Swiss HO Conversions and Repaints

[Swissrail]

Well after some delay, mainly caused by my cowardice at the prospect of taking sandpaper to a coach that cost a hundred and twenty quid, I finally grabbed my courage in both hands and went for it. Because the burgundy colour of the bottom half of the sides is actually the colour of the plastic, I was able to use a small section of a 5000 grit sanding stick to remove the old SBB double arrow emblem without worrying about patch painting the red and possibly not getting a perfect match. The area where it was removed however now has a slight gloss as opposed to the semi matt factory finish but all things considered I'm pleased with how well it went. I've dealt with the problem by feathering the edges of the "hole" in the varnish and once I give it a new coat to protect the TEE transfers, it'll be invisible...even more so once the shell is weathered. Now that it's done, I think it's pretty much indistinguishable from the factory TEE version of the coach. Thanks go once again to Steve at Railtec for doing another excellent job, particularly in the colour matching of the transfer.

 

 

Edited May 31, 2022 by Swissrail

[Swissrail]

This is the finished article.

 

 

 

 

The sides were given a single mist coat of MIG General Dust to take the ex-works shine off the paintwork and, to give the impression that the coach was cleaned recently, I ran a cotton bud dipped in thinners along the rainstrip to simulate where the carriage cleaning plant's brushes take the dirt off the bottom edge of the roof. I then gave the roof another dusting of Railmatch dirt to soften the edge of the cleaned line that was created. Also dirt was run into the vents on the the kitchen side and the door seams and the underframe got liberal quantities of muck thrown at it. It now looks like a real vehicle with a good few miles on the clock rather than a showcase model.

Edited August 3, 2022 by Swissrail

[Swissrail]

After a bit of a summer layoff, this is next for a liberal coating of grime to match that of the 1930 restaurant car WR10226.

 

 

 

 

 

[Swissrail]

First job is the interior, which Roco supplied in plain brown plastic with a separate corridor partition that was roughly the right shade to represent wood. I painted the compartment partitions in  Humbrol 71 cream and then 186 tan which, when brushed over the cream, gives the impression of wood grain. The seats were painted red in non-smoking and green in the smoking compartments as per prototype. The floor was given a coat of mid grey. I then added pictures on the compartment walls which are simply a self adhesive freezer label marked out in 5 x 3mm rectangles to represent the picture frames and then dabs of felt tip pen to create the impression of the paintings used.

They are then sealed in using Winsor & Newton Galleria satin varnish.

 

Edited September 12, 2022 by Swissrail

[Swissrail]

A bit of a disaster today and it was entirely my own fault.

Three days ago I started spraying the bodyshell with MIG general dust filter to give it that well-worn and grimy look that restaurant WR10226 got. Everything seemed to be fine until I handled it. A fingerprint got left behind in the dusty finish. Odd, I thought, because I had left the shell for 24 hours to harden before going near it again but there was my mark, as large as life, ruining the finish. I decided to see if a dry cotton bud would do anything to what I'd done and it did. It removed the dusty finish as if it was actual dust. At this point, the job a right-off, I decided to see if washing the shell with warm soapy water and an old toothbrush would take the rest of it off. Again, as if the MIG enamel washes were water paint, the whole lot went down the drain and I was left with the original factory finish. This, at least, was fortunate because it wasn't on this occasion a repaint with decals or that would have been catastrophic since when I do decals for a particular vehicle I don't generally do spares. There's one set for everything and that's it.

I could not figure it out and then it dawned on me that, because I hadn't done any of this type of thing over the summer I had forgotten the routine. A routine which starts with washing the shells in warm soapy water before anything gets sprayed from the airbrush. Oil was my downfall. The normal oil from my fingers transferred to the plastic in handling the model had caused the paint not to adhere at all. A lesson learned.

But it could have been a lot worse!

 

UPDATE: I have discovered after discussions with the MIG supplier that it may have been mould release agent on the bodyshell that was causing the problem. I had wondered at the time how the paint could have failed to adhere over the entire model. I couldn’t imagine how grease from my fingers would be so evenly distributed over the bodyshell’s surface that absolutely none of the paint stuck at all. Mould release agent explains it completely.

 

FURTHER UPDATE:

The problem persisted. Each time I painted with MiG filters darkened with MiG wash, the resultant finish wouldn't dry. It turns out that a weathering mix that contains a wash needs to be set in place by being wiped down with the matching MiG thinners or they stay wet and water soluble. Leaving it as an undisturbed finish won't work. I have now created a weathering mix using Railmatch enamels which will be used from now on.

Edited October 10, 2022 by Swissrail

[Swissrail]

After the episode of the MiG wash/filter mix not drying, I had to come up with another way of creating the dark grey grime I wanted on this coach. Using this as my prototype..

 

 

...I came up, after some trial and error, with a mix of enamels I had in my stock:

 

About 1/4 jar of Railmatch Roof Dirt
A few drops of Railmatch Weathered Black
Three or four drops of Humbrol 62 Leather for a little bit of warmth.

 

I sprayed two coats of this, removing patches over the insignia etc., after each pass using a cotton bud dampened with thinners. I then added AK dirt & dust effects AK4062 to create streaks between and under the windows. It also has the advantage of creating a faded effect to the green area where the insignia is. It gets painted on in vertical lines and after a few minutes you go over it with a flat brush to streak it down the coach side and blend it in, taking away the hard edges that are created when applying it. I then used the dust/rainmarks and streaking dirt pencils from the AK10044 Weathering Pencils set to create variations in tone. You simply draw on the marks you want and then soften and blend them with a barely damp flat brush. They are excellent for detail work like this. I then created a light wash of AK012 Streaking Grime to darken the dust effects by combining some of the paint with MiG thinners. Then I applied another light wash made up in the same way from Abteilung Dark Rust pigment powder and pigment fixer to create the reddish brown finish. Once applied, I wiped it down with a cotton bud dampened in more pigment fixer. After that I used a little more rainmark pencil to redefine the marks under the windows. The glazing strips were masked off with Maskol and then the polished chrome frames given a coat of light grey to simulate age-related dulling of the metal. The roof was fitted with rainstrips above the doors, streaked with MiG Dark Wash and then sprayed with Railmatch Roof Dirt. The underframe was done in the same way as the other coaches I have completed and illustrated in earlier posts.

This is the result:

 

 

and this is what it looked like before I started. It's quite a transformation.

 

Edited October 21, 2022 by Swissrail

[Swissrail]

Not quite Swiss this time. Courtesy of Heris, two Deutsche Bundesbahn MDDm911 car carriers. Only six of them were ever built in 1956, 1958 and 1960 for use on only one route, strangely, the Hamburg to Chiasso run through the Gotthard tunnel. I’ve therefore an excuse for having two of them to run at the back of a train composed of partly Swiss, German and Italian coaches.

 

 

These beautiful monsters been given the usual treatment of MiG General Dust and Railmatch roof and frame dirt to give them that well-worn look.

Edited November 18, 2022 by Swissrail

[Swissrail]

And for my next trick...another restaurant car!

The plan this time is to turn this:

 

 

into this:

 

 

It involves fitting a new pantograph, the metal steps below the doors and trickiest of all, removing the Klein windows' glazing bars and frames. This will be done with finer and finer sandpaper followed by TCut for a final polishing. The shell will be repainted in green and Railtec transfers applied. It'll then be weathered but not too much as I think this one's colours need to be shown off a bit.

Here's a colour shot of one of the prototypes by the great Max Hintermann. This is the level of weathering I propose to do:

 

Edited November 9, 2022 by Swissrail

[Swissrail]

The first job after stripping the paint was to remove the steps under the main doors as they have to be replaced. Some very careful filing and sanding was required to preserve the tumblehome at the bottom of the door aperture.

The white line at the end of the side is filler that was needed to correct for the misregistration of the mould where the end meets the side.

 

 

The interior needed some major surgery. Liliput had made the bulkhead at the toliet end of the saloon solid, so it needed to be cut to create the doorway. They had also omitted the bulkhead between the main saloon and the single table that was used by the staff so that had to be added. The kitchen was a bit of a shambles in that the bulkhead was in the wrong place that meant there was no access to the kitchen at all. The corridor wall and the bulkhead had to be cut and removed. The hole created in the floor was filled with 60 thou plasticard and Tamiya putty. The bulkhead was then repositioned further to the right to create the entrance to the kitchen. The stump of the remaining bulkhead behind the rightmost seat of the staff table had to be extended so that there was no way for passengers to see into the kitchen from the saloon.

I then created the upstand behind the sinks opposite the corridor wall as these can be seen from outside the coach and are quite distinctive:

 

 

 

 

I also opened up the bulkhead between the kitchen and the storage area and created some high level cupboards. I don't think these details are particularly accurate but I think it looks better than the bare kitchen interior that Liliput created. I wish I could lay my hands on an LS Models spare EWI kitchen/restaurant interior. It's got every detail imaginable and much nicer seats. All that's missing is the food!

 

Edited March 17, 2023 by Swissrail

[vectispete]

Hi

 

i have just seen this thread as I venture into Swiss Railway modelling for the first time. 

 

You have made made a fantastic job of the examples shown on here. I too want to have weathered locos and stock and will very much refer to your work once I summon up the courage!

 

Is there a thread of your layout here on RM? 

 

Do do you have much reference material on coaches used for the various lines in Switzerland? I am looking at modelling late 1970s Interlaken OST. Much research has been started but I may have opened a can of worms with my choice. All interesting though as I find new information week by week.

 

Pete

 

[Swissrail]

Thank you Vectispete for those kind words. It is very rewarding to see the transformation from out-of-the-box pefection to real life appearance when the dirt is added. As to a layout thread, I have no layout...as yet. There are plans to build an eight metre long garden room more or less specifically intended to house my future layout along one wall with spirals at each end leading to the fiddle yard underneath but it's a couple of years away at the moment, so I satisfy myself with repaints and conversions of coaches. I have a fairly enormous library of photos, artwork I've created and information I've gathered over the last seventeen years or so since I abandoned modelling British Railways when my interest moved over to continental modelling in general and 60s & 70s Switzerland in particular.

If you're going to weather your stock , in my experience you need three things before you start: Martin Welch's book on weathering, George Dent's book on weathering (read both from cover to cover thoroughly, preferably more than once) and as good an airbrush as you can afford. Doing this kind of work with a cheap airbrush will cause disaster and heartache in equal measure. Contemporary continental models are exquisitely crafted and very expensive so you don't want to be ruining them by attempting to weather or modify them with the use of poor quality tools. My airbrush is a Harder & Steenbeck Infinity 2 in 1. True, it cost a small fortune but the finish I can get with it is second to none and a considerable improvement over the Badger 155 I had before it. I had to push the boat out on the thing because, as an incurable perfectionist, I literally wouldn't have been able to sleep at night if I had bought something less well put together. It is a thing of beauty as well as being a superb tool.

Another tip I would give about weathering is not to use your imagination about how you think it ought to look. Copy a photo of a particular vehicle. I doesn't matter if it's not the prototype of the coach you are actually working on, but it will show you how the dirt is distributed, where it is, how much there is and what colours it is. 

PM me if you have any specific questions about how to go about it, what paints to go for etc. and if you need a photo of something specific I may have it...my picture library has over 100,000 files in it on virtually every Swiss railway company of the last sixty years. Good luck!

Edited March 17, 2023 by Swissrail

[Swissrail]

I next had to create new steps for under the main doors. I used an piece of Evergreen plastic channel section that gave me the step once the top web was removed. I thought that creating the step from two pieces glued together would be too flimsy:

 

 

It was attached to the coach using a reinforcement piece on the inside that meant the step would have more strength than if it was simply attached from underneath:

 

 

I then had to file away part of the chassis to clear this new element:

 

 

Painting is next. Halfords' rattlecan grey primer very carefully applied followed by three or four sprayed coats of Cherry Paints SBB Green...

EDIT:

...which turns out not to be the correct colour. It's more akin to GWR & BR green in that there's not enough blue in it. I eventually found a supplier in Grimsby that does the correct NCS range of colours. As it turns out, although the 'absolute' colour is NCS 8010-B90G, that had too much blue in it. I therefore took an LS Models RIC coach in what I judged to be the correct green to Humberside Paints and they spectroscopically scanned it to assess its colour. I asked them why the given shade was too blue and they told me it's caused by the fact that British pigments are slightly different from the ones used in Switzerland. The colour they came up with from the scan was one shade removed from the 'real' one, namely, NCS 8010-G10Y, so I got them to mix me a 100ml tin in cellulose which should last me for years.

 

 

Edited March 17, 2023 by Swissrail

[vectispete]

Thank you for your assistance. I will ensure I get a good airbrush. I have 2 articles from a British railway magazine showing how to achieve Martin Welch's weathering but had never heard of George Dent. I will look out for his book.

 

I assume for the 1970s period most of the 'internal' coaching stock were EW Is? Have you weathered any of these? It is a pity many contributors have lost many photos from the forum. 

 

I look forward to your further postings on this thread in the meantime. The transformation of the stock is truly superb.

 

Pete

[Swissrail]

Hi Pete

Sorry I missed this most recent post of yours.

The internal coaching stock in the 70s was a mixture of EWI (built 1956-1967) and II (built 1965 -1975) together with the lightsteel coaches (built 1937 -1957). There are several types of these but the main ones are these two:

 

 

There were also lightsteel restaurant cars, in fact, the one I'm working on now is a lightsteel:

 

 

There were also these heavyweight steel coaches from the 1920s and before:

 

 

The only EWIs I've worked on so far are the two BLS ones I showed you and this Bodensee Toggenburg AB that was built from the other halves of the two coaches that were used to create the BLS one:

 

 

Alan

Edited November 18, 2022 by Swissrail

[chb2488]

Hello Alan, the Leichtstahl first class coach up there is one of the two Pneuwagen, which used to run on Michelin bogies. Not exactly part of the ‚main build‘, but all the more interesting!

[Swissrail]

Agreed chb2488. I was trying to emphasise the central entrance variant but I couldn't find a picture of one! I'll try to find one that's more typical.

 

 

Edited November 18, 2022 by Swissrail

[Swissrail]

I've decided to postpone this project for now. I applied the lettering to one side as you can see but I managed to get it all a millimetre too high and now that I know it's not right I can hardly bear to look at it. I've asked Steve at Railtec if he can reprint the SPEISEWAGEN     WAGON RESTAURANT lettering again for me so I can strip this attempt off and then do it properly. I must have been having an off day because I thought I'd checked and double checked the alignment and only noticed the error after it was too late to do anything about it. I left it for a couple of days to see if I could just let it go but I can't. Only once I can get rid of the mistake and redo that side in one go will I be able to come back to it and finish it. This one's been a bit of a pig actually. The paint I was using is cellulose and the colour wasn't right to begin with and then I couldn't get a decent finish so it was stripped back to the plastic twice before I was happy with it. Now I have this lettering debacle! I just have to drop it and come back to it after my batteries have recharged.

 

Edited December 12, 2022 by Swissrail

[vectispete]

Hi Alan

 

what a shame. It looks so good but if you know it’s not quite correctly placed then I see why you would want to re-do it. You must be frustrated.

 

Time to pick one of those other 300 to make a start on. I look forward to seeing the next project

 

Pete

[Swissrail]

I decided I needed to get a move on with this project so I thought I'd have a go at the windows. As you can see the original model had Klein windows:

 

 

But they have to be modified to the earlier full-pane drop down type. I had seen videos on You Tube that showed the way aeromodellers remove unsightly seams etc. from aircraft canopies so I decided to try it. I used various sanding sticks, starting with fairly rough to get the window frames off and then went to finer and finer grades to get the glazing completely flat as it is very slightly concave as moulded:

 

 

I used further finer and finer flourpapers until I ended up polishing with TCut which gave me the high gloss transparency I was looking for:

 

 

What I need to do now is add the hooded vents and the little knobs on the inside that are used by passengers to pull the windows down.

Edited January 19, 2023 by Swissrail

[Swissrail]

The Leichstahl restaurant is on hold for the moment...again...as I noticed that my transfer sheet only had two number panels when I should've drawn four. I'm waiting for Steve at Railtec to do me a spare pair.

In the meantime I decided to get underway with something else: the service/bar car for the Reisebüro Mittelthurgau's 1980s observation car train...

 

 

I have the five Roco observation cars, beautiful things they are too, but the service and bar car isn't made by anyone so I decided to create it to give me the correct six car formation. It's the third vehicle back from the loco in this picture. Here's another shot of it...

 

 

Finding pictures of it in its RMT guise was very difficult and this and one or two other distance shots are all I have of it in this form.

After a lot of research and conferring with people on the German Railways forum, it transpired that this was a modification of a DSG BR4ymg-52 speiseraum. This Roco model isn't available except as a three car set (45920) together with a 1st/2nd class Schnellzugwagen AB4bm-63 and a 2nd class Schnellzugwagen B4üm-63 and it took me a long time to find one. When I did finally track a set down on Ebay, it was in unopened mint condition and only cost me about £70, a real bargain.

 

 

It still exists as the service car of the Rheingold tourist train but it's been modified again and has lost five of its windows on one side...

 

 

This photo, however, gives me a great view of the grille that took the place of one of the windows when a diesel generator was installed in the coach. Using the GIMP software has enabled me to get a broadside view that I can use to get the dimensions so I can build it.

 

 

The first thing I'll need to do is strip the DB green and all the lettering from it (heartbreaking I know as it's a lovely vehicle as is), create that grille and the exhaust ports on the roof, and then repaint it in RAL 3004 carmine red and RAL 1001 beige. I have already drawn the lettering and Mittelthurgau crest and both have since been printed up beautifully by Steve at Railtec.

 

 

Edited February 28, 2023 by Swissrail

[Swissrail]

The light steel restaurant is back on. Steve at Railtec sent me the replacement transfers and so progress could continue:

 

 

I put the body onto its chassis temporarily just to photograph it more easily. The lettering is now correctly placed on the bodysides but as to the inscriptions, it turns out that when originally built, these coaches only had French and German titles on both sides. In 1959 it was decided to include Italian so one of the French inscriptions was removed and replaced with the 'CARROZZA RISTORANTE' lettering as seen above.

The handrails are the supplied Liliput ones and they are overscale but I fitted them anyway because filling in the holes and redrilling would have ruined the paint job. Since this car has had more than its fair share of delays in its conversion I swallowed my instincts and decided not to let perfection get in the way of the good. They're not massively obvious as they are painted green and blend in quite well. If I'd been modelling this car in red however, the handrails would have had to be changed since, being yellow by this stage they would have stood out like a sore thumb.

I've also made a discovery that I can spray Winsor & Newton satin varnish straight from the jar with the compressor set to 28psi. Diluting it was never easy since the water content sometimes caused it to blob. This way it goes on really nicely and produces a lovely finish. I use my older Badger 155 for this job as it has a 0.6mm needle as opposed to my Harder & Steenbeck's 0.4mm and 0.2mm needles. They're just too fine to allow the undiluted varnish to pass. The 0.6mm Badger needle works really well and gives a bigger spray pattern which is ideal for varnishing.

Edited March 18, 2023 by Swissrail

[Swissrail]

This is the finished interior. I found out that there were curtains that came about one third of the way up the windows in the saloon that gives a quite distinctive look from outside so I added a strip of 10thou plasticard on each side of the interior painted in the correct colour to represent them.

 

[Swissrail]

And here it is. Finished at last! From this:

 

 

To this:

 

 

 

And this is the original:

 

[Swissrail]

Back to the Reisebüro Mittelthurgau Restaurant/Servicewagen.

 

 

This is the Roco interior as intended for the original BR52ymg model. It's quite a bit better than every other Roco interior I've worked on in that the seats are seperate items clipped into place in the baseplate and the seats on the left are themselves in a subframe that sits inside the main frame. The seating on the right is a one piece moulding that inserts into place from underneath. The tables, kitchen area and partitions are all on the baseplate. This makes modification and painting a lot easier than usual.

As I have no pictures of the interior of this coach, I'm going to have to improvise based on a few assumptions. The tables and associated seating stay as they are although the table and four chairs next to the partition halfway along will have to change sides to allow for the door in the partition to be reversed to allow for the storage cupboard to be built in the area of one of the blanked out windows. All the seating nearest the camera will be removed and replaced with the generator compartment and a storage area which will have a passenger corridor down one side . I can't think of what else to do. No one even at the RMT can tell me how this vehicle was laid out internally and i've never been able to source a drawing of anything but the donor restaurant car.

Edited May 24, 2023 by Swissrail

[Swissrail]

This is the rebuilt interior, with the saloon converted to storage and the restaurant section modified to allow for the corridor to be on the opposite side. The oval table nearest the camera was removed and replaced on the opposite side, that section of the floor cut out and turned round with one stool removed and its locating hole filled into create a space for passengers to pass...

 

 

And here's the bodyshell fitted with a scratchbuilt grille for the generator compartment together with two windows filled in on the other side as per prototype and the whole thing primed with Halfords' primer ready for the red and cream finish. The fun part will be reapplying the gold around the window frames...but I have a cunning plan.

 

 

 

 

 

The next job is to add is to add the various underframe details, such as fuel tank, associated with the generator.

 

 

Edited April 7, 2023 by Swissrail