Dettingen GCR might have been layout

[Clive Mortimore]

53 minutes ago, richard i said:

Thanks for your succinct summary. I do agree with your sentiments, however, I am conflicted about the best course of action and am open to hearing others thoughts on the matter to see how they view the balance between improvement vs keeping historical modeling. 
richard 

Hi Richard

 

Have fun running them , then make your mind up.

[t-b-g]

On 27/08/2021 at 19:26, richard i said:

This is a philosophical question.

one is my f2 up to my current standards. The other (left hand one) is an F1 ( you can tell by the lip on the back of the bunker.) I was lucky enough to be offered it, but it is clearly different and of it’s time.- oversized letters, crest might be a shade over size. Limited lining.

do I:

leave it?

add the missing detail and patch paint to improve it but keep its heritage?

paint he tops of the water tanks black as that is the most obvious change?

a full repaint as the colour is off and the lettering too large? There is much evidence that locos were not painted the same shade of green but would it be this different?

thoughts

richard 

 

Unless the present finish has some sort of sentimental value or some historical significance, I wouldn't think twice about repainting it. If it had been done by a friend who is no longer around, or if it had been built by some figure of significance within the hobby, I might leave it alone. Otherwise it is fair game for improvement.

[richard i]

Thank you both. I always thought your perspective would be interesting because of your custodianship.
spider, yours as you cut up anything old which comes your way to make something different.

richard . 

[Clive Mortimore]

52 minutes ago, richard i said:

Thank you both. I always thought your perspective would be interesting because of your custodianship.
spider, yours as you cut up anything old which comes your way to make something different.

richard . 

Hi Richard

 

There is many a piece of rolling stock and locos that trundle around my train set with an uncertain future, do I leave them alone or do I cut them up.

[t-b-g]

3 hours ago, richard i said:

Thank you both. I always thought your perspective would be interesting because of your custodianship.
spider, yours as you cut up anything old which comes your way to make something different.

richard . 

 

Thanks. There a few items on Buckingham which show great signs of age. If they were not by Peter Denny they would be getting a strip down and a repaint. I have repainted 3 locos which had got to the stage where all that was left were a few patches of black and a tiny trace of the original lettering. There were plenty of photographs to show what they used to look like and I have tried to recreate the Denny livery as well as I can, rather than give them correct GCR livery. One loco, the 0-6-0 saddle tank, has been running all these years with no number! I thought about adding one and decided against it.

 

I would add one more category to the "leave alone" group. Some time ago I acquired a collection of 4mm models from somebody who was switching from 4 to 7mm. Amongst them was a body for a 2-4-2T which is in hybrid GCR/LNER livery. It is so superbly painted and lined, I would guess by one of the top professional painters, that anything I do to it would only be a poor second best. So I won't be touching that because I couldn't improve it.

 

I think you could improve yours and that it is well worth doing.

 

Edit to add a couple of photos to illustrate what I mean about the state of a Buckingham loco before I did some work on it. This is the WM&CQ 0-6-0 as it came to me and when I had finished with it. Just behind the cut out in the tank side, that was a hole where somebody had managed to punch something through the metal.

Edited August 30, 2021 by t-b-g

[Regularity]

14 hours ago, richard i said:

Thanks for your succinct summary. I do agree with your sentiments, however, I am conflicted about the best course of action and am open to hearing others thoughts on the matter to see how they view the balance between improvement vs keeping historical modeling. 

That’s a fair point, and I do know how you feel. In my case, it’s not just a loco but a whole layout: one or two aspects of Barry’s compression of the real Lydham Heath are at variance with photos of the prototype. Not in any significant manner, but if I were to add the single-point lever frame for the junction at the base of the platform, it wouldn’t be in line with the points. If I were to add it in line with the points, it would be partly up the ramp.

If I had built the layout in the first place, then I would probably (but not definitely) make the alteration, but as there is a degree of it being an historical model, I am less inclined so to do.

 

 

[t-b-g]

47 minutes ago, Regularity said:

That’s a fair point, and I do know how you feel. In my case, it’s not just a loco but a whole layout: one or two aspects of Barry’s compression of the real Lydham Heath are at variance with photos of the prototype. Not in any significant manner, but if I were to add the single-point lever frame for the junction at the base of the platform, it wouldn’t be in line with the points. If I were to add it in line with the points, it would be partly up the ramp.

If I had built the layout in the first place, then I would probably (but not definitely) make the alteration, but as there is a degree of it being an historical model, I am less inclined so to do.

 

 

 

It is interesting how these things crop up. There have been quite a few things on Buckingham which have caused me to think "If it was all mine I would change it but it isn't so I will leave it alone".

 

The one which bothers me most is the ex LD&ECR 0-6-0T working the Verney Junction push pull. They were purely shunting engines and as far as I know they never worked a passenger train at all and they certainly had no push pull gear fitted. The "correct" loco is available, in the form of the outside framed 2-4-0T but that was very much a favourite of Peter Denny's and is of mine. It presently works the Buckingham/Grandborough/Leighton Buzzard branch service and as such it is always on view. The push pull is only on the layout for a short while on each run, disappearing to either the short hidden branch track or the fiddle yard apart from overnight stabling and short spells at Grandborough.

 

So every time the LD&ECR tank appears, I just smile and live with it!

 

Could you live with the lever at the bottom of the platform ramp and a couple of cranks to take the rod movement a couple of inches sideways to the point? It might be a workable compromise. 

Edited August 30, 2021 by t-b-g
remove extra word typed in error

[Regularity]

13 minutes ago, t-b-g said:

Could you live with the lever at the bottom of the platform ramp and a couple of cranks to take the rod movement a couple of inches sideways to the point? It might be a workable compromise. 

I am not sure. I am reminded of a comment by CJF: which is worse, a layout with no signals, or a layout with the wrong signals in the wrong place?

 

In your case, Buckingham GC is not a model of a real place, just an imaginary supposition of a real railway in a real location. You can, therefore, repurpose some things in a way that the prototype might have done. So, if the 0-6-0T is vacuum-braked, and has balanced driving wheels, then it could have worked passenger trains. As for the 2-4-0T, I agree: there’s no way that it shouldn’t be in view as much as possible!

[CKPR]

Regarding the two 2-4-2Ts, my inclination would be to strip down the acquired one, detail it and then repaint in order to get a uniform standard across your locomotives. Obviously, I wouldn't do this myself if I acquired a Furness engine as built by Ross Pochin [which won't happen as these are all in the safe hands of the Cumbrian Railways Association] because the standard of both build and finish would be much higher than my own models, which would raise a bigger problem of uniformity of finish in my 4mm locomotive fleet ! On this point, I think that the uniformity of standards and finish is one of the main reasons why  'Buckingham' is so impressive.  Returning to acquired engines, I have one pre-grouping engine that I purchased, a LNWR 'coal tank' made from I think the Pro-scale kit and even though it was already in LNWR livery, I still stripped it, detailed it with a set of 'Riceworks' parts and repainted it back into LNWR livery. It's still my only LNWR engine but fits in much better with the FR and M&CR engines for being painted in my style as it were.

 

 

Edited August 30, 2021 by CKPR

[richard i]

I would resist a full strip of paint as I do not know how it is put together and it is nicely built and do not want to return it to a kit of parts.

stripping the transfers, adding detail and then building up the repaint from there might be the best way forward. Keeping the modeling but changing a paint job. 
Thanks for all the opinions

richard 

[t-b-g]

1 hour ago, Regularity said:

I am not sure. I am reminded of a comment by CJF: which is worse, a layout with no signals, or a layout with the wrong signals in the wrong place?

 

In your case, Buckingham GC is not a model of a real place, just an imaginary supposition of a real railway in a real location. You can, therefore, repurpose some things in a way that the prototype might have done. So, if the 0-6-0T is vacuum-braked, and has balanced driving wheels, then it could have worked passenger trains. As for the 2-4-0T, I agree: there’s no way that it shouldn’t be in view as much as possible!

 

I have learned to live with any matters like that on Buckingham. I find it easier to overlook things that somebody else did than I find it to overlook my own errors and omissions. As you rightly say, for a fictional location, who can say that they didn't bring in a loco from elsewhere and fit it with push pull gear.

 

As for Lydham Heath, I had never even noticed the lack of a lever until you mentioned it and I have seen the layout at several shows and in MRJ. So you can probably get away with it.

[Caley Jim]

4 hours ago, CKPR said:

......... then repaint in order to get a uniform standard across your locomotives. 

One of the reasons I persist in hand lettering all my stock is that there were no suitable transfers available when I started, so I had no choice back then.  If I was to start using transfers now that would just make my earlier efforts stand out like very sore thumbs.  I now have too much stock to start repainting and transfer lettering them!   After all, I make no pretence of creating a museum standard historical record, only an attempt to create an impression of what was (or in the case of my layout, what might have been).   That being the case I've gone for consistency rather than accuracy.

 

Jim

[richard i]

Jim 

I think you are right. I have started with r&e lettering and so should persist with those. The f1 will need to attended to. It will join the queue.

the next project is a batch of 5 wagons. I needed the 5th NER wagon to give me a wire mesh to make the top of a wagon I have had a hankering after since seeing one running on John Quick’s layout. 

Using a gcr open and the top off the NER wagon. It is not a perfect fit nor an exact copy but it has the right flavour I feel.

the others will be a pair of end door coal wagons. 
wizard should be thanked and supported having put their faith in producing gcr kits.

richard 

[Regularity]

12 minutes ago, richard i said:

started with r&e lettering

I hope you weren’t adding a&s…

[thegreenhowards]

On 19/07/2021 at 15:44, richard i said:

Much trial and error. 
trying to work from drawings and then apply to a model being converted.

finally got to this.

the bunker is too wide by 1 mm which throws the back of the cab out by the same amount. So have added side pieces to the correct width one made. This means the cab sides angle out by half a mm each side from front to back. This looks like it can be hidden by the overhang of the roof. Otherwise a new roof will need to be made.

I have painted the cab floor with humbrol 110 and washes to get the wood effect.

 

etched overlays applied with three types of glue. Gorilla, super and two part epoxy in different parts to see which holds up the best. Like I said, trail and error. When I build the next I will have found every pitfall. 
richard 

Richard,

 

I enjoyed reading through your progress with my 2-4-2T. That is an ingenious dodge on the cab fitting. It was that problem which made me put it in the too difficult box!

 

You’ve made a really good job of it and it seems to run beautifully as well. Did you use the rather dodgy chassis I provided?

 

I'm glad the N5 overlays worked. I was rather proud of that idea even if I didn’t manage to follow it through.

 

With regards to painting of things like the safety valves. My approach if I don’t know, is to paint it my best guess colour and stick a photo on here. Some people (one in particular in my case but no names!) are generally much better at telling you that you’ve got something wrong after you’ve done it than helping in advance. Look on the time to repaint as equivalent to a little bit of research!

 

Regards

 

Andy

 

 

Edited August 31, 2021 by thegreenhowards

[richard i]

Andy

I did not use the chassis. I could get it to work fine but it had lumps in places which would have needed the body to be pulled apart again and I was not up for that so have it for the original conversion of mine and I stole the chassis out of that one to solve the problem of marrying up the chassis and body of this one.  If that makes sense.

I have decided on green. No one has shouted yet so it looks like they will stay green.

richard

[richard i]

Ready for painting. Just needs scrubbing clean.

I was going to build the others before this stage but my son wants to learn to spray paint some warhammer thing so I will use this to teach him.

richard 

[richard i]

Paint on.

transfers to follow.

still not sure how to make all the load for it to replicate the picture. It needs to be light as the wagon is already heavy due to its white metal construction.

richard 

[Compound2632]

11 minutes ago, richard i said:

still not sure how to make all the load for it to replicate the picture. It needs to be light as the wagon is already heavy due to its white metal construction.

 

I'm moderately sure that that load would be sheeted over before it left the goods station. Assuming the wagon is 7'6" wide and allowing for the load sticking up above the cage, a standard 14'4" sheet would hang down about 2'6" - 3'0" either side, so probably less than 12" of the cage (and the load behind) would be visible.

[ChrisN]

Preiser do boxes and barrels.  I am not sure if they are still available but I have seen them come up on EBay.  I know they are H0 but who will notice?

[richard i]

Thanks both for your advice. I have homemade wagon sheets I can play with and will look into the crates as injection moulded plastic should be light enough. I was picturing 10 commandments boxes which would have been heavy. Forgotten about ho stuff.

richard  

[James Harrison]

Where did you get the mesh from?  (thinking one or two of those might look interesting on a couple of my own wagons).

[richard i]

8 hours ago, James Harrison said:

Where did you get the mesh from?  (thinking one or two of those might look interesting on a couple of my own wagons).

They are good for adding variety and a little different. I think I have only seen it modeled on John quick’s layout.

I used the top half of this wagon from wizard.

not exactly correct but passes at 3ft in my opinion. 
on the plus side they also ran without cages so you can build up the NER wagon to add to the fleet too.
richard 

[richard i]

So I could show this and pretend things have all worked out.

I do feel that it should be a warts and all tale. So, there is this. 

iron lingering too long in the wrong place. Gap in the brake lever.

I may just paint it black and have the brake lever merge in or try a bridging repair. Perhaps a little paper to get the paint across the gap.

just to show progress has not entirely stopped due to work.

richard 

[gr.king]

Have you by any chance fitted the castings for the shoes and pushrods inside-out? Unless those brake levers both (unusually) have reversing cams at the base of the V hanger, hidden by the door springs, it appears to me that they will release rather than apply the brakes when pushed down.

 

If it is an error it won't be the only wagon model to have been built that way.