Lima EW I B SBB to BN conversion

[Swissrail]

This is my first upgrade and repaint of a Lima EW I coach. It's the first of a set of six coaches for my projected BLS train from the seventies so naturally it had to have the rather gorgeous blue and cream livery the BLS introduced in 1976. After a great deal of research and conferring with various people who remembered the livery, a letter to the BLS themselves (who told me they didn't have a colour reference!) and various cottage industry manufacturers in Switzerland, I came up with a mixture of RAL 5017 and a touch of violet. It may not be 100% but it appears no one, not even the railway company who used it, can categorically tell me it's wrong.

 

The coach started out like this, in SBB 90s NPZ grey and blue:

 

 

The first job was to remove the moulded handrails at the doors and drill 0.3mm for wire ones, strip the paint off and prime the shell using Halfords grey primer straight from the rattlecan. If you're careful the finish can be as good as an airbrush:

 

 

The interior got a full repaint into prototypical cobalt blue and red. As supplied, the interior was coloured in green and red, correct in basic terms for the SBB although lacking in detail. The underframe was also weathered at this point and the two reassembled:

 

 

The blue and cream was then applied using the airbrush, cream first so the blue didn't show through. It's a bit strident to begin with but later weathering will take care of that. The doors were sprayed with AK Interactive "Extreme Metal" AK475 brass paint which comes pre-thinned for airbrush use. It's lovely stuff.

 

 

Et voilà, the finished article. The transfers are my own artwork printed by Steve at Railtec Transfers and a wonderful job he did of them too. The weathering on the shell is a MIG neutral wash applied and then wiped off with cotton buds dipped in thinners as suggested by George Dent. The idea is that it tones down the paint without making it look too dirty. The roof was replaced with the correct type and weathered with Railmatch Roof Dirt lightened slightly with mid grey as the dirt in Switzerland wasn't as sooty as it was here and it is in fact dirtier than it appears in this photo. I worked from a picture taken by the great Max Hintermann whose fabulous photographs of the Swiss railways in the 60s and 70s were my inspiration to do something other than simply run models of modern Swiss stock straight out of the box.

Another four repaints and a Roco SBB D to rebuild into the correct BLS version to go...followed by literally countless others! I hope I have sufficient years left on the planet to do them all.

 

Edited November 15, 2021 by Swissrail

[Samedan]

It warms my heart that people are prepared to go to these lengths to achieve accuracy, when models of Swiss trains out of the box are generally such a high standard. I’ve got enough on my plate assembling and painting 16mm/ft models, so I’ll continue to run pretty much out of the box in HO. But I might pluck up the courage and find the time to weather a few older models perhaps. 
Thanks for providing a clear explanation of how you went about this and I look forward to the finished set.

[Swissrail]

I'm working at the moment on the artwork for the transfers that will adorn my next two coaches. I'm going to take the Lima EWI A and B shown below, cut them in half and reassemble them as a pair of AB's. One will be in the blue and cream you see above and the other will be in the equally attractive 1960's Bodensee Toggenburg green and cream livery with the full title along the side.

 

 

Edited October 13, 2021 by Swissrail

[Swissrail]

This is the transfer sheet I've drawn up for these two coaches plus a D-wagen parcels car I'll be converting from a Roco SBB model at some stage. This now just has to go to Railtec for printing.

 

 

Some of the elements such as those inside boxes or circles look a bit skew but that's simply an artifact of my graphics card when zoomed out this far. They are correct in reality.

Edited October 15, 2021 by Swissrail

[Mol_PMB]

Very nice indeed!

What software do you use to prepare your transfer artwork, and which file format do you supply to Steve?

Cheers,

Mol

[Swissrail]

I use Corel Draw X5 and I export it in Adobe Illustrator .ai format for Steve. I also make sure all the text is exported as curves so that he doesn't need the various font files.

[Mol_PMB]

Many thanks. I should be able to do the same.

[Swissrail]

This morning I took my courage, and a mitre saw, in both hands, and cut the shells in half. I left the glazing in place as it is a one piece "inner shell" that can be cut at the same time. I have also removed the moulded handrails. The next stage is to strip the paint from them.

 

[Swissrail]

The shells are now stripped and reassembled in their new AB configuration. The plastic filler pieces are there to replace the material removed by the saw. I put the roof on temporarily to keep everything stable and square while the solvent welds set overnight.

 

Edited October 17, 2021 by Swissrail

[Swissrail]

The interiors are next. Because the second and first class seating is different, the point at which they meet had to be modified to give the correctly staggered passageway from one to the other. This meant cutting the last second class seat on the right down by about half and reattaching the armrest, filling the consequent hole in the floor with 40thou plasticard and creating a new partition wall. I've yet to add the door.

 

Edited October 21, 2021 by Swissrail

[Swissrail]

The ends of the bodyshells have to be modified. The double stepped end on these Lima models is only accurate for SBB types, the BT and BLS ones are different:

 

This is the BT version:

 

And this is the BLS one:

 

 

And here are the modified shells:

 

   

 

[chb2488]

Talking of detail differences (and you may want to check with a reliable source), but there is a fair chance the BT AB gangway/communication doors were made up of two leaves each.

[Swissrail]

It's funny you should mention that. A Swiss friend of mine pointed that fact out to me last night together with a photo which I then used to create new gangway doors.

It does alter the look of the ends quite a bit. Here is my modification:

 

 

The new doors aren’t yet fixed in place, I’ve just put them in position for this photo which is why they’re not quite correct at the top. First I’ll drill them for grab handles, paint them in white aluminium and once the shell has been painted, they’ll be permanently attached. They’re not quite 100% perfect…I did entertain the notion of having them etched in brass but the company I use has a minimum sheet size which is far too big for a small number of items such as doors and a few vents.

Edited October 25, 2021 by Swissrail

[Swissrail]

I've now ftted the correct large headed round buffers based on photos sent by friends of mine. I filed the original clipped oval heads off and drilled the shanks with a pin chuck 0.8mm and fitted brass buffer heads I had in my bits box from my 4mm days...a set of MJT Great Western ones which were a perfect size based on what I got by scaling off those photographs.



The next job was simply to cut the MJT shanks down and superglue them into place:



I think they look pretty good for an improvised job.

Edited October 25, 2021 by Swissrail

[Swissrail]

Today the roof got its rather distinctive roof-end rainstrips after the original SBB style groove was filled in.

 

[Swissrail]

As a result of my project to build a six car BLS EW I train I realised the SBB coaches I'll be using as donor vehicles don't have the correct pattern roofs. The BLS ones have ventilator grilles above the passenger doors and the SBB ones don't. I wracked my brains to come up with a decent way of making the grilles so they'd be indistinguishable from the factory created ones and I came to the conclusion there was really only one way to do it. I was going to have to have the correct design 3D printed in resin. The problem was I'd never successfully touched 3D CAD before yesterday; the few times I'd tried it in the past I gave up in disgust, but after going through some posts on the subject here on RMWeb I downloaded the free version of Autodesk Fusion 360 and watched a beginners' video. It's one of the steepest learning curves I've ever had to climb but it's a good bit simpler to use and more intuitive than the other packages I tried before. I'm never going to design complex machines with this stuff but roofs and other simple(ish) components look like being within my reach. It's frustrating to begin with but I've become addicted to the process and it's actually a lot of fun seeing something recognisable appear as you intended it to.  After a lot of false starts here is my, as yet, bare bones Lima style roof with the corner locating clips constructed. It's still to have two more clips along both sides of the roof's length and the ribs, rainstrips and ventilator panels are yet to be done but I think it's coming on nicely.

 

[Swissrail]

Back to the BT shell. I've fabricated the extractor fans at each end and primed it. The first coat showed up some deficiencies in the filling of the centre seam and the modifications at the ends. After some extra filling and rubbing down, a second coat of Halfords grey primer was added and now the surface is perfectly smooth and ready for its first coat of RAL 1015 beige.

 

 

 

[Swissrail]

The BT shell has now had its coats of green and cream. The cream is Vallejo Model Air acrylic and although it's marketed as "airbrush ready" I find it needs a little thinning to make it flow more easily through the airbrush. Experimentation has shown that three drops to every ten of paint is about right. The green is the correct RAL 6009 but as it's sold as a military colour by AK Interactive it's EXTREMELY matt. That said I have to give the green half of the shell a coat of gloss in any case so the Railtec tansfers will take correctly to the side without silvering. The paint is very nice stuff with an incredible opacity...some of the best paint I've come across which needs thinned quite a bit for airbrushing as it's quite thick. Isopropyl alcohol does the job and this was recommended by the firm who sold it to me.

 

Edited November 5, 2021 by Swissrail

[Swissrail]

The BLS shell has now had its paint job. Next task is the transfers which should be delivered from Railtec soon. Masking for that first class stripe to go round onto the end wasn't easy!

 

Edited November 25, 2021 by Swissrail

[Swissrail]

This afternoon I spent time building up the underframe from the various parts in the box together with fabricating a second battery box from plasticard which is found under the AB together with relocating the voltage regulator.

 

[Swissrail]

My wife and I were with relatives in Italy for three weeks over Christmas and New Year so coming back to the dark and dismal UK was a bit of a shock wich gave me a bad case of the January blues. Modelling was not something I wanted to do but I have emerged however and reignited the Lima AB project.

Both shells have had their lettering done and the satin varnish applied to protect it all. Steve at Railtec has done a stellar job of the BT lettering. The colour is spot on. After this comes the weathering which will get done over the weekend.

 

 

 

Alan

Edinburgh

Edited January 26, 2022 by Swissrail

[icn]

On 08/10/2021 at 14:10, Swissrail said:

[...] so naturally it had to have the rather gorgeous blue and cream livery the BLS introduced in 1976. After a great deal of research and conferring with various people who remembered the livery, a letter to the BLS themselves (who told me they didn't have a colour reference!) and various cottage industry manufacturers in Switzerland, I came up with a mixture of RAL 5017 and a touch of violet. It may not be 100% but it appears no one, not even the railway company who used it, can categorically tell me it's wrong.

 

 

Your colours certainly look right to me - the BLS still has a consist of these coaches parked in Burgdorf I believe (I haven't been there since the start of the pandemic though). There are some photos of it here (the appearance of the blue varies quite a bit depending on lighting):

https://www.bls.ch/en/unternehmen/ueber-uns/unternehmensportraet/geschichte/bls-stiftung

[Swissrail]

Thank you for that. I have seen that rake of EW1s and I have ben advised by a friend of mine in Switzerland that the blue the BLS used for it is too dark and that I shouldn't use it as a reference.

This picture of Max Hntermann's below is the one I used after much deliberation.

 

 

 

Edited January 29, 2022 by Swissrail

[Samedan]

On 29/01/2022 at 13:14, Swissrail said:

This picture of Max Hntermann's below is the one I used after much deliberation.

Photos can be unreliable for colour matching. Never mind the blue, the upper bodywork looks more LNWR off-white in this photo. I think your “cream” looks more correct, although it does look quite buttery.

[Swissrail]

Photos and memories were all I had to go on. I do consider that I'm pretty close as Andreas Hui of the venerable Hui Modellbau in Guarda told me he thought it looked correct. I do know the cream is correct as the BLS were able to tell me it was RAL 1015, in common with other railways that used it like the BT , SOB, SMB etc.

Edited January 31, 2022 by Swissrail