Rufford Red Lion Square

[James Harrison]

3 hours tonight spent fighting a pair of bogies. I got there, eventually, but there was a fair element of mutilating parts and bridging and whatnot. Full particulars tomorrow.

[James Harrison]

The bogies.  Where do I begin? Where, oh where, do I begin?

 

The following is the way I built them, accounting for the issues I ran into.  Your mileage may vary...

 

I started with a set of Bill Bedford brass etches for the basic 10' 6" GCR bogie and a set of 3D printed parts drawn up by JCL of this parish and my intention was to follow the instructions.

 

Start with the etches.  Fold up the basic frame and solder all of that solid; I was fine that far.  Take the axle boxes from the etch, fold those up and fit the bearings; again, fine that far.  Then you have to slip the beatings and boxes onto a length of wire, set the axle boxes into the W-irons and do something with the wire?- well this as where it all started to go wrong.  No matter how much I pinched up the axle boxes they kept slipping off the end of the wire and when I got them into the W-irons they kept falling out again.  Eventually somehow I got all four axle boxes into the W-irons without their falling off the wire in the meantime, and then when I tried to fit the axles I found they had to come out the W-irons again to be able to get to axles into the bearings.  Once I had got it all together I found it had quite a lopsided appearance, because the wire had got itself caught somewhere which was making it all want to buckle.  

 

Eventually I ended up with a neat brass bogie.  It was a ticklish little procedure but with a bit of experience under my belt I set off to build the other bogie.  Two hours later I lost patience with the axle box- sprung wire- W-iron farce and decided that it might be a idea to use the 3D printed sides to hold the whole lot together whilst fitting the axles.  

 

As best as I can tell, the brass bogie frame is built to a 10' 6" wheelbase, or 42mm. The cosmetic sides are a 40 or 41mm wheelbase. So they didn't fit over the bearings.  I did think to simply drill out the bearing holes a little more, however the amount I would have needed to remove would have destroyed the cosmetic axle boxes.  Hmmm.  

 

My solution to this little problem is as follows.  

 

I took the bearings and brass axleboxes off the Bill Bedford bogie.  I threw away the sprung wire.  I used impact adhesive to glue these bearings directly into the cosmetic sides.  I offered the cosmetic side up to the bogie and found that the W-irons blocked the axles.  Out came the tin snips, off came the W-irons.  More impact adhesive to secure the cosmetic sides to the now somewhat mutilated bogie frame.  Let it set, fit the axles.  

 

The wheelbases are around 1mm too short, but I can live with that.  The bogies aren't sprung, but neither is any of my other stock- I can live with that.  

 

 

 

I just have to fit the central block pieces now and I'll have a pair of Barnum bogies.  Even with the issues I ran into, I'm happy with them- because my alternative would be the Hornby Gresley bogie with the detail removed.... which is serviceable but doesn't look right.  

[richard i]

Thanks for the heads up.

As long as bogies run smoothly that’s all that matters.

Option C would be to slice the sides in half and extend then use filler. Not for the faint hearted.

Are you going to fit the springs?

Richard

[James Harrison]

I've gone for rigid, unsprung bogies- the same as the rest of my stock. Since taking the photos I have fitted the extra springs in the 3D print; I worked out they fit inside the cosmetic sides and handily sit right on top (below?) some etched fabrication on the bogie frame. So they set it all up nice and solid.

[James Harrison]

I don't intend to go down the route of an exhaustive blow-by-blow account of building a Barnum; it basically follows the previous model (which I detailed in my blog) but with obviously some new parts and a few tweaks.  

 

 

Anyway, this is the current state of play and I'll just run through what we're looking at. 

 

Bogies: Bill Bedford etches (half-used and mutiliated) fitted with JCL's 3D printed sides and running Hornby 14.2mm wheels. 

 

Bodywork: JCL's silhouette cutter files (downloaded via his Wainfleet thread), the sides are cut in 10thou plastic sheet whilst the ends, bulkheads and floor are 20thou.  I should point out that they're all a double laminate, so two laminations of 10thou to create a 20thou side overall and two laminations of 20thou to create 40thou overall floor and ends. 

 

Interior: Very basic scratchbuilt seating from scraps of balsawood and cardboard.

 

Roof: Dart Castings LNER elliptical roof aluminium profile.  It's not quite right for this type of carriage but it actually doesn't look obviously wrong!- you can see I've had to build up the carriage ends to match the profile. It's a neater job than the alternative of a scratchbuilt roof awkwardly married to the ends.  In fact, it will stick out increasingly less as the first Barnum I built is down for a rebuild to match the current project, and the brakes (when I get around to them, probably after the second part of CfP and some goods rolling stock) will likewise follow this route. 

 

Works still to do are obviously to complete the roof, the ends and the underframes, fit the bufferbeams, buffers and couplings.... we're probably about halfway there in terms of effort and two-thirds to three-quarters there in overall appearance.

[Annie]

Very nice work James.  The 'Barnums' are a distinctively nice coach and I think you've captured their essential character very well.

[richard i]

Barnum looking great, have not forgotten i’d Send you the brake, just been crazy here.

Richard

[James Harrison]

Barnum looking great, have not forgotten i’d Send you the brake, just been crazy here.

Richard

 

I'm in no rush for it!- when you get a chance would be great.  I'm slowly working down through the to-do list (and so much of it is dictated by having bits lying around making a mess and at risk of going missing....) Once this Barnum is out the works the other saloon will be going in.  Once that is out I'll be doing the other buidings for CfP.  Once that is done I've got some cattle wagons and box vans to attend to, and once those are done I'll be looking at the brakes.  Unless something else grabs my attention in the meantime!

[James Harrison]

 

Work progresses at what some people call 'Hednesford #1 Shop' and others, 'the dining room table'.  Here I've brought my pair of Barnums together to able to set up couplings, also it presented an opportunity to show how the second in the rake is better than the first.  The bogies don't really show up being lost in the murk but the 3D printed buffers are an obvious improvement over the original whitemetal type I used and the aluminium roof shows to good effect too.  

 

I've started work on the underframe gubbins with the solebars.  For these I'm using some 3mm x 2mm I-section plastic beam bought very cheaply on Ebay.  It's surprising how even just fitting the solebars immediately improves the look of the model, makes it appear much 'stronger' below the body. 

 

The plan for today is to complete painting the roof, then clean up the roof/ body joint and clean up the body paintwork.  If there is time once that has all set and dried out, I'll be starting work on the underframes trusses and battery boxes. 

 

There was a delivery from Shapeways today too- more buffers and bogie sides (I now have all the outsourced buts for the complete set of four carriages) and a bodyshell for a GCR 6-wheel goods brakevan.  I must admit, not entirely happy with it having been printed in that furry white stuff, but with a little bit of thought and effort it should scrub up well.  A project for the roundtoit pile I think, I might slip it in between the Barnum saloons and CfP's shelters. 

[James Harrison]

Barnum #2 is, to all intents and purposes, finished.  Back onto Barnum #1.  I've run into a slight problem; some of the 3D printed bogie sides appear to be bowed, warped or generally banana-like.  I'm wary of trying too hard to bend them back because the last thing I want is for them to break.  So, this gives me an opportunity to try a few options out. 

 

The main issue I have found with Barnum #2 is that the bogies are quite delicate; the glued joint between the brass subframe and the 3D parts is rather weak.  Idea no.1 was to omit the brass frames and try to re-use some plastic Hornby bogies with cosmetic sides; unfortunately this results in something too wide whilst still not very robust.  From this I've concluded I'd sooner not use the 3D printed sides as anything more than cosmetic as by putting load through those joints you're inviting the bogie sides to bow out and the axles to drop out.  Idea no.2: a subframe to the subframe.  Plastic or brass section, or even timber, with inside bearings to seat the axles in and take the load.  These sit inside the brass frames, then the cosmetic sides secured to the outside of the frames.  You'd keep the bearings in the cosmetic sides just to keep the axle pin ends in check.  That might actually be worth investigation....   

[James Harrison]

Well, that didn't work, so.... well to be honest I'm out of ideas for it.  I did find, rooting around in my bits box, a pair of Hornby clerestory bogies, which are too short but of the same style as the Barnum type.  I've test-fitted them and they do suit the model, if anything better than the original Gresley bogies did.  So, that's one option.  Meanwhile the brass frames and the 3D printed bits have gone into that selfsame bits box for another day. 

 

Elsewhere on Barnum #1 the seating has been removed, the weighting has been fettled and the buffers have been replaced.  The intention is to try to get it to match with Barnum #2.  Bogies excepted of course. 

 

Oh, and the six-wheel brakevan?  I have plans for improving the surfaces but I did idly just slip some Hornby axles into the little depressions for bearings and was pleasantly surprised to find it rolls along beautifully as it is.  All it needs is a floor and some weight. 

[richard i]

I just leave this here then.

The one thing I would do is scribe the planking on the ends before sanding back to avoid losing definition. The sides seemed much better in that respect.

Richard

[James Harrison]

The thing I've found on mine is that three sides out of four the panelling is there. On the fourth side, it's very faint. An idea I might look into is cutting very thin paper overlays to get a sharper, more defined panelling detail. Though looking at yours, I'm not sure the completed model needs it. Hmmm. Thanks for sharing your completed brake, if I can get mine anything like that good I'll be very happy.

[James Harrison]

I'm now the very pleased owner of a pair of Barnum saloons.

 

 

 

 

 

They're not perfect- none of my models ever are- but they'll do for me.  I rather like them. 

 

And then I started a certain brakevan....

 

Fitted a floor and some weight to it, slipped the axles in and started painting.  As-per Richard's suggestion I scored the plank lines with a scalpel blade to hopefully make them less inclined to fill up with paint and swarf. 

 

 

[richard i]

Looks good.

Would like a comparison of experience with kit. Rarely find others building the same thing I am at the same time.

Richard

[ChrisN]

I thought at first your Barnums were not glazed.  No, it is just you have done the glazing so wellnot a scratch or glue frosting to be seen.  Well done.

[James Harrison]

 

This is how things stood this evening before working on it.  First thing I had done was a coat of Humbrol 165 as a primer, which was then sanded down.  Then a coat of Humbrol 64 on the bodywork for GCR goods grey.  Then I used Tamiya flat black below the solebars... spot the obvious mistake.... I painted the solebars in it too.  That's been rectified this evening.  The flat black is surprisingly glossy at the moment, so a second coat of it is on the cards.  Then a second coat of Humbrol 64 above the running gear.  This evening I've also applied a first coat of Humbrol 22 gloss white to the roof.  I don't want a gloss white roof but it strikes me that starting with a nice glossy white roof will work out in the long term when I apply a drybrushed coat of Humbrol 40 to tone it all down. 

 

Getting away from painting and actually building the kit, the only things I've done have been to fit a 20thou plastic sheet floor with a 10-gram weight glued inside the brakevan, and to fit some shims of thin plastic around the axles to stop them wanting to drop out.  It runs pretty sweetly without the need for brass bearings, I'm not going to question that!- glue some shims around the pinpricks for the axles and leave it at that. 

 

I've not started looking at handrails yet.  My idea in that regard is to just fit lengths of plastic rod, my reasoning being that the model as manufactured by Shapeways is more of a stand-off standard than a finescale product, I think fitting wire handrails and the like would probably bring that into sharp relief.  Also I've tried to drill and cut through this nylon stuff before and it's not the easiest of materials to work with; this is definitely one of those where you just have to accept the material and its limitations for what they are and compromise accordingly.  I'd sooner have a decent and presentable semi-coarse scale model than try to make it into something it isn't and end up with a mess. 

[James Harrison]

I thought at first your Barnums were not glazed.  No, it is just you have done the glazing so wellnot a scratch or glue frosting to be seen.  Well done.

 

Glazing is one of those awkward jobs.  The way I do it is to use glue 'n' glaze to fix the glazing in, which doesn't fog the glazing material.  There are a few scratches and whatnot in the glazing, the transparent plastic is one of those materials that seems to attract abrasive materials!

[James Harrison]

Progress on the brake van.  



This was the situation as of the middle of this week.  At this point I was still working on painting the basic print- it had had, by that time, a coat of primer, a coat of the main body colour and a coat of matt black to the underframes.  Being just the first coat you can see there was a fair bit of touching in and cleaning up to do, also the solebars I'd painted the same colour as the underframes rather than the body....



Moving on a couple of days I've cleaned up the paintwork, painted the roof- by this time everything is at least the right colour and neatened up.  You can see this is the end of the print which didn't come out very well defined.  



There's a lot of detail that's not included on the print; lamp irons, hand rails, foot holds and so on and so forth.  So when it came to adding extra bits, my first job was to add some couplings, just because to work this material is an exercise in brute force.... well I got it cut after a struggle and was able to fit a pair of 3-link couplings.  Then I turned to the footholds.  I've got some 3mm x 2mm plastic I-section girders, and it struck me that but filing down the bottom of the 'I' created a 'T' section, the top of the 'T' then glues quite securely to the body to create the foothold.  



Snap!- well, not quite.  Dukinfield obviously had a masochist working in their drawing office, the vacuum pipes are bent up in two directions at once... I folded my vacuum brake pipes out of 30-Amp fuse wire, which was err.... fun.  

I've still to look at the hand rails and lamp irons. 

[Annie]

Digital model of the same type of GCR brake van.  Definitely not one of my models, - I have a ways to go before I'm as good as this.

 

Not being cheeky, - I just thought it might be a useful reference.

 

[James Harrison]

I've been thinking recently about how RLS is going to work operationally, I've never been particularly happy with the goods yard design for instance but also I've been thinking about how it's not a very good idea to put it at the back of the layout considering how I'm fitting 3-link couplings to my goods stock. 

 

Perhaps I should explain at this point I've been working for the last few years to replace the tension lock couplings with a better-looking replacement.  I've gone for Kadees on passenger and NPCS stock, and for 3-links on goods stock.  It sounds a bit mad not standardising on one sort, but consider; kadees look like vacuum or train heating pipes, so suit passenger stock better than they would mineral wagons.  Meanwhile 3-links look right on mineral wagons and also bunch-up prototypically; also prototypically you have to run at a crawl to avoid pile ups and such like.  Also splitting couplings up like this dictates that locomotives are split up for specific duties and I get quite a basic link system; a big part of my aspiration is to run it like a real railway which means of course specific loco types for specific duties. 

 

What 3-link couplings mean of course is that I need to be able to get to them!- so the goods yard needs to be at the front of the layout....

 

 

The original track plan had some elements I was rather fond of; the centre release road for instance. 

 

 

The new track plan keeps the elements I like; the passenger station is bascially the same but mirrored, so it comes even closer now to the Ruddington Fields arrangement (which was my original inspiration- you could probably think of the passenger side of RLS as being what Ruddington Fields could look like if the GCRN's ideas for it come to fruition).  But then the goods yard I've completely re-worked, I decided it needed really four elements to make it work.  1) Easy access to and from the up/ down roads respectively (down being to Rufford, up to Beighton Junction and thence Sheffield). 2) A run-round loop. 3) A sane set-up for general goods roads.  4) A coal yard. 

 

I dug out my copy of Robert Robotham's "Great Central Railway's London Extension", which handily features sketch track layouts of the stations and yards, and it struck me that GCR goods yards tended to be quite modest in provision, if not size.  I mean, I don't see Rufford as being on the same scale as Nottingham or Leicester, so it doesn't need a massive goods yard.... I think even only a pair of long sidings would probably be more than sufficient, and only a small coal yard.  Bear in mind Rufford also has a Midland station so a big GCR yard would be overkill.

 

I think this second plan is actually a little smaller than the first- which is great, it frees up more room for building Red Lion Square as well as just the station- but it also has a better flow. 

 

I also can't quite believe that it has taken me... how long have I been slowly developing Rufford? 2 years or so?  But it's taken me this long to realise what I've basically come up with is a pre-grouping version of Frank Dyer's "Borchester".  Consider.  They're both secondary mainlines.  They're both in Nottinghamshire.  They've both got a GC element.  They're both modest termini with centre release roads and bay platforms....

[James Harrison]

 

Nearly but not quite there!

 

I made up some lamp irons out of 15 Amp fuse wire and scraps of plastic.  The lamps themselves are the Hornby loco headlamps, I've painted them red (I'm sure I've read, somewhere, that GCR tail lamps were red).  The two lamps on the side were awkward!- eventually I solved the problem of fitting them by fabricating a little bracket out of some I-section plastic strip, gluing the lamps to the top of it, and gluing it into the vestibule.  As you can see the lamps will benefit from a second coat of paint. 

 

The bufferheads on the print looked a little on the small side, and looking at the drawings in Tatlow's book confirmed this.  I used a holepunch to press out four new bufferheads. 

 

Handrails are simply lengths of 0.5mm plastic rod fixed on using glue 'n' glaze. 

[James Harrison]

 

That'll do for me. 

[richard i]

Looks good, small point, steps were painted black if you can face breaking out the paint again. If not still looks good.

Richard

[James Harrison]

I think I have a fine enough brush for that. I'm surprised that none of my books have an ex-works photo of these brakes, some of them talk at length about them but no photo.