Ruston's Industrial locomotive and wagon workshop thread.

[Barclay]

When I start weathering I always find it's a bit of a lottery how heavy it turns out. I mean I can go deliberately light or deliberately grotty and work from there but everything in between seems to be out of my control! Most important thing is that it looks great - fantastic piece of work - that picture of it running by the water, if you dialled the colour down to make it look like a 50's picture, or showed it in B/W it would be hard to believe it is a model.

[Ruston]

19 hours ago, AlfaZagato said:

I'm surprised you didn't seal the transfers before weathering.   Do Fox Transfers hold up to paint?

I did. I put a coat of matt varnish over them. It's just it can't have been left to dry for long enough. The wash must have softened it and got in to the decals. I'm going to scratch off the wrinkled parts and make it even more weathered.

 

The original plan would have avoided having to apply individual corners and lines. It was to have complete panels printed on clear decal paper, which would also have had company lettering and engine number. I employed the services of a decal company and after waiting two months the decals were useless. The lining was all zig-zagged, as was the black shading under the letters. I've enquired with others but no one can produce what I want to the standard that I want.

[Ruston]

The dropped footplate Barclay is finished.

 

It has had a lot of weathering but I think not over the top for its intended use. It will be used on my new layout and so would be at least 50 years old. It's supposed to be still in the original paint but with patch painting and a lot of faded and dirty paintwork.

 

Faded, shabby and past the first flush of youth. A bit like myself.

[Ruston]

The latest one out of the works is another Hattons conversion. I sold the dropped footplate conversion (not the one above) to a friend because he liked it and although I built it for use on the CVMR it was pushing the time period to be able to fit it in. It would have been fine if I had done it in fully lined livery but what I had done didn't really fit in. I planned to use it on the new micro layout (Harboro Stone) as it had cut down boiler fittings and a dropped footplate but it needed a little modification and that's when I reckoned it was time to start afresh. I swapped the body and kept the chassis as I had milled the chassis block to enable the fitting of a Stay Alive.

 

The new body was the Kermit green NCB one. The conversion was inspired by several Dorman Long Barclays, that didn't have dropped footplates but did have lowered cabs and some also had home-made bunkers. I took about 3mm out of the cab height and added a bunker, made from Plastikard. The boiler fittings were all cut down and/or repositioned as on my original conversion. Some of the Dorman Long engines also had huge block buffers, so I made deep buffer beams and blocks from brass.

 

 

 

To show how much lower it is than the out of the box product. Of course the 16-inch Hattons Barclays are too short in the tank, too short in the wheelbase and too short overall but there's nothing can be done about that.

[Ruston]

That didn't quite go to plan. It didn't fit through the arch! There wasn't much stopping it, in fact I reckoned that if the cab gutters were trimmed then it would clear but with such a short wheelbase on a relatively long engine, coupled with the generous amount of side play built into the chassis and wheels, it could have still hit the arch.

 

I didn't get to try that out because as I attempted to trim the gutter, using a scalpel, the cab collapsed. I had used Mek to make the joint where the cut had been made and the plastic that Hattons used seems to be a lot more resistant to Mek than Plastikard is. The rear pillars shot off and were devoured by the shed floor monster. I had a spare cab from the Grant, Ritchie build, so I used that and left the gutters but took another millimetre off the height. It now fits the tunnel as intended but has a full rear panel and windows on the cab.

 

It is running on Watery Lane until the new layout is ready for it.

[Tullygrainey]

Looking very fine. A great recovery.  Those floor monsters are an acquisitive lot. I reckon mine now has enough bits to build its own locomotive.

 

Regards, Alan

[Ruston]

The Peckett Piercing Saw Massacre.

It's not cruelty; it's for their own good.😁

[Ruston]

Several pages back I posted a blurry pic of this. It has been resurrected and the lower part of the boiler added to the frame. Peckett W/n 492 was an inside-cylinder 0-4-0ST. From the running plate up it looked identical to a W4, so a spare Hornby body has a use. The prototype had deep buffer beams and two sets of buffers. On the model, the upper set are the Hornby ones, whilst the lower ones are RT Models castings. The wheels on the prototype were of a larger diameter than on the W4 and had no balance weights. The previous pic showed a set of old 14mm Romfords under it but they are a bit naff so I will use standard Hornby wheels.

 

I've got a bitsa gearbox to go in it.

[Yarravalleymodeller]

On 28/09/2022 at 03:23, Ruston said:

The Peckett Piercing Saw Massacre.

It's not cruelty; it's for their own good.😁

Always alarmed by what you get up to but then equally have total faith in it turning out well. It's been a strange sensation watching your modelling exploits over the years but so glad to have done so 🤣

[Ruston]

This is the reason for the cutting away of the footplate.

The cab is a 3D-print, courtesy of James Hilton, of Planet Industrials. The smokebox front is also from the same source. They are pre-production/test parts for an as yet unreleased conversion kit. The front buffer beam is a spare from a previous Pi cab kit. I have the etched brass roof to add but will need to make a rear buffer beam myself.

[Ruston]

I slapped some paint in it late last night. When I got to work on it this afternoon it was dry and ready to proceed with. I was thinking that the colour choice had been a bad one, but now it's had the shine taken off it, and the first stages of weathering added, I like it. Under all that crap is Phoenix Precision BR coach red.

Note the small diameter dome cover and lack of safety valves. Looking through the IRS Peckett book I noticed that some reduced height engines had a small diameter dome cover, which was just that; a brass cover for the steam dome. The safety valves were fitted to the top of the firebox, so that's what I have done here. Holes have been drilled in the cab roof where the steam from the safeties would be directed up a cowl and through the roof.

 

The chassis is still in works. The motor has been removed and the casting that forms the lower part of the boiler has been removed to be painted to match the rest of the engine. It will also be getting a replacement motor and the cylinder block will be modified.

[Ruston]

Bottom of the chassis block opened out to take an 11x15mm speaker.

 

To properly weather the frames, the wheels need to be removed. The tops of the cylinders have been filed to represent the wrapper going around the top, rather than coming up to the edge of the valance.

 

[cctransuk]

1 hour ago, Ruston said:

Bottom of the chassis block opened out to take an 11x15mm speaker.

 

Careful - don't breath on what's left of the frames!

 

CJI.

[AlfaZagato]

That's an appealing look, with the 'profiled' cab and curved windows.   Seems sensible to me, too.  I never understood the little spectacles barely large enough for the engineer's face.

[Ruston]

13 hours ago, AlfaZagato said:

That's an appealing look, with the 'profiled' cab and curved windows.   Seems sensible to me, too.  I never understood the little spectacles barely large enough for the engineer's face.

The front ones are never really for looking out of. It's more about letting light in to see what you're doing in the cab because you really can't see much ahead with a saddle tank.

 

It's not done, done, but it's cosmetically done. There's no motor in it yet but as there seems to be a shortage of the right sort of decoder I can't get it running anyway.

 

 

 

There were no wheel balance weights with the parts that James gave me, so I had to make my own.

 

I also had to make my own rear buffer beam. I used one from a spare Hornby B2 Peckett body, suitably narrowed and deepened using plastikard. The large buffer heads are my usual self-made parts.

 

I'm really pleased with how it's turned out and I think that whenever the kit is eventually released I'll have another.

 

[Sweet pea]

Excellent work Dave.

[Barclay]

Lovely paint job - nice and gritty !

[Ruston]

I had another spare Peckett body to play with so hacked it up yesterday. My local model shop have some tins of discontinued Humbrol paints for sale and No.36, Pastel Green seemed like a good idea.

It doesn't seem such a good idea now.

[Din]

2 hours ago, Ruston said:

I had another spare Peckett body to play with so hacked it up yesterday. My local model shop have some tins of discontinued Humbrol paints for sale and No.36, Pastel Green seemed like a good idea.

It doesn't seem such a good idea now.

 

 

Back in the 1970s my mother had a mini this colour, my dad bought it her.

 

She had it a week.

[Ruston]

It's a bit cold out so I've just brought it in from the shed to help the paint dry in the relative warmth of the house. Bloody Hell! The colour looks even worse now! No wonder it's a discontinued shade.

[mike morley]

A friend has given me his Peckett on permanent loan.  He'd fitted it with Dingham couplings, which I don't use, and during the struggle to remove the rear one I damaged the handrails that run up either side of the cab backsheet.  I assumed it would be a simple matter to replace them with brass wire, but on further investigation I've realised that the original handrails are moulded integrally with the backsheet and that fitting replacements looks like being a far from simple task - the beading at waist height being the trickiest bit.

I guess you must have damaged those handrails at some time during the numerous drastic alterations you've done to your host of Pecketts.  Any advice?

[Michael Edge]

1 hour ago, Ruston said:

It's a bit cold out so I've just brought it in from the shed to help the paint dry in the relative warmth of the house. Bloody Hell! The colour looks even worse now! No wonder it's a discontinued shade.

Plenty of weathering should make it look a bit better.

[Ruston]

18 hours ago, mike morley said:

A friend has given me his Peckett on permanent loan.  He'd fitted it with Dingham couplings, which I don't use, and during the struggle to remove the rear one I damaged the handrails that run up either side of the cab backsheet.  I assumed it would be a simple matter to replace them with brass wire, but on further investigation I've realised that the original handrails are moulded integrally with the backsheet and that fitting replacements looks like being a far from simple task - the beading at waist height being the trickiest bit.

I guess you must have damaged those handrails at some time during the numerous drastic alterations you've done to your host of Pecketts.  Any advice?

I have. Assuming it's just the handrail itself that are broken, and not the beading, then there are two ways of fixing it.

 

If the rail is broken but still attached at both ends, and isn't bent, it will usually click back into line. A small amount of MEK can be run into the joint to weld the rail back together.

 

If a part is missing then the rail needs to be cut out and the beading/roof/buffer beam be drilled through with a 0.5mm drill and the rail be replaced with 0.45mm brass wire. You will need to get the backsheet out to do this. It is held by glue at the join with the roof and with the buffer beam. The buffer beam has slots into which the backsheet fits. If you're lucky it will come apart simply by taking hold of the sheet hear the top, with tweezers, and wiggling it until the glue gives way. The same applies with the bottom joint. If that doesn't work then it's scalpel time.

[Ruston]

It isn't finished yet. The chassis is a borrowed one and couplings have yet to be fitted, plus a little more detail weathering, but it's a huge improvement on the dayglo mess that it was a couple of days ago.

[Ruston]

I intended this one to be another addition to the Harboro stone fleet but toning down that awful "pastel" (more like dayglo lime!) green took a lot of weathering. It gave me the idea of having it as a former gasworks engine. The Westinghouse pump on the front isn't for air brakes but is supposed to provide compressed air for opening and closing the hopper doors on small internal use wagons that would charge the retorts, as I understand happened at Beckton.