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Adventures in kit and scratch-building.


sej
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Thankyou! Here are the underframe details. I decided to make some of the more complex shapes from plasticard and was very pleased with the results. The sandboxes were laminated, filed and sanded to shape and drilled to take a piece of brass tubing with a cast cap stuck on top. The casing for the jack-shaft gearing was similarly made up from plasticard. The brake shoes are modified Slaters.Various pipes, springs, bits and pieces and bullead rail guards were either epoxied or soldered on. I've found that a well hardened paint finish will withstand a quick bit of local soldering, handy! You can also see where I've applied the Archer rivet head transfers to the louvres before I sprayed the topcoat. They were very easy to use and there's no sign of carrier film, an excellent alternative to other methods.

 

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So, here she is as finished. I made the "curtains" that the crew used to fend off the North Eastern winds and cold weather from wine bottle metal seal material. Wolf Blass, I think! I pressed it onto loops of cotton and the ends of cocktail sticks to get the folds. Dry brushing helps to show them up. The driver had some radical waist-line surgery to help him lean out of the window, his wounds were healed with Milliput. The lights were from my cannibalised Harley Davisons from TKMax. I used card-board templates to cut the flush glazed windows from a lovely cast acrylic material from Wizard Models. It's absolutely flat, cuts and snaps very cleanly and I've never had trouble with frosting. The couplings are Dinghams which I like very much, a bit fiddly to make, easy to use and you don't need a bar across the buffers.

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I managed to put a short, rather clonky video, (plus Radio 4 soundtrack,) of The Lady demonstrating the Dingham couplers on YouTube. I'm not sure how to add the link but if you search for "Armstrong Whitworth Dingham" you should find it!

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I managed to put a short, rather clonky video, (plus Radio 4 soundtrack,) of The Lady demonstrating the Dingham couplers on YouTube. I'm not sure how to add the link but if you search for "Armstrong Whitworth Dingham" you should find it!

 

This one, in fact (for reference, just copy and paste the URL into the message):

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWdx7rrTQBM

 

Nice work there too btw.

 

Adam

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Thankyou all. Adam, thanks very much for putting up the video, I'll try harder next time! Ozzy, it just goes to show what a fresh view can point out, I'd not noticed the wheel centres throughout the build or when posting the photos. All my other locos have had them painted or blackened; excellent spot, thankyou. And Ken, cheers, I'm very proud of my curtains! As this has been such a useful and positive experience, both IT-wise and modelling, I'll continue to post with some of my other projects. And I'm going to try and edit the title...might take me a while. Meantime, some photos of the lovely coach kits (and so cheap) by Connoissuer, as running contemporiously on the NSR with the Lady Armstrong...

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Thankyou, they're lovely kits. Easy to build, excellent instructions and they look great whatever colour you paint them in! I'm looking forward to thinking of excuses to build more Connoisseur kits.

Here are some more pics., of the other coaches and a start on my first scratchbuilt loco.

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I didn't take many pictures of this build, multi-tasking's always been a little tricky for me! Anyway, this is the chassis almost complete, if I remember correctly. Perhaps you'd like to have a guess of the prototype?

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Thankyou Paul, you've got some very nice photos in your gallery.

It's not an F8, although an LNER F5 kit is on my wish list! I really like small tank locos. As far as I know there isn't or hasn't been a 7mm kit for this loco...

 

Here's a closer view of one of the radials. I hadn't fitted coil springs on the side spigots at this point.

 

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I've found a few more construction photos lurking on the computer. Here's one of the inside motion which I soldered up from bits and pieces. Next time I'm going to try and make it work!

 

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Here's a photo of the frames and cab attached to the chassis. I got a lot of inspiration from the books of Guy Williams and Iain Rice and, from far back in my childhood, a very old and tatty edition of John Ahern's book. All full of excellent tips and advice. Looking at the photo, I seem to have a prediliction for facing my motors in the opposite direction to the norm; prehaps it's my preference for chunky flywheels?

 

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Here's the rear end after a bit more work. Incidently, I've just finished reading another Wild Swan book, "The 4mm Coal wagon", by John Hayes. It's excellent, well written, with some great scratch-building tips and ideas for any gauge. And the wagons are superb!

 

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Here's the front end. It was at this point in the build that I discovered that my soldering iron was seriously underpowered and would just stick to whatever joint I was trying to make in the enormous quantity of brass involved. I did move onto those rather nice cheapo temperature controlled irons from Maplins. They have a great small bit option and can whack out some heat but I've got through two in as many years and hope to pick up something a little bit more swish at Warley.

 

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Anyone know what it is yet?

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Here's the front end. It was at this point in the build that I discovered that my soldering iron was seriously underpowered and would just stick to whatever joint I was trying to make in the enormous quantity of brass involved. I did move onto those rather nice cheapo temperature controlled irons from Maplins. They have a great small bit option and can whack out some heat but I've got through two in as many years and hope to pick up something a little bit more swish at Warley.

 

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Anyone know what it is yet?

 

GWR "birdcage" 2-4-2T ?

 

Phil T.

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On the button Phil!

She's No. 3601 in the original form before she was fitted with conical boilers and such. I like the rather old-fashioned toy-like look of the class and there were far fewer rivets!

 

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Here she is with some blu-tacked smoke box furniture.

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Thankyou all. Adam, thanks very much for putting up the video, I'll try harder next time! Ozzy, it just goes to show what a fresh view can point out, I'd not noticed the wheel centres throughout the build or when posting the photos. All my other locos have had them painted or blackened; excellent spot, thankyou. And Ken, cheers, I'm very proud of my curtains! As this has been such a useful and positive experience, both IT-wise and modelling, I'll continue to post with some of my other projects. And I'm going to try and edit the title...might take me a while. Meantime, some photos of the lovely coach kits (and so cheap) by Connoissuer, as running contemporiously on the NSR with the Lady Armstrong...

Lovely modelling, the Armstrong looks great. I really like those coaches as well. How did you get the texture on the roofs, are they covered with tissue paper?

 

You mention editing the title of the thread; its easy enough. Go to the first post, the one you started the thread with, and select the Edit command (its at the bottom). The text appears in a box ready for editing. Down the bottom again is a command "Use Full Editor", select this and you can edit the title of the thread as well.

 

All the best,

Dave.T

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Thanks Dave, I'll give the title an edit when I'm feeling brave!

The coach roofs are covered with tissue. I got the idea from an article by Martyn Welch, about panelled coach weathering, in an issue of the MRJ. It also involves copious amounts of talcum powder and flicked PVA, great fun.

 

Here are some further photos of the 2-4-2t...

 

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It's interesting what a difference the detailing makes. I think Guy Williams says something about the main body being 90% of the build and the last 10% being the time consuming and effective bit.

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Looking at the photo, I seem to have a prediliction for facing my motors in the opposite direction to the norm; prehaps it's my preference for chunky flywheels?

Not neccessarily, most of mine end up that way round. Its usually due to the needs of the kit design, hiding the motor and gearbox within the tanks or firebox and maintaining any daylight under the boiler. And packing as much extra weight as possible over the drivers.

 

Iain Rice was a big influence on my modelling too, one of his best pieces of advice was: "Always use the biggest motor you can fit in, as long as its invisible on the finished model." He was talking about 4mm scale though, its less of an issue in O Gauge.

 

Lovely model, I'm still not sure what it is though. GW absorbed loco? From the Rhymney or Taff Vale?

 

Cheers,

Dave

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Thanks Dave, I managed to edit the title! My IT skills know no bounds, ahem.

Here are a couple more pictures of the coach roofs showing the paper tissue surface and plasticard rainstrips on the Saloon. I sprayed the roofs with etch primer first and the PVA'd the tissue (cheap ones from Wilko's) to both sides as I've read that if you just do the top, when it dries it pulls the curve out of shape. And I didn't want that to happen.

 

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Here are some photos of the painted loco. She is a 36xx built by the Great Western at the turn of the last century for almost exclusively suburban passenger duties. The large cab, which earned the class the "Birdcage" nickname was to enable them to be run equally easily in either direction without turning. 3601 portrays the loco before various modifications such as conical boilers and top-feeds were fitted. I hope to produce some etches to enable me to to build some of the variants. I get a bit obssessed with single classes of locos. I'll show you my 14xxs next... 3601 was spray painted with Phoenix enamels and lined with a bow pen following the work of Ian Rathbone in book and DVD form.

 

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3601 was spray painted with Phoenix enamels and lined with a bow pen following the work of Ian Rathbone in book and DVD form.

What a superb finish; particularly so as the lining is done by hand!

Not sure what else to say...

Dave.T

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