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James Harrison

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Blog Entries posted by James Harrison

  1. James Harrison
    It is starting to feel like I'm on the home straight with this model now.
     

     

     
    The loco itself is being lined out, I only have to add the red lining around the cab edge to finish it off. I've reluctantly come to the conclusion that full GCR livery is, at the moment, beyond my skill level and beyond what I can reasonably achieve, so I've simplified it a little. Unless you get right up close to the model, you can't tell. Besides, I work to the 2' rule.
     
    The loco now needs the last bits of lining applied, cab handrails, reversing lever, nameplates and numberplates.
     
    The tender is a bit more involved, as the original plastic chassis it was fitted with broke apart.... I would have needed to do something with it anyway as it sat too low on the track, and I had a spare Jaycraft resin Director tender to hand which when paired with a Triang 2P tender chassis sites at the right height. So I now have a K's whitemetal tender in my spares box, and a Jaycraft tender running behind the loco. The 2P tender chassis has to be extended a little at the rear, which is why there are no buffer or drawbar fittings yet. I've also got to line out and add handrails to the tender- more work required here!
  2. James Harrison
    Fairly impressed by the results being shown in the Silhouette Cameo cutter thread, I decided a few months ago to save up and buy one. I haven't bought the big Cameo cutter, as that was a bit more than I was prepared to pay on what I regarded as a bit of a risk (these things rarely turn out entirely to plan), but instead bought the smaller, cheaper Portrait Cutter, with a vague idea of using it to cut the difficult beaded areas on carriage sides.
     
    When it arrived, and after I had installed the software, I decided that as a first attempt I would have a go at some new sides for my old Hornby clerestory stock, which sometime ago I had attempted to convert into GC types. I scanned a couple of George Dow's drawings and traced over them in the design software, which I found surprisingly easy to pick up. More usually new computer software leaves me swearing and utterly bewildered, and ultimately I give it up entirely as a bad job. Not this time.
     
    It took a little bit of experimenting with various plastic thicknesses, cutting speeds and pressures, but eventually I got somewhere with it and for the last few weeks I've been steadily rebuilding an 8-compartment all third, which I finished last night. I think the result is a marked improvement on my previous effort.
     

     

  3. James Harrison

    Neverwazzas....

    By James Harrison,

    Since my last update, finally getting a decent result for a Robinson matchboard carriage, I've been quite busy. The intention is to rebuild all four of my matchboard carriages in one go, and so far I've completed two and got a third roughly half-way finished.
     
    Yesterday progress on these came to a halt when the postman delivered a copy of W.A. Tuplin's 'Great Central Steam'. A quick flick through brought me to the obligatory centre pages of illustrations, complete with line drawings of locos considered but never built.
     
    Now the 'Super Sam Fay' and the 'Super Director' left me feeling quite ill. To my eye the fine lines of the original builds would have been comprehensively ruined if rebuilt with longer, larger, 200psi boilers and more substantial frames. What really got my attention and excited me was the proposed but never built Gorton mogul. 5'8'' drivers with a coupled wheelbase 7'6'' + 8'6'' paired up with the boiler from a Director.
     
    Now then, who has ever made a model 5'8'' wheeled mogul.... ah, yes, Mainline made one. Does it match? No, not quite.... the 43xx wheelbase is 7'0'' + 7'9''....
     
    So, 7mm out at 4mm scale. Still, as it was never built who is to say it would be wrong?
     
    And of course, to build this would set a precedent to build the neverwazza early 1920s Robinson pacific....
  4. James Harrison
    Difficult post to make, this.
     
    Turns out Photobucket have put a lock down on 3rd party hosting- and until rather recently all of my photos were hosted on Photobucket. Basically, if you have a free Photobucket account, you can't link back to any photos you put on it. You can continue to use Photobucket for 3rd party hosting.... for an eyewatering $399 a year fee.
     
    This absolutely flies in the face of everything I happen to think fair, just or right.
     
    Therefore, I have taken the decision that all of my images on Photobucket will be deleted forthwith. If I can't share them with friends, I'm going to deny them to Photobucket entirely....
     
    So, regrettably, there are going to be few or no photos to any of my posts except for those from the last few months.
  5. James Harrison
    I thought progress was going too well with my Met electric, and then everything started to go wrong....
     
    It turned out I'd managed, somehow, to get even the basic colour wrong! What looks like choclate brown in some photos looks deep red or even almost purple in others.... researching (which I should have done before I started painting) I found that the colour is actually a very deep red. Out with the brushes again
     
    It was a simple job to rectify.... I broke out some burgundy paint and gave it a very thin wash over the body, removing most of the paint before it had a chance to dry. The result is a finish that like the prototype looks a very deep brown in some lights and a very deep red in others.
     
    I managed to fit the interior in much the fashion as I described last week. It's basic in the extreme but looks convincing enough when glimpsed inside.
     

     
    I found that the glazing supplied with the kit didn't fit very well. The window mouldings were very deep, whilst there was only about .25mm actually bearing onto the body... practically nothing to form a good strong joint. I kept the angled windows for the cab ends as they did fit pretty well, but replaced the others with some glue 'n' glaze.
     
    Now I'm working on fitting the handrails, which is proving quite a long and tricky task. I can only do one or two rails a night without taxing my patience....
     

  7. James Harrison
    There were three ex-GC 4-6-0s on Ebay this evening and I came away with one of them.
     
    The other two were a B6 and a 'Sam Fay' (which I was also bidding on but lost in the last 5 seconds )
     
    Anyway, I ended up with a B3 or 'Lord Faringdon' class.
     

     
    There are a few things with it that are suspect and I'm sure I can improve. I'm considering giving it a new chassis, new cab sides and a new paint job at the very least, and at the end of it I'l have a nice and certainly unusual addition to the loco stud. But I doubt I'll get around to it before the end of next year....
  8. James Harrison
    Back to the mogul for the final bits- lining and handrails are done!
     

     
    Having waited a week for parts so I could do the lining as a transfer, I got frustrated with the method after about half an hour, and lined it out by hand with a paint pen and ruler.
     
    On the other hand; my attempt at using fuse wire for the boiler handrail worked a treat. Unfortunately I found that the 15amp wire was too thick to fit through the handrail knobs, so had to use 5amp instead. This I think looks too thin and flimsy; next time I'll try to get hold of some 10amp or 13amp wire instead.
  9. James Harrison
    I said last year that 2017 would concentrate more on trying to clear my to-do list than taking on new projects.
     
    To a degree I have succeeded in that; at the same time I seem to have failed woefully.
     
    I did very well at paring down my stock of unbuilt wagons, but unfortunately as quickly as I was building them I was buying more. To my recollection my unbuilt wagons collection now runs to five or six cattle wagons, a GCR open wagon, a GCR double bolster, a pair of LNWR opens, a Midland covered van, a GCR horsebox and a GCR bogie parcels van. There are also donor vehicles intended ultimately to be the basis of a GCR 4-wheel brake and a GCR bogie fish van.
     
    I've had more success when it comes to carriages; although I did buy a rake of five 4-wheelers, at the same time I have managed to reduce the unbuilt carriages backlog to one ex-Metropolitan Ashbury carriage, a pair of Barnums and some clerestories.
     
    When it comes to locomotives I don't think there has been any real progress. Granted, I did complete a pair of Pollitt 4-4-0s, an LDECR 0-6-4 and a Pollitt 0-6-0, but that still leaves a huge amount of work to do- and this year I've bought another three projects (donor locos for a Robinson dock tank and LDECR 0-6-0 and a K's ROD which was going for a song).
     
    Now what does this all mean for my 2018 Programme?
     
    Put simply, another moratorium on taking on new projects and another year trying to get through the to-do pile.
     
    First priority will be to build the last of the Ashbury carriages. Slow, awkward and painful as it may be, once that carriage is done it represents not only another project finished but also another completed rake of carriages. That boost to my enthusiasm should be enough to see me through to doing one or two of the cattle wagons. I've tried batch-building this year and I've worked out that it probably isn't for me. So rather than do all of the cattle wagons at once I'll probably spread them out through the year and do one or two at a time.
     
    I'm going to try and do more of the locomotives this year, quite probably the easier/ quicker jobs will be the ones to be looked at (this means the repaint jobs and those which only require tweaks to be made good). Don't expect to see any herculean efforts of hack-bashing!
  10. James Harrison
    Well, it started out as a 6-wheeler, but, erm....
     

     
    I got as far as having the chassis backbone and the outer axles completed, whilst I working on the centre axle the W iron broke away. I suspect that as it broke off along a half-etched line, either the etch had gone too deep, or I was little too exuberant in bending it, or I bent it back and forth once too often and it snapped. I was having difficulty with the iron, in that it wasn't heating right down to the tip but rather only to about halfway along it. So I couldn't get heat where I needed it and I was having to try to nudge bits out of the way to get the iron in. I do have several spare tips so once the iron is cooled down and before I pack it away I'll be swapping the tip out.
     
    So now it's going to be a 4-wheel carriage instead, not really the upset it might seem as the GC (well, the MSLR as it then was) was building mainline 4-wheel stock down to the 1890s. Indeed, when it was running a joint service into London Kings Cross with the Great Northern, the Great Northern argued for 6-wheel carriages whilst the MSLR was adamant on 4-wheel stock only. Although 6-wheel carriages seem to appear more often in photographs, the 4-wheelers are the ones that George Dow chose to draw for his 3-volume history of the Great Central. Anyway. Although it's regretable, I'd sooner find this sort of thing out on a £10 chassis kit than on one of my more expensive brass wagon or carriage kits.
     

     
    It still looks right enough anyway, and once the footboards are fitted and the bodywork attended to it'll still fit right in with the 6-wheelers.
  11. James Harrison
    Long ago I bought a resin kit for a large Welsh tank engine with intentions of turning into a Metropolitan loco. Well, that hasn't happened but it is being hacked into something else.
     

     
    An 0-6-4 mineral engine of the Lancashire, Derbyshire & East Coast Railway. Interesting railway, that. In the middle 1890s the Company set out to build somewhere around 170 miles of track, in the process gaining the distinction of being the single largest railway scheme to be approved by Parliament in one session. Unfortunately it ultimately reached neither Lancashire nor the east coast, the only section actually being completed being the line between Chesterfield and Lincoln (and even then the last few miles into Lincoln were along Great Northern/ Great Eastern property). Within 10 years of opening it had been bought by the Great Central; much of the route closed in the 1950s but a 10-mile stretch survives as a test track.
     
    So, the model. The real thing was built to haul coal trains to the east coast in the period 1904-06; six of them entered service under LDECR ownership, and three more were completed shortly after the GCR bought the line in 1906. They survived into the late 1930s/ early 1940s. You might see some vague resemblance between this model and the big 2-6-4 freight tank I built recently. The reason being, the LDECR's locomotive superintendent was quickly made Robinson's right-hand man at Gorton; it is believed that he had a hand in the conception and design of the GCR's freight tank locos of 1914.
     
    Yes, the model. Let's try not to sidetracked again.
     
    I started, as I have said, with a resin kit for a Barry Railway class L 0-6-4.
     

     
    It's basically one moulding with a couple of brass and whitemetal castings to fit; of which more later.

     
    The first thing I did was to cut the cab away; it needs to be completely replaced.
     

     
    The side tanks are longer, wider and taller; so I made up some new plastic side tanks and fitted them.
     

     

     
    Then the joint between the side and the top of the tanks had to be sanded to a radius, and then I was able to fit the chassis (I'm using a Hornby 0-6-0 chassis under it, which is what the original kit was designed for).
  12. James Harrison
    When I last spoke about my L1 there were really only one or two bits left to work up on it.
     
    Well I'm very pleased to say that it is now finished!- another loco out of the shops and ready for the planned layout.
     

     

     

     

     
    I began by firmly attaching the front footplate footsteps. Previously these had been glued into position, but they kept coming adrift. Something a bit more permanent was required. I drilled 0.8mm holes very carefully into the underside of the running plate to a depth of about 2mm, then UHU'd some lengths of brass wire into the holes. I smeared UHU over the rear face of the footstep castings, then pressed them onto the wire. Result? Much firmer fittings.
     
    The coal bunker I managed to build up by simply taking a piece of paper, measuring the hole through the bottom of the bunker and transcribing that to the paper (with a little extra to the front and rear to form fixing tabs) and painting the resultant rectangle matt black. Once it had dried I cut it out, folded it up and glued it into the bunker with UHU. Left overnight to set I was then able to fill it with coal this morning.
     
    Nothing looks more like coal than coal, in my opinion. Living as I do on top of about five old coal pits it was a simple matter (at least, it was last Spring- might be a bit difficult right now!) to find a decent lump of the stuff sticking out the ground on the fields behind my house. Wrapped up in a plastic bag and then worked over with a hammer, you end up with a load of bits. Some are too large and really need smashing up further, others are okay to build up a foundation and still others are tiny shards or dust which can be placed on top.
     
    So I started by filling the bunker up to a decent height with some large-ish bits and then filled in the gaps with the smaller shards and dust. I then set it in-place using very dilute PVA glue delicately poured over it.
     
    Before I did this however I applied the transfers. I use HMRS pressfix transfers but in a slight twist I remove the backing paper before applying them by soaking them in water, This has an additional beneficial effect in that it removes most of the decal adhesive, meaning when I lay it on the model I can move the decal around using fine tweezers and a paintbrush until I am happy with the location. I then firmly dab the decal onto the model with a sheet of tissue paper, removing the excess water whilst temporarily fixing the decal in place. Once I have all of the decals on I give the model a coat of very dilute PVA glue. This sounds mad but it does a very good job of fixing the decals down fully, sealing them in and it dries to a matt finish to boot. It has to be dilute though- you can't get nearly as thin a coat as you need with the stuff as it comes, as a thick gloopy liquid from the DIY shops.
     
    Once the PVA had dried I gave the model a subtle dusting down with artists' chalks (in brown, grey and black tones) to suggest weathering.
     
    And there we have it, an unusual prototype ready to roll, available for a reasonable price and capable of being built to a good standard straight out of the box and to a better one with just of modicum of thought and tweaking.
     
    Would I build another? Absolutely.
  13. James Harrison
    Onwards, now, to a new project, and I've chosen to model a Class 18 converted.
     

     
    Photograph from the RCTS LNER locos books.
     
    These are quite interesting engines which started life as 0-6-0 tender locos in the 1880s and were converted to tank engines in the early 1900s.
     
    My starting point for this project is a Triang 0-6-0 dock shunter, which looks vaguely similar but the similarities stop there.
     

     
    I started then by cutting the bodywork up into separate components. The saddle tank, cab and bunker form one, the smokebox a second and the running plate a third. There was a fourth part- the skirt running around the loco below the saddle tank. I decided that as the bodywork needs to be lowered it would make sense to tank material out of that skirt, and as I'm not confident I could take a neat 3mm slot out of it I decided to remove it entirely and replace with new material.
     

     

     

  14. James Harrison
    And.... it's finished! No.1 of 4, anyway.
     
    The roof: I used the roof formers that had been drawn, fitted to a sub-base. I laid thin strips of balsa wood over them, then the final covering is paper.
    The underframes: Battery boxes and bufferbeams had been drawn up and cut. I used some BR Mk.1 buffers, which look right. Underframe trusses I made up very simply from some 10 thou plastic sheet. Couplings are my usual Kadee type.
     
    Right, next project I think.
  16. James Harrison
    After two coats of Humbrol matt orange to begin the teaking process, I fitted the bogies. I'm using Hornby Gresley bogies for these, with the detail removed.
     

     
    Then returning to the teaking process, a drybrushed coat of Humbrol satin mid-brown finishes the job.
     

     
    At this point I tested the model on some track and found that each bogie needed a 5 gram weight fitting inside, and the body needed two 10 gram weights fitting inside the saloon just in board of the bogie pivots. This meant that the as-drawn interior couldn't be fitted.
     

     
    So I built the seating out of balsa wood instead.
     

     
    After a bit of experimenting I settled on this arrangement as being suitably robust, detailed enough to pass muster for me, and fitting over the weights in the body.
  17. James Harrison
    Nearly finished. I'm now thinking about how to weather it, specifically how to realistically model the limewash.
     
    I went back to my test piece.
     

     
    I tried tipex; it doesn't look right. There's something decidedly off and unsavoury about the appearance.
     

     
    On the other side, I tried matt white paint. I did think this might be a bit too thick and on the nose, but actually it looks about right....
  18. James Harrison

    Some wagons

    By James Harrison,

    I'm taking a break for a little while from my carriage building... and have turned my attention on the (smaller) pile of unbuilt wagons I have to hand.
     
    First up are a pair of unpainted Dapol 9' wheelbase wagons, which were a quick little project. Some paint and transfers- and job done, except for the couplings.
     

     
    And then onto the next project- an open wagon from Cambrian Models.
  20. James Harrison

    GCR 11A no.858

    By James Harrison,

    The latest candidate for a rebuild and backdating is my hackbashed LNER D6, which is currently in the works to be rebuilt after the fashion of the photograph of her at Trafford Park in GC days in a Yeadons volume.
     
    Work so far has taken the form of lengthening the smokebox by means of a new paper wrapper, reprofiling the splashers and fitting cast brass chimney and dome, which really transform the look of the model.
     
    It's getting there slowly.
     

     

  21. James Harrison

    The D9, part 2

    By James Harrison,

    I've finally managed to get a few photographs of work so far.
     

     

     
     
     
    Work carried out so far consists of the following:
     
    1) All detail removed from the boiler and firebox.
     
    2) A 3mm slit was then filed into the boiler barrel right in front of the firebox.
     
    3) A 3mm fillet of a second 2P firebox was then inserted, and once the glue had set it was filled and sanded.
     
    4) Model filler was used to fill the holes left behind when the boiler fittings were removed.
     
    5) The running plate was sanded down flush with the cabsheets from the rear of the cab to the front steps.
     
    6) New cabsheets and splashers were cut from 0.4mm plastic sheet (this thickness has a nice slightly transparent finish, so I could trace directly off the Charles Reddy drawing).
     
    7) From my spare 2P body the cab front was removed, filed down and then inserted between the new cabsheets. This extended the cab by 6mm to the front.
     
    8 ) A piece of 0.4mm plastic sheet was gently curved between my fingers and then smothered in solvent and fixed down to the cab roof. Once the solvent had dried I held the model over a candle to further soften this piece and co-erce it to take up the curve of the cab roof. I then gave it another dousing with the solvent.
  22. James Harrison
    Herein we start to see why this blog is titled "The GC and Met in OO"...
     
    ... Because I've started my next loco build, and it's a red (well, chocolate brown) one....
     
    It's a Radley resin kit for a Metrovick Bo-Bo which I am planning to build pretty much straight out of the box. Sorry, no, got mixed up there- I never do that
     
    I want to see what can be done with this fairly basic kit to improve it.... I know the panelling is overstated by miles but my efforts at removing panel lines on carriages are poor to very poor, so I' not about to start sanding the body down to correct a fault that personally I have no proble with. No, my efforts are directed more at the 'being able to see right the way through the engine room from fore to aft and port to starboard' issue. I'm going to have a go at building an (admittedly fairly rudimentary) interior for the model.
     
    No work on that yet but last night I did manage to wash off and clean up the main parts- which were fairly clean castings anyway.
     

     

  23. James Harrison
    Thoroughly tired of laboriously hand-painting my models, and then finding a streaky finish and brush hairs on the completed model, I decided to have a go at airbrushing.
     
    I found a very cheap airbrush on ebay- now I know some argue to only buy the best but I've been burnt before spending lots of money of something that turns out to be a disappointment. So I bought a cheaper brush-if all goes well then no doubt eventually I'l work my way up to more expensive equipment. I've been given a compressor and I've ordered a water trap, but for my first attempt I used a can of compressed gas.
     
    At first I put just a few brushfuls of paint into the glass jar thinned roughly 50/50 with white spirit. Then I wondered why it kept running out.... eventually I just put about half of a Humbrol tin into the jar, thinned it and went for it. First lesson learnt- put as much in the jar as you can!
     
    This is what I ended up with...
     

     

     
    A much better result I feel. The only problem is that at the moment I've got to keep my airbrush attached to the can of propellant- the regulator on the can can't/ won't screw down completely to stop the gas escaping and relies upon the regulator on the brush to keep pressure. Not ideal.
  24. James Harrison
    Well, what do you think?
     

     
    Still masses to do obviously but to my mind it does now start to look like a B5 rather than a generic loco.
     
    I've paired it up with a Triang L1/ 2P tender, which I'm going to hack up in the same fashion I did an identical Airfix tender for one of my J11s.
     
    On the loco itself I've added a spectacle plate in slivers of plastic sheet- not quite finished yet- and I removed the cab roof, straightened it out a little and then re-instated it. It looks a lot better for this operation.
  25. James Harrison
    Hot on the heels of the L1 comes the next loco project....
     
    .... a BEC whitemetal 'Improved Director'.
     
    This is a kit I bought late last year and for reasons I'm now starting to remember put in the 'I'll get round to it someday' pile.
     
    Well today was that day and I'm starting to regret it, though I must say I do enjoy a challenge.
     
    The first problem was a biggie.... the castings are buckled. The footplate I straightened out by gluing the splashers to it fore and aft and then applying pressure in the middle of the splashers using pliers. The boiler halves were the real issue; they went together nicely at the back and around the smokebox but part at the the bottom of the front and in the middle.... it took a fair amount of fettling, and I'm sorry to say some colourful language, to get them back straight-ish. They're still not quite right now.
     

     

     
    I was able to use the boiler fittings from the kit, though I did replace the chimney with a spare casting from the L1 kit (the L1 and D10/ D11 share the same boiler diagram- I'm not entirely sure this extended to boiler fittings but the L1 casting was so much neater than the BEC example).
     
    Overall at the moment- bleurgh. Just look at the amount of filler I've had to use to fill in the worst of the gaps.... and I've still to go back over it once the glue has dried. Oh yes, I'm gluing this together with UHU. The last time I used a soldering iron I managed to pick up the hot end....
     
    The basic model's gone together easily enough, but I think that the experience has been enough at the moment to put me off whitemetal kits. The material strikes me as being too soft and pliable for larger castings like boilers and the fact it melts at low temperature has put me off soldering it. I think if I decide to go down the metal kit route, I'll go for brass ones.
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