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Adam's EM Workbench: Farewell for now


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29 minutes ago, Adam said:

Hi Stu - I hadn't see the Accurascale couplings until now. I see what you men about the tommy bar which is a bit of a shame, but the stem on the hooks is so short I'd want to replace those anyway. Worth looking into for the price.

 

Adam

 

You can carefully drill the centre of the headstock through the shortarse stem and pin it to make it a tad more secure.

Also, it is the screw coupling with two bars, so not universal for wagons as you will be aware, but probably worth the faff of rebuilding to get a loco type version at a decent price.

 

Mike.

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26 minutes ago, Jack P said:

@Adam, looking excellent as usual!

 

How many couplings do you get in one 'pack'?

 

Masokits? Seven pairs (self assembly, involving some fiddly soldering, much aided by metalblack and of course via rather 'old fashioned' mail order). Excellent value and I've never had one fall apart. The Accurascale version is four pairs for £7.50 (though those are more suitable for more modern prototypes or locos).

 

Adam

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1 hour ago, Adam said:

I hadn't see the Accurascale couplings until now. I see what you men about the tommy bar which is a bit of a shame,

 

 Easily sorted for a man with your consummate skills.

 

and there's this.

 

https://www.scalefour.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=126&t=6838#p74555

 

Re the couplings: Masokits screws used to be be my No. 1 but the Rumney Models jobbies  (when available again) has recently leap frogged to the  top spot. You get shed loads of links to various lengths but no hooks supplied. That's a bonus for me as I tend to use Ambis hooks.

 

GedgeSlotMkI.jpg.9f688346f53de07c3ad3df90f11d5dad.jpg

 

Screw-Couplings.pdf

 

P

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A pair of completed (well, in one case, all bar the shouting) milk lorries to serve the off scene dairy on the layout. Both are from Road Transport Images bits and both appear further up the thread, but here they are in the full colour finery. First the complete one, the Austin FF in the (fictional) colours of Bateman of Pitney, mover of milk churns. The real Bateman is a friend who'd probably be bemused by it...

 

FFK_009.jpg.c1db29d9abac6af2be3296e01e64a4c0.jpg

 

Glazing the cab took a bit of care. I'd managed to lose the vac' formed screen that RTI supply and so had so sort my own replacement from OHP slide film that I'd kept in the 'solutions in search of a problem' folder. Before painting I thinned the bottom edge of the opening and cut a strip of the film which conformed to the inside of the cab nicely. Once fixed in the middle with a spot of superglue, the ends were trimmed to approximate shape with scissors and the full fixing was achieved with a bit of Glue 'n' Glaze and looks not all that bad.

 

FFK_010.jpg.b05a2d493188fcbe45652cee8dfaa2c7.jpg

 

While the Austin has hung around for some years, the big Scammell MU has been a bit quicker. Given the geographical setting of the layout a big milk tank *should* be an 8-legger AEC in Wincanton livery and maybe I will, one day, but I like Scammells and United Dairies owned plenty.

 

Scammell_Milk_015.jpg.24bc069a03f4f8161d9bf87bc5532b16.jpg

 

Scammell_Milk_016.jpg.edd9851420c0c717db0ce2c9fd67fcd5.jpg

 

This one needs plates and a spot of weathering, but not too much as milk lorries were generally well-scrubbed.

 

Adam

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  • Adam changed the title to Adam's EM Workbench: two lorries for the milk run
  • 2 months later...
  • Adam changed the title to Adam's EM Workbench: LMS five
49 minutes ago, Adam said:

I might well do another of these conversions - I don't really have enough opens - but I'm not sure I'd go with the brass body. It's all very neat and hugely enjoyable, a but I reckon I could manage it from plastic quite happily. It might take a bit longer, I suppose, but I could leave the soldering iron unplugged.

 

Of course if everybody did that sort of thing then you might find there's no suppliers left out there or a lot less product to choose from...

 

The wagon looks very nice Adam. 

 

Justin

 

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3 hours ago, jjnewitt said:

 

Of course if everybody did that sort of thing then you might find there's no suppliers left out there or a lot less product to choose from...

 

The wagon looks very nice Adam. 

 

Justin

 

 

All that is true - and all these things are options - my preference for complicated AVB chassis are your kits because they're elegantly designed and no slower than adding the detail myself to the supplied sprues: because they're all one material I don't have to wait for glue to dry. I'm sure I'm not your most frequent customer, but I have built almost all of mine!

 

That said, I do have a drawer full of perfectly usable plastic sprues that could furnish complete wagons with a bit of work (the moulded chassis from the donor kit for example) and the cost is sunk already. The all in cost of this wagon is more than some would be willing to pay (just shy of £40 at a rough estimate and that's fine with me, I like wagons and find them satisfying projects). Most of these other projects will end up with your axleboxes, other details and Lanarkshire buffers, etc. You will be getting more orders from me, just not until I've paid for a replacement back door and windows...

 

Adam

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

My current, and ongoing, project is a Southwark Bridge Models (available from Roxey) GWR P7 ballast hopper, the type that the later Herring were based on. These are - characteristically - 'Swindon' though based on a commercial design (the LSWR and GNoSR had similar vehicles). I don't know about the GNoSR, but the South Western went on to more sensibly sized and a bit more operator-friendly things. Not so the GWR which upgraded them and perpetuated their folly with the Herring. But they did last until '63 so...

 

P7_001.jpg.836136550b0a4495514830c98c7d3751.jpg

 

This is not a bad kit as such, but I think that it's been shot down from 7mm and it shows in the design decisions. The chassis is a bit of a mess and leaves too much to chance in location terms though that said I managed to put it together right first time.

 

There are a lot of tiny bits. The brake push rods, shoes and especially hangers are not really fit for purpose in 4mm. Half etched brake hangers with no backs to them are not really on. Ivan isn't available for comment following his untimely death and to be fair to him, the brake variations on this are many, varied, and made even worse than the usual Swindon norm by the retro-fitting of vacuum cylinders but that shouldn't have made it past the test etch. I'll have to get one of Justin's Herring for comparative purposes. His approach to the hopper is a bit different, having seen the instructions, but the chassis is to his normal method and I know that works and works well.

 

The hopper, in contrast is really quite good and goes together accurately and square sufficient that the tierods just fed through all the various holes at the first time of asking.

 

P7_002.jpg.4321550becef846056c0880a57ab8121.jpg

 

P7_003.jpg.4fd14035d2b41cebe1fc749e5ba67b54.jpg

 

At this point, all hot operations are complete barring the upright vac' pipes which I think I'll have to make up from scratch. They're not a complicated shape but modifying a whitemetal one is likely to result in meltdown. Note the 'modern' pattern of kickstep, replacing the rather pretty, but I imagine a bit delicate, steps on a bit of rod Victorian version. The safety loops ended up mounted as I imagine the real thing was, attached to the hopper tierods: I'm sure Swindon did something more sophisticated than a blob of solder. Oh, and I've added journal reinforcements, tweaked from some Rumney Models spares.

 

P7_007.jpg.a18cf17229b4acac4b20a4ee320274ff.jpg

 

Still, the hard work has  resulted in something not bad and once the paint is on, who'll know. I wouldn't build another though.

 

Adam

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  • Adam changed the title to Adam's EM Workbench: GWR P7
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3 hours ago, Adam said:

My current, and ongoing, project is a Southwark Bridge Models (available from Roxey) GWR P7 ballast hopper, the type that the later Herring were based on. These are - characteristically - 'Swindon' though based on a commercial design (the LSWR and GNoSR had similar vehicles). I don't know about the GNoSR, but the South Western went on to more sensibly sized and a bit more operator-friendly things. Not so the GWR which upgraded them and perpetuated their folly with the Herring. But they did last until '63 so...

 

P7_001.jpg.836136550b0a4495514830c98c7d3751.jpg

 

This is not a bad kit as such, but I think that it's been shot down from 7mm and it shows in the design decisions. The chassis is a bit of a mess and leaves too much to chance in location terms though that said I managed to put it together right first time.

 

There are a lot of tiny bits. The brake push rods, shoes and especially hangers are not really fit for purpose in 4mm. Half etched brake hangers with no backs to them are not really on. Ivan isn't available for comment following his untimely death and to be fair to him, the brake variations on this are many, varied, and made even worse than the usual Swindon norm by the retro-fitting of vacuum cylinders but that shouldn't have made it past the test etch. I'll have to get one of Justin's Herring for comparative purposes. His approach to the hopper is a bit different, having seen the instructions, but the chassis is to his normal method and I know that works and works well.

 

The hopper, in contrast is really quite good and goes together accurately and square sufficient that the tierods just fed through all the various holes at the first time of asking.

 

P7_002.jpg.4321550becef846056c0880a57ab8121.jpg

 

P7_003.jpg.4fd14035d2b41cebe1fc749e5ba67b54.jpg

 

At this point, all hot operations are complete barring the upright vac' pipes which I think I'll have to make up from scratch. They're not a complicated shape but modifying a whitemetal one is likely to result in meltdown. Note the 'modern' pattern of kickstep, replacing the rather pretty, but I imagine a bit delicate, steps on a bit of rod Victorian version. The safety loops ended up mounted as I imagine the real thing was, attached to the hopper tierods: I'm sure Swindon did something more sophisticated than a blob of solder. Oh, and I've added journal reinforcements, tweaked from some Rumney Models spares.

 

P7_007.jpg.a18cf17229b4acac4b20a4ee320274ff.jpg

 

Still, the hard work has  resulted in something not bad and once the paint is on, who'll know. I wouldn't build another though.

 

Adam


Nice one Adam. How n earth did the vac cylinder fit under the sole bar with all the other gubbins in there?

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1 hour ago, Phil Bullock said:


Nice one Adam. How n earth did the vac cylinder fit under the sole bar with all the other gubbins in there?


It didn’t! The bracket holding it cantilevered it outside the solebar. As the wagons were relatively narrow that was ok.

 

Adam 

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3 hours ago, Adam said:


It didn’t! The bracket holding it cantilevered it outside the solebar. As the wagons were relatively narrow that was ok.

 

Adam 


Ah can see that now you say..... not surprising it moved to the end of the wagon in later designs. Think I have discovered why so few herrings were branded.... there isn’t room between the gussets to get the name in! Well not with Fox transfers any way....

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27 minutes ago, Phil Bullock said:


Ah can see that now you say..... not surprising it moved to the end of the wagon in later designs. Think I have discovered why so few herrings were branded.... there isn’t room between the gussets to get the name in! Well not with Fox transfers any way....

 

Not much later - the precursor of the Dogfish, Trout and Catfish designs was produced by Leeds Forge less than a decade afterward the P7 and at least some of those (some for the SECR, for example - that'd be a fun conversion from a Hornby Trout if I could lay hands on one) had vac' brake. There was at least one P7 rebuilt with a vac' cylinder at the end because there's a picture of it in MRJ 257. The P22s should never have been built in my view - especially as Met Camm that built most of them had inherited the Leeds Forge designs via Cammell Laird - but I've never understand the doings of Swindon...

 

Adam

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2 hours ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

I happened across a 4 pack at a certain emporium last month and was in like a rat up a drainpipe.

 

Mike.

 

You jammy beggar. I've no use for four of the things, but several of the SECR types - more or less identical but with rather cute dropside doors in the middle two panels - made it to BR and, well, it'd be rude not to do one.

 

Adam

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  • 3 weeks later...

And now for something completely different. In 1911, the SE&CR acquired its first ballast hoppers supplementing its traditional flat bottomed, low-sided pens which, nonetheless, lasted in some numbers into the 1960s. These were curious things with three chutes to unload the ballast (just the one bottom door on the GWR P7) designed to be operated from track level and rightly reckoned to be sub-optimal from the user's point of view especially when the wagons were - as designed - unloaded in motion. In 1915 they added another train's worth of similar hoppers of 21T capacity with the operating wheels moved upward and a platform provided for the operator. Construction was by the Leeds Forge Co., and they seem to have been at least partially responsible for the design since they some very similar vehicles to others until their closure in 1929.* This sensible and much-safer set of features was later adopted by the SR on their later bogie hoppers but, through Leeds Forge's successor, Cammell Laird (later Met Camm), more very similar 4-wheeled vehicles were built for the LMS and LNER and by BR as the Catfish and Dogfish . Characteristic Swindon conservatism saw them get Met Camm to build their P22 design when the same company had a superior vehicle available for thirty-five years...

 

Hornby, of course, have offered a moulded plastic version of the Trout and since examples of the second batch of SE&CR hoppers lasted into the '60s and there are pictures at Meldon which is the right end of the SR for me how could I resist? Getting hold of one has proved a bit tricky but a kind donation from @Enterprisingwestern has solved that and here we are. So apart from the lovely pressed steel side door (for copyright reasons you'll have to take my word for that unless to have a copy of An Illustrated History of Southern Wagons vol. 3 or the later Southern Wagons Pictorial) the main difference is the capacity and the consequent height of the hopper, roughly 6" lower on these early relatives. From a modelling point of view the difficult bit is the door but I have a plan for that.

 

SECR_hopper_001.jpg.415db10f0d725f433da94d9cb541d627.jpg

 

Here's the donor - sadly the nicely-moulded axlebox lettering has to go and the chutes are 2mm shorter than they should be (trainset wheels, but who can really tell), as do the buffers and bendy footsteps. Vacuum brakes and their associated fittings are to be added. About an hour's drastic surgery later...

 

SECR_hopper_002.jpg.2845ed952ec441b8f9a8d7c5c987af1f.jpg

 

More later.

 

Adam

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  • Adam changed the title to Adam's EM Workbench: Trout Tickling - a SE&CR ballast hopper
  • 2 weeks later...

The main visual difference between the Trout and it's SE&CR forebear are some pressed drop flap doors and making these is a fiddle but visually crucial. Those of you into 3D printing are probably laughing already but I'm happy with plastic sheet and know how to make it do what I want (mostly).

 

You should see the number of failures littering the workbench...

 

So from the front, a layer of 20 thou' backed with bits of 10 thou' strip:

 

SECR_hopper_004.jpg.9984b3d4195575c7434532d26e8913f9.jpg

 

This phase from the rear:

 

SECR_hopper_005.jpg.50e185d69dcfafcbb3833ae81d8944e2.jpg

 

The next phase is to add more relief. Pared back 25 thou' Evergreen rod gets the pressed frame and some shaped 30 thou' the centre panels. It now needs a witness coat of primer and some filler to tidy it up. I'm reasonably happy with these so far, but the reason there's three of them is that I'm probably wrong...

 

SECR_hopper_006.jpg.d380cd7dbda448ffc1612e159c6812b2.jpg

 

Adam

 

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A quick update on the Hornby Trout/SECR Ballast Hopper conversion. The doors are primed and fitted and re-filled (the first pass wasn't bad, but better is better).  I think it's worth carrying on so the next stop is a coat of grey primer and some transfer rivets before sorting out the door catches and other detail. The chassis hasn't been untouched, but new buffers and couplings aren't as exciting as all that...

 

SECR_hopper_007.jpg.33030236410c6d6cf69d2cdc12335ad9.jpg

 

Inside... and out:

 

SECR_hopper_008.jpg.71d387f55f27f1785c6f9feac7223b69.jpg

 

Adam

 

 

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On 29/12/2020 at 09:26, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

YOU'VE BROKEN IT!!!!!

 

Mike.

 

Any better Mike?

 

SECR_hopper_009.jpg.a0242828b185092b0fdfd81a9023c43c.jpg

 

Door detail added, rivets still to come and then I can think about the chassis. Most of that is vac' fitting an unfitted vehicle. Tricky.

 

Adam
 

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Having finished titivating the hopper, I've made some tweaks to the chassis. The first one was to very carefully remove the brakeshoe mouldings with the tip of a scalpel. I then drilled out the hanger and stuck a bit of 0.45mm wire into the hole prior to drilling some new fixing holes in the chassis frame. Obviously as I work in EM this was to get them to line up with the wheels, but I'd have done this if it as staying in 00 so as to bring the shoes closer to the treads. 

 

Helpfully Paul Bartlett has some useful detail pictures of the BR Trout which was more or less the same below the solebar so I was able to base the brake yokes (Hornby have helpfully moulded holes in the back of the brake shoes) on those shown here: https://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/troutzfo/e18016132.

The distinctive safety loops will go on later, but the next critical bits were the hopper supports and here the drawing in SR Wagons vol. 3 were invaluable, but apart from the lightening holes are a fairly simple bit of plastic cutting. I've added a few other solebar details and there's a few more to go, but just roughly mocked up, I think we're going in the right direction:

 

SECR_hopper_010.jpg.cab6670cd92eeef1b142ab77127c929c.jpg

 

That's all for now,

 

Adam

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

A little bit further - I've replaced the hopper supports at the outer end and the handrail stanchions to match. The vac' cylinder comes from an old Dapol Presflo that was started just before the Bachmann one turned up and needs plumbing in. The latter is no simple job as the pipe is in view above the solebar all the way along the wagon mostly without obvious means of support...

 

SECR_hopper_011.jpg.69e10c4fdfa4d2336e71dc84fa6ac9e3.jpg

 

Adam

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Late last night I broke the back of perhaps the last really difficult job on this conversion, running the vac' pipe round the fixtures. I guess that its just about possible to modify a casting t do this, certainly at the platform end, but it you're going to make one, you may as well make both.

 

The pipe is formed of several bits of 0.7mm brass wire, with fine electrical wire and bits of shim for detail and, in the case of the vac' cylinder end, to represent a join clearly visible of the real thing. This is much, much easier with a decent drawing as supplied in Southern Wagons volume 3; so often we have to guess the route the pipe took!

 

SECR_hopper_013.jpg.b0d202134f40ecea6fa68023141eec1c.jpg

 

I love how the pipe disappears under the headstock before popping up and heading off behind the side stanchions...
 

 

SECR_hopper_014.jpg.fa54a167b9744bcda17596ba3b3d2ce1.jpg

 

... and then turns left back towards the centre line and, through bends and elbows, is bracketed in place. Yes, the dummy for the bag really was supported like that (I cut the pipe overlong and then slotted the end with a fine blade in a piercing saw which gives an overlong bit of 0.3mm wire something to hold onto until the solder does its job.

The next job is to knock up a replacement set of steps before thinking about how I'm going to lengthen the chutes underneath the thing - those on the Trout were shorter in real life.

Adam

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  • Adam changed the title to Adam's EM Workbench: Trout Tickling - a SE&CR ballast hopper: plumbing in the vac' pipe
21 minutes ago, Jack P said:

That's really fantastic Adam. I'm sure I've asked before, but I can't seem to find it in the depths of the thread, who's screw links do you use, please?

 

Hi Jack, 

 

They're from Masokits - self assembly from flat etches - a bit tricky from New Zealand as Mike Clarke prefers to deal in Sterling cheques. There are ways around this, of course if you want to try them (you can DM me) and there are other sources of etched screw couplings (Rumney Models do some which are more adaptable but not quite such good value). 

 

Adam

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1 minute ago, Adam said:

 

Hi Jack, 

 

They're from Masokits - self assembly from flat etches - a bit tricky from New Zealand as Mike Clarke prefers to deal in Sterling cheques. There are ways around this, of course if you want to try them (you can DM me) and there are other sources of etched screw couplings (Rumney Models do some which are more adaptable but not quite such good value). 

 

Adam

 

Keep an eye on Stenson Models too, inbound imminent!

 

Mike.

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