DavidK71

Oh, I think more Masterclass coaches are an excellent reason to hijack a thread 🚂 I can see from the flyer that I shall have to invest in some, despite only now getting round to building bogies to go under one of Mr. Higgs toplights. So much to build, so little time ...

How far have you got with them?

I hadn't noticed that that photo in "GW Coaches in Colour" before was of a toplight, thanks. Looking through Russell Appendix 1 it does seem that in general for steel no-panel toplights the crimson is slightly lower than the top of the toplights. Given the difficulties of representing such thin bands in 2mm / N I think an 'approximate representation' is the best we can hope for. A sneaky solution for at least one coach might be to put plasticard behind the toplights and fill them in with modelling putty, to represent the toplights being plated over. Fortunately for me the Masterclass toplights I'm intending to do are steel without panelling, which should help a little. My intention is to build the coach with the sides attaching last, which would allow me to try leaving off the top crimson band to see how it looks - if the result is terrible the sides can be stripped and redone. It does look a bit unloved. Looking through Russell at all the photographs of somewhat tired first class toplight coaches, I'm struck that while the opporunity to ride in one today would be fabulous, if I'd paid for a first class ticket in 1955 or so I can't imagine I'd be too thrilled if a dirty old toplight pulled into the station. How times change ... If it was easy what would be the fun in that?

Oh yes, much fun was had! Actually, the top of the sides posed an interesting question. Looking at pictures in Russell shows that the top crimson line was very thin indeed, and I had wondered about leaving it and the top lining off altogether. (The Great Western livery for toplights without lining above the windows was much more sensible.) In the end I added the crimon line and lining, partly because, relative to photographs, the strip above the windows is a bit too thick in this kit. It's noticeable that the unbuilt Masterclass toplights I have have a somewhat thinner strip above the windows, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do for those. This was lined with the ModelMaster / NGS lining transfers. I have considerable respect for the people on here who manage to line with a bow-pen - I can't imagine ever being able to get that to work, especially on the uneven join between the crimson and cream paint. My basic approach with the lining is to first give the side a coat of gloss varnish (actually Halfords lacquer spray) to get a good surface for it to sit on. To start with I brush MicroSet on the side, then put the transfer in warm water until it's ready to slide off. Sliding it off is the tricky bit - if I try to push it off the backing paper vertically I find I can never get it straight again, so I generally push the lining horizontally so a little bit is hanging off the left, get that lined up and on the side. Then I hold the left edge of the lining down against the side and draw the backing paper away to the right - if I do this in a smooth action generally the lining will rest on the side pretty nearly straight. I then use a cocktail stick and a brush to straighten any bumps in the lining. It's also sometimes necessary to run a thin brush coated in MicroSet underneath the lining if it won't move freely any more, which often happens to a section if it's left in place without being moved for more than a minute or two. Finally, run over it with a brush and then a piece of tissue paper to push out any final lumps. One thing I've found that doesn't work well with the lining is MicroSol - that tends to make the lining curl up in the vertical direction. I generally just add a spot of MicroSol at the end on any recesses in the side (e.g. where the door edges are) but don't use it anywhere else. I also take the view that lining transfers aren't that expensive, so if the first attempt doesn't work, take it off (with more MicroSet) and keep trying until the result is satisfactory.

After a few hiccups and problems, the K.22 full brake has escaped from the workbench: As I had expected, painting proved to be a challenge, as the sides and floor formed one piece that was folded up to form the body shell. As a result, I couldn't use my usual approach of painting the sides and then attaching them as the final step. Instead, a lot of masking tape and touching up was needed. The worst moment was removing the masking tape after spraying the top carmine line, which revealed a very obvious run. There was nothing for it but to strip the coach and try again. As it is glued rather than soldered, just dunking it in paint stripper would effectively take me back to the start, so I ended up carefully cleaning the sides with paint stripper and a large number of my other half's cotton wool buds. (Let's hope she never notices how many are now missing.) At least I've learnt that it is possible to strip the sides of such a coach without destroying the whole thing. Lining and applying decals also revealed a rather awkward mistake. The running numbers should really be above the hand-rails, not below, just below the lining. Unfortunately I think I set the boundary between carmine and cream just a fraction of a millimetre too low. Combined with the fact that 2mm/N lining is, by it's nature, overscale, there wasn't room for the running number in it's proper place. Gah! I couldn't face stripping the coach (again) and trying to move the handrail, so I've settled for having the running number sit below the handrail. At least it's one thing I'll be ready for with any future toplight coaches. After the saga of painting and lining, getting the roof to sit exactly right was also not entirely stress free. This roof is rolled brass, and in the end I resorted to gluing it to hidden supports in the coach, then putting weights on the roof to hold it in place for 24 hours. Thankfully it has stayed in place so far! Despite all the above, I'm very pleased with the result - my first toplight coach. More to follow ...

Oooh, those could prove useful. Is there any chance you'd be prepared to make the artwork available so anyone else could get these etched, too?

Nigel, thank you for the explanation of your roof rainstrip technique, I will definitely give this a try. You are right, I haven't added knobs or grab handles to most of these coaches. When I first started building these coaches I wasn't confident that I could successfully attach them to the painted sides, so left them off. I try not to go back and rebuild kits once they're done - they're a record of my ability at the time, and if I started trying to correct every flaw I can see I'd never get anything new built. 🙂 Anyway, I think that I'm now ready to try tackling grab handles etc., so the next coach I build I will have a go. The next likely to be out of the pile to be built is a 70' toplight 3rd from Masterclass - that's a lot of grab handles!

Thank you, very interesting photographs. That is an impressively unloved class 22 ...

One more post, this time of a coach I finished a little while back while waiting for the replacement side for the Hawksworth sleeper. Much earlier in this thread I posted about a Stanier 50' full brake that I'd done, but I was never completely happy with it - allthough it wasn't bad, there wasn't enough tumblehome on the sides, which detracted from the look of it, and the sides could have been more detailed. My original plan was to dismantle and strip it, but then I had the happy idea of selling it on eBay and building this as a replacement: Nearly all my stock is Western region, so I'm not sure quite what this and the LMS CCT will do on the layout, once it gets built. Perhaps it'll be a small Midland region parcel train passing through ... 🙂 As usual, bogies are from the 2mm Association, with N gauge profile wheels. These close-up photographs emphasize that the roof rain-strips are too wide (1mm tape) but it doesn't look so obvious at normal viewing distances. I still wish I could find some thiner tape, though ... That pretty much clears my workbench aside from the K22 full brake, on which painting is about to start.

Thank you, but I think that the painfully slow speed at which I manage to complete these makes commision work unlikely ☹️. I think I started the sleeper back in November - in that time Coachman could produce an entire coach fleet!

It's taken quile a while, but the Hawksworth J18 sleeper is finally done: The model has been finished in its original British Railways livery that these coaches wore when new, as number 9083. The real 9083 is at Didcot where it is slowly being restored, and has fairly recently been repainted and lined out, and very impressive it looks too. This would have been done rather sooner, if I hadn't, after painting and lining it, discovered a problem with the compartment etched side: the attendant's window (on the far right) was missing, and the toilet window was where the attendant's window should have been. Alan at Ultima very helpfully redrew the side based on current photographs and had a new side etched, which I have used. Quality service! While I think the six wheel bogies look great, I'm not sure I'll be making any more coaches that ride on such monsters. The coach is, it has to be said, quite curve shy. It will go round a Peco number 4 radius curve (which is about a 13" radius) but there is noticeably more resistance than on a straight, due to the wheels rubbing against the solebar. This is partly because I've tried to get my coaches to sit as low as is practical on the bogies, as it looks much more prototypical, but I guess is also partly a reflection of the truth that the real coaches wouldn't have been much use on tight curves anyway. Does anyone know what the rules were for minimum curves that twelve wheel coaches were allowed on? I haven't found much on anyone running twelve wheel coaches in N or 2mm, so I'd be interested to hear if anyone does. The only other such coaches I'm come across on RMWeb are wermy's thread (at http://www.rmweb.co....posite-sleeper/) on building an LMS sleeper, and Nigel Hunt's exquisite image of a scratchbuilt clerestory diner (http://www.rmweb.co....x-gswr-car-no3/). Has anyone else got a twelve wheeler?

Well, rolling the roof did not turn out to be as bad as I had feared it would be. A trip to the local DIY store provided lengths of 5mm, 10mm and 30mm diameter pipe, and using them to roll the etched brass gives this as the result, after about two hours of very slow work: The roof is just resting in place, and is not quite finished: I intend to get the main shell painted and glazed before final adjustments are made to get the roof perfectly shaped. Overall, I'm very pleased - it seems that etched brass is a viable method of making roofs, if not exactly quick. This means that the planned experiments with 3D roofs will have to wait a bit.

Thank you, you're very kind! Lining clerestories in 2mm sounds like an "interesting" challenge, I'll be interested to see how you get on with that. You are correct that the couplers are not ideal. They are only attached to the bogies so that they can be removed fairly easily (or the whole bogie replaced, if need be). So many choices and decisions to make ... 😃

Ooops, that was not intentional! I did not want to suggest that Mr. Wright's etches were anything other than very nice 🙂 My understanding is that the Ultima roof is extruded aluminium, to the same profile as the Ultima LMS kits. For both this roof profile and the 2mm LMS one the main difficulty I can see will be the lack of roof rain-strips. Looking around rmweb I can see that some people have used lining tape successfully for this in 4mm, but I haven't managed to track down thin enough lining tape, and also I suspect that any folds or creases in the tape will be more noticeable in 2mm. I think 3D printing will be the way to go. Alan Cox's posts have introduced me to OpenSCAD, which looks very interesting, so at some point I definitelty want to try this. Having said that, experimenting yesterday with rolling the K22 roof was surprisingly okay: the shape is not completely there yet, but the roof at least looks evenly curved.

Next up on the workbench is a Great Western K.22 full brake: D869 remarked in a recent blog post that he was posting about a kit you can't build, and this is rather similar: I bought this on a whim as just an etched sheet from an eBay auction. From the instructions on what is on the etch this was made by "5522 Models" and looks to have been shot down from 4mm in the 1980s or early 1990s. This has proved to be more of a challenge than the previous kits I've done. The floor and sides are all one piece, which made creating the tumblehome an exciting challenge. The sides were then folded up and the ends attached. I have to say that I prefer separate sides, in the style of Ultima and Masterclass kits, especially as painting will have to be a "get it right first time" project. In the past I've occasionally been unhappy with what I've managed on sides, so I've stripped them and tried again, but that won't work here, at least not without stripping the whole thing. Bogies are 9' American from the 2mm Association on N gauge wheels. Truss rods, underframe details and coach ends are from Ultima. Buffers are from NBrass, as these seemed to be the closest to accurate, but they're not really correct: the buffers should have square shanks. I've never seen square shank buffers for sale in 2mm, and an attempt to file a round shank square didn't end well. One disaster during construction was the solebars. The original etched part is supposed to be folded along its long axis to produce the solebar, but that went completely wrong - I suspect it would have been easier in the original 4mm! I got round this by buying a suitable coach floor from Ultima and taking the solebars from that. One essential item that the observant will notice is missing from the photograph is a roof. The kit comes with an etched roof, which I have not yet had the courage to tackle. Rolling a three-arc roof profile from thin brass sheet looks to be hard ... does anyone have any advice? A 57' toplight resin roof from a Masterclass kit fits perfectly, but I want to build the Masterclass kit too ... does anyone have a Masterclass 57' resin roof they don't want? No, I didn't think so ... 😪 My plan is to give the roof a try and if that doesn't work, experiment with 3D printing of roofs - this is something I want to try anyway, as if I can figure out a way to make roofs then there are lots of Worsley Works and Bill Bedford etches that I could use. Overall, building this has been interesting and fun, but I couldn't actually recommend it as an approach to anyone wanting a 2mm / N K.22. After buying the etch I noticed that Worsley Works do a K.22 (or at least the sides and floor): a much easier approach would be to get hold of a Masterclass 57' toplight and replace the sides with the Worsley etch.

You are right, my current stash of kits does show a certain randomness in its selection. But that's usually how I do most things in life 🙂 As you say, more kits will sort that out ... Thanks for the tip about the BRCS group.

An excellent question! The original impetus behind the coach building experiments is that while I have long term plans for the space for a layout, they're likely to be a few years off, and until then I wanted something to occupy me. The first plan (which is stating it too grandly: the first vague idea might be better) was for a model of a section of Great Western main line. The Hawksworth full brake and sleeper are intended to be part of an overnight train, and the brake third and first part of a daytime express. However, inspired by a photograph of Old Oak Common in (I think) Harris, I have considered instead a layout of coach sidings. This would allow a more arbitrary selection of interesting coaching stock of various ages, perhaps with a shunter loco or two pottering about. Still, I fully expect several more changes of plan before there's any danger of actually making a layout. There's also the great N gauge vs. 2mm finescale question to decide. I have at least tried to sit on the fence by using 2mm Association bogies: it would not be hard to remove the N gauge couplers and put in 2mm wheelsets. So many choices to make ...

Another one done, this time a Hawksworth full first to diagram A.23, again from Ultima: Bogies are GWR Pressed Steel, from the 2mm Association, on N gauge axles. Transfers are from ModelMaster (for the lining, '1's and the running numbers) and from Fox (for the first class 'sausages' in the windows). The sausages have just been applied directly to the glazing so I have a certain amount of fear that they'll eventually fall off, but that hasn't happened so far. One slight cheat I have tried is with the filler pipes. Rather than try to bend two pieces of wire into the correct shapes, as I attempted with the original brake third, I instead have one curved piece which forms a near semi-circle, attached to the coach side, and two straight pieces, attached to the roof. This was much easier to form and avoids problems with having to get the roof in place before adding the pipes, but does mean close examination shows that the pipes aren't perhaps as prototypical as they could be. From any sort of reasonable viewing distance, though, the effect convinces me. Finally, a shot of the three completed Hawksworths to date, all now running on 2mm Association GWR Pressed Steel bogies:

I was afraid of that! I think I will have to give it a try, then think of something else when that doesn't work ...

That looks lovely, despite your difficulties. The problem of how to do rainstrips has been taxing me recently, as I'd like to make several LMS period 2 coaches, but nothing looks good enough. My current plan is to hope that 3d printing soon gets good enough to handle this. I also have an etch of a GWR full brake with an etched roof that I periodically look at before losing the courage to try to roll it ...

My copy of "LMS Coaches" states that withdrawals started in '64, and many were still around in '69, so they must have lasted well into the 1970s, at least. Paul Bartlett's site has a photograph of one in BR blue, albeit very faded and battered, taken in '85, though it looks like it has spent a while sat on a scrap line. There was also a thread about this a while back (http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/27920-ex-lms-42-guv-when-were-they-withdrawn/) which quotes the 1978 RCTS stock book as having two left in service, so it looks like they lingered on until about the same time as the 50' brakes. I'm looking forward to that!

Work has been progressing slowly on the Hawksworth J18 sleeper, and in the meantime a few other projects have managed to bypass it on the production line. First to completion is an Ultima LMS 42' CCT (or GUV), which coincidentally Coachman is doing a rather nice version of in 4mm in a nearby thread ... Pictures of the finished result, in British Rail carmine: Bogies are LMS 9' from the 2mm Association, with N-gauge profile wheels, and very nice they are too. The Ultima kit itself is straightforward to put together and produces a very pleasing result: these short bogie coaches are, I think, very attractive. If anyone wants a simple coach project to get started on, I would recommend this one. The only addition beyond what comes in the kit is the wire handrails and door handles, which are just made from 0.3mm nickel silver wire from Eileen's Emporium, bent to the appropriate shape and inserted into holes in the sides that had been drilled out with a jeweller's drill. One valuable lesson learned from doing this is that you have to take account of whether the lower holes in the sides will sit over the folded up edge of the coach floor - I ended up having to drill holes in the folded up edges to let the wire through in order to get the sides to attach correctly. This would have been easier to do if I had worked this out before completely assembling the shell. Painting is much as for the previous LMS full brake: the sides and underframe are Halfords satin black, the sides Halfords red primer then AR530 cellulose car paint sprayed over the top. This is then covered with a spray of Halfords clear lacquer to give the transfers a smooth surface to adhere too, followed by another coat of lacquer to protect the transfers, and finally a very light spray with Humbrol matt varnish to achieve the desired finish. Transfers are from ModelMaster for the number, and Fox for the grey chalkboard panels. One thing that does detract a touch from the appearance relative to the prototype is the lack of the horizontal beading stripes on the sides. I did experiment with the same 0.5mm lining tape as has been used for the roof ribbing, but it was just far too thick. (It's a little too thick for the roof, too, to be honest, but it doesn't seem quite so obvious there.) The search for some thinner lining tape continues ...

They're nice kits - hope you enjoy building them and post about it on RMWeb! D869's blog at http://www.rmweb.co....draulic-heaven/ is also well worth reading for details of how he built a very nice Hawksworth full brake.

I glue thin slivers of plasticard to the folded up sides of the floor until the sides touch the plasticard as well as the edges of the ends, then glue the sides to the ends and the plasticard, with a tiny amount of glue to hold it to the roof, too. If the sides don't have a door right at the end (i.e. a brake end) I'll also glue a 1mm square piece of plasticard rod to the ends to provide a larger surface to attach to, as well. The glue for this is Evostick Impact - it's strong and quite viscous, so doesn't end up were it shouldn't.