Nile's Mostly Freelance Bodging Bench - Pre-Grouping Locos

[Nile]

The major ingredients of this build:

The loco body, now painted Reading Green.

A GBL C class tender.

Driving wheels for the Hornby Henry - they are cheap and green.

The loco chassis, 3D printed. The parts have yet to be separated here.

 

As this project had been going nowhere for most of last year I made the decision to finish it off as an non-powered model. There is no layout for it to run on and that isn't likely to change any time soon. Motorizing it shouldn't be too difficult if circumstances change.

That meant finding bearings to suit the Hornby axles, I eventually settled on some plastic tube glued between the chassis sides. As before I've added the ashpan using some black plastic card.

 

After some more painting, including the wheels, i did a test assembly of the major parts. This gives a good impression of how it's going to look.

[Buhar]

Nice work again Mile.  What diameter are the Henries? 

 

That's quite a substantial balance weight on the front driver.  I like the way the tender sort of overpowers the loco, many lines ended up with that sort of arrangement, especially with their 4-4-0s.

[Nile]

24mm.

[Nile]

As this is a passenger loco it needs some lining to relieve that plain green livery. Boiler bands first, I used Microscale striping. I started with a thin yellow line, then added an even thinner black line to its centre. This took some time, and patience.

 

Then I had an idea about what to do with the splashers. This involved cutting circles in a sticky label with a compass cutter.

 

These were cut to length and painted yellow, then stuck to the model. The idea is that these would have originally been brass, but have been replaced with painted ones.

I wasn't entirely convinced by these and left them off the other side for comparison.

[Martin S-C]

Better with, IMHO, though they are a bit wide.

[Gibbo675]

18 minutes ago, Nile said:

As this is a passenger loco it needs some lining to relieve that plain green livery. Boiler bands first, I used Microscale striping. I started with a thin yellow line, then added an even thinner black line to its centre. This took some time, and patience.

 

Then I had an idea about what to do with the splashers. This involved cutting circles in a sticky label with a compass cutter.

 

These were cut to length and painted yellow, then stuck to the model. The idea is that these would have originally been brass, but have been replaced with painted ones.

I wasn't entirely convinced by these and left them off the other side for comparison.

Hi Neil,

 

I think the beaded splashers are definitely the way to go. It is just the way that railway companies used to waste brass upon such titivation that shews that the locomotive is of its time.

 

As for the boiler band lining I would have to have my eyes form twenty years ago to see well enough to do that standard of work.

 

Gibbo.

[Nile]

Thanks for the comments and likes. I like the idea of the lined splashers, but the cabside one wasn't working for me, it got in the way of other things I wanted to do, so I removed it (bear with me).

I've repainted the tender and added lining and lettering. A black border with a yellow inner line.

T'other side.

 

Now for the tricky bit, lining the cabside and front splasher in the same style. On the splasher I kept the stuck-on beading but painted the outer half black, I think it looks better now. The rest was made up from Microscale decals and some black paint. When softened the decals can be forced into a curve.

[Corbs]

Gorgeous! You must have the steadiest hands to get the painting on those splashers right.

[HonestTom]

Very nice. The livery really makes it for me.

[Nile]

And now to the chassis. It may not be powered but it still needs coupling rods and crankpins. The Hornby wheels are tapped for 10BA, so the starting point here is a 1/4 inch 10BA cheese head screw. I fitted it into a pin vice and filed the head down until the slot disappeared.

 

I then filed the round head into a hex shape. File across the top, then rotate the vice to its next side, repeat.

 

This is the result. The thread needed to be shortened by a few mm to stop it sticking out the back of the wheel. This was done with side cutters and cleaned up with a file.

 

And then make another 3. The coupling rod here was built last year as an experiment. It consists of two 10BA nuts that have had the thread drilled out, linked by some 0.7mm Nickel Silver rod soldered into holes drilled into the sides of the nuts.

 

To improve their appearance I soldered some strips of brass to the outside of these basic coupling rods, more leftovers from brass kits. The nuts were later filed round.

 

Final fitting.

[Jollibob]

I've been one of your silent followers for a while Neil and I just wanted to say your work is absolutely brilliant. It has encouraged me to continue with my own freelance style railway but I'm nowhere near as good as you are.

 

The 4-4-0 looks really good, it reminds me of the Cambrian Railways small bogie class built by Sharp Stewart, alas with a different style cab. They lasted on the GWR until the end of the 1920s. 

 

Rob.

[Nile]

Thanks Rob. I think you've correctly identified the origins of this loco. Sparkshot does both the Cambrian and Furness versions of the Sharp Stewart design, this one is a freelance development of it.

[Jack P]

Looking excellent as usual Nile! I don't think I will ever get to the point you're at with my own fidelity and neatness - a constant source of inspiration!

 

I've been tossing up building an E2, and which route to go down, and watching the progress of your build, and the way it looks when finished off, mean I think i'll take the plunge with a Sparkshot print.

[Nile]

With a few more bits added the model is nearly finished. Handrails and buffers are the main things. One addition to the livery is a coat of arms on the splasher. Not sure what actual railway it's for, it's off a HMRS sheet. I've rotated it to further obfuscate its origin.

 

Various details in and around the cab have been picked out with paint, such as the window frames with brass paint.

 

Handrails and handbrake added to the tender.

 

Some matt varnish is needed next before I can glaze the cab.

[Nile]

With the matt coat on I glazed the cab and fitted some scale couplings (from the new Accurascale Cemflo) and brake pipes. It was now finished (or so I thought) so I took some photos of it with some related locos.

Here it is alongside its LMWR cousin, basically the same design but with a different cab and splashers.

 

And then with another WMR loco in the plainer goods livery.

 

It was only I took these that I noticed I'd forgotten the reverser linkage, the hole in the cab front is the give away (doh!). After I've made and fitted that, from 0.4mm nickel silver, I'll take some more photos of it on its own.

[Corbs]

What I particularly like are the common features as well as the differences on all 3.

Like, the LMWR 4-4-0 and the WMR 0-6-0 have similar cabs, domes, while the two 4-4-0s are clearly similar types with the WMR one featuring the enclosed cab. Could all believably be from Sharp Stewart, the WMR goods loco looks a lot like the Sharpie 0-6-0s on the Furness Railway.

[Nile]

I think it's finished now.

[Nile]

After the Lima-bashed horsebox I thought of how to produce an older looking design. My cunning plan was to take a Parkside Models LNER horsebox and shorten it by removing the end sections. This composite photo shows what I did.

 

Rather than chop up the kit's chassis I used a Parkside LNER 10ft wagon chassis I had in stock, it needed to be shortened slightly to fit.

[autocoach]

Fit for a 1/4 horse perhaps.  Might be a problem for carrying Belgians....

[Nile]

More on that chassis, it's a wagon chassis designed for 12mm wheels. So fitting 14mm coach wheels raises it by 1mm. To compensate for this I've elongated the bearing holes upwards by 1mm, the wheels still fit just. The brake block parts from the kit have had to be cut up to fit around the larger wheels. I've detailed the brake gear with bits of micro-rod and strip. The metal chassis sides have been in-filled with micro-strip to backdate them to wood.

 

When I fitted the brake levers from the chassis kit I realised there was no way the straight lever would clear the axle box. So I replaced it with one made from scrap nickel silver, bent such that it now cleared the axle box. A lower footstep was made from some bits of brass soldered together, them glued into a hole in the solebar.

[Miss Prism]

That's rather cunning. Could pass muster for many pre-grouping horse boxes.

 

[Nile]

Thanks, that's the idea.

Moving on slowly to the painting stage, I've added the interior partition and a basic seat for any two-legged travellers.

[Martin S-C]

I acquired a Parkside LNER horse box kit the other day so I can chop it up into one of these. Thanks for the ideas.

[Nile]

The last tricky job for this conversion was shortening the roof. This has a recess at each end that fits over the body ends. Trying to replicate this on the shortened end would be difficult, so instead I filed a chamfer on both the roof end and the body.

On the roof I've ignored the guide holes and done my own thing with some round torpedo vents and a lamp top.

 

It's the little details pieces that seem to take me the longest to make and fit, but here finally is the finished model.

 

At the other end I've added handrails and steps. These partly hide the mess left by removing the moulded on pipes for the toilet compartment I removed when shortening it.

 

Compare and contrast, little and large, older and newer.

[Nile]

Not a modelling update as such, but I have been editing the first post of this topic and it now has an almost complete index of my various projects here. It goes up to page 30, I shall try to keep it reasonably up to date.