Adam's EM Workbench: Farewell for now

[Bulwell Hall]

Way back when, I had plans, and even some steps towards, a model of one of my favourite prototypes, a Brighton Terrier. It all looked quite good, but led me a merry dance trying to get it to actually run. So, bullet bitten, I've striped it down and started again using conventional compensation (click here to see Mark Forrest's thread for what that looks like) and some Comet frames. These are dimensionally sound but have some strange features. The brakegear is designed for a much larger engine using the same dimensions so the pull rods and brake shoes are still on the etch and I reused the Branchlines versions which while not perfect are at least of appropriate proportions... I also recycled all the additional detail and added a bit more.

 

Terrier_7.gif

 

No sandboxes are supplied with either the Comet or Branchlines etches so I sourced some from Perserverance Kits - http://www.perseverancekits.co.uk/- and a Marsh chimney to go with them (I could have had a chassis too, I suppose). Steam lines for the sandpipes also went on, something that was surprisingly straightforward using the wire that comes wrapped round some bottles of rioja (the rioja itself having been safely and enjoyably disposed of) and the next stage is to add the brake pull rods and pick ups but it rolls nicely - though one of the wheels needed pinning to its axle - so that shouldn't prove too traumatic.

 

So, why have I painted the chassis  such a fetching shade of maroon?

 

Well, this should answer that:

 

Terrier_8.gif

 

A start has been made on reworking the body to better represent 'Brighton Works' which means lopping off the front splashers, scratchbuilding a new saddle for the smokebox (which will have the extension ring fitted with a new smokebox door), carving off the clack valves and that lovely chimney has to go as well since Brighton Works had a slightly less delicate replacement under Marsh. The full list of body modifications currently runs to a side of A4 but none of them will affect the tank or cab sides so that lovely paintjob will remain.

 

Yes, the boiler will have to be repainted which isn't a great problem since the Hornby rendition is a good match for the Precision version of Stroudley 'Improved Engine Green'. The valance will also have to get a repaint as well to match the chassis as opposed to the buffer beams. And before you ask, yes, I have the lining in hand in the form of transfers from Eric Gates. Thank you Eric.

 

Adam

 

Absolutely lovely Adam!  What a sight for sore eyes she must have made in the 1950s if you happend to come across her at Brighton amongst all those black engines and green EMUs!

[Mark Forrest]

That does look good, nice little engines those Terriers.  Must remember that tip about the rioja; might have to buy a couple of bottles later - purely for modelling purposes, obviously.

[Adam]

I suspect the splash of colour and its regular presence at Brighton are the reason that good photos are easy to come by. It also did a few railtours which is handy, for this is about the only way I can justify a model of it, and some of the Southern coaches I want to do.

 

Must remember that tip about the rioja; might have to buy a couple of bottles later - purely for modelling purposes, obviously.

 

The wire seems to be soft brass about 0.27mm (according to the digital calipers), which makes it good for 1" scale pipes which might be a bit too flexible in copper fuse wire.

 

Adam

[ullypug]

Looking good!

Think I did the first Terrier with new plasticard splashers and the second with brass. Brass was definitely easier.

Does it run ok?

(PS haven't forgotten about the axles - honest!)

[Adam]

Looking good!

Think I did the first Terrier with new plasticard splashers and the second with brass. Brass was definitely easier.

Does it run ok?

(PS haven't forgotten about the axles - honest!)

 

Runs nice and smooth - much to my relief! We'll see how it goes with motor and pick ups.

 

I've already fretted the splasher fronts from brass sheet (a penny is pretty much bob on for diameter as a template) so we'll see how forming the tops goes. The saddle will be plastic and Milliput as I reckon that's easier in this scale.

 

There's lots of plastic work to do. Lots and lots...

 

Adam

 

PS - No rush on the axles, plenty of other stuff to do.

[Adam]

After such a colourful interlude (and it'll be back, I promise), we return to the monochrome world of plastic sheet, leavened to some extent by brass and whitemetal. This, then, is the further adventures in the Italian food industry.

 

 

What should be visible, just about, are the scribed centre doors (a real trial) and the small hatches in the top corners which I decided to cut out because I find it easier to form a nice radiused corner (or by means of a drill), cut one than to scribe one tidily. Looking at pictures, I think the hatch doors should be flush so it's a case of cutting the hatch doors from 20 thou'. As you can also see, I've had to make some adjustment to the axleguards since I made them too deep; setting the ride height with reference to the guide line etched in the front face should be reasonably simple I hope. Buffers are by Lanarkshire Model Supplies, couplings by Masokits.

 

 

Still, it does look like a wagon now and once it's on its wheels, I can crack on with it, but probably via two or three other projects first...

 

Adam

Edited February 5, 2023 by Adam

[Adam]

While the ferry van inches forwards or, being a continental prototype, perhaps that should be 'progresses by mm'? Those wheels should be plain discs...

 

 

Work has concentrated on the Terrier. That said, this work has mostly involved lopping bits off and filling in holes. So the chimney has gone, which is a shame but it wasn't right for the prototype and a whitemetal replacement has been procured (when Gordon Gravett did his 7mm version of this loco and documented it back in MRJ 62 he built up the size of his Stroudley chimney with filler primer - a good Brighton colour...). The ring Hornby supply to extend the smokebox to A1X dimensions has been fitted, and the boiler filled with lead, but the rather feeble smokebox door has gone and quite a lot of Milliput has been deployed because well, Dapol put the filler caps in the wrong place, the handrail knobs are enormous, and in the case of those on the tank, in the wrong place (they should be mounted perpendicular to the tank top).

 

 

The weird splasher/gear cover inside the cab has gone too but gradually, parts are going back on, starting with the smokebox saddle. Just a bit of 30 thou' for the base and 20 thou', cut over length and curved, then clipped in a ring with a clothes peg and left on the radiator for a few minutes. Once cool it was trimmed to length and solvent welded in place; I've got to work out the way of making the curved edge...

 

 

Meanwhile, the chassis looks a bit more colourful - I wanted to get the wheels painted before pick ups and brake pull rods go on. This is just stage one, the rims need to be green as, I think, do the axle ends. Oh, and the sandpipes/guard irons will be bright red. Fiddly, these pre-grouping liveries...

 

 

The motor fitted and the, er, motor mount (lead sheet, epoxied in place, they'll be a spot of blu-tack later!).

 

Adam

Edited February 5, 2023 by Adam

[jwealleans]

Adam, a picture here about half way down of these vans being filled with ice. Some good footage in 'Link Span' by the BTF, which I think is on YouTube.

[Adam]

Adam, a picture here about half way down of these vans being filled with ice. Some good footage in 'Link Span' by the BTF, which I think is on YouTube.

 

That is interesting, thank you. I thought that - way back when - I'd seen footage of a train ferry being loaded and I guess it must have been that. There seems to be a lot of abuse of BTF copyright on Youtube, but not that, so far as I can tell... Next job, I think, is the roof proper.

 

Adam

[jwealleans]

It's been taken down, then, because it was on there. I hasten to add that I have a legit copy.

[jwealleans]

Only of academic interest, but there appear to be a rake of them at Harwich in 1933 here.

[Adam]

World of Terrier, same but different. Brighton Works's striking Stroudley colour scheme takes several steps forward and, in the midst of it all, it runs, which is quite exciting. First, a view of the mechanics:

 

 

Just this once I put some thought into this. The chassis a basic compensated job with a beam connecting the front two axles and the axles themselves running in tube sleeves which the beam bears on for lower friction. Drive is on the rear axle with a Mashima 1024 installed via a High Level gearbox. Note that the pick up assembly consists of a pair of pieces of PCB screws to cross members and linked by bus bars - the lengths of brass wire running fore to aft - onto which the pick ups for the centre wheels are fixed. The kink over the cosmetic ashpan is invisible the right way up. Happily, the pull rods on these are outside the wheels and that makes life easier. As luck would have it, I even wired the thing in the correct orientation at the first time of asking which is truly remarkable...

 

 

This way up shows the paintwork: the Precision paint yellow (sorry, Improved Engine Green) had to be let down a smidgeon with some very light grey to match the colour Hornby painted the body and is the better for it, I feel. We also have claret-coloured frames, and rods, green rims and the axle ends (the Gibson standard 1/8" axle being somewhat oversclae here), picked out in black. The guard irons and sandpipes are painted bright red which is all rather exciting while the continuation on the spokes over the balance weights is a neat touch on the real thing that was a bit of a fiddle to add. It appears much less gaudy than might be expected because, the red guard irons apart, the colours are tonally similar in intensity. The body is coming on a little too, with a couple of wedges added to build up the smokebox saddle. This will be completed using Milliput.

 

 

Adam

[Adam]

o, the workbench, and everything else, has been relocated and is now sort of up and running again. It's a bit slow, however, because I painstakingly stored everything very carefully - though the bench itself moved in one piece with all its drawers - and I now have to find it again. With that in mind, it made sense to take one project and use that as a search aid and in the process get some modelling done. In this instance, it's giving my plastic Terrier a facelift. So, starting with the bit that Dapol got 'most wrong' (at least for an A1X), the smokebox. In the previous post, the bones of the new smokebox saddle were shown in all their gory detail. I didn't take any pictures of the process of building up the saddle in Milliput, partly because my fingers were covered in the stuff but some way down the line, this was the result:

 

 

Note the nice even curves and the 'orrid file marks on the buffer beam. No matter, we'll be coming back to that. The white area is 5 thou' plastic sheet which represents the smokebox ring behind the door. And so, a day or two later, spot the difference:

 

 

There's a dart (made from a turned base and a couple of handrail knobs for 0.3mm wire - a Terrier is a small machine, the real things are appropriately dainty: one size does not fit all). I'll be using these for the boiler handrails as well once I've bought some more. The buffer beam has been slightly reduced in height and you should be able to see that the hole for the coupling hook is now in the centre of the 'beam as it should be. It also means that the buffers look as though they'll be in the correct spot for this engine without too much modification to what's left. This is where the detail oddities come into play. Terriers had (have!) buffers at two different heights and different brake fittings. This one, weirdly, only had an air pipe on the bunker end in its latter years for example. The straps have yet to go on the door (modified from an RT Models item), but the Marsh chimney (Perseverance - happily available again) has and the loco looks better for it. Side on the effect is clear:

 

 

The tank fillers - somewhat underfed - have been sheaved with plastic tube and look better for the weight gain. Work still to do includes making the corners of the valances sharper and fabricating enormous amounts of pipework. The seriously eagle-eyed may notice that some of the filled holes in the boiler have been redrilled, but not all.

 

 

Why? Well, I discovered that most of the 'boiler' handrails were - and are - located on the tank tops, as this photo from John Turner's collection on Flickr shows: https://www.flickr.com/photos/blue-diesels/6846352536/

 

Onwards and upwards.

 

Adam

 

[RThompson]

I'm assuming the smokebox door is my manning wardle part?

Looking good, I have a half finished A1 terrier lying about that was going to be a Shropshire and Montgomery light railway loco complete with large buffer heads. It involved moving the dome in line with the tank fillers.

 

The terrier as well as the austerity is unfortunately very wrong in detail wise, just the basic shape is correct.

Edited March 14, 2016 by RThompson

[Adam]

I'm assuming the smokebox door is my manning wardle part?

Looking good, I have a half finished A1 terrier lying about that was going to be a Shropshire and Montgomery light railway loco complete with large buffer heads.

 

Yep - 4SLP037 - I ran a bead of Milliput around the edge to get the diameter right and decided at that point that the straps were a bit close together. It'll come together in the end. That was a Terrier variation I wasn't aware of (not difficult!).

Adam

Edited March 14, 2016 by Adam

[Adam]

Another thing that emerged in the course of the move was this Cambrian kit for a SR Borail. Such long wagons often adopted a bow in reality but in moulded plastic this is not always desirable. In this instance, the floor is moulded in two halves and there is precious little structure to prevent it warping all over the place.

 

 

Here's a crude but effective (and cheap!) solution: A waste bicycle spoke (the wheel was written off in a collision my sister had a few weeks back - she's fine, mercifully) is stiff, straight and was epoxied in place (held in with a pair of clothes pegs while the glue cures) quite messily - but invisibly - when the wagon is the right way up.

 

 

I'm wondering now about how to add some more weight, so it's back in the box...

 

Adam

[Enterprisingwestern]

For weighting such spidery wagons I use thin lead sheet strips which I picked up at S4um a few years back.

Good for under valances on Mike Edge shunters too, but annoyingly I don't know the original source/manufacturer.

 

Mike.

 

Edit.

Good for weighting herrings too.

Edited March 18, 2016 by Enterprisingwestern

[Porcy Mane]

Another thing that emerged in the course of the move was this Cambrian kit for a SR Borail. Such long wagons often adopted a bow in reality but in moulded plastic this is not always desirable. In this instance, the floor is moulded in two halves and there is precious little structure to prevent it warping all over the place.

 

Despite taking all the usual precautions I find it sometimes happens on SWB wagons too.  Thats when 3/32" brass square tube & 16 BA bolts come in handy  Hmmmm, bike spokes look cheaper.

 

For weighting such spidery wagons I use thin lead sheet strips which I picked up at S4um a few years back.

Good for under valances on Mike Edge shunters too, but annoyingly I don't know the original source/manufacturer.

No wonder all the church roofs leak round you way.

 

B & Q used to do a flashing material that was approx. 1.5 mm thick. Don't know if they still do?

 

Scalelink does this lead foil that can fold or laminate to the depth you require. Expensive for what it is but it's also great for wagon tarps.

http://www.scalelink.co.uk/cgi-bin/sh000002.pl?WD=lead&PN=Sundries__Lead_foil__Chain__Adhesives%2ehtml#aSMLEAD_2fA

 

P

[Adam]

 

Despite taking all the usual precautions I find it sometimes happens on SWB wagons too.  Thats when 3/32" brass square tube & 16 BA bolts come in handy  Hmmmm, bike spokes look cheaper.

 

LowfitMdling-02-EditSm.jpg

No wonder all the church roofs leak round you way.

 

B & Q used to do a flashing material that was approx. 1.5 mm thick. Don't know if they still do?

 

Scalelink does this lead foil that can fold or laminate to the depth you require. Expensive for what it is but it's also great for wagon tarps.

http://www.scalelink.co.uk/cgi-bin/sh000002.pl?WD=lead&PN=Sundries__Lead_foil__Chain__Adhesives%2ehtml#aSMLEAD_2fA

 

P

 

An owfit indeed... Trouble is that my nearest B&Q is a pain to get to without a car (they're not mad keen on bicycles on the M27) which rules that out until I'm next in that direction. A worthwhile thought though.

 

Adam

[pete55]

 

B & Q used to do a flashing material that was approx. 1.5 mm thick. Don't know if they still do?

 

 

 

P

 

I bought a roll of 1.5mm lead flashing from a local builders merchant last year, will last several lifetimes I should think, but would have thought any decent builder's supplier would stock it, not just the DIY chain sheds.

[cctransuk]

I bought a roll of 1.5mm lead flashing from a local builders merchant last year, will last several lifetimes I should think, but would have thought any decent builder's supplier would stock it, not just the DIY chain sheds.

 

I use 3mm. lead flashing -as wagon solebars are 3mm. deep.

 

My neighbour had about 3ft. left from a roll that he'd used to line a roof valley; we did a deal !! Should see me out !!!

 

Your local roofer may well be glad to do a deal on his offcuts.

 

Regards,

John Isherwood.

Edited March 18, 2016 by cctransuk

[Kelly]

Thought it might not work for the borail wagon, something that might work is something called liquid lead, its used a lot by aviation and military modellers to weigh noses and the like down and can be almost painted on any nook and cranny.

[Adam]

My last lot of flashing did emerge from a skip as I remember - I've just run out - and I do have some liquid lead, but I want to keep that for more difficult applications: this isn't, it's just long!

 

So back to mucking about with the Terrier. At this point the work is about putting the detail I removed back on in the right place or simply more of it. So the straps on the smokebox have been replaced in 10x20 thou' strip, thinned down, the buffer beams have been tidied up and a bit of plastic strip added to represent the overlap of the footplate, the plate for the drawhook knocked up from 10 thou' and, obviously, new buffers (no, they won't be sprung). I've also moved the buffers down a smidge.

 

 

Strangely, the drawhooks on the back of a Terrier are at a slightly different level to those at the front. Easy enough to do.

 

 

I must get on and make up the splashers now...

 

Adam

 

 

 

 

 

[Porcy Mane]

Loadsa lead flashing on ebay. I suppose the downside is paying for the postage. 

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Code-4-Lead-Flashing-Lead-Sheet-Lead-Rolls-1-2-3-4-5-6m-Rolls-/252309044679?var=&hash=item3abeca7dc7:m:mkc_UhAaHEXXV3oHsYk9BCg

 

Another possibility is automotive  wheel balance weights. They are usually my weapon of choice and also available relatively cheaply from ebay.

 

P

[Adam]

Moving on for the momeny, I've made up some splashers - in 4mm a good template for scribing the circumference is a 2p piece (though my compass cutter has been located!). The sandbox lids were spares from something else, though they'd be easy enough to knock up from plastic rod and sheet, and the start of the cab floor can be seen - some splashers are wanted there, too.

 

 

Otherwise, the Italian ferry van has moved forward too with the first brakegear elements assembled. The vee hangers are Masokits parts intended for LMS vehicles are are a pretty decent match, I think. These vehicles were dual braked: the vac' cylinder acted on one shaft and the air brake gear on the other with a linkage between the two. The question (I have an excellent isometric drawing showing what goes where thanks to Jonathan Weallans) is how much of it to add...

 

 

Coming on.

 

Adam