Finishing unfinished business

[pete_mcfarlane]

Like everyone else, I seem to have a lot of half finished projects. Or more accurately, 95% finished projects that I got distracted from before final completion. So I've recently had a try at finishing off some of these. 

 

First up is a Southern insulated meat van. This was built from a Ratio Banana van, so the roof profile and planking aren't quite right. It had various modifications to the sides, and a new chassis using MJT and ABS components. I'm rather pleased with the result. The only under construction photo I could find shows it drying off after a good scrub, hence the drops of water.....

 

 

Set 331 was one of three sets formed out of a SECR corridor brake composite and a SR 'Thanet' corridor third. These were intended for Ashford - Hastings/New Romney services, although they seem to have wandered a lot. There's even a photo of this set at Snow Hill, presumably on the Margate - Birkenhead through train. This set had mismatched liveries and was quite well photographed, or at least the Brake Composite was due to its rarity. The Third is from a Worsley Works etching - these are sold as 'scratch aids' rather than kits, so I had to source a lot of components. The roof is from a Southern Pride Bulleid coach, the bogies are NNK and the gangways from Roxey Mouldings.

 

The brake composite is a Roxey kit. This was a great kit to build, except for the roof. It's vacuum formed and doesn't sit very well on the coach despite a lot of adjustments. For future builds I think I'll cut down the full height corridor partitions and make a solid roof (using the vac formed one as an outer skin). 

 

This LBSC brake van started life as a Hornby model. It's had new ends, deepened sides, a new chassis and new body handrails. I would suggest that anyone wanting an accurate model one of these vans scratchbuilds one, because it was a lot of work. It's finished as a per an example in the OPC book on LBSC wagons, which has been relettered in the 1936 style with a small 'SR' but with the remains of the earlier much larger letters still showing.

 

Lastly is this Craftsman LSWR T1. There's a detailed account of the build here. It's pretty much as per the kit, except for some detail changes to represent this particular loco, a new bogie, and some extra chassis detail. It's a rather nice little kit. I finished it as E75, which is in a series of H C Casserley photos of Midhurst in 1930. It's a bit out of location for my planned layout, but was a good introduction to etched brass loco kits and will be a useful stand in until I build a SER Q or Q1. 

 

It's was also my first attempt at painting a loco in SR passenger livery - luckily the real thing was quite dirty in the photos, so I copied this. The real thing appeared to have been partially cleaned (tanks but not boiler) several days before Mr Casserley photographed it.

 

[mikeandnel]

Hello Pete

Nice to see what you have achieved. Keep it up and please keep us advised of progress.

I have also built the Craftsman T1 but finished in LSWR livery and have also built a rake of Blacksmith etched brass SECR coaches with SECR livery.

Am waiting with bated breath to see yours finished.

By the way, What is the origin of the station buildings?

Regards

Michael dJS

[pete_mcfarlane]

Michael,

 

The station building is scratchbuilt, using the plans for Westerham but with a more typical round topped canopy. There are some more photos of it here: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/45495-saltmarshe-road/

[mikeandnel]

Thanks Peter,

The reason I asked was that I am now working on a model of Midhurst, period 1875-1900 and the building and canopy are very similar the stations such as Fittleworth which is local to me. I think your efforts in building the station have resulted in an excellent model

Best regards

Michael dJS

[pete_mcfarlane]

This is another long time lurker - a 5 and 9 models LBSC special cattle van. These survived until about 1930, so just about meets my timescale. The kit is whitemetal with etched w-irons. The body castings needed a fair bit of cleaning up, and the corners needed a bit of filling to get a decent finish. It's a good kit, but perhaps not one for the absolute beginner. That said, the only bits I replaced were the brake shoes as they were etched and I prefer cast ones

 

You're left to make your own roof, so I used my new toy - a set of GW Models rollers.Theses rolled a nickle silver roof to the right curvature in no time at all. It's covered with some self adhesive cloth from Craft Computer Paper to give the canvas texture.

 

 

 

[mikeandnel]

Hello Pete

I have also got one of these to build if my hands let me, so your experiences will be of great help (except that I don't have a set of George's rollers!)

Can you please provide a picture of the completed wagon when finished?

Regards

Michael

[pete_mcfarlane]

I will do. It had a coat of primer overnight, so it should be completed in a couple of weeks depending on how much spare time I get. I've also got one of 5 and 9's LBSC open wagins in my to do pile, and again it looks like a nice kit.

[pete_mcfarlane]

I will do. It had a coat of primer overnight, so it should be completed in a couple of weeks depending on how much spare time I get. I've also got one of 5 and 9's LBSC open wagins in my to do pile, and again it looks like a nice kit.

At which point my house move got brought forward, and mayhem ensued for a few months. And when it was over, in the best traditions of railway modellers I started on a whole load of different projects rather than picking up where I left off. 

 

The LBSC van is nearly done, and is just waiting for some good weather to spray the varnish. I'm also waiting on a set of EB models w-irons to do the LBSC open.

 

In the meantime, I managed to get these finished. They'd been in my to do pile for about 10 years, and were half complete when I moved last year. They are Parkside SR vans - one is the original SECR design (of the type that carried the coffins of Edith Cavell and the unfortunate Captain Fryatt). The other is the post-war BR built CCT variety, with plywood sides. These need an awful lot of work, mainly due to their design rather than any fault of the kit.

 

They've had wire handrail detail, new buffers (one has Southern Railway Group castings, from the days when they actual sold the things on their website and the other has some more modern Lanarkshire Model Supplies castings) and various replacement undergear bits. 

The underframe is a little crude, but will look OK from normal distances. Luckily I took a few photos of a preserved one at the Rutland Railway Museum in 2000 (which is 15 years ago, rather scarily) which were helpful. 

Total cost of each one is probably in the region of £15, which is a lot less than the forthcoming Bachmann ones. I suspect i'll end up with a mix of both, as the kits took ages to detail.

[pete_mcfarlane]

Another long term workbench project is ready for the paintshop. This Bachmann 03 has been on the go since 2012 - I originally documented it in a blog. I started it at the same time as an 04, which needed far more work and is long since finished. The 03 just seemed to languish until a week or so ago.

Apart from filling the gap in the buffer beams, and fitting larger replacement air tanks, its just had lots of little details added. Lots of pipework, including high level brake connections (the cab rear air pipes have been missed off until after painting) and extra marker lights. It now just needs a few bits of paint, and I should have a nice little model of one of the SR allocated batch. 

 

 

 

[pete_mcfarlane]

I seem to be on something of a roll, and have even managed to get this ready for the paint shop. 

This battered looking thing has been on the RMweb before (on the previous incarantion of the site) and I've been working on it on and off since 2012. Mostly off...it even has Sharman wheels, because you could buy them back in those days.

 

It's the Finecast kit for the LBSC I3 express passenger tank. It has been lowered to roughly the right height, which makes a big difference to the thing's overall appearance. It's also had a vast amount of pipe work added, which is why it took so long to finish. It kind of sapped my will to live poring over photos of my chose loco (32029 in early BR days) trying to work out where each of the vast number of pipes went. Anyway, I managed to add the last of those pipes tonight, and it's ready for painting. 

 

I'd really like another of these in SR condition. but I'm not sure I'd want to spend another 13 years battling it. 

 

[pete_mcfarlane]

And another model finally ready for painting. Well this one has actually been ready for several months, but i didn't take any photos until tonight when it was given a good scrub (along with the I3, 03 shunter, and various other models). It's a David Geen 8.83 Toplight brake composite, and a very nice kit it is too. The CAD designed etches were first class - there was a lot of work involved (all sorts of small details to be soldered to the sides, such as the window bollections). 

I only deviated in a couple of places - simplifying the brake gear, leaving off a few bits of detail like bogie steps, and replacing the lost wax brass buffer bodies with some cleaner castings from Slaters. 

 

As supplied the kit has two of my pet hates - a vacuum formed root, and all cast bogies. For an eaxtra £8 I bought the very nice resin roof, which made things a lot easier. The bogies, on the other hand, were sorted by fitting the cast sideframes to MJT compensation units. I can never get cast bogies completely square, so this solved that problem.

Overall it's a really good kit, and although it cost over £80 including the resin roof I reckon it's still good value (although wait for the wailing and gnashing of teeth when Hornby or Bachmann eventually get round to doing some in RTR and they cost half this). But I'm glad that I only need one for my short rakes of GWR through coaches - a full rake of these would be somewhat expensive. 

 

I'm also finishing off some long stalled wagons. Most of these are standard-ish Parkside and Cambrian jobs, but there are a few oddities in there. The 5&9 LBSC special cattle wagon is nearly done, and is joined by a D&S unfitted example (top left). The SR covered van is a Cambrian SECR van, but modified to represent one of the fitted examples, and the Parkside LNER 21T mineral has had its doors modified. More on these when they're finished. 

[pete_mcfarlane]

Another of my very intermittent updates. The various wagons and vans are mostly now finished. I'm particularly pleased with the two SR vans - the blue one took a bit of fiddling with the lettering to get something approximating the BR lettering. The seemed to put every possible dimension on there. 

 

 

Now that spring is here I'm able to take photos outside in sunlight, so hopefully the next two look a bit better. A Falcon Brass LMS claf van (one of the new production, since the firm was taken over). It's had a fair bit of work on it to replace the underframe with something looking vaguely like the drawings. The lettering is a bit of a guess - there's a drawing in the Essery book on LMS wagons but no photos. 

the LSWR Horsebox is from Chivers - at a guess one of his earlier kits as it's less detailed than others I've built from him. I added a little bit of extra detail such as door handles and handrails. It's in original condition, before the Southern plated over the sides to make it look a bit more modern.

[pete_mcfarlane]

And another irregular update. This is a diagram 3103 luggage van (the variety with odd planks), made out of the sides of a Parkside CCT with the ends from their BY brake van (with added plasticard end vents). It's not quite right as the planking on the doors is slightly out - the Pakrside kit has had extra plank lines scored, but the smaller planks aren't quite in the right places. 

Buffers are from the Southern Railways Group (back int he days when you could buy stuff from them) and the underframe uses various MJT and Comet bits. 

 

I case anyone is wondering - the blue paint is where I painted the end vents to check they were smooth. It just happened to be the first paint to hand. 

[pete_mcfarlane]

The David Geen GWR Toplight has come on quite a bit since the last photo of it. It's now fully painted, glazed and with a full complement of passengers. All in all, it's rather lovely kit and woth every penny of the £82 I paid for it (5 years ago, it's gone up a bit since then). That's not cheap, it was a really nice kit to build, well designed and thought out, with no major issues. It took longer than a normal etched coach kit due to the it's complexity (for example seperate window beading to be soldered in) but none of that was particularly difficult to do. 

 

I'd imagine it would cost a bit to build up a full rake of these kits  wouldn't bee cheap, but I only need one as part of the GWR through set on my planned Southern branch.

 

As an added bonus, here's a Cambian models SECR single bolster pair. These were built about 2 years ago and only now finished. The only real change I made was to replace the supplied inter-wagon coupling with a simple bit of bent wire, which is a lot less obtrusive. The load is held in place with chains, as per examples in the Russell book on GWR wagon loads. 

 

[pete_mcfarlane]

The 03 is finally finished. To recap, it's one of the newer Bachmann models which has had a number of modifications to represent one of the Southern locos:

 

• Replacement larger air cylinders on the footplate.
• Extra marker lights, as the model only had 2. You'll note that as per the real thing it only has 4 at each end, rather than the 6 you'd normally expect on a Southern example. 
• Modified buffer beams, to fill in the hole for the tension lock couplings. 
• the various pipes and other gubbins for the high level air brake connections. 
• New cab handrails. 
• A selective bit of repainting, and a renumbering. 

 

I'd been after one of these since I borrowed a couple of 'Modelling BR today' from my local library in 1980-something, which had a detailed example of the Mainline 03. I'm now rather pleased with it.

 

And lastly a couple of bonus wagons. A standard 12T van from the Parkside Dundas kit, and (slightly more exotic) a 5&9 models ex-LBSC 'Open D' with a single brake shoe. This is rather nice kit, it's just a shame that they're so hard to get hold of as I'd like some more of his kits (although I fully appreciate why one man band part-time suppliers may have other things to do with their lives than manufacture kits). 

 

[pete_mcfarlane]

The problem with posting stuff on RMweb is that you realise that it's taken from May until October to finish the Utility van.....

 

It's painted Crimson, and finished using some rather nice Cambridge Custom Transfers as one of the examples fitted for carrying bikes. The van is a Parkside BR Plywood example based on an LNER design, backdated to original LNER condition using MJT running gear and ABS brakes.  

These two vehicles both carry livestock..... The cattle wagon is another Parkside kit, built pretty much as designed except that I experimented with fitting sprung buffer heads from 51L in to the plastic moulded bodies. The Meat van is a David Geen whitemetal kit, compensated using a MJT inside bearing unit (my usual workaround for not being able to get these kits assembled with all 4 wheels touching the rails). 

[pete_mcfarlane]

A few months on, and another spate of activity. 

 

This GWR insulated meat van is from the recent Pakrside kit. I copied an example in 'A history of GWR Goods wagons' whilst building and painting it, only to find that I couldn't track down any suitable transfers. So it's hand lettered using a 0.1mm red felt tip. It looks OK, but not brilliant. 

These two Parkside kits are seperated by about 30 years. The LNER plywood bodied fruit van was picked up cheaply at the Derby show a few years back - their club stand was selling of a selection of ancient wagon kits. Unlike the standard LNER plywood van this version hasn't been retooled, so it required a fair bit of extra detail. The underframe is a mix of MJT running gear and ABS brakes.

 

The RCH 1923 open is from a much more recent kit, and required no modifications. It's finished with some ancient Letteraset in a fictitious private owner wagon livery, for carrying shingle from the (Dungeness style) ballast siding on my planned layout. I need several more of these, but I'll probably use the proper shaded PO lettering from Modelmaster for some of those as a bit of a contrast. This one, with it's unshaded lettering looks rather like some of the cheapo 1930s austerity repaints of private owner wagons. 

 

Lastly is another kit that's taken a while to finish. I started this Branchlines LCDR passenger brake about 3 years ago, then moved house, and restarted it a few months back. The livery is slightly conjectural, as I;ve never seen a close up of one of these in SR passenger livery (only departmental) but they must have carried it given how longer some of them lasted after 1923.

It's a pretty standard etched kit, and I didn't have any major issues. Having a set of GW rollers helped with the etched roof (which has a huge great hole in the middle and would have been difficult to roll by hand, at least for somebody as hamfisted as I am). The bent footboard has now been unbent - why is it that these things are never visible until after taking the photo?

[pete_mcfarlane]

Today (well yesterday, when I took the photos) is an auspicious day, for I have finally finished my South Eastern Finecast LBSC I3. This has been covered on this page before, but to cut a long story short, it was started in early 2003, spent long periods time in boxes, and had a major rebuild part way through the build process to correct a problem with the kit riding a couple of millimeters too high in best 1960s Triang fashion. A sign of how long it has taken is that it has Sharman wheels, which you could still buy at the time I started building the kit. 

It's now finally painted and lined - using Modelmaster lining. It's based on a photo of 32029 in the Wild Swan book on the Cuckoo line, running in BR livery but with no signs of ownership. I was also alble to buy several other shots of the loco from the Bluebell Museum, which helped with details like the number of the bunker rear (in best 1930s/1940s SR style). 

 

I rather like it, and will build another in Southern olive green one day (when I've recovered from this one).  

 

 

[DavidLong]

Always enjoy your updates, Pete, no matter how far apart they are! The 03 and the I3 are interesting companions, not to mention the LCDR brake. Catholic taste I believe it's called!

 

David