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Gallows Close Multiple Unit Workshop - Three's a crowd? The Class 144 Project


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The class 141 is looking very nice so far - keep it up!

 

Back to the Mark 2's. I'm calling the mk IIc finished, and that marks the end of the cross country set project. The coach has been flush glazed and mounted on a modified Dapol underframe, just a light weathering to go. I'd also like to tone down the roof colour as at the moment it is a bit too shiny.

 

post-6842-0-79761400-1427045970_thumb.jpg

 

post-6842-0-08831700-1427045978_thumb.jpg

 

I thought I'd post a YouTube clip of the inspiration for this train, it is the first thing you see on the below video.

 

https://youtu.be/NOCWs1EJeuc

 

And, here is my video response.....

 

https://youtu.be/wwXT69Qz_hs

 

Control must have been short on class 47/4's today - they have turned out a '50! The complete six coach cross country set heads north with a SW/NE working.

 

Thanks for looking in, next up it is the (Leyland) National Front (end),

Chris.

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  • Gallows Close changed the title to Gallows Close Multiple Unit Workshop - Scraping the Barrel. DMU Hybrid

Scraping the Barrel

 

1358422806_Class108-111Hybrid-1b.jpg.8b3629db59451fe08de4e97dc08652c4.jpg

 

On 30th September 1991 class 108 DMBS 53969 found itself working the 13:24 Leeds to Sheffield service in the company of class 111 DTCL 54061. This hybrid combo was apparently quite long lived.  No doubt formed in a hurry at Neville Hill depot in response to the Sprinter crisis of the time, the pairing was recorded first in 1989, and again as late as 1991. After that 53969 was again paired with a class 108 trailer, being withdrawn on 26th November 1991.  The class 111 car was transferred away from Neville Hill, first to Cambridge and then to Longsight where it was finally withdrawn in June 2000. (Info <a href="https://www.railcar.co.uk/" )

 

Here the unit is reproduced in model form.  Both cars are from Bachmann, with the class 108 vehicle showing scars from having been fitted with window bars for working the Cumbrian coast, missing a ventilator on the roof and showing a Tyseley set number recording its nomadic career.  Damage under the center cab window has been replicated and a generous coat of Neville Hill grime has been applied.  The class 111 car has had all the usual treatment and been renumbered from a standard Bachmann car.  The vehicle has been rewired to accept a DCC chip of its own to control the lights.

 

Another useful addition to the Kinsley fleet.

 

 

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  • 1 year later...
On 24/06/2010 at 14:29, DavidB said:

I can't remember the sounds produced by 210 002 - as it had no first class accommodation, it never seemed to operate west of Reading and I only ever saw it from other trains at speed. By contrast, 001 was a regular between Reading and Oxford, and very nice it was too. Having read about it in the magazines, I was expecting it to sound like a baby HST power car with its half-sized Valenta, but there was no turbo scream - instead, it made a deep-throated mumbling while idling and a decent throaty roar while accelerating. The closest modern equivalent to my ear is the MTU engines in the rebuilt HST power cars, although they are smoother-sounding with their 16 cylinders - which is all a bit ironic considering that it was 210 002 that had an MTU engine.

 

Eastwestdivide is spot on about the riding qualities of the power cars - noisy, bouncy and rough, compared to the silky-smooth 317-style ride in the trailers. As a bit of petrolhead (dieselhead?), I therefore always preferred the power car, loving the rough ride while accelerating hard over the junctions at Didcot East and Moreton Cutting. A cracking piece of machinery while it lasted.

 

Love the model of 002 - looking excellent!

 

David

Departing Twyford

 

 

 

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  • Gallows Close changed the title to Gallows Close Multiple Unit Workshop - National Express. Rebuilding the Dapol Class 155
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Fabulous work on the 155 - it’s like proper old skool Rmweb is back 😎 People think the old Dapol model is junk (probably judging it by the 150/2 - which was pretty much a plastic MTK model, and was indeed junk) but the body profile is pretty much there once you sort out the lower edge of it and it’s got some nice panel and rivet detail.  Hornbys 153 is all kinds of wrong and it’s main features all are distorted out of recognition - It looks nothing like the real thing at all to my eye . It’s got the right number of wheels and the under frame is nice except the bogies which again don’t really look anything like the real thing. 

It looks like you chopped the original glazing into bits to keep the ‘hoppers’ and refitted it all nice and flush - how long did that take!!?😲😲😲

 

Jon

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Thanks Jon,


There is an awful lot of modelling value in doing up old stuff, and I agree with all you say about the Dapol model.  There wasn’t too much fundamentally wrong with it.  
 

On 21/01/2023 at 11:57, 43179 said:

Fabulous work on the 155 - it’s like proper old skool Rmweb is back 😎 

 

It looks like you chopped the original glazing into bits to keep the ‘hoppers’ and refitted it all nice and flush - how long did that take!!?😲😲😲

 

Jon


if I recall there are 70 individual windows in all (including the cabs) and each took about 5 minutes to cut out, file to fit, edge the outside in black and pick out the hoppers in silver before gluing in with satin varnish.  So almost six hours on the windows.  I reckon the whole thing too about 60 hours in total.  
 

Best wishes,

Chris. 

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60 hours isn't too bad I guess, it's a lot of entertainment for the level of outlay! I used to have a Hornby WYPTE one, and even just adding 'ploughs and a representation of the coupling made a huge difference. I think I added a bit more black around the lights too as even on a clean unit, that recess was generally dirty rather than yellow. But I sold it before I started the conversion of a pair of 153s, which might not be quite as good a shape but at least they run better, and for me they sit better alongside Hornby 153s. Whatever the faults, at least they are all consistent, I think a Dapol 155 and Hornby 153 would look odd side by side.  

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  • Gallows Close changed the title to Gallows Close Multiple Unit Workshop - Three's a crowd? The Class 144 Project
51 minutes ago, adb968008 said:

Fantastic !

 

Did you use the motorised chassis, or the unmotorised ?


Thank you.  
 

The two driving cars have both axles powered. The centre car is unpowered, but through wired to collect current from the track for the two power cars. There is a Lokpilot v.5 in each of the powered cars.  
 

Best wishes, Chris.  

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This is my kind of modelling! And very impressive that you were able to cut and file neatly enough to avoid major repainting.

 

I want one.

(Although I want it slightly less than I did before you got there first 🙂)

 

Cheers,

 

Will

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3 hours ago, CWJ said:

 

I want one.

(Although I want it slightly less than I did before you got there first 🙂)

 

Cheers,

 

Will


Being ‘first’ is always a nice feeling, but it also paves the way for someone else to do it better.  I hope you do. 
 

Best wishes, Chris 

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Very nice! Having done a Northern one using the Realtrack model, and a WYPTE one using the older DC Kits resin kit, it's nice to see someone else produce a centre car. I'd have been tempted to do one using the new WYPTE one if the price weren't so high. Cutting up a Realtrack one that cost around £100 I can cope with, but I decided buying two £250 models to produce a three car DMU was beyond what I was prepared to pay.  

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21 hours ago, JDW said:

Very nice! Having done a Northern one using the Realtrack model, and a WYPTE one using the older DC Kits resin kit, it's nice to see someone else produce a centre car. I'd have been tempted to do one using the new WYPTE one if the price weren't so high. Cutting up a Realtrack one that cost around £100 I can cope with, but I decided buying two £250 models to produce a three car DMU was beyond what I was prepared to pay.  


I’d love to see how you did it.  Please feel free to share it here. 
 

The cost is of course quite a thing to get over once the realization kicks in that you are going to hack to bits a perfectly good (and brand new) model.  My rationale was that I wanted to do it with a Railtrack model but was unable because my order was too late, so this time I ws not prepared to miss out.  It is still a bit mad, but the result justifies the initial risk.  I’m very happy with how it came out. 
 

Best wishes, Chris. 

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I didn't take any decent pics of the work in progress I'm afraid, but (sorry to disappoint!) I did exactly the same. Sliced the coach in the same place as you, rejoined the two halves, even used the same trick with the glazing to line things up, and inserted the doors. Definitely a bonus that the livery on yours matched and you didn't need to repaint it - a fraction of a millimetre out between the bodyside parts on any of the stripes could have meant a repaint! I managed to get away with the same trick to create a Midland Mainline class 170 centre coach without having to match the paint colours to Bachmann's. 

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Id be looking at following in both of your footsteps with this idea. Doing a 3-car 144 looks great but is also challenging. I like the fact that there is a guide, but some more details on how could be really useful - as in where cuts were made and how you get the electrics right. At the moment the livery for my choice of 3-car has not been done as either it would be Realtrack for Northern and so very expensive and hard wiring not not yet done by EFE and so possible to adapt. 

Still, it could be an option to do sometime so I would be interested to know more. 

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Looking at Chris' model, it seems like the EFE underframe/floor unit might be easier to modify than the Realtrack one, although I also suspect that Chris has made a better job of it than me - I ended up having to ream out a lot of metal from beneath the floor unit and drill a new hole for the wheel assembly mounting screw because of where I decided to cut the two floor sections. If I were doing another, the EFE one looks a better choice from that perspective. The couplings and re-wiring things was immensely fiddly (I'm not great at soldering, and so many small wires in such a small (and delicate) space is a recipe for disaster. 

What livery are you planning? I wouldn't mind one in the 'circles' red and grey but that would need a complete repaint for the three car version, you couldn't get away with just using the two car and adding the middle coach in for that one!

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On 15/10/2023 at 00:24, JDW said:

Looking at Chris' model, it seems like the EFE underframe/floor unit might be easier to modify than the Realtrack one,

 

- I ended up having to ream out a lot of metal from beneath the floor unit and drill a new hole for the wheel assembly mounting screw because of where I decided to cut the two floor sections.

 

I am not familiar with the Realtrack version at all, however the EFE chassis is plastic and easily altered. The only modification the chassis was to remove the cab steps and cut down the valence.  The floor of the chassis was thinned down by sanding at the former cab end so that the kinematic coupler could be glued on without being massively too high.  The diecast seating section was cut in half for exactly the reasons you stated.  There are three holes which need to correspond to the plastic chassis.  The centre hole locates the seating section to the chassis, and the two outer holes are to mound the wheel assembly which in turn locate the pick-up springs on the silver pads on the PCB.  After that electrical continuity was provided by connecting the two black wires from the 'new' cab end kinematic coupler to the PCB.  This is the only mod to the electrics needed. I did this by drilling a hole through the PCB exactly on the track carrying the current and soldering it in place.  Because the coupling is reversed at this end, then the wires need to be crossed over to avoid a short.

 

One thing I will not do again is cut off the end of the PCB as I showed in the write up.  Somewhere there is a fault which affect the interior lights on the middle car, so in time I'll swap it out for the spare complete one I have and see if that makes a difference.

 

Best wishes,

Chris.

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