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What has The Johnster bought?


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Some time ago, I bid successfully for four aluminium coach bodies on the Bay of e, and am beginning to wonder what exaclly they are!  I think they are BSL, but wouldn't swear to it.  There is one fairly identifiable as a Collett B/E  C61/63 non-gangwayed compartment third, and a similar but slightly longer body is therefore an E141 composite.  These coaches were AFAIK marshalled into 5 coach sets BT/T/C/T/BT for South Wales use, and i already have an ersatz C61/3 made of an Airfix B set cut'n'shut.  The other two have stumped me; I initially thought they might be Hawksworth non-gangwayed coaches but am now less certain as i cannot find any GW non -gangwayed stock that has this particular arrangement of windows.  They are flat ended brake thirds and perhaps of LMS origin; the brake compartment windows are offset rather than mirror image, but there are no duckets, I thing I associate with LMS brake stock.

 

The current plan is to work the C61/3 up using the chassis currently beneath my ersatz version. and acquire another Airfix B set E129 as a chassis donor for the E141.  The Airfix chassis will have to be cut'n'shut for both, but they'll 'do' as cheap and cheerful layout coaches, not to be marshalled with Hornby 57' suburbans which will seriously show them up!  The brake thirds are another problem, and need identificatiion before I think about what to do with them.  If they are GW coaches I will use at least one and probably both of them, perhaps in different liveries.  Again, the aim will be to produce 'layout' coaches and I have plenty of spare 9' Collett bogies from auto coach kitbashing for them (the bowenders, these ones at least, had 7' bogies).  

 

Apart from Airfix E129 chassis, I intend to use Comet ends and other parts, and Stafford Road/Shapeways 3D print bogies; it almost goes without saying that Ratio/Parkside seating will make an appearance!    IMG_0703 shows the two bowended coaches, C63 at the top and the slightly longer E121 at the bottom right.  IMG_0701 shows the mystery brake thirds, which scale out at 57'.  There is something vaguely Hawksworth about them but they do not have the slab sided Hawksworth body profile, also the measurement from solebar bottom to cantrail is about 0.75mm less than on the bowenders.  They are all aluminium stampings, so doors will have to be scribed and door hinges, handles, and grab rails added.  I am not in a rush to build them, and will put them in a project box to make progress as and when, but will try to finish tasks before putting them aside until next time the muse takes me...             

 

   

IMG_0703.jpg

IMG_0701.jpg

 

The 4 bodyshells were aquired for so little they can be considered redacted, and I am reckoning on a budget of about £30 per coach, maybe a tenner more for the bowenders as I will have to consider the cost of Stafford bogies.

Edited by The Johnster
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They look like some Westdale kits that I misguidedly bought soon after returning to the hobby several years ago. Mine are for a B-set, and after struggling to get the aluminium ends to stick to the aluminium sides, I set them aside until either my skills improve or a better glue was invented. These things don't seem to have happened as of yet.....

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The brake ends? I've got the same ones. I think they should be flat ended as mine just had a flat section of punched aluminium.

 

I'll try and remember the diagram numbers. I wrote it all down somewhere when trying to work out what I needed.

 

Found them. Probably not what you want to hear.

 

I think they are LMS D1964 Brake Thirds.

 

 

The GWR ones I have are totally different in they have double pairs of windows. Possibly the B set mentioned above.

 

 

Jason

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Many thanks for this, gentlemen; the mist is clearing a little now.  The bodies are MTK or Westdale, then, and the brake 3rds are LMS as I was beginning to suspect; there's something about the brake compartment window spacing that sort of feels a bit LMessy if you know what I mean.  The amount I paid for them means this is no great loss and  they can return to the 'maybe one day' box, but the C61/3 and the E121 have potential as I have said. 

 

Aluminium is a pig of a material to work with and I doubt I'll get much joy glueing the brass Comet ends so that will be a solder job.  I'll also have to scribe the doors, and drill for the handles and handrails, and cross my fingers that I will be able to find a way of making the alu sides adhere to the plastic chassis; there may be some finagiling about with screws at the ends.  Another problem is going to be getting the glazing to stick to the inside of the sides, although by that time they'll be painted which might help.  There is going to be quite a bit of coach activity over the next year or so, with a Comet A43 'cyclops' compartment auto trailer being build for me, refurbishing a badly made (mea culpa) Comet C66 to go with it, and a Comet E147 B set on the cardsm and I'm looking at Rue d'Etropal of this parish's 3D auto trailers as well.  The A43 and E147s are essential items for the Tondu area. both types being used there in the 1950s; there were 3 E147 B sets.  Of the aluminium coaches, I'll probably do the C61/3 first.

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I've not tried it on aluminium as yet, but I can see no reason why Gorilla glue wouldn't work quite well. I've used it on all sorts of other materials & it certainly is tenacious stuff in my experience. Usual precautions, of course - clean & roughened surfaces, hold/secure the components until glue has gone off etc...

 

Anyone else tried it?

 

Mark

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Many many years ago,  when god were a lad and aluminium coach kits like these were the only way to go for something slightly different, I remember seeing a modeller who had drilled and countersunk the corner edges and had drilled and tapped small aluminium angle, something like about 10 or 12BA to join the corners, and covered up the screwheads with a smear of filler. At the time when UHU or EvoStick were the only other options it struck me as a good option, and still probably holds good today.

 

Mike.

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Really interesting to see this thread. Only last night I was thinking about the Westdale kits that I have in the loft. I had been wondering about the best way to start constructing these and the information and links here give some great information. 

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5 hours ago, MarkC said:

I've not tried it on aluminium as yet, but I can see no reason why Gorilla glue wouldn't work quite well. I've used it on all sorts of other materials & it certainly is tenacious stuff in my experience. Usual precautions, of course - clean & roughened surfaces, hold/secure the components until glue has gone off etc...

 

Anyone else tried it?

 

Mark

 

I've found it expands quite a lot as the curing process generates CO2.  Wouldn't old fashioned epoxy be a good choice for aluminium? 

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12 hours ago, The Johnster said:

...Aluminium is a pig of a material to work with and I doubt I'll get much joy glueing the brass Comet ends so that will be a solder job.  I'll also have to scribe the doors, and drill for the handles and handrails, and cross my fingers that I will be able to find a way of making the alu sides adhere to the plastic chassis...

 

Hello The Johnster, the only BSL/Phoenix GWR carriage I have made is this D94 BTK. I think the only difference between this one and the D95 is the D94 has one less compartment.  It’s a fairly old kit (older than me) in the bag when I got it was a price list in pounds, shillings and pence. I bought it on eBay about 6 years ago for a tenner.

 

523479203_GWRD943ComptBTKW4753W(BSL-Phoenix)(1).jpg.0c5b7d987acef6ed41d86fba27d2a886.jpg

 

It has an aluminium body and chassis, whitemetal ends and a wooden roof. I’ve used araldite on this – probably a whole packs worth – to glue the ends to the floor and sides to the floor. The whitemetal ends had a flange that sat above the floor pan so I drilled the two and fitted a couple of 16BA nuts and bolts to help the glue. Its seems to be holding okay. The fit between the roof and ends could be better...

 

The doors have been scribed and I drilled for the door hinges – the hinges are flattened and shaped brass pins that are then soldered on the inside. Obviously the solder doesn’t adhere to the aluminium but it does the pin. I guess it’s akin to a rivet. The windows, corridor handrails and grills in the brake end are secured with Micro Krystal Clear. The window panes (real glass) are fixed with araldite.

 

I scratch built the under frame but the bogies are the original castings.

 

Kind regards,

 

Iain

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25 minutes ago, BernardTPM said:

I built one back in the mid-1970s, a Collet C70. It turned out reasonably well. I'm pretty sure I used Evostick for at least some of the joins. I replaced the modified Triang/Hornby BR1s I originally fitted with Mainline bogies in the early 1980s.

 

post-1877-0-12037500-1497450193_thumb.jpg

 

Sadly the evostick of the 70's was far superior to that available today by all accounts..... :(

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5 hours ago, Flying Pig said:

 

I've found it expands quite a lot as the curing process generates CO2.  Wouldn't old fashioned epoxy be a good choice for aluminium? 

It certainly does, but it can always be smoothed back where necessary, & you certainly don't need a lot.

 

I think it would be better than epoxy, simply because it's less viscous when applied, so it gets into the surface roughness better, for want of a better explanation  - it 'flows' more efficiently.

 

Certainly something to try.

 

Mark

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Yes, I suspect Evostick is not going to be a flyer, but interested to hear of your successes with Araldite and it might be worth at least trying Gorilla, which is messy gunk but useful for all sorts of other things as well so will not be a waste of money.  I don't like the idea of bonding different materials in principle, but here needs must; the coaches are going to consist of aluminium bodies, plastic underframes,  and etched brass or cast whitemetal ends, so there is potential for all sorts of unpredictable and model destroying chemistry to develop even before I apply nasty glue or solder/flux to things.  This project, when it gets going, is going to be something of a suck it and see area, and then there's the paint...

 

OK, planned sequence of events, 1) mark out doorways and pre-drill holes for door handles, handrails and such,  2) spray undercoat, 3) spray interior cream, mask window reveals outside, 4) decide livery and spay exterior gloss or eggshell, 5) have a think about what to do next, probably fit ends, 6) acquire Airfix B set coach as chassis donor or use chassis from existing ersatz C61/3, or both since a chassis is needed for the E121, 7) cut'n'shut chassis to length, 8) fit seating/compartment dividers to chassis, 9) fix transfers to outside and spray matt varnish to seal them, !0) fit door handles/handrails, 11) general touching up and tidying, 12) cut glazing and affix no smoking xfers to inside of windows, 13) paint interior and add passengers, 14) fit glazing, 15) assemble coach, 16) test run, 17) be very pleased with myself and go up pub to celebrate. 

 

I'm thinking about maybe trying an experiment with this coach, having different liveries on each side; this will depend on the fit of the sides and ends as it must not be possible to see the livery on the blind side creeping around the ends.  Another issue is the no smoking labels, but all will be well if the two liveries are austerity brown on one side and 1945-7 G W R on the other.  This will possibly need black paint on the thickness of the window reveals so as to limit 'colour creep'.

 

Excellent advice about glues, gentlemen, please accept my further thanks.  I owe you all a beer next time we're all at a show...

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My Westdale coaches have the ends glued in.. Evostick as a n initial glue, then overlaid with a fillet of epoxy.  Still works ( says he with fingers firmly crossed)..

 

 

and coachman used evostick to glue lots of things - with time it means some of the interiors in teh coaches he built have distorted,,,I have had to glue some back together..

Baz

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The only Westdale kit I've built finished was the K38 'Ocean Mails' van. The ends were tacked into place with super glue then Araldite was liberally spread around the inside seams. It went together quite well in the end but for some reason I painted it (very poorly) in British Railways livery. Needless to say I got rid of it in my great purge when trying (unsuccessfully) to save my house from sale.

I have two other K38's to build, another Westdale and a Phoenix. I've just checked the Westdale kit contents which include the preformed roof and body sides, 2 stamped aluminium ends, stamped aluminium truss rods which are bent to shape with a partial floor and 4 stampings in the shape of the corridor connections. There are 2 thick glazing strips, a wooden floor which is longer than the body and 4 white metal oval headed buffers. This kit has just a simplified drawing of the body showing where to scribe the doors and no other instructions although I seem to remember some form of generic instructions in the previous one I built.

The Phoenix kit seems to have more promise. I have built a number of the BSL/Phoenix kits quite successfully over the years with very few problems. The K38 has seperate aluminium sides, roof floor and solebar stampings, white metal ends and underfame detals, brass buffers, some plastic truss rods which may be usable and a precut sheet for the door droplights. It also has a better drawing of the van and better (once again generic) intructions.

When I can summon the motivation to really get stuck into modelling again I might do a simultaneous build of the kits for comparison.

 

Dave R.

   

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My recent Phoenix/BSL LMS coach builds (aluminium body & roof/WM ends) were built using a type of contact adhesive similar to Evostik (the cheaper Wilko's variety) and so far, they haven't fallen apart. Not sure if they will be fine in 10 years or so, but I can't see there being any issues.

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I too have a stash of westdale & BSL kits, some done, but the majority still in "pending".  The BSL kits that have been done, I have used Araldite to stick sides ends and roof to each other - ends and sides first, then when set firmly (24 hours) the roof.  I did try superglue for the Roof/sides join but that was awful.  I would support the view that cleaning the areas to be glued with fine sand paper literally just before applying glue is the best approach.  I was told in school (last Century) that Aluminium does not 'rust' but it does oxidise creating an useless surface for gluing. 

One thing I struggle with, is marking the door edges.  Any suggestions good people????  (My son has suggested I make a jig so I can drill the holes for grab handles, door handles and bump stops too.  He has a M. Eng. degree and I suspect my modelling skills fall far short of his estimate.)    

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I made a simple jig to drill some scratch built coach sides. Bit of 20thou brass wider than the door plus handles. Bent over at a right angle at one end. Cut to reach about half way up the door overlapping to either side. Hook this against the lower edge of the coach side and mark the door position (Small notches in top edge). Tape it to coach side and Carefully mark positions to be drilled.

Once these have been drilled you can just slide it along the side from door to door.  The brass will wear but should be good for several sides.

Afraid I binned mine when the scratch builds failed for other reasons so I don’t have any pictures.

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Well, some good tips regarding glue and how to mark out the doors, and I'll be starting sometime quite soonish on the E141, to which end I've ordered some bits from Comet (57-60' underframe, non-gangwayed bow ends, end fittings).  This will be followed in due course by the C61/3, which will probably be able to sit on a cut'n'shut Airfix B set underframe.  I'm almost glad that the brake 3rds turned out to be LMS types, as this means that my prospective purchase of a pair of Comet E147s for a B set moves up the queue a bit.

 

Thanks again for the suggestions, everyone!

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