Bilton Junction

[Jon4470]

Quick test this morning using Hornby R607 curves (2nd radius I think….18” radius)

 

The railcar coped fine with the curve …. But not so well with the transition from straight to curve. The rear of the bogie is catching (as I thought it would). A little bit of filing will sort that out, however. Once on the curve the railcar moved along nicely under power with no short circuits or derailments.

 

 

This overhead photo shows the railcar fully on the curve

 

 

As you can see there is plenty of clearance (remember though that the cosmetic sides are not in place…although I don’t think that they will foul the sides).

 

A close up at the flywheel end shows the clearance at the tightest point

 

 

 

However, when I turn the railcar around, the problem with the steps (at both ends) becomes apparent…..

 

 

 

 

 

Now, these steps are the white metal originals, so they maybe a bit thick. I also plan to use 30” radius on the layout, so my curves will be less severe. Despite this, I’m still thinking that I might fix the steps to the bogies, just to be safe.

 

More tests coming on I think🤔

 

 

[micklner]

I replace the steps on mine with 0.45mm Brass wire and bent them outwards and downwards from the top . Not protypical but near enough for me.

Edited June 23, 2023 by micklner

[Chas Levin]

13 hours ago, Jon4470 said:

There is a simple answer to the first question….yes this is the entire Nu-cast kit. White metal sides, floor and roof. I was a bit worried that the motor might not be powerful enough but it seems fine in reality. It doesn’t seem to be struggling (or getting hot) so I think it’s doing the job required of it.

 

With regard to bends, I’ll see if I can find some curved track pieces and take a photo from above. There seems to be quite a lot of room though. One thing that I am aware of though, is the steps. There are some that are next to the bogie front wheels. These are, I think, a problem. I believe that some people have actually attached them to the bogie, and not to the body, in order to give clearance for curves.  This is something I’ll need to look at. (The steps are missing from my railcar…..because they got bashed so much when fitting and removing the power bogie!……that is a clue🙂)

 

Thanks Jon, very interesting info and yes, photos of bogies on curves viewed downwards through the body would be very interesting please, if it's not too much trouble. 

Good to know tat motor's up to the job - it looks pretty beefy. Very useful info for others building the Nu-Cast kit.

I knew about the steps clearance issues - that's one of the reasons I left the upright pieces very long on the steps I made up, in case they need to be mounted in some way on the bogies...

[Jon4470]

6 hours ago, micklner said:

I replace the steps on mine with 0.45mm Brass wire and bent them outwards and downwards from the top . Not protypical but near enough for me.

Well…angled out steps maybe prototypical…..I saw this diagram of the front steps and bogie earlier today 

 

 

 

What I was really looking for was confirmation that the steps bolt to the outside of the solebars (on my kit they are attached inside).
From the photos and the diagrams that I’ve been looking at I conclude that the steps do actually attach to the outside of the solebars…and look like they were angled out a bit. All of this will give me extra clearance on curves.

 

 

[Chas Levin]

Very odd, it looks like our posts appeared in the wrong order Jon, because mine asking about testing on curves appears after yours with the actual tests!

No matter, thank you for testing and for posting the photos, very interesting. And the steps discussion is very interesting too of course.

@micklner, did you see the posts on the 'Sentinel & Clayton Railcars - livery & other questions' thread about the angled steps, towards the foot of page 8, where I added some photos too, showing them angled outwards?

Edited June 25, 2023 by Chas Levin

[Jon4470]

20 hours ago, Chas Levin said:

Very odd, it looks like our posts appeared in the wrong order Jon, because mine asking about testing on curves appears after yours with the actual tests!

No matter, thank you for testing and for posting the photos, very interesting. 

As people used to say (in the days of snail mail) …. Our letters must have crossed in the post.🙂

[MarkC]

Just gone through this thread - great work, Jon. Some lovely modelling to be seen.

 

Mark

[Jon4470]

11 hours ago, MarkC said:

Just gone through this thread - great work, Jon. Some lovely modelling to be seen.

 

Mark

Thanks for the kind words.
 

[Jon4470]

Tonight I had a little play around with ideas about the grills that were fitted over one of the windows on these railcars. I plan to model number 2200 “Surprise”. Several reasons…This one was shedded at Starbeck, I have a photo and (as long as I’ve checked correctly 🙂) I can make the name up from the transfers supplied with the kit.

 

The photo shows that the grill bars were vertical on this unit. (Some had horizontal bars and some had both vertical and horizontal I think). There were 12 bars showing on the photo, although a drawing in one of the books shows 11 bars. The window is 12mm across. So, whatever the exact number of bars, it will be necessary to have a drilling jig - there is no way I can drill that many holes accurately spaced….let alone matching at the top and bottom of the window.

 

I hit upon the idea to use clear plastic, which I taped to the outside of the body

 

 

Sorry that photo is blurry!

 

I marked the window out line with a scriber and the result looks like this with an outline of the window

 

 

 

 

Easy part now? Drill 12 holes in a straight line and all equally spaced out……

 

 

As you can see, they didn’t end up evenly spaced out. This is despite taking great care with marking out…..

 

Nevertheless, I decided to check what the bars would look like on the window (cue much swearing as pieces of 0.33mm brass wire went anywhere and everywhere….but, obviously, not where they were supposed to go!).
 

Finally, I got to this 

 

 

The doubled over masking tape is the only way that I could keep the wire still.

 

To me at least, it shows that slight variation in spacing and (even more so) slight deviation from parallel looks messy. The thought of trying to drill these matching holes in the white metal body was not appealing at all…… if I couldn’t do it in clear plastic I figure that the metal will be even more difficult.

 

But then, I had an idea. Just drill the holes at the top, cut the bars to the same length as each other and just solder them on the bottom of the window frame (just above the horizontal beading). 
That was followed by another thought……why bother with holes at the top? The bars can be soldered on top of the window frame.

 

So now all I have to do is to figure out how to hold these bits of brass parallel to one another and 0.85mm apart…….and anything that I use must not get soldered to the brass or body🙂

 

With that, it’s time for bed and let the brain dwell on this……hopefully my sub-conscious will figure out a solution…….

 

Tonight, though, I have at least found the photo of Surprise, determined that the bars should be vertical and decided how many to fix…..so, quite productive.

 

 

[micklner]

I cheated and used a cut down Railing etch for mine. Much simpler !!

 

 

[Jon4470]

12 hours ago, micklner said:

I cheated and used a cut down Railing etch for mine. Much simpler !!

 

 

 

 

I don’t call that cheating……..it’s lateral thinking!😃

[Jon4470]

While pondering the window grills ….. I’ve started work on another area🙂

This is the engine area. The engine was placed just behind the power bogie. On the model it is represented by a casting on the centre line. On photos the cylinder heads are visible on the left hand side of the railcar. This is logical because the crankshaft was on the centreline….meaning that the cylinders were to one side.

 

This photo ( borrowed from @Chas Levin) shows the engine

 

 

and on a railcar it looks like this

 

 

To represent this I’ve made up 3 “cylinder heads” from scrap etch. I created U shape tubes and soldered an end on to them. The ends were rounded at the bottom edge only….the top is not really visible.

 

Here they are sitting (not yet fixed in place) on the kit casting.

 

 

 

 

And with a “steam pipe” just held in place it will look like this

 

 

 

This is beginning to look like the clutter that I want to represent. More bits of wire etc required for detailing. However, there will be steps in front of this…and the whole thing will be black and hidden in the shadows. So that means that the details can be representative and don’t have to be completely accurate. 
 

 

 

 

 

[Chas Levin]

On 05/07/2023 at 22:36, Jon4470 said:

While pondering the window grills ….. I’ve started work on another area🙂

This is the engine area. The engine was placed just behind the power bogie. On the model it is represented by a casting on the centre line. On photos the cylinder heads are visible on the left hand side of the railcar. This is logical because the crankshaft was on the centreline….meaning that the cylinders were to one side.

 

This photo ( borrowed from @Chas Levin) shows the engine

 

 

and on a railcar it looks like this

 

 

To represent this I’ve made up 3 “cylinder heads” from scrap etch. I created U shape tubes and soldered an end on to them. The ends were rounded at the bottom edge only….the top is not really visible.

 

Here they are sitting (not yet fixed in place) on the kit casting.

 

 

 

 

And with a “steam pipe” just held in place it will look like this

 

 

 

This is beginning to look like the clutter that I want to represent. More bits of wire etc required for detailing. However, there will be steps in front of this…and the whole thing will be black and hidden in the shadows. So that means that the details can be representative and don’t have to be completely accurate.

 

Nice work Jon; I was looking at photos recently with regards to roof detail but also found myself noticing that there's a lot more underframe there than included with the kit...

Edited July 9, 2023 by Chas Levin

[Jon4470]

Work on the cylinder heads has progressed. I was quite pleased with this….but something was nagging at me. The cylinder heads were slightly too big. This resulted in the right hand cylinder being too far to the right of the door post..

 

 

This photo is also one of those rare times when the photo looks better than the reality🙂. The left hand cylinder was ready to fall off……..which it duly did straight after the photo.

 

I had a re-think……and swapped over to plastic (although I did reuse the brass pipe).

 

 

This is a cruel enlargement……. I found it easier to shape the cylinder heads and get them to the correct size. They are glued onto the piece of plastic in the background. This give some solidity to the arrangement before the pipes are fitted. The flanges on the pipe are made from scrap etch on the right hand end and 0.3mm wire for the other two (I know these are supposed to be square flanges but I don’t think they will be very visible anyway). The copper wire that is sticking out of the brass tube was something I inserted to stop the tube creasing when I bent it……there is a small crease on the bend…which started before I put the copper wire in😃.

 

In situ the assembly looks like this

 

 

The cylinder assembly is just blu tacked in place because there is a set of steps to go in front of this lot…..which need to be fitted first as the will be soldered to the solebar.

 

Finally, a reminder of what I’m trying to represent

 

There’s some sort of rod linkage running along the bottom of the solebar and the angling down slightly across the front of the cylinder heads. It looks like it ends at the  brake V hanger….or possibly at the construction slightly to the right of the V hanger. So that’s another bit of underframe detail to add!

 

[Chas Levin]

On 17/07/2023 at 20:20, Jon4470 said:

Work on the cylinder heads has progressed. I was quite pleased with this….but something was nagging at me. The cylinder heads were slightly too big. This resulted in the right hand cylinder being too far to the right of the door post..

 

 

This photo is also one of those rare times when the photo looks better than the reality🙂. The left hand cylinder was ready to fall off……..which it duly did straight after the photo.

 

I had a re-think……and swapped over to plastic (although I did reuse the brass pipe).

 

 

This is a cruel enlargement……. I found it easier to shape the cylinder heads and get them to the correct size. They are glued onto the piece of plastic in the background. This give some solidity to the arrangement before the pipes are fitted. The flanges on the pipe are made from scrap etch on the right hand end and 0.3mm wire for the other two (I know these are supposed to be square flanges but I don’t think they will be very visible anyway). The copper wire that is sticking out of the brass tube was something I inserted to stop the tube creasing when I bent it……there is a small crease on the bend…which started before I put the copper wire in😃.

 

In situ the assembly looks like this

 

 

The cylinder assembly is just blu tacked in place because there is a set of steps to go in front of this lot…..which need to be fitted first as the will be soldered to the solebar.

 

Finally, a reminder of what I’m trying to represent

 

There’s some sort of rod linkage running along the bottom of the solebar and the angling down slightly across the front of the cylinder heads. It looks like it ends at the  brake V hanger….or possibly at the construction slightly to the right of the V hanger. So that’s another bit of underframe detail to add!

 

Nice work Jon; it's another of those things where once I've seen it, I wonder how I never noticed it before and why it isn't a standard feature on models.

Needless to say I'll be following your example on this!

[Jon4470]

So, the weather has been lousy today……which means some modelling time😁. This is much better than repairing a window…which is what I’ve spent most of my week off work(can’t really call it a holiday) doing!

 

I’ve progressed the railcar quite well…..but I was always pondering how to do the window grills. Borrowing the idea from @micklner of using railings - but not having any in stock - I tried to create my own version. I soldered the vertical pieces to a horizontal bar. The best that I could do was …..well, not very good! Even using a spacer it was very difficult to get even spacing and parallel bars. Any attempt to adjust thing just unsoldered everything😠

 

Basically I figured that the mark one eyeball was the best judge of what looked correct……but how to hold everything in place while still being able to adjust the bars?

 

Then I hit upon an idea…blutack.

 

 

I used a spacer for the first three bars and then did the rest by eye. Once happy with the spacing I pressed them into the blu tack and then soldered on a horizontal piece…in one hit.

 

 

 

(the observant might notice that I lost one bar in the process 😁)

 

Now the question is how to attach to the window frame?

 

 

I think that there are two options (after scraping off the paint on the window surround and evening up the bar lengths at the lower edge). 

I could try to solder the bars onto the bottom frame….and then the top. Hopefully I can be quick enough with the iron to avoid unsoldering any previous joints as I go.

 

The other option that I can think of is to use runny superglue. Not as strong as soldering but less risky.

 

Anyone got any other ideas?

 

One other bonus of the blu tack is that the imprints are still there…so the second grill should be a bit easier to align.🙂

 

 

[micklner]

The only problem with the Brass rod is the lack of contact areas, the etches are flat and a bit wider contact area as a result, and less chance of them being knocked off.

 

Personally I would glue them on, anything else maybe a total disaster .

 

Good luck

 

 

(I think I used Mainly Trains or a  Langley etches on mine).

[Chas Levin]

Gluing is certainly an option. Would you fancy bending the ends into 90 degree curves and fitting them into holes drilled in the frames? That might be more robust, but possibly overkill...🤔

Edited July 27, 2023 by Chas Levin

[Jon4470]

21 hours ago, Chas Levin said:

Gluing is certainly an option. Would you fancy bending the ends into 90 degree curves and fitting them into holes drilled int he frames? That might be more robust, but possibly overkill...🤔

Hi Chas

 

I’m agreeing with @micklner on this one….gluing is the best option I think. 

 

The chances of me drilling 24 holes each side in a straight line and equi-distant are low. Then I’d have to do 24 very neat solder joints on brass to white metal…..(there isn’t a lot of white metal on the window frame either….so a big risk of melting this)

 

I think that if the sides were in the flat and were brass etches then I might give the soldering a go. I think the plan there would be to build the bars up like I have, tape them securely in place on the side, look at them carefully to make sure that they appear correct and then adjust if necessary. Then solder.

 

Alternately…..if I had an RSU…..😀

 

 

Edited July 26, 2023 by Jon4470

[micklner]

Another reason in favour of a etch solution is the etch thinness. Brass wire is either too thick/wide/protudes too far it would look even worse if curved over at the ends, or use  too thin and it looks naff.

 

 

[Chas Levin]

On 26/07/2023 at 07:43, Jon4470 said:

Hi Chas

 

I’m agreeing with @micklner on this one….gluing is the best option I think. 

 

The chances of me drilling 24 holes each side in a straight line and equi-distant are low. Then I’d have to do 24 very neat solder joints on brass to white metal…..(there isn’t a lot of white metal on the window frame either….so a big risk of melting this)

 

I think that if the sides were in the flat and were brass etches then I might give the soldering a go. I think the plan there would be to build the bars up like I have, tape them securely in place on the side, look at them carefully to make sure that they appear correct and then adjust if necessary. Then solder.

 

Alternately…..if I had an RSU…..😀

 

 

Yes, I think you're right given the WM base. To drill the holes you'd need a jig or some sort of predrilled guide, but even then... And I'd also agree about the thinness of the windown frames and risk of melting!

[Chas Levin]

On 26/07/2023 at 09:40, micklner said:

Another reason in favour of a etch solution is the etch thinness. Brass wire is either too thick/wide/protudes too far it would look even worse if curved over at the ends, or use  too thin and it looks naff.

You're right Mick about the flatness: @Jon4470, once you've soldered a holding crossbar at the other end of the vertical bars, you could turn the assembly over and file the facing sides of the vertical bars a little flatter.

 

I've found that it's quite easy to file brass with very little pressure and moving at quite slow speed with the file, because it's actually quite soft. That means you can file very delicate pieces of assemblies like the bars you have there without damaging them, just by going very slowly and patiently.

 

Apologies if you're prefectly well aware of this - given how much longer you've been modelling than me, you probably are, but it's a relatively new discovery for me and you never know what other's aren't aware of yet 🙂.

[micklner]

1 hour ago, Chas Levin said:

You're right Mick about the flatness: @Jon4470, once you've soldered a holding crossbar at the other end of the vertical bars, you could turn the assembly over and file the facing sides of the vertical bars a little flatter.

 

I've found that it's quite easy to file brass with very little pressure and moving at quite slow speed with the file, because it's actually quite soft. That means you can file very delicate pieces of assemblies like the bars you have there without damaging them, just by going very slowly and patiently.

 

Apologies if you're prefectly well aware of this - given how much longer you've been modelling than me, you probably are, but it's a relatively new discovery for me and you never know what other's aren't aware of yet 🙂.

I am fully aware of Brass qualities , 0.45mm Brass Wire  is useless to bend as it will always end with a very round corner ,it is  impossible to bend "square". The etch option I have suggested  will always be far  more accurate (if you find one with the correct spacings and/or near enough ) than soldered brass wire .

[Jon4470]

5 hours ago, Chas Levin said:

You're right Mick about the flatness: @Jon4470, once you've soldered a holding crossbar at the other end of the vertical bars, you could turn the assembly over and file the facing sides of the vertical bars a little flatter.

 

I've found that it's quite easy to file brass with very little pressure and moving at quite slow speed with the file, because it's actually quite soft. That means you can file very delicate pieces of assemblies like the bars you have there without damaging them, just by going very slowly and patiently.

 

Apologies if you're prefectly well aware of this - given how much longer you've been modelling than me, you probably are, but it's a relatively new discovery for me and you never know what other's aren't aware of yet 🙂.

I’ll try filing a flat on the wire…..I’ve used 0.3mm wire I think so it is quite fine.

 

It did occur to me that half round wire might have been a better idea…but too late now😀

[37Oban]

On 27/07/2023 at 10:31, Chas Levin said:

You're right Mick about the flatness: @Jon4470, once you've soldered a holding crossbar at the other end of the vertical bars, you could turn the assembly over and file the facing sides of the vertical bars a little flatter.

 

I've found that it's quite easy to file brass with very little pressure and moving at quite slow speed with the file, because it's actually quite soft. That means you can file very delicate pieces of assemblies like the bars you have there without damaging them, just by going very slowly and patiently.

 

Hi,

 

in the past I've used fine, 1000 or 1200 grade wet & dry, glued to a lollypop stick, or a similar grade flexible sanding stick, on such assemblies, making sure the assembly is well supported and with plenty of patience!

 

Roja