Strand and its trains

[Guy Rixon]

One D376 van is now finished apart from lettering and weathering. This is the one I haven't oil-washed yet. The open-spoked wheels are what I had left in the box and may get replaced. The other of the pair is edging towards final assembly and detailing and should be done this week if work isn't too oppressive.

 

The next project is to finish yet another MR fruit-van (yes, yes, I know, slightly obsessive). This one is posh and painted red: it's a D418 that I built OMG-how-long? ago and never finished because I couldn't line the sod. I now have some lining transfer that may do the deed.

[Guy Rixon]

I keep forgetting how horrible are Slaters' transfers and then actually trying to use the rotten things. They are anyway the only transfers I have in stock with the right size of letters and numbers. I've now found a way to put them on that seems repeatable (and is nothing to do with the method in the instructions).

 

First, I cut the transfer right out of the sheet, cardboard backing and all. No point trying to tease up the tissue carrier from the cardboard.

 

Next, I wet the transfer in tap water and plonk it on the model near, but not exactly, where it needs to end up. After ~30 seconds, I can slide the card and tissue backing off leaving the transfer trapped in the surface tension of the drop of water.

 

I now push the transfer almost into position - at least on the right plank - and suck away the water with a scrap of tissue paper. The transfer is now held to the model by the surface tension of the residual water it's trapping; when it dries out, it will curl up and drop off.

 

Quickly now, I wet the transfer with meths using a small brush. This reactivates the glue on the back and sticks it to the model, but it's still moveable for a minute or so. I move it into position with my pointy tweezers and let the meths evaporate. Pressing the transfer to secure it (as in "pressfix") is now a Bad Idea, as the thing is mainly held on by faith. (Prayers to Great Cthulu, tutelary deity of maddening things, have been uttered throughout this process). Prodding it will cause it to stick to the tool and come away.

 

Sliding the transfer too widely after methylating it is also a Bad Idea, as too much meths and pressure will fetch off the paint.

 

Finally, it needs to be varnished as soon as the meths has dried, before the faith runs out and a new sacrifice is due. This means that I can only do one side of a vehicle at a time. Putting on "M R" and five numerals is actually quite quick now, but the overall process takes two days including varnish-drying time.

[Argos]

I must confess to giving up the battle with the Slaters ones provided with a 7mm MR kit and getting some HMRS instead.

 

The HMRS sheet did have more than one useful set though.

In fairness to Slaters, the kit had been on the shelf for a few years.

[Guy Rixon]

The D376 vans are now finished apart from couplings, for which I've been waiting for Martin Goodall's construction-guide to appear. They are shown here with a D361 which needs to be finished off with brake hoses, a brake lever and weathering. The numbers for the D376 are guesses since no photographs are known. They were chosen to be in a range slightly above the other, known vehicles in lot 309 in which range there are no takers in Essery.

 

This is the D418 van mentioned in a previous post: it's the "before" shot for the lining repair. The van is built from a PC Models kit.

[Compound2632]

I agree with your approach to numbering. I trust those roofs are going to get darker - I think they started out wagon grey.

[Guy Rixon]

Wagon grey roofs? If so,then I need to mask off and respray. But my impression from photos was of weathered-white roofs.

 

The roof on the D361 is too white in either case. It needs both respraying and oil-washing.

Edited October 4, 2018 by Guy Rixon

[Compound2632]

Roofs look paler in photos - check out this 1890s example - but I'm pretty sure that's down to the lighting. Compare the sheets on the wagons in the background.

[Guy Rixon]

As an early birthday-present, I got some Tamiya sprue-cutters.

These are superb and a joy to use. They make it easy to extract fine parts (e.g. the buffer-guide collars in Slaters' kits) without breakage and will be good for cutting up sprued prints. Since they're made of proper metal, I must remember to pass them to my grandson in my will.

 

If anybody is inspired to get a pair, be careful to choose the right kind; Tamiya do a wide range of side cutters. These are part 74123.

[Regularity]

Are they good on resin?

[Guy Rixon]

Are they good on resin?

 

I just tried them on a buffer-guides print. They are just right for clipping the sprues, strong enough to cut the waste off the end of a 2mm spigot, and fine enough to trim rough edges on the prints. Couldn't really be any better.

[Guy Rixon]

Much better.

[Guy Rixon]

I learnt something yesterday. If one puts rubbish transfers on a vehicle, then flattens them with rubbish transfer-setting solution, they will not stay in place reliably even when varnished. I wrapped the D418 van in masking tape to respray the roof; the tape pulled off most of the transfers. I will have to strip, repaint and reline the entire body. It will cost over £20 for the materials and take a week's modelling time.

 

In this case, I call out Humbrol transfer-setting solution as a product to be avoided. It has no apparent benefit and encourages the transfers to break up into unusable fragments. I have some Microset on order.

 

The Fox lining transfers are also poor. They have glue that doesn't stick, they break up too easily and they are printed wider than the width given in the catalogue. However, they seem to be the only waterslide transfers for this style. I would not be able to do the lining with Pressfix, Methfix or dry-print transfers.

[pete_mcfarlane]

I always stick waterslide transfers down using clear floor polish (originally Johnson's Clear, which is no longer available, and more recently Pledge). I've never had any problems with them lifting. It even works on matt painted surfaces. 

[Guy Rixon]

Two wagons I'm trying to get finished this week, before the Thing in the Pyramid finally eats my free time.

 

This is the third of a set of Cambrian Models kits of Cambrian Railways wagons, designated to carry cliches - i.e. slates- to London. I finished two of these several years ago but messed up the dry-print transfers for the last one and couldn't get replacements. Now the Welsh Railways Circle have released a nice set of waterslide transfers, I've finished the body.

 

Originally this was to have an Exactoscale chassis, but to hell with that, I've enough grief in my life. It's now to have Bedford axleguards mounted on my printed baseplates and with my printed brakes, so will be the engineering prototype for the brake prints. More on this when the goods arrive next week.

 

The second wagon is a 3-planked open of the Metropolitan railway, of which I badly need a few. I'm starting with the SEF kit (acquired at Scaleforum last month, so setting possibly a personal record for time from purchase to build), but it's going to be majorly altered.

 

The kit has cast everything, meaning that the axleguards and brake gear are as good as can be done in whitemetal, but still meh by modern standards. It's a 9'6" wheelbase wagon, so replacement, etched brake gear is hard to get. Hence, the advent of my printed range of brakes, actually. The 9' w/b brakes were just a by-product. Printed brake gear implies,for me, printed baseplate and BB axleguards; and here, modern design runs up against the Baldrick design of the kit and gets a bit crumpled.

 

This is the inside of the wagon end. Note the notch in the headstock to contain the wagon floor laterally (nice!) and to allow the floor to be a huge casting 1.6mm thick (ick!). The notch drops the bottom of the floor almost exactly 0.5mm below the top of the headstock. This is exactly the space that the printed baseplate is supposed to fill. So the cast floor goes in the bin (it was too heavy, anyway) and I need to make a thinner floor that also fits that notch.

 

In the scrap box I had a length of etched floor, made by Exactoscale back in the '90s. This was the right width. It's only 0.25mm thick, so needs packing out at the ends to fit the notches. I also had some copper-clad sleeper strip that was the right thickness, so added that.

 

 

The floor is braced along its long axis by some brass angle at the edges. Tomorrow's job is to try and solder up the wagon around the replacement floor.

 

The brass floor-strip was a nice product and somebody should reintroduce it. I have enough to do maybe three more of these wagons, which is about how many I want to build.

[Guy Rixon]

While trying to re-imagine Strand's goods yards in a modellable form (I go so close to something I could actually build), I found that the earlier surveying was not quite what I needed. Firstly, the north-west side, where I wanted to put a warehouse, was too far into the high money-density; secondly, I suspected the bridge would fall foul of the  legal principle ne pontes sanguines ultra maintained by the local authorities; and finally, I couldn't find a good way to link the two sided of the goods depot that worked as a model (easy to work out how to do it with horses and turntables, hard to represent it in a working form).

 

Therefore, I have slewed the CCEJ such that the high-level bridge is part of an east-side extension to the low-level bridge. Not a new bridge at all, Mr. Councillor, no Sir.  This introduces #1 bastard curve into the layout, but nothing was ever going to run fast through Strand anyway.

The red line is the CCEJ and the green the curve from the MDR. Dashes lines are fully below the surface. The realignment helps in a number of ways.

 

The north end of the layout now has a definite boundary, at the Post Office in Bedford Street: another historical building that can be modelled. The CCEJ is just deep enough here to get below the foundations, if the rail level over the Strand is dropped to 15ft and the bank is steepened to about 1 in 46.

 

The point at which the line gets below foundation depth is the northern limit of frontage on Bedford St. which the CCEJ was forced to buy up to build its line. Therefore, the northern goods yard is legitimately squeezed in to the "spare" land. It is a lot more compact, and therefore modellable , than might otherwise have been the case.

 

The junction of the main line and the MDR chord has moved north east and is now under Garrick Street. That street was, historically, driven though at about the time that the CCEJ would have been planned. If I still want the carriage sidings to be underground, then they are under land that would have been cleared for the cut-and-cover work at around the right period. Those sidings are now on the south west of the line, and their entry pointwork could be worked by the Garrick St. box that controls the junction.

 

The main line is a little closer to Bedford Street than previously. This makes more space for a turntable and loco-servicing sidings in the Agar-St/Strand/Bedford St./Chandos St block than previously. The market sidings, which are east of the line in that city block, are now more cramped and have an excuse to extend out over the lower end of Bedford Street.

 

The low-level goods-depot can now be reached by locomotives on both sides of the viaduct, so I can shunt with steam along the front of the layout. There will still be some cross-links via turntables beneath the viaduct, and I intend to retain the "horse shunted" link across the Strand to the undercroft of the northern yard.

 

The land to the east of the station does not fall away as steeply as I'd thought. I was looking at the slope of Villiers St., on the west side, but to the east the land is embanked along the old water's edge (before the Victoria Embankment was built) to nearly the level of the Strand. This means that any multi-level warehouse does not need to reach down to river level. The south-east goods shed is now at the end of Buckingham Street and is a more normal shape. It's a lot nearer the end of the layout than I'd previously thought possible.

 

The extreme auditorium-left end of the layout will now show the steep drop from the road level into Victoria Embankment Gardens, and will feature a decorative building (a house? company offices) to mask the bit where the CCEJ emerges from the station train-shed.

 

Finally, the south end of Strand station is now much closer to Charing Cross station, which makes sense from the SER's point of view. The walkway between the two will be part of the visual terminator of the model.

 

By this time next week (assuming that the Lovecraftian horror of my current work doesn't entirely consume me), I hope to have a topologically-definitive version of the track plan that can then be milled through Templot. There is even - gasp! - some chance that building might start before Christmas. 

 

[Guy Rixon]

Well, I didn't finish the Met. wagon or the track plan. Excrement occurred. I did finish the Cambrian wagon.

This is from a Cambrian Models kit, with Bedford axleguards on an RFM baseplate, with RFM brakes and buffer guides. The brake lever, guard and V hangers are by 51L. Wheels are by Exactoscale. The body colour is Precision LMS grey, darkened somewhat with oil washes. Transfers from the Welsh Railways Circle.

 

[Guy Rixon]

Slate carrying wagon, now with slates.

 

I am immodestly pleased with how the slate load turned out in respect of the appearance of parts. However, this wagon is badly loaded and the load has shifted in transit. I may pose a cameo in the yard, with the official photographer recording evidence for the damages claim.

[Guy Rixon]

Another wagon struggling towards the light: this is the "before" shot. I plucked this from the "started last year and I really should finish it" pile, which was blocking access to the "started recently and I was enjoying that" pile. It has jumped the queue ahead of the Met. wagon for now.

 

This is Ashford's adaptation of Hurst Nelson's design in interpretation of an SE&CR specification for a "coal wagon", and thus perverse. The original design was probably a commonplace, 10-ton mineral-wagon, but the SE&CR specified channel-section end-posts, their own design of axlebox and Stone's patent either-side brakes. All those mutations were on the Hurst-Nelson build of wagons and then Ashford built some themselves, adding rounded ends and a sheet rail. Clearly, a coal wagon must have a sheet supporter, because, to the SE&CR, any open wagon was a goods wagon except when it was  actually, currently, full of coal.

[Mikkel]

Lovely wagons Guy. The slate load is one of the most interesting loads I've seen for a while, and very nicely modelled (damage claim or not!). 

[Guy Rixon]

Thanks, Mikkel. I couldn't find any pictures of slates loaded for transit, except for dubious shots on preserved narrow-gauge railways. I've assumed that they were stacked on end and the rows were padded with straw - somewhat like the way that bricks used to be loaded. However, I didn't manage to pack the rows neatly enough and the loose slates on the end of the rows have shifted.

 

The slates are cut from printer paper and there are about a thousand of them. The thick-looking slabs you can see in the picture are parcels each of five slates, my guess being that they might have been carried onboard like that. Since I didn't want to spend a year or so cutting and stacking slates, I made up a glued stack of 5 A4 sheets of paper, with the pattern of slates printed on the top sheet. I cut the rows from the sheet with a knife and then cut the parcels from the rows with scissors. I then stacked the parcels and secured them to a card base. The "straw" is cotton wool.

 

The slate colour is a grey from the Vallejo range mixed with light blue from the Tamiya range. These paint ranges are incompatible (one is water based and the other spirit based) and don't mix cleanly. I used this to get an uneven colour over the slate surfaces. It was a lot quicker than dry-brushing everything.

[Mikkel]

Thanks for the tip Guy, very crafty.

 

I remember reading one or two discussions on here about the direction of stacking, with opinions ranging from end-on, to sideways, to alternating directions. But useful prototype photos do seem hard to find. 

[Guy Rixon]

Stacking logic: it's a drop-sided wagon, so one side is down against the loading bank and the men are carrying the slate parcels into the wagon. Stacking the slates on their short end fits in more of them, since the slates are 24" x 12" ("duchess" size) and therefore taller than the wagon; I didn't check the total weight. Until the wagon is full and the side lifted back up, the slates have to be leaned against one side or end otherwise they fall over. I've assumed that they lean against the side opposite the loading bank. It might be better for the slates if they were in rows along the length of the wagon, and packed in more tightly on that axis.

[Guy Rixon]

 

More parts for the coal wagon introduced a few posts above.

 

The chassis is BB axleguards on an RFM baseplate with RFM brakes. Originally it was to have a Craig Welsh chassis, cut down to suit the wagon length. The CW chassis kits are good, but are a lot more work, IMO.

 

The solebars are bodged together from Evergreen strip, Mainly Trains etched details, and Exactoscale V-hangers. Door springs and brake lever brackets (for Stone's patent brake) will be added after I assembled the wagon as it's easy to get the right position with the body on.

[Guy Rixon]

D1335 wagon, slightly progressed. Tamiya "IJN grey" and Fox transfers. The wheels are by Exactoscale and I must blacken the tyres with my laundry marker. Nothing else touches these tyres as they are turned from stainless steel. The buffers are RFM prints, exactly right for this subject, but I have scuffed one during fitting and must rub it down and repaint. D-type axleboxes (RFM again) are ready to fit, but I need to get the cosmetic springs on first, and they have not yet been delivered. Door springs and brake levers still to do.

Edited November 28, 2018 by Guy Rixon

[Edwardian]

IMG_6003.jpg

D1335 wagon, slightly progressed. Tamiya "IJN grey" 

 

Banzai!

 

Looks superb, Guy