Atso's occasional workbench

[Atso]

I've done a little more on the A5 chassis conversion.

 

 

Amazingly, having chopped out sections of the coupling rods and reassembled them, the whole thing rolls very freely! Following some advice from Graeme King, I've added some strengthening plates out of 0.25mm nickel silver sheet using more epoxy to secure them. Once this has hardened properly, I'll file the sheet back more or less to the outline of the underlining chassis block.

[Atso]

It's been an age since I last posted on here. Another bout of depression coupled with extreme heat exhaustion and dehydration sidelined me for most of the last month. However more recently I've been feeling better and with a holiday to North Yorkshire looming, I decided to purchase a some holiday projects to get on with in the mornings - Kate is very understanding and accepting of such things and I'm an early riser while she likes to sleep in.

 

So what did I get and how did I get on?

 

 

Above is my attempt at the 2mm Association's etched Toad E etches. This was the state of play as of Thursday last week when I decided I'd gone as far as I could in the cottage. Since this picture was taken I've come home and replaced the etched long horizontal handrails with guitar wire and handrail knobs as the etch was rather fragile and added some lamp irons. The brackets that hold the body to the chassis on the prototype were lost so I'll 3D print some replacements and use epoxy to glue them on. Overall a very nice set of etches that could only be improved in their assembly by my reading the instructions properly! I'm looking forward to building some more of these as, even though they are to 2mm scale, they are actually longer than Peco's rather compromised version.

 

 

Six of the 2mm Assocation's LNER six plank wagon bodies. This is wagon that is unfortunately missing in N gauge as the LNER built these in considerable bulk from the 1920's up until the steel version (as made by Farish) appeared in the 1940's. I need to purchase some etched chassis for the fitted version but I found 3 Peco 9' wheelbase chassis kits this morning so, for simplicity and cost, I'll probably end up adapting these for the unfitted versions. Having spent several days on the Toad E etches, these were a breeze and when together in about an hour on Friday morning.

 

We got home yesterday and I found myself with a couple of spare hours today. Eager to get on with something else, I dug out half a dozen Peco 9' wheelbase PO wagons I assembled last year and started to bulk out the basic colours to turn them into some examples of the ones that the LNER built for their own use.

 

 

I'll touch in the bits of iron work on the sole bars that should be black tomorrow but not too bad for two hours using rattle cans and the airbrush.

 

Come Tuesday I really need to turn my attention back to the County and L1 but at the moment, I'm just happy to be feeling relatively healthy again and that I seem to have gotten my modelling mojo back!

[Atso]

I managed to obtain some Model Masters decals for LNER wagons which have numerous six digit numbers made up on the sheet. Not being too bothered about correct numbering of wagons that are intended for fixed rakes, I decided to use these to save time and finally number the last three LNER six plank wagons that I started last year! I also touched in the brake handles and painted the buffers on the RCH seven plank wagons.

 

 

I'll leave this lot to set/dry before sealing everything in and painting in the diagonal stipes on the RCH wagons. Then weathering can commence! 

[Atso]

For some strange reason, I'm locked out of my CAD program today. Fingers crossed that I have access tomorrow.

 

In the meantime, I decided to move another wagon project a little closer to completion.

 

 

It's the N Gauge Society kit for the GWR Loriot which I decided was close enough to masquerade as an ex-NER MAC L well wagon. Shortly after decaling it, I discovered that there is a strong likelihood that the frames were black! Therefore, to save having to paint over the decals, I made up a dark wash and liberally applied it to the frames to darken things up. I'll weather the remaining grey bits a little later but I'll have to go lightly so that the contrast between the frames and the upper bits isn't lost.

 

I've got a second one of these to do but the decal sheet only supplies 'MAC' for one wagon!

[Atso]

I've gotten access back to my CAD program, it turned out to be my fault that I got logged out... 

 

Therefore, I've done some work on the GWR County tender today.

 

 

 

[carlwooduk]

Steve, I feel Mr Hawksworth would approve.

Looking spot on to the reference photos I have checked against.

[Atso]

Thanks Carl, I've got a test print of the tender on the go this evening to see if it fits.

 

While I'm waiting for things to print and paint to dry on some commissions, I've turned my attention briefly to some long term conversion projects.

 

 

Four Dapol A3s that are in the process of being re-numbered/named and modified. These have been on the go on and off for a year now and are a useful set of filler projects in between other bits and pieces. From left to right there are:

 

A1 'Sceptre' c. 1933: Started life as a BR example that was gifted to me as it was a non-runner. I had a spare apple green boiler, cab and driving wheels which I substituted for the BR ones and repainted and lined the splashers. The smokebox has had the superheater covers carefully sanded off and the pipework and reversing gear as been transplanted to the right hand side of the boiler to give a reasonable approximation of an A1. Strictly speaking the cab should have the earlier large cutouts but I decided this was a step too far. The Westinghouse pump is a spare from a Dapol Terrier mounted on a simple 'L' shaped bracket that I made out of 0.5mm plastic. The lining on the pump was made using some decal paper, sprayed with Precision gloss Doncaster Green and a thin white line was ruled onto the decal using a bow pen - I'll be adding the associated pipework at some point!

 

A3 'Harvester' c. 1933: Many of the same modifications as per Sceptre but, as this one is an A3, it retains the superheater covers on the smokebox. This loco was purchased as a returned LNER green item from the Dapol open day.

 

A1 'Great Northern' c. 1938: A birthday present from my better half in June (the newest of these projects!) which was obtained as an absolute bargain on Ebay. So far I've renumbered it but not yet carried out the modifications to make in an A1. One this locomotive, removing the tender letters (I don't like Dapol's effort on this model) resulted in a loss of paint and some unsightly black patches. Therefore, I carefully masked up the lining and outer sections and resprayed the center section with Precision gloss Donny green before applying the lettering. Although I've renumber the loco, the nameplate still betrays its origins as 'Papyrus'!

 

A1 'Isinglass' c. 1935: Another returned item from the Dapol open day and returned to working order (at £35 each, who could refused!). I've still got to reinstate the handrails having sanded off the superheater covers and finish transplanting the various bits to the right hand side of the boiler. It is presently missing its tender as I'm having to repaint a GNR BR liveried spare. I've chosen this particular locomotive as a nod to Andy at Isinglass Models who has been so helpful in supplying me with drawings for my 3D printed projects over the years.

 

There is still plenty to do on these such has painting in the missing bits from the wheels, correcting the green valances and fitting the various other bits in the detailing packs (where I have them, scratch built where I don't). In the end I'll have another four Gresley Pacifics available for my future layout, each subtly different to the others.

[millerhillboy]

Lovely fleet of pacifics, I love the A3 model, just a shame its such a dog to get running as well as I would like (at least it is for me).

 

Those do look lovely though.

[Atso]

Thanks Craig! The only running problems I've had with the A3s are the ones I purchased cheaply knowing that there were problems. In a couple of cases this was simply noisy running which I cured by ensuring that the cups holding the drive shaft were correctly aligned and not hitting the openings on the cab backhead and tender front.

 

I also had one A4 which didn't like curves. After some examination, I discovered that the cups were set too close together and didn't have enough room to close up on curves causing the drive shaft to bind and lift the front of the loco up slightly and to one side. Moving the tender cup back about half a mil on the motor shaft cured this and I've had no problems on curves with the A4 since - it'll happily run at full power around a 12 inch curve now without problem!

 

All four of these A1s/A3s will get finished at some point but I've now got a hankering to make an A1, 'The White Knight', with an A.C.F.I. feed water heater. Maybe another banjo dome later build but with a GNR tender... It's my intention that each of my A1s/A3s are visually different, whether that be a different tender or other fittings.... Is twelve Gresley A1s/A3s going to be too many!?!

[Atso]

I'm out for most of the day but, not wanting to get too involved with a commission, I spent an hour this morning working on the boiler for Great Northern. Main handrails removed along with the vacuum ejector pipe removed which then had the holes filled and made good. Superheater header covers removed (hence the removal of the main handrails) and carefully sanded back flush with the smoke box. Patch painted with satin black for the smoke box and Precision gloss Donny Green mixed equally with matt varnish and thinned with white spirit to make also a wash to better blend it in with the original paint work.

 

[Atso]

Things went a little further in an hour this morning. The boiler and smoke box door (which were accidentally knocked off) handrails were reinstated and the vacuum ejector pipe was transplanted to the right hand side of the boiler). Once this was done the relevant parts patch painted to approximately match the Dapol colours. Hopefully these will blend in nicely once I've matt varnished and lightly weathered the loco.

 

 

Great Northern now has an reasonable approximation of an A1 boiler.

 

Now I need to turn my attention to the 'fun' of working out the best orientation to test print some bits... 

[Atso]

After a day wrestling with the CAD for the GWR County 4-6-0, I decided to paint the missing lining on to the tender and Cartazzi truck for Great Northern using a bow pen. The front bogie wheels have had a wash of white paint put into their centers. Once dry, I'll carefully paint in a black dot.

 

I've also painted out the incorrect green on the loco's valance and had to respray inside the tender lining as I'd accidentally removed the paint when I removed the original, too large, lettering. The two pence piece is to give an idea of the scale of the Dapol A3 donor (still retaining its original 'Papyrus' nameplates!).

 

 

[Atso]

I test printed the current GWR County loco body and decided to quickly spray it up using Tayima paints (hence the wrong shade of green) as it was coming with me to TINGS yesterday.

 

 

Please note that, other than removing the printing supports, no cleaning up or rubbing down of this print had taken place - hence the strange pattern on the boiler. However, I hope that you can see some of the detail that's been incorporated into the CAD.

[Kris]

Even without a lot of prep the loco still looks good.

[Atso]

Even without a lot of prep the loco still looks good.

 

Thank you Kris, once I've finished messing with the CAD and print the final prototype, I'll rub it down and hopefully it'll look even better!

[millerhillboy]

Steve

 Has something happened recently with the printing standard as the V1/V3 I received from your Shapeways shop really didn't need a huge amount of attention and looking above neither does that print. Compared with prints I was seeing online before with hugely notable ridging etc things do look like they've moved forward in recent times.

[Atso]

Hi Craig,

 

Yes, I think that Shapeways has improved in its quality control and all the prints I've ordered recently have been of a much better quality. However, the still benefit from some light sanding just to remove what little evidence of the printing process there is as well as to remove the slightly worse areas where the wax supporting structure was in contact with the model.

[Atso]

It seems somethings that, for ever model that makes it off the bench, there are always one or two more that didn't quite make it and need a rethink before they see fruition (if they ever do!).

 

Those with good memories may remember a few months/pages back I obtained a NQP Dapol Britannia and a NQP Dapol Grange in the hope that I might be able to combine the Britannia's wheels and the Grange's chassis to create the basis for an LNER C1 Atlantic. Unfortunately, Dapol didn't use the same size gear wheel for the driven axles of these two locos and also redesigned the axle so that they could not be swapped without modification (and risk of damaging the plastic axles). Therefore the project was once again shelved.

 

Fast forward to June and I was lucky enough to arrange a swap of some locomotive bodies for chassis units with a 2mm fine scale modeller. Within that little lot was the remains of a Dapol Hall chassis. This went unnoticed due to various events that lead to another bout of depression and some other health issues.

 

Fast forward again to today. I spent quite a bit of time today measuring the Black Five chassis and transferring it into CAD to get the fixing points correct for the Hawksworth County project. Yes, you would think that would have been the first thing I would have done but, when I started the project, I wasn't in the best frame of mind and this didn't occur to me for some reason - I almost got away with just measuring and transferring directly to the loco body too!

 

Anyway, after several hours of doing this, I'd just about lost the will to live and needed to do something else. While searching for that something else, I came across the remains of the Hall and the Britannia. Anyway, long story short, the Hall and the Britannia both use the same size of axle gear and therefore are compatible! I'll need to shim one or two of the gears in the gear chain to stop them disengaging but this is easy to do. Having proven that I could fit the Brit wheels, I found a very old C1 body that I designed awhile back - it also has several mistakes that I'd like to correct but is accurate in the major dimensions. Anyway, bluetacked onto the the chassis with a spare Farish bogie temporarily standing in, the C1 concept...

 

 

The Brit wheels are slightly too small for a C1 (but bigger than the Hall's wheels) and the Hall chassis is a scale two inches too long in the coupled wheelbase but I think it is close enough - due to how close together the coupled wheels are, I couldn't fit anything bigger anyway! The loco body will need to be completely redesigned to both correct mistakes and make it easier to fit properly on the Hall/Brit chassis. As I've got plenty of other things that I need to get through, I doubt this will progress for a few more months but I'm very happy that there maybe a way of making a close to scale C1 after all!

[Atso]

After a bit of a period of feeling a bit low again, I finally got back to the County today and did a virtual build of it on the Farish Black Five chassis.

 

 

This actually revealed a couple of issues around the tender which I've since corrected. I'm still not happy with the shape of the chimney but I think I know why.

 

While I have been feeling low, I've been trying to keep the mojo going with a few plastic kit builds.

 

 

 

 

The bogie bolster is an N Gauge Society kit while the LNER mineral wagons are Peco 9' wheelbase PO wagon kits painted to represent the version built by the LNER to the RCH drawings for their own use. I decided to go to town weathering these as I figured that they'd be pretty unloved and wouldn't have seen a wash since they were built. The weathering was achieved using a couple of washes of Railmatch 'Roof Grey' and Humbrol weathering powders, in this case 'Soot' and 'Dark Earth'.

 

Finally, over the last few days, I've made up a keeper plate and pickups for the A5 chassis hack. I also fitted a 40 tooth gear and a Nigel Lawton 8mm motor. Surprisingly, after a little fettling and running in, it works very well! The video below shows its ability to run reasonably slowly - the Dapol B1 boiler is there to add some weight!

 

[Atso]

I thought it might be interesting to forum members if I discuss a little bit about my 3D printer and provide a glimpse of what goes into the test printing stages of one of my designs.

 

For this, I've been playing with the County's cab as a separate part. While it is my intention to print the final model as separate parts, all my test printing to date has been of the parts already assembled for speed to produce study/development models. My machine is an early B9Creator with a best possible resolution of 50 microns on the UV projector that cures the resin to produce parts (by at the cost of only having a projectable area of c. 50mm by 38mm). Below is last nights imperfect print.

 

 

There have been some sections that have not formed properly. This is partly due to insufficient supports during the printing but also party because I've pushed the limits of some of the features. I've since done some modest changes to the design and support patterns.

 

 

This is the B9C immediately on the completion of the cab part. The second attempt at the cab part still attached to the build plate and will be left for a few minutes to allow liquid resin to drain. This being a relatively small part took about one hour and forty minutes to print. Something longer in length will take much long (printing the whole County took about seven or eight hours).

 

 

Once I'm happy as much liquid resin as possible has drained from the build plate and part, I remove the build plate assembly and hang it over the resin vat for a few more minutes to allow any remaining trapped resin to drain.

 

 

After this, the print is carefully scraped from the build plate using a scalpel. You can see the raw print and some of the support network that needed to be removed to successfully get the print off the build plate (hopefully) without damaging the fine detail it was supporting. The supports on this machine are created in the same material as the part so great care has to be taken in their removal. Even then, there will be some evidence of the supports which must be removed by careful sanding or filling once the part is fully cured.

 

After this the part is placed in some IPA and put in an ultrasonic bath for between three and nine minutes (depending on the size and complexity of the part) before repeating the process using soapy water. After this the part is given a light scrub using an old worn toothbrush is water before being placed in a UV light box for between four to six hours to fully harden.

 

While I have my own machine, it is now primarily used for prototyping (although it does still get used for final parts on some projects) as Shapeways FXD (or whatever it is now called!) provides roughly the same level of detail but is capable of providing this equally on all six faces of a part. Also some geometries on are prone to warping on the B9C which can be a real pain to try and control - usually requiring a heavy and complex support system which requires a lot of care and effort to remove without causing damage. In the B9C's favour is its ability to produce parts which require less clean up on the unsupported faces that a FXD print and for work like this I'm not paying another company quite a bit of money for multiple test prints or having to wait up to two weeks to see if I've got something right (although my printer still carries a cost in maintenance and consumables).

 

My B9C is about four years old and has already been overtaken by two new generations of machine from that company. I was looking into a Form2 printer which uses a laser to cure the resin. Unfortunately, having had some test prints made, I've discovered that the laser isn't fine enough to produce detail in N gauge that I'm happy with - which is a shame as the much large build area is very appealing. Hopefully the Form3 will be able to achieve this as there are so many things I like about the Form2.

 

I hope that this is interesting to (at least) some.

[Atso]

In between test printing and alterations to some other projects, I've been tackling some of the 2mm Association's etches to produce some Fox bogies. This is how the etch arrives, it'll need bearings and wheels to complete.

 

 

Being an older design, the axle boxes are made up out of three separate layers that need to be carefully positioned and soldered into place. Newer designs have these in one piece to allow this tiny components to be folded up which does make life a little easier.

 

Below are the completed bogies with the 2mm Association's 7mm diameter coach wheelsets that have been turned to N gauge standards. Each bogie took about an hour and twenty minutes to build.

 

 

I primarily used solder paste to put these together by did use a couple of tiny amounts of 145 degree solder to tack the ends of the cross members to the bogie sides once I'd folded everything up. After that is was a scrub using cream cleaner followed by a wash and a then a soaking an a solution of Cillit Bang (about 25% bang to 75% water) for about half an hour before giving the bogies a final wash. Once dry, I test fitted the wheels to ensure everything was level and ran smoothly.

 

You may have noticed that there are only three bogies in the picture and there is a reason for this.

 

 

An ex-GNR articulated pair which I've been working on one and off since the beginning of the year. Originally these were built as vestibule six wheelers but were rebuilt by Gresley into articulated pairs. Four of these set were created but, sadly gone before nationalisation. I've still got to design the underframes as I need to work out how I'm going to articulate them (I'd like some kind of close coupling cam system) and I needed the bogies made up to be able to take measurements (as well as to get a bit of inspiration by placing the bodies on top of them!).

[Atso]

Some more work done on the County loco body CAD.

 

 

 

I've reworked the chimney, added cylinders and created a rough representation of the backhead detail (although I make no claims that the detail is correct). The loco end is getting very close to being signed off for Shapeways printing now - then I get to see if I've plotted the fixing points correctly!

Edited September 25, 2018 by Atso

[Atso]

Someone on another forum kindly shared a photograph of the inside of a County cab. Therefore, I've done a little bit more work on the rough representation of the back head. I'm not going for the level of detail that I've gone with on the outside as most of this cannot be seen!

 

[carlwooduk]

Steve, you keep raising the bar on the County. If it’s getting close to final print be great to see the latest body at Great Electric train show.

[Atso]

Steve, you keep raising the bar on the County. If it’s getting close to final print be great to see the latest body at Great Electric train show.

 

Thanks Carl,

 

I'm just going through the final checking with Shapeways' design criteria and making some modest amendments so that it will print. Hopefully (as long as the L1 reaches a similar state), these will be ordered today. Timing will be touch and go as to just what state the prints will be in by the Great Electric train show but I'll bring along it along to show the progress to date.