, 2020 by Adam FW

[Adam FW]

It's not just my St Thomas model that's being used for the other type of modelling, Portbury has got in on the action as well and can now be seen as the example on the railwaymania.net store, at least until we do a good representation of the fully lined IW&D livery that we all know and love, rather than my 'in storage' wasp stripe paint scheme

 

fortunately Corbs can use photoshop as my 'photo booth' was more than a little crude, just a sheet of A4 leant up against an old biscuit tin to give a white background (I'm sure it's what all the professionals use )

 

 

On a side note, though it's a little late, after a Portbury kit appeared in BRM last month I'm very proud to say that another one of the round tank Avonside kits makes an appearance the November 2020 Railway Modeller magazine (volume 71 issue 841), this time it was an Edwin Hulse kit that got built, and just like my Portbury it was painted in a 'primer' livery the real loco only wore whilst in storage before full restoration but after it's working life, in this case Edwin Hulse was stored at Fry's Somerdale for a while whereas Portbury was at Radstock, Washford and finally Avonmouth.

[Adam FW]

it's wet and miserable outside so time for some modelling that isn't an Avonside for Railway Mania which makes a change, back to the weird and wonderful.

 

I've wanted to do a something properly tiny in oo gauge for a long time and the recent thread on smallest standard gauge locos really got me thinking. Originally I wanted to do one of the chain driven traction engine based locos but their lack of body work makes hiding the electronics and adding weight challenging so sticking with the traction engine idea I decided to go for an Aveling and Porter loco more like Sirapite or sir Vincent who's cab and big wheels give me a fighting chance.

 

I've started on the 3D model basing it off some dimensions and a basic drawing I found, combining it with info from pictures to judge the width of everything. It took me far to long with a model that looked completely wrong to realize that the boiler doesn't sit in the middle of the wheels as the drive gear offsets it

 

There's a lot of work to go to make it look right but I think it's a nice starting point, I'm not sure what to do about the valve gear, it almost certainly won't move so I could 3D print it or I could glue together some scrap valve gear

 

Motorising the model is also going to be a challenge, I was going to use belt drive like Nigel Lawton hidden in the cab but I don't think I can get enough reduction easily so worm gears is probably best with the motor in the boiler area, as for the chassis I think it will be a 3D printed lump as atleast that's one new skill I won't need to learn with some brass bushings for the axles to run in, reliable running is going to be a challenge so I may need a Hornby Ruston style pickup wagon or consider a compensated chassis (god help me)

[TurboSnail]

I do like a good tiny engine - I've got a traction engine on the go at the moment too, as well as Manning Wardle Class B and Hunslet 22hp models being built (slowly). Make sure you think about places to add weight while designing it, it'll make the running so much nicer (there's nothing quite as disappointing as finishing a loco you're really proud of and having it run horribly, don't ask me how I know...)

Word of warning on the chassis front - 3D printed chassis are a bit of a nightmare to get right - if you're lucky they can work fine, but the tiniest amount of warping (that would be invisible or inconsequential on a body) can start to mess up your gear meshing or lift one wheel off the track. I've had models I've left in the cupboard for a year and don't work due to this, so if you can find another way of doing it then it might turn out better. And if you do find a good way of doing it, I'd love to know!

[Adam FW]

41 minutes ago, TurboSnail said:

I do like a good tiny engine - I've got a traction engine on the go at the moment too, as well as Manning Wardle Class B and Hunslet 22hp models being built (slowly). Make sure you think about places to add weight while designing it, it'll make the running so much nicer (there's nothing quite as disappointing as finishing a loco you're really proud of and having it run horribly, don't ask me how I know...)

Word of warning on the chassis front - 3D printed chassis are a bit of a nightmare to get right - if you're lucky they can work fine, but the tiniest amount of warping (that would be invisible or inconsequential on a body) can start to mess up your gear meshing or lift one wheel off the track. I've had models I've left in the cupboard for a year and don't work due to this, so if you can find another way of doing it then it might turn out better. And if you do find a good way of doing it, I'd love to know!

 

That's a very good looking loco, though I don't recognise it, is it based of a prototype or is it freelance? From the looks of it you're going to have the flywheel and some simplified valve gear moving, which will look very nice with the spoked flywheel. I was considering making the flywheel and the centre of the gear wheel rotate on my model with a belt drive off the driven axle. 

 

My intention for the chassis was for it to have a integrated motor and gear mount to make it one lump but only for a single axle, the second axle I'd allow to pivot sort of like figure 35 on this website:

 

http://www.clag.org.uk/41-0rev.html#figure35

 

and have it bolted or screwed onto the main lump so any warping or misalignment shouldn't affect pickup or running. I'd have pickups on both axles but only drive the fixed one of them as this isn't going to be hauling a lot anyway. I have a kit built brake van with a similar set up that seems to work very well

 

If that fails one of the Tenshodo motor bogies happens to be within 0.5mm of the correct wheelbase but I'd have to swap the wheels out and they're not supposed to be the best runners anyway 

 

I agree lack of weight is going to be a serious issue, Sirapite seems to be a bit chunkier than yours and I have to cab to hide some sins so I should be able to to fit more weight inside and I can always fit white metal crew members for a few extra grams

 

 

[TurboSnail]

It's based off a Ruston and Proctor design, but simplified a little to remove the secondary gearing, as I'm not quite mad enough to try and get that to work.

 

Unfortunately that compensation method doesn't work for me with the way I'm driving it, but I've got a couple of other ideas to keep it in line. Will keep it in mind for a couple of my other locos though.

 

What pickups did you have in mind? They'd have to be a very light touch to allow unpowered wheels to turn, unless the loco is very heavy at that point. You could always add another drive belt between the axles if it struggles.

 

Tenshodos can run well, but again, only if weighed down well. I looked at metal casting the flywheel and boiler fittings on mine (similar to what @Corbs does in resin) but that's a bit too much faff for me, so it'll be light loads only. As per the real thing, I suppose.

 

Will be interested to see how yours turns out!

[Adam FW]

for the pickups I was thinking along these lines with a coils to reduce the spring force applied to the wheels and thus reduce the drag but repositioned from the top of the wheels to avoid the splashers, I'm not too fussed if they're a bit visible

 

I'm pretty sure I have an old kit built 0-6-0 with similar tender pickups and it's wheels spin freely, I could belt drive between the axles but I think that would need the belt to be on the axle centre so might be tricky to achieve

 

the tenshodo issue for me beyond the poor running I've seen some people have is that it'll cost a fair amount to buy and then I've got to swap the wheels from 10 to about 20mm diameter (and ruin it's slow running in the process), then butcher the pickups to suit and then alter the motor wiring for DCC, I think working from scratch might give a better end result in this case

 

haven't got much further as the sun started shining not long after my first post, got the slide bar set up modelled though

 

 

[Adam FW]

Back to the Avonside kits again, I've been working on another example for Railway Mania, this time it's Hartington from Staveley Quarry/Ironworks. It had 2 sister locomotives, Avonside No3 (later renamed Cranford in preservation) and Devonshire which as far as I can tell were identical to each other bar the number and position of the 'dogs' on the smokebox door

 

 

 

Compared to my earlier square tank Avonside kits this one has some obvious differences, firstly the deeper buffer beam and massive dumb buffers (though standard buffers could be fitted to replicate 'avonside no3' in its later life). The smokebox is also different, the door is dogged (I think that's the right term, aka: midland style), a handle can be fitted rather than a dart (holes for either can be drilled easily as both sets of holes are there just capped off) and there's some additional reinforcement plates to beef up the connection between the smokebox saddle to the frame giving a really interesting heavy industrial look. Other changes include a new taller dome and chimney to better match the prototypes as well as the earlier round tank style sandboxes all 3 locos carried

 

 

I've painted up one of the first prototype kits in a dark green as the only colour photos of Staveley steam locos I could find were green, it's also been my first attempt at loco weathering done almost entirely with dry brushing, I might go back and add some powder at a later date as I think the top of the tank should be sootier despite me dry brushing some extra layers on already

 

 

I think it captures the prototype nicely

[37114]

Really interesting thread, credit to you the quality of the prints and your design work looks excellent, this thread shows the advances in printers/quality of printing has improved massively over the last 5 years.