Building Franken-Duff

[West_riding]

Very pleased to have a working chassis for my Franken-duff! I bought this very rough Hornby Class 47 years ago for under £5 as it only had one bogie, I picked up a second motor bogie for £2 last summer. The £2 motor bogie went up in a lot of smoke when being serviced, but by stripping it out and modifying the chassis I have managed to cobble together something that works! Quite proud that despite my complete lack of electrical knowhow I have got something that runs. Next job is to clean up the body, repaint etc. but at least the tricky bit is done! I have a set of etched name plates for 47474 Rowland Hill in the spares box and the Parcels livery looks fairly straight forward so that is my plan- best way to learn is by having a go and far safer on a scrap loco like this than an expensive one with pristine livery!

[Halvarras]

Absolutely the right approach! Less than £7 all in, and as for the pyrotechnic motor, you'd have struggled to find a proper trailing bogie for £2 so never mind about that, and you now have a few spare parts in stock too!

 

Quite right about giving it a thorough clean - try to avoid soapy stuff, a kitchen scouring type cleaner such as Cif or similar would be better, scrubbed up with an old stiff toothbrush. This should degrease it and prevent the masking tape lifting the paint you've already applied, which is very frustrating!

 

Have fun and let us see the result in due course 🙂!

 

 

[West_riding]

Some more progress, got the last of the humbrol paint off the body shell using oven cleaner and pleased to discover the previous owner had fitted cast metal plating over the head codes and cast buffers. One buffer was missing its head so I drilled this out and added a plastic head from the spares box. The next task is new handrails from old guitar strings. As I am pretty much broke, this conversion is being done with whatever I have at hand!

[West_riding]

Well this is taxing the old eyesight and manual dexterity! Detailing the front of the class 47- guitar string for the handrails and pipes, offcuts of plasticard for the ETH jumper boxes, high visibility headlight and buffer beam reinforcement and a piece if solder for the ETH cable! The coupling hook is out of the spares box and I will add the chain when it's all painted up.

Edited January 8, 2023 by West_riding

[Halvarras]

2 hours ago, West_riding said:

Well this is taxing the old eyesight and manual dexterity! Detailing the front of the class 47- guitar string for the handrails and pipes, offcuts of plasticard for the ETH jumper boxes, high visibility headlight and buffer beam reinforcement and a piece if solder for the ETH cable! The coupling hook is out of the spares box and I will add the chain when it's all painted up.

 

Looks good so far and it's all good practice for your next project 😉!I

 

Mainline Peak? - I did one with scratchbuilt plasticard bufferbeams mounted on the bogies which reused the Mainline bufferbeams carefully cut away from the bodyshell, and IIRC the headcode panels on the original model are not recessed so can be simply cut/filed flat without needing filler to create a flush-fronted Peak with twin market lights to go with your Class 47.......or better still seek out a Replica model with (hopefully still working) headlights! (Moulding the nameplates as raised details on the Mainline model was not exactly a brilliant idea.........)

Airfix Class 31? Finding a smooth-running example is the hardest part......

 

To match your '47' both would ideally need bodyside steps and roof boiler filler hatches panelling over with 10thou plasticard (and the '31' new EE exhausts from 20thou). Of course you may struggle to find either of these for a fiver but there of lots of them around so more likely to turn up at car boot sales and market stalls, etc.

[Richard_A]

Looking good, I have an old Hornby class 47 on my bench as well but have got a double motored lima chassis with ultrascale wheels which I've had for almost 10 years so I'm counting them as free now, I have splashed out on a few Shawplan bits, as I have had all the bits for 10 or so years it owes me nothing really 

[West_riding]

Amazing how good it starts to look when you put some primer on! Need to add another coat and then I can start adding the top coat next weekend

[West_riding]

First time I have tried airbrushing a diesel and very pleased with how its going- need a lot of touching up and all the detail painting but definitely going in the right direction. The yellow was a right pain and in hindsight I should have primed the ends in white not grey. 

[West_riding]

Amazing how it comes to life with the details picked out! The ends were brush painted and needed about 15 coats to cover so are not as smooth as I would like, but overall I am really happy with how it's coming together. Next weekend's project is varnishing and decals. I have never tried airbrushing varnish before so that will be an experience. Got some Vallejo gloss and satin so see how that goes on.

[JDW]

Great to see what can be done with a bit of imagination and effort

[Halvarras]

4 hours ago, West_riding said:

The ends were brush painted and needed about 15 coats to cover so are not as smooth as I would like

 

 

Unfortunately I also find that the colour density of modern paint (enamel - too entrenched (old!) to switch to acrylic now), especially yellow, is nothing like what it used to be in the past - Humbrol, Railmatch, Precision, applied with a brush all would give adequate coverage in no more than 3 coats - 4 if the underlying colour was a bit dark. White primer/undercoat definitely a good idea these days.

 

Looking good so far!

[West_riding]

Finished bar some more light weathering. So happy with how this has turned out! Best loco repaint I have done so far. Cost was £5 for the loco, £2 for the other power bogie, £2 for the nameplates and maybe £1 for paint, transfers etc. Out of my existing stocks. All in all £10.

[Clive martin]

Hi your class 47 looks very nice ,back in the early 90s i used to rebuild detail Hornby class 47s i was always on the look out for scruffy second hand examples,i used to pay round about a tenner for these ,i spent many happy hours removeing the paint guide lines on the body sides adding wire hand rails etc,i also built an example in parcel sector livery 47 533 i was quite proud of the bang up to date livery on my model but it soon became historic as 47 533 did not last very long in this livery as it was involved in an accident and scrapped! I look forward to seeing some more of your work !