Starting out with older Mainline models.

[Yankee]

The recommended advice of the experienced when starting out on detailing and weathering is to practice on some old models. 

Well I did just that, digging out some old Mainline engines left over from my children’s train set era of the early 1980’s. I must admit that for their age they are quite well detailed to start with.

I started with the J72

 

 

 

Detailing included  vacuum pipes from Wizard’s and lamp irons from the Hornby X9631 M7 detail pack obtained from Peter’s Spares. Real coal was added along with a cut down driver from Bachmann to hide the motor in one side of the cab. Weathering consisted of washes and powders sealed with Mat Varnish

 

 

Running Qualities of this model was quite good also.

 

 

Edited December 23, 2020 by Yankee
Content Added

[cypherman]

Hi Yankee,

The old engines are capable of being nearly just as good in looks as new engines with a bit of work. I have maybe 5 engines that are 5 years old or less and the rest of mine are 40 - 60 years old. Most suitably upgraded. Ok many cannot be used with DCC, But that does not bother me as I am a Ludite when it comes to that and am happy with analogue.

 

Edited December 23, 2020 by cypherman

[Enterprisingwestern]

 

Your thread title had me thinking about Linda Lusardi.

 

Mike.

[Yankee]

On 24/12/2020 at 08:10, Enterprisingwestern said:

Your thread title had me thinking about Linda Lusardi.

 

Well the J72 and Linda  were both Mainline models.

[Yankee]

 

Encouraged by the results with the J72  I decided to give the Mainline BR STD4 4-6-0 a go. This started off with the aim of simply replacing the boiler hand rails with thinner nickel sliver wire, but then I got carried away.

 

Weathering was carried out similar to the J72. The wheels and motion were first painted Mat Black and them over painted with Gun Metal. I found the Gun Metal alone too thin to apply straight on to the bare metal motion parts.

 

 

 

 

The cab rear pillars are too thick so these were pared down to a more scale like appearance.

 

 

 

 

The regulator operating rod alongside of the boiler is just a bent piece of wire where it enters the boiler so a more scale like handle was fabricated from plaskit card and glued on. This is not a finely detailed part but a representation, far better than bent wire.

 

 

The only addition to the tender was added coal.

 

 

 

Being pleased with the results I thought it deserved a little more, so ordered from Bachmann the detailing pack for their latest STD 4 that included buffer beam pipes, front steps and cylinder pipes.

Also added to the frontal area were a Hornby  R7200 screw link coupling and Foxe’s shed  code transfer.  Mainly Trains Lamp irons from Wizard’s were added also, but I feel they look too large and out of scale, but too late to change now.

 

 

 

When all finished the cab area looked too open with no windows. The small front facing cab windows and those on the tender were dealt with by using Glue and Glaze. The forward side windows were cut out from a CD clear case cover. This is quite thick material and use of a OLFA scriber really came in handy. I found a push fit was sufficient to secure the windows, but the material being so thick caused a prismatic effect that didn’t look right. Painting the edges of the windows Mat black before installing overcame that effect.

 

                                                                                 

Added Crew

 

 

 

 

Edited December 28, 2020 by Yankee

[cypherman]

Hi Yankee,

The 4MT's were always good looking and for their time very well detailed. One of the first RR engines I can remember with loco break details. They do suffer from 2 major faults.

1 they nearly always break their axels causing quartering problems. This is an easy fix as Peters Spares sell replacements.

2 And this is a greater problem in that the engine wears out the chassis pickups causing very poor and rough running. But all is not lost as you can with a bit of messing about put new pickups on that do not use the original chassis pickups on. Therefore you can keep the bearing surfaces well oiled and so less wear.

Here is my post of how I originally did this. I have now refined the method to make it better. Check this page as this will give you an idea of what I mean. Currently I cannot seem to link any pages from RMweb here.

July 17, 2019 in Modifying & Detailing RTR stock .How to make a Mainline 4mt last longer 

Edited December 28, 2020 by cypherman

[Yankee]

Here is my post of how I originally did this. I have now refined the method to make it better. Check this page as this will give you an idea of what I mean. Currently I cannot seem to link any pages from RMweb here.

July 17, 2019 in Modifying & Detailing RTR stock .How to make a Mainline 4mt last longer 

 

Thanks cypherman very interesting, I found the link 

 

 

[Yankee]

Hi cypherman

 

You got me thinking and remembered buying these some time ago with the aim of fitting to a Bachmann Tender loco to improve pickup performance.

 

DCC Concepts DCF-WP12 P-Bronze wiper sets. Might try them out if I get problems.

 

 

 

 

[Mike 84C]

I like your weathering and the detail improvements on the class 4. The cab would be improved by giving the crew seats with a tool box underneath to sit on. From my experience the only comfortable way to drive any standard is to sit down on the seat! Then the right handed fireman could stand in a far more comfortable position or sit on his seat. take a look at a standard cab interior they were all quite similar.

     Mic

[rockershovel]

That’s an interesting point, because they never appear in model cabs! 

 

[rockershovel]

There are some interesting pictures in another thread, in which the tension-lock couplers are very effectively weathered and rendered inconspicuous..

 

[JDW]

They look really good, especially the J72. It's amazing what a little bit of work can do

[Yankee]

After weathering the black STD4 thought I should have a shot at a Green one. Again this is one of my children’s old 1981 Mainline models. Having proved what could be achieved with added detailing on the previous model I decided to stick with just weathering this time except for the added cab windows and tender coal.

 

 

Motion and underframe were treated to the same treatment as before, but Dark Green wash was used on the green body instead of the Dark Grey used on the black model.

 

 

The running quality of this one was not great. Some time was spent investigating the cause and eventually it was found the quartering on the main drive wheel set was slightly out. I think this was  caused by me some time ago gluing the wheels to the axle  to overcome them slipping  and not getting the quartering quite right. Instead of just breaking the glue joint and repositioning the wheels I decide to replace the gear wheel axle with a new axle set from Peter Spares, part PS39.

 When ordering I took the opportunity to include some motor brushes and axle sets for the J72 and Goods Collett which will probably be the next detailing task in the queue.

Question now is am I ready to move on now from these cheap £20 odd models and attack my collection of £100 plus finely detailed modern steam stock. May be a crack at a Bachmann Lord Nelson before moving on to the Hornby one.