East Barnet Joint Stock - a workbench

[Rob Pulham]

Hi Chaz,

 

I didn't get a chance to reply earlier on the subject, due to the outage. After reading of your ceramic bladed tweezers, I sought some out (a set of 3 different shapes from Germany via eBay). 

 

I have to say a big thank you, they are fantastic.  I have already wondered how I managed without them before.

[Bucoops]

On 01/04/2022 at 22:14, Chas Levin said:

Well, like everyone on RM Web, I'll have to sit tight and see which pictures reappear... Fingers crossed!

 

Reading Andy's post, if they aren't there, they aren't coming back

 

[Chas Levin]

On 02/04/2022 at 11:35, Rob Pulham said:

Hi Chaz,

 

I didn't get a chance to reply earlier on the subject, due to the outage. After reading of your ceramic bladed tweezers, I sought some out (a set of 3 different shapes from Germany via eBay). 

 

I have to say a big thank you, they are fantastic.  I have already wondered how I managed without them before.

Glad you've found them Rob and yes, I felt the same!

 

Can't remember if I mentioned it (and I don't want look back through the thread at the moment as all those missing photos are too depressing!) but had I mentioned using the ceramic tweezers to pluck tiny stray hairs from fresh paintwork? Their parallel blades do this much better than any other tweezer types I've tried, and it's such an annoyance when you try and remove a hair or fibre nd smudge the paintwork in doing it!

[Chas Levin]

On 03/04/2022 at 15:30, Bucoops said:

 

Reading Andy's post, if they aren't there, they aren't coming back

 

Hello Rich, that's what I thought, but when I first checked the start of this thread when the site came back up, the earliest few pages' worth were there and then today, some of those have disappeared too.

Sorting out and re-posting photos is quite time-consuming and I have to say it's more than a little discouraging, not knowing whether they will stay there or not.

 

I'll tackle it, of course, just have to find the right time...

[Chas Levin]

Well, while the job of replacing older photos continues to lurk on the horizon, here are a couple of more recent ones of the current state of play:

 

 

 

 

The very front-most white boiler band line has been added in, which was an opportunity to compare the experience of adding white after the centre black had already been done: I can confirm that doing the whites first and filling in the black afterwards is definitely easier! There's also been quite a bit of time spent re-touching both white and black.

 

I'm currently working on the dark green. I'd tried an initial thin brushed coat on the area around the bunker and found it very difficult to keep the border with the white really straight, not to mention achieving anything like decently even coverage. I posted an update on the Western Thunder forum (https://www.westernthunder.co.uk/threads/chass-workbench-an-lner-pipe-wagon.10461/#post-246719) and Ian Rathbone recommended doing the dark green areas with the bow pen... and I thought 'Ah, why didn't I think of that', to which the answer's obvious of course: because he's a professional with many years of experience and I'm not! Which is just the way it should be: the system works.

Using the pen will make obtaining a straight edge with the white relatively easy, though I've not tried covering such a relatively wide area with the pen before and I'm wondering about how to avoid the earlier lines drying before they can be blended with the later ones - so the practice panels' going to get some more use.

Edited April 6, 2022 by Chas Levin

[richard i]

Perhaps next to the white with bow pen and then brush paint the larger areas.

richard 

[MikeTrice]

Would it have been easier to do the dark green before the lining?

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, MikeTrice said:

Would it have been easier to do the dark green before the lining?

 

I asked that question a couple of weeks back; Chas had a convincing rationale based on drawing the finest lines on the smoothest surface.

[Chas Levin]

7 hours ago, richard i said:

Perhaps next to the white with bow pen and then brush paint the larger areas.

richard 

Yes, that's the direction I'm going in. Actually, the areas above and below the panels are so narrow that two passes with the pen should do it; the 'sideways along an edge' bow pen trick should do the corners and two to three verticals at the ends, then filling in with a brush where needed.

The question I'm thinking about at the moment is whether to replicate the thin brushed 'wash-coat' I did around the bunker on the side-tanks too, before starting with the pen, so everything looks the same final shade.

I made a start on the tank fronts today - they have to be brushed whatever else may be penned - and they're pretty awkward, more so thatn with the white and black lining, because you have to get right in, round the insides of the handrail knobs...

[Chas Levin]

6 hours ago, MikeTrice said:

Would it have been easier to do the dark green before the lining?

 

5 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I asked that question a couple of weeks back; Chas had a convincing rationale based on drawing the finest lines on the smoothest surface.

Evening gents👋, as Stephen says, the order was for a reason - well, two reasons actually - and they were from Ian Rathbone's book, where he advises doing the lightest, brightest colours first, as they're the ones you eye picks out first so they really need to be as good as possible. As Stephen notes, that does indeed mean that doing them on a virgin surface is highly advisable, plus it means you can get them right, then fit other lines round them.

 

Ultimately, with a multi-coloured livery like this one, I think you're always going to end up with one or two areas that need to be fitted in around everything else, right at the end and it's likely to be a little awkward...🙃

[Chas Levin]

11 hours ago, Chas Levin said:

Hello Rich, that's what I thought, but when I first checked the start of this thread when the site came back up, the earliest few pages' worth were there and then today, some of those have disappeared too.

Sorting out and re-posting photos is quite time-consuming and I have to say it's more than a little discouraging, not knowing whether they will stay there or not.

 

I'll tackle it, of course, just have to find the right time...

Decided to make a start on replacing the photos, starting from the most recent ones and working back (on the basis that earlier ones may still gradually reappear as things percolate through the new systems) and following a system I use for all sorts of less then enjoyable tasks, of doing a little bit every day.

So the photos will reappear, but they may take a little while 🙂.

[Bucoops]

1 hour ago, Chas Levin said:

Decided to make a start on replacing the photos, starting from the most recent ones and working back (on the basis that earlier ones may still gradually reappear as things percolate through the new systems) and following a system I use for all sorts of less then enjoyable tasks, of doing a little bit every day.

So the photos will reappear, but they may take a little while 🙂.

 

The older ones *should* reappear once the indexing is completed. *Should*...

[Chas Levin]

I'm still not entirely sure about the best way of tackling the main areas of dark green, so I've been using modelling time to deal with other things, mainly re-touching some of the white lines a little further, but also doing the dark green on the inner front areas of the side-tanks, which will have to be brushed, no matter how the rest is done and which is even trickier to reach than the nearby lining. Only one coat so far, and the surface finish is far from good, but it's exceedingly awkward to reach (especially without messing up the neighbouring colours), the areas are very small and I'll hopefully be able to float another thinned coat or two over them, so I'm not too worried at this stage:

 

 

 

For the larger areas, as I mentioned previously, I'd tried putting on a thin brushed coat before receiving Ian Rathbone's advise to use the bow pen and as you can see in the picture below, the results, while far from finished, actually look better than might be expected:

 

 

The uneven coverage is fairly clear (the main reason for it being the extremely fast drying time of the Phoenix Precision GNR Dark Green when used in very small quantities on a small brush, in a bid to avoid over-painting the white lines and achieve a thin even coat, all in one go!) but I think this might provide a good 'wash' under a second thicker coat applied with the pen, leading to deeper colouring and making it less likely that the light green will show through, so I'm fairly sure I'm going to apply a similar thin brushed coat to the relevant side-tank areas too and only then get out the bow pen...🤔

Edited April 9, 2022 by Chas Levin

[Jon4470]

That’s looking good Chas - and I admire your perseverance!

 

With the addition of the dark green, the finished look is starting to show.

[Chas Levin]

Thanks Jon - yes, I thought that too, that even small areas of the dark green change the overall look and suddenly the parent company's identity is more obvious.

Which is gratifying 🙂.

Actually, perseverance hasn't been too much of a problem for the most part. Sometimes, I do have to make myself get started, but once I get going, I enjoy the finely detailed painting a great deal. In some ways, I'll be sorry to see it finished... though in other ways, I'll be rather pleased!!

[Chas Levin]

On 06/04/2022 at 23:06, Bucoops said:

 

The older ones *should* reappear once the indexing is completed. *Should*...

Well, I've re-uploaded the photos back to late June 2021 (start of page 26) and I guess it's worth pausing at this point to see how many more photos originally uploaded prior to that date re-appear; so far, I'm not seeing anything more recent than the end of May 2020, but I know it's early days and the sheer quantity is enormous.

I know it's already been said many times by many people, but a big 'Thank you' to the RMWeb team for resurrecting things!

[Chas Levin]

Happily, working my way only a couple of pages further back, to a little earlier in May 2021, I met up with images that had been restored from the RM Web side of things, so I think everything's now back in place... 🙂

 

I hope other people on here haven't had too bad a time replacing photos? I can see that lots of threads are up and running and it feels as if things are getting back to normal.

 

There's room for so much on the internet - we're very lucky!

Edited April 12, 2022 by Chas Levin

[N15class]

Just followed your thread looks to be lots to read, but, that will be for another time, my son keeps looking, I don't think he thinks I'm paying enough attention to his judo.

 

[Chas Levin]

38 minutes ago, N15class said:

Just followed your thread looks to be lots to read, but, that will be for another time, my son keeps looking, I don't think he thinks I'm paying enough attention to his judo.

 

Yes, indeed - the modelling-life balance is always important: judo first, railways second 🙂

[Chas Levin]

I've now finished the rest of the first, thin, brushed coat of dark green:

 

 

 

I'm still in two minds about whether this is the best way but as explained in an earlier post, having done it on the bunker, prior to receiving Ian R's advice about using the bow pen, doing the same thing to the side tanks seemed the best way forward - 'Levelling Up' the paintwork, to borrow a currently popular phrase - and I'm definitely happy not to be trying to remove that first coat from the bunker!

The advantage is I think that I'll only need one coat with the pen which given the pen's sometimes delicate balance between coverage and flooding is a good thing!

Actually, in these photos - which appear, on my screen here, roughly life-size, the coverage doesn't actually look too poor, but in real life you can see the unevenness far more clearly. Some of the slightly better areas were done with very thinned paint (having used the brush in white spirit to tidy up edges, I left it wet when picking up a new droplet of paint) but it's still difficult to achieve consistency.

 

Still, the overall effect is heading in the right direction and remembering your comment on Saturday Jon about the bunker's dark green bringing out the GNR look, that's even more the case now I think; though it does make you realise what a small area proportionately is actually in dark green, for it to have such a pronounced effect...

 

Needless to say, the long white lines are once again appearing in these photos looking far less consistent and solid than in real life. I recently asked Tony Wright, on his thread, about a photo he'd shown of a BR Maroon coach, where the double yellow lining lines had taken on a sort of zig-zag 'interference' look. He commented that digital photography 'doesn't like diagonals' and it occurred to me that it might be to do with the fact that everything's divided up into a horizontal/vertical grid of pixels...? Quite annoying, whatever the reason🤨

Edited April 13, 2022 by Chas Levin

[N15class]

Looking very nice. You are braver than me doing such a lovely livery.

[Chas Levin]

Thanks Peter; it felt a bit brave when I started, but you get used to it, a bit like climbing a mountain or something. After a while it seems quite normal. Plus, having spent so much time with the bow pen over the last few months (I did hours of practising with it as well as the actual lining of the model) you get much better at using it and more confident. I was thinking about that last night as I was dozing off, funnily enough, what an odd thing confidence is. Because you've done something a number of times already, you believe you can do it successfully again and that affects how well you do it the next time - a sort of positive feedback loop.

It's a terrific learning experience too: I've learned more about building and painting on this project than anything else I'd built before, by a long way.

It's still miles below the top notch builders and painters though: I've seen work on here (and on WT, LNER Info and Scalefour of course) that is simply stunning, things you look at (even in comparatively low resolution online photos) and wonder how on earth they did it that well - soldering, painting, scratchbuilding, things that take your breath away. Very inspiring - something to aim at 🙂.

Edited April 13, 2022 by Chas Levin

[Chas Levin]

On another note, I referred a few times earlier in this thread to fitting Train Tech automatic coach lighting strips to Hornby Gresley coaches, including a way to deal with the inconvenience of battery changing and I've assembled some photos to show how I did it. 

The Train Tech strips (more details on their website: http://www.train-tech.com/index.php/lighting/interior-coach-lighting) are a briliant product: tiny movement sensors turn the lights on when the coach moves (and they're incredibly sensitive, no issues with them failing to light) and they stay on for four or five minutes after movement stops (catering for brief station stops). They use very bright but astonishingly low power mini-LEDs, powered from a CR 2025 or 2032 coin cell which runs them for a long time, but therein lies a small problem, if accessing the board to change the cell is difficult because of the way the coach dismantles. Having taken a Hornby Gresley apart to add passengers and an interior, I was not keen on having to do so repeatedly, even if it was at intervals weeks or months apart!

I decided to try de-soldering the battery holder from the board and mounting it beneath the chassis, adding wires between it and the board, inside the coach - here's how I got on, starting with dismantling the coaches.

They're held together by plastic lugs that are part of the clear plastic glazing piece and push down through holes in the floorpan. Accessing them at all is awkward, but the real issue is pushing them aside sufficiently to pass through the floorpan holes, without snapping them off: the plastic they're made from is very brittle!

In the first pic, the bogie is held aside with blutak and you can see one of the lugs coming down through the floor:

 

 

The next thing you come up against is the tendency of the lugs to pop back into their holes! You get one out and sitting on the edge of the slot, go to do the next one and the first one slips back in!! And you then gradually discover that each time you bend one to get it out, it weakens it and makes it more likely it'll snap. I did about half a dozen of these coaches and only managed to keep all the tags intact on a couple! So, I collected some small pieces of plastic card to use as wedges, to that each time a lug's been pushed out, the gap can be kept open:

 

 

 

Turning to the Train Tech boards, the battery holder is de-soldered using whichever de-soldering aids you find easiest. I used de-soldering braid, holding the board in a 'third hand' vise with the croc clips padded inside with thick paper, with the iron in one hand and needle-nosed pliers in the other to pull the holder gently away:

 

 

The one shown above came away quite well, but it occurred to me after having a couple come away messily that I should just buy a small stock of new coin cell holders and use them instead, so that it wouldn't matter if some of the ones on the TT boards were damaged and I could concentrate on making sure the TT boards themselves were unaffected.

 

One of these new holders is seen in the next photo, installed under the underframe, araldited in place:

 

 

Wiring is run from it, along the underframe, up through the floor and onto the board - the exact route to take with the wiring will vary according to the interior layout of the coach, but here are some examples of this part of the operation - the clothes pegs are to allow glue to set with some 'slack' in the wiring, as a nod towards possible unavoidable future dismantling:

 

 

 

 

 

I realise that hanging a coin cell holder in amongst the underframe gubbins will not amuse the purists, or even those who don't think of themselves as purists but don't like to see too many unprototypical mods either... I can only say that the pleasure of seeing such realistic looking lighting operating - and not dependent on power to the tracks - outweighs for me the underframe compromise! After all, I hope I won't cause offence if I say that the Hornby underframe isn't fully accurate anyway; where I did something similar to a D&S ECJS Luggage Brake (detailed further back in this thread) I disguised things a little better.

I'll close this post at this point because of photo upload limits, but I'll follow it with another post, showing examples of how the batteries and the lighting look on the finished coaches...

[Chas Levin]

So, how do things look when the jobs' been done, from normal viewing angles (as clearly things don't look very prototypical when you turn the coach upside-down!)? One further thing to be done is to paint the edges of the coin cells matt black (and I can confirm that Humbrol Matt black is not conductive, so it doesn't matter if you go over the two sides of the cell) and following that, here are four harsh, larger than life-sized side-on views, where I hope you'll agree that they don't look too obtrusive. If you didn't know what had been added underneath, you might think things looked a little crowded but on an RTR coach, I think you get away with it, especailly when you consider that we generally see these vehicles from a much higher angle:

 

 

 

 

 

And here are some views of the lights in action:

 

 

 

 

 

 

The photos of the Sleeping Carriage and the Suburban Brake also show up a problem I hadn't anticipated at the time, that of the plastic being insufficiently opaque to block the light fully, so that in darkness, areas of the sides appear translucent and backlit! Easily rectified of course, by applying some black insulating tape to the insides of the bodyshells, but... that means dismantling the carriages again! 😁😆🙄

 

I wouldn't deny for a moment that this is certainly a compromise and not for everyone, but if you like the idea, I can recommend it: changing batteries is now an easy five minute job (including re-applying matt black paint to the new ones' edges) with almost no risk of damage to the coach, where before it was more like an hour... a stressful, frustrating hour, with a high risk of damage! 

Edited April 14, 2022 by Chas Levin

[Chas Levin]

A quick update on the Slaters ex-NER birdcage brake, work actually done before The Great Outtage but not posted, of course. The DCC LNER-style lamp's wires were fed through the hole in the rear face of the van - the thicker heatshrink section contains the resistor - and down through the rearmost hole in the floor...

 

 

...where they emerge alongside the DCC pickups...

 

 

...and they're then soldered to the pickups' pads. I left the plastic insulated wire long enough to reach both sets of pads, stripping the insulation midway to allow soldering to the first set it meets, but i had to use a new piece to continue the run from the very thin red enamelled one that comes direct from the LED, because stripping that enamel insulation is near impossible...

 

 

...and tests were successfull on both sets of pads:

 

Edited April 14, 2022 by Chas Levin