Keira's 4mm workbench - Building Comet coaches

[Keira]

Hi folks,

 

I'm on a mission to get all of my ongoing projects out of the way before starting any more (we've all been here before, we all know how it ends). Nevertheless, I'm making good progress with my Severn Valley based stock, including, a CSP models kit for Hudswell-Clarke built (and GWR adopted) saddle tank no.813 and three Great Western carriages: Collett high waistband brake composite to Dia E148 (from the Comet kit), Collett sunshine 3rd to Dia C77 (also from a Comet kit) and a Churchward toplight 3rd to Dia C32 (using Worsley Works sides and odds and ends).

 

To encourage me to get all of these out the way and ready for service I've started this workbench thread, I hope it can provide something of interest to a few out there...

 

The pictures below show the Collett brake composite upon completion, based off of the preserved example currently running on the SVR. This was my first kit of any kind for model railways and has seen many different forms, rebuilds and repaints over the past few years. It's of soldered brass construction riding on fully compensated bogies and is gauged to OO. I lined it using a bow/ruling pen and the transfers are HMRS "pressfix".

 

Regards,

Keira 

 

Edited February 17, 2022 by Keira
Changed topic title

[Keira]

Evening all,

 

I've been busy finishing off lots of small jobs for 813, I seem to not have much to show for my efforts however, hmm 

 

The coupling rods are now all in place though, before securing the crank pin nuts with thread locker everything all ran sweet, but after some testing today there seems to be a slight tight spot, I'll have another look tomorrow. (I've also realised the chassis has no sand pipes, I'll make those up tomorrow too I think.)

 

 

In the meantime, I've made up some fire irons out of some brass scraps, I know I could probably buy ones with much finer and neat detail, but I enjoy the process of making them, and when in place I think they'll look sufficient. (All of these aren't just for 813 by the way!)

 

 

[Keira]

Evening all,

 

I've spent the last couple of evenings ironing out most of the discrepancies in the running of the chassis for 813. The pickups are now fitted too, along with the DCC. Some of the frame stretchers have also been "modified" to allow the chassis clearance to the steam heat pipes, doesn't look to pretty but no one will ever see. I've posted some videos of the locomotive in action, both running on DC and DCC, I'm quite happy with the running now, although there's still a small tight spot noticeable at slow speeds which I'll no doubt end up trying to fix at some point.

 

Running on DC (please do excuse the motor flying about all over the place)

 

 

Running on DCC

 

 

[Keira]

I'm still fettling the running of 813, I'll be at this forever, but the loco is basically now done, so here are some photos... I'm quite pleased with my "turned" brass safety valve bonnet made using the electric drill as a makeshift lathe. The whistles are from an old whitemetal kit for a 4575 prairie and the GWR style lamps are from Modelu.

 

[Keira]

I've definitely been keeping busy! 1450 took at trip to the workbench for fitting of glazing to the cab windows and some revised weathering. I also added a hose hanging out of the cab from a picture I took a couple of years ago. I really like how this one came out. 

 

 

(A photo of the real 1450 taken a couple of years ago showing the hose hanging out of the cab)

 

 

[mpeffers]

How did the 813 kit go together? I’m trying to put aside my reticence to work with metal and soldering and give kitbuilding a go, but kits seem really quite expensive (from the perspective of not knowing whether you can successfully assemble one - I appreciate RTR is increasingly expensive too these days) and few of the oft-recommended starter kits are of prototypes that motivate me. I have many fond memories of 813 on the SVR, though...

[Keira]

On 29/05/2021 at 13:29, mpeffers said:

How did the 813 kit go together? I’m trying to put aside my reticence to work with metal and soldering and give kitbuilding a go, but kits seem really quite expensive (from the perspective of not knowing whether you can successfully assemble one - I appreciate RTR is increasingly expensive too these days) and few of the oft-recommended starter kits are of prototypes that motivate me. I have many fond memories of 813 on the SVR, though...

 

The kit goes together quite nicely, I enjoyed the build. The half boiler comes pre rolled, however, the saddle tank doesn't, I don't own rolling bars but it went together without much fuss. I would recommend it, makes to a nice model.

[mpeffers]

Thanks - good to hear.

[Keira]

Evening all,

 

I've got a couple of new scratch building projects lined up now that the last few stragglers of previous projects are reaching their conclusions, before I start these though, there's a few things I want to get done, the two main ones being, repainting and relining the bottom half of one of my carriages, and finishing the repaint of a Bachmann small prairie from BR unlined black with early emblem, to BR lined green with the later emblem. The prairie was bought slightly damaged but at a really good price as a chassis donor for an ancient white metal kit I was building, but when it arrived, I really liked the Bachmann model, so I decided to keep it in its entirety and abandon the kit for the moment. The model is to be yet another Severn Valley Railway resident, no.4566. The model came in weathered BR early black, and with the factory weathering removed it would fit 4566 well as that's what the real life locomotive currently wears, and it's one of my favourite liveries for GWR tank engines, but I wanted to test out some new "Deep Bronze Green" paint I bought and I fancied lining something, so it's back to 1986 and 4566 in BR lined late green! The pictures below show the sure but steady progress on the repaint over past few months, this project was very much on the back burner for a while, however its now right at the front of the queue, and it shouldn't be long until it's ready for service...

 

4566 in red oxide primer a few months ago...

 

 

4566 how it looks now, well on its way to completion... I've mistakenly painted the various tank accessories in green, looking at pictures of the real thing, they are supposed to be black.

 

 

In other news, the second fore fronted project on the go at the moment is churchward toplight no.3930, which is in for a complete repaint of its lower half, although my original attempt at lining GWR 1922 livery was ok for me at the time, I now feel it doesn't match the "standard" of my other carriages, so I'm going to try again, and hopefully to a much better standard this time!

 

3930 ready for relining of the bottom half of the body shell...

 

[MJI]

The BCK used to be mainline registered and was seen on BR in 1985 with the GWR 150 set.

[rope runner]

Some lovely builds here.

 

Were there any parts in the CSP kit to allow 813 to be modelled in its original pre-GWR guise? IE original style bunker and safety valves? 

 

Paul A. 

[Keira]

On 13/06/2021 at 16:13, rope runner said:

Some lovely builds here.

 

Were there any parts in the CSP kit to allow 813 to be modelled in its original pre-GWR guise? IE original style bunker and safety valves? 

 

Paul A. 

Thank you Paul,

 

The kit allows for various incarnations of these engines to be built, I'm trying to find a piece in the instructions that specifically states about the engines as built but I cant find it, it just says about other, later versions (if someone can find it in the instructions please do correct me!) The running boards that come with the kit match the later extended bunker length and my kit didn't come with alternate safety valves and I cant recall seeing an alternate bunker on the etches either. I completely neglected taking pictures of the early stages of the kit build so I cant really confirm whether or not I'm right about all this, perhaps contacting CSP models would be the way to go.

 

Cheers,

[Keira]

Hi all,

 

I've been taking a break from the workbench modelling for a bit and working on the layout instead. I'm currently trying to plot out and visualize the route the canal will take as it follows the railway for about 6 or 7 feet, which I'm finding quite difficult without a scale reference. So, over the past few days, I've knocked together a narrow boat out of some brass sheet scraps to help give me a sense of scale in my planning.

 

The boat isn't strictly to a real life design, just sort of made it up as I went along, but is roughly based on Stewarts & Lloyds "Tug No.2"

 

The beginnings of the hull soldered to the baseplate, the boat is a scale 40 feet in length...

 

 

All the main details in place here, starting to look like a canal boat...

 

 

Ready for paint, still some details to add afterward. Painting this is going to be... interesting 

 

[Keira]

When I started this workbench thread, I stressed how I was dedicate my focus to unfinished projects before starting anymore, and to no one's surprise, none more than my own, here's a new project!

 

 

These Hornby Hawksworth carriages were going for really good prices recently, having a soft spot for Hawksworth carriages, I picked up a carmine and cream one with the view of replacing the sides with Comet etched examples. To be honest though, having not delved into RTR stuff much, I was pleasantly surprised, the thick plastic of the flush glazing isn't as noticeable as I would have thought, so I've kept it as is. Of course though I've repainted it, this one to join my Severn Valley collection as no.829 in 1940s double waistline colours.

 

 

I have to say its not my best lining, a bit chunky, it will all blend and look less "toy like" when weathered though I think. I've also added a varied tone effect to the "wood" interior and glued in paper seat patterns onto the seats. I took photos of the seat patterns in many of our GWR carriages on the SVR a while ago, so I can print them out and put them in the model coaches, these ones were left over from my model of no.6913.

 

 

Edited to remove wrong photo... oops

Edited September 27, 2021 by Keira

[Keira]

I haven't abandoned my many ongoing projects though, this Churchward toplight all third is currently my main lining focus, I think its going quite well! Just the other side to do now.... 

 

[Keira]

I've been thinking about wagons lately, I've been very slowly adding a few to my collection and today I decided to have a go at one. This is a Cambrian kit for an SECR 5 plank, not to difficult to construct, although this is my first ever plastic kit, so anything could happen! Ooo

 

 

In reality nothing much out of the ordinary happend, half an hour's job and now I've got a new wagon to join the railway.

 

 

It needs a few more details adding and then onto painting of course, the transfers are on order. Nice relaxing job this, and for my first plastic kit I don't think it looks to bad. Wagon no.1 done, roll on wagon no.2 (pun most definitely intended)

Edited October 3, 2021 by Keira
Spelling correction + added sentence

[Keira]

Good evening all,

 

I've committed to the wagon rake! (and even bought a few more, oh dear....) It's quite relaxing this wagon building malarkey!

 

There are currently two wagons on the workbench, which are as follows:

 

First up, a Cooper Craft N13 loco coal wagon, a few areas to clean up, then ready for paint. It also needs some proper wheels, which are on order.

 

 

And then back to my home territory of soldered construction, an ABS whitemetal kit for an 'iron mink' (what a great name, iron mink ) . This kit was missing one side of the brake detailing, which I've replaced with a spare from a Cambrian kit, along with the brake levers. The roof is made from 0.3mm brass sheet soldered to the carcass and will have roof ribs and archers rivets added in due course.

 

 

[Keira]

Narrow boat done!

 

 

Well actually its been done for about 2 weeks but I've only got around to photographing it now, oops 

 

As I want the layout to have lights for some spooky night running, I've added a head lamp and small stove light inside the cabin to this model, which I think do look rather lovely if I do say so my self. (This does mean that at some point I need to add lights to my locos and rolling stock too, I fitted no.1450 with a firebox flicker a while a go, does that count?).

 

 

The paintwork is Stewarts & Lloyds in spirit, but in keeping with making this model out of scraps and bits that were never going to be used otherwise, I've used some surplus transfers and made up my own company for the boat. This is also why in some places the paintwork looks a little bit, odd? the paint I used was also surplus, and quite old, it didn't behave itself very much. Weathering is as working condition, the sides still sparkle but with some grime and the traditional canal style décor is kept clean, would be a bit of a shame to cover it all up with roof dirt and sleeper grime! The hull, deck and roof have seen better days, I've tried to depict where foot prints and other things would disrupt and or scrape the dirt off the deck and roof, creating a patchy effect in these areas. The "dirt" on the roof and deck appear more grey than they really are on the photos, in real life they have a little more brown to them. The hull was weathered with old brown and black pastels reduced to dust to make a homemade weathering powder, this was streaked down the hull sides by diluting the powders down with white spirit and flicking the paint brush up and down the hull various times, with a slightly different mix of colours each time.  

 

 

Of course to complete a model of a working canal boat, we need a skipper! This one is from Modelu, he's part of the loco crew range and was holding an oil can, but he's obviously found a new job (and dropped the oil can *in fact that oil can would probably look the part placed on the roof along with a cup of tea for the skipper! will get on that, always details to add with a model railway!) A detail which probably shouldn't be there is the milk churn, so why is a milk churn sitting on the deck of a tug narrow boat, well it just looked nice there I thought so why not.

 

 

 

 

*Edit, the skipper now has a suitable cup of tea! couldn't find the oil can though*

 

 

Edited October 10, 2021 by Keira

[phil_sutters]

A suitably grubby little workhorse.

The milk churn could be being carried to an isolated lock-keeper's cottage with fresh water in it. This was done on the Somerset and Dorset to supply crossing keepers, whose cottages weren't on mains supplies, with the churns sometimes travelling on the footplate.

[Keira]

Oh lovely, the more you know! 

[Keira]

My first kit build would turn out to be something that seemed to drag on and on for few years, being rebuilt several times as my kit building abilities progressed, in fact, the first post in this thread is of that very kit, a Comet E148 brake compo, which I only officially finished this year. Back when I first got into railway modelling however, my initial thoughts into building my first kit turned to something a bit more cute and small, the David Geen GWR Y2 fruit van whitemetal kit, one of my favourite prototypes and what I thought would be a good entry point into the hobby, I just seemed to have missed the opportunity to pick one up though as that range of kits became unavailable shortly into my endeavours. No matter though, because over the past couple of weeks, as a side project I've been converting an old Cooper Craft wooden body Mink van into a Y2 fruit van, to finally have this dinky little wagon part of the collection!

 

 

I picked up this Cooper Craft mink second hand, already built, and very nicely built at that, which is why I felt a little bit guilty stripping the paint off and cutting it to pieces, but here we go, no going back now! I don't imagine the dimensions are exact for a Y2, but it looks about right and the end vents and cross bracing are correct for the preserved example at the SVR at one stage or another (the end bracing has varied over the years).

 

The van with the transfers stripped and wheels removed.

 

 

The original axle boxes and springs removed, replaced with MJT examples correct for the Y2 prototype. I've had a go at adding the vacuum cylinder and its associated bits, its a tad small, its made out of spare bits I had lying around, but I think it will do. This photo reminds me, I must glue back on the DCI brake handles, I snapped them both off by accident...

 

The MJT replacement W irons and axle boxes.

 

 

And here we are, basically ready for paint with the tread boards and 14mm disc wheels fitted, I'm happy to report the ride height seems to be just about right when compared to my carriages, looks the part! Just needs the vacuum fitted gear on the ends and sprat and winkle couplings (and the brake levers glued back on!!).

 

 

When it has received its "non passenger carrying brown" livery, I think this will look nice and at home with a couple of choc and cream carriages on the railway...

[Keira]

The modelling mojo has been on annual leave it seems for far to long, its back now though, so its time to crack on with some of the new projects on the bench (and then some of the old projects on the bench, dearie me will I ever learn!)

 

This is a old mainline dean goods, the real life ones simply look fab in my opinion, one of my favourites, and this model was available for purchase at my local model railway club in good working condition for a really good price, so I picked it up! I'm going to be making many detailing modifications to it and its going to definitely be a project to keep me busy (if I don't already have enough of those!). One thing that I am not planning on doing to it though, is replacing the chassis, and mechanism. Have I gone mad? Absolutely! The mechanism is getting on a bit and going round the club layout it certainly sounded it, but now after a thorough clean and service, the resulting noise levels are pleasantly surprising. The gears for the tender drive are visible on the tender underframe which I want to try and hide if I can and I think the 1980s would there wheel flanges back! They are monstrously huge! I'm going try and bring this existing chassis up to standard and to begin, I've had a look at the wheel flanges, to the lathe!

 

 

This is my "micro" lathe, it lives on my desk, and its great for small scale railway modelling! I got this one second hand at much, much lower than the retail price! Anyway, the plan was to turn down the wheel flange profile and when trying to figure out how to remove the wheels from the chassis I was surprised that the wheel tire just popped off, rather convenient for my purposes, and I could simply plop it on a mandrel (a lip stick lid). The tire is held very close to the chuck jaws, and I really should have made a proper mandrel to hold it a tad further away, but the tool post cleared the chuck and all was well.

 

 

The before and after... It's amazing the difference this makes!

 

 

Now what to do with the tender wheels, they aren't as noticeably huge as the drivers but I'll have to check whether they go through finescale points. If they clear points ok, I might not turn them down, but we'll see.

[Keira]

Visitors from the Island of Sodor!

 

Something a bit different from my usual, two of the new Bachmann 812 locos on the bench! These two were in for a repaint from BR black into NWR blue (Humbrol 109 WW1 blue) to become Donald and Douglas from the railway series books. I'm doing these for a friend, my bit was to paint the bits that should be blue, blue, they will then add the rest of the paintwork, details and 3D printed faces too! I'm really happy with how they turned out and look forward to seeing them all completed!

 

[Keira]

I feel I haven’t picked up the soldering iron in a while, and with all the painting/weathering going on I felt a brass kit was in order to spice things up. I saw an Alan Gibson GWR V5 van kit up for sale, and thought, ah yes, that’ll do nicely! 

 

This is where I’m up to, chassis pretty much all done, minus vacuum pipes, sprat and winkle couplings and a general clean up, bit of filing and all that, that will all be done closer to the carriage’s completion. 
 

 

Not much to report on the construction, although I made a bit of a fool of myself with the wheel sets, one of them is designed to wiggle slightly to go round curves, the fixed wheelbase is quite long otherwise. Well I soldered them both in place, one of those moments where you just do something, and then proceed to feel like a bit of a sausage afterwards. It was desoldered and with a bit of clean up it would have been just fine, but instead I decided to fit a “comet” style bogie fitting with a cheese head bolt and nut, and it works a treat.

 

(yes those buffer heads need cleaning up a bit more!)

 

 

I haven’t come across a build of this kit before, it’s quite lovely, a lot of the bits in the design you just think, yes, that makes sense! Anyway, onto the body, and then paint! Into lined crimson lake you go!

 

[Keira]

Progress on the V5

 

The basic body carcass has been assembled with Comet door hinges soldered in, the door bangers will be Archer’s rivets added in the primer stage, I’m also probably going to wait till the paint is on to add the door handles and handrails too. The whitemetal duckets have also been added. The body etches come flat and so require the tumblehome to be formed, this was done using a combination of rubbing the back of a file handle on the back of the coach side where the bend was required, similar to how you can curl paper by running the edge of scissors along it, with the coach sides flat on the cutting mat and doing a similar motion but holding the coach sides up to a steel ruler with a bit of leverage. Still quite a bit to go on the build, the body shell is just resting on the chassis loose in this picture, but the basics are there and it gives an idea of the finished product, exciting!