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James Harrison

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  1. 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.
  2. James Harrison
    Last week a small package arrived containing whitemetal buffers... duly fitted and painted, the first of the Ashbury carriages can now said to be complete.
     

     
    Considering how it started out as a flat cardboard static kit, I think I am justified in saying I am satisfied with the result. I have been able to get it to run, I have fitted an interior, I have fitted glazing, I have added a degree of depth and surface texture and the beading and panelling, I have added wire handrails and roof fittings. In essence, it has been a scratchbuild out of pre-drawn components. Yes, it has been a lot of work- more than I anticipated- but I think it was worth it.
     
    It was so worthwhile, in fact, that having completed the first carriage I immediately launched into the second- of course refining the techniques and methodology.
     

  3. James Harrison
    The body now has been glazed, had some seats fitted, and has been secured to the chassis.
     

     

     
    There is still a lot of work to do. The underframe needs detailing up. The bufferbeams haven't even been started. The roof needs ventilators adding and then repainting. And there are a number of rough edges on the body that need attending to. But we're getting there.
  5. 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.
  7. James Harrison
    Hot on the heels of #871 comes #858. She started out variously as a Triang JInty, 3F and 2P, has now been rebuilt twice and I am very, very happy with the result. This time in the works I have replaced the splasher beading, replaced the valve chest cover and rebuilt the tender top.
     

     

     

     

  8. James Harrison
    There's something missing on the Mac B of course- a load....
     
    I originally had in mind a horsedrawn wagon of some description for a load- a pantechnicon or a dray, perhaps. Then somehow I ended up on a Lesney/ Matchbox collectors site and after that things get hazy. For some reason then a Matchbox 1/80 scale traction engine turned up in the post.
     

     
    It fits so it sits.
     
    I had a small, far away, sort of a moment as I was expecting something perhaps a little bigger...
     
    As one project is finished so I go out and buy another, as there are all manner of little changes I can see that would improve the toy no end.
  9. James Harrison
    Nearly finished now.
     
    I fitted three link couplings and built a suggestion of the brakes from plastic sheet. Then I made new decks fore and aft- the planking arrangement is totally different- and gave the model an initial first coat of paint- Humbrol #64 all over.
     
    I'm increasingly disappointed with the quality of Humbrol enamels. Variously they're too thin, take days to dry, some attack the plastic sheet and others (like my current tinlet of #64) have gone almost like a gel- unless you get a lump of pigment on the brush, you don't get any paint. I'm open to suggestions for alternative paint brands.
     

     

  10. James Harrison
    With the first of the three finished, I thought I would keep the impetus up and therefore set about the second. This is going to be another five compartment all-third, whilst the third in the set will be a four compartment all-first. I also have a drawing of a 25' 4-wheel luggage brakevan, so eventually I will be building a few of those too to bookend the six wheelers.
     
    So I broke out the second Brassmasters Cleminson chassis yesterday and set to work, but almost before I started I ran into problems with the soldering iron.
     
    I should point out it is practically a brand-new iron, that it cost me about £13 as part of a basic soldering kit amd that it is about of the 30 to 40W power range. The first time I used it was when I built the first of the chassis kits, just after Christmas, and within about an hour of starting to use it I noticed the tip had gone black. So did the metal barrel.
     
    When I tried to use it yesterday I found that it took quite a long time to actually transfer any heat into the work; not knowing any better (then!) I took a file to the tip and scraped off the black gunk, and then it worked a little better for a short time before resuming its recalcitrant nature. Eventually I lost patience and gave up yesterday afternoon as a bad job. Reading up overnight I found a few tips and decided to have another crack at it this afternoon. Before I did anything I gently removed the black gunk from the tip and the barrel with kitchen roll, then took the tip out and cleaned out inside with a cotton bud-loads of blackish brownish dust being the result. I then put it all together again, plugged it in, and waited for it to heat up.
     
    I was waiting a good ten minutes and it never got beyond the lukewarm stage of heat. I then got out my reserve iron- slightly older, but the same design, right down to the colour of the handle- and that had no problems at all. Interestingly, despite being older and cheaper and more used, I found the standby iron was better than the new one!- the tip was still shiny and took solder readily. The new one wouldn't even take solder for tinning.
     
    I can only surmise that a cheap soldering iron is a hit and miss affair. You might buy two of them at the same time from the same shop and to the same design, and one of them might work perfectly whilst the other breaks down. Anyway; I have bought some new tips and more solder and I intend obviously to take very good care of the working iron!
     
    So, after yesterday's false start, I built the second chassis today.
     

     

  11. 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.
     

     

  13. James Harrison
    So with the bodywork built up to roof level, the obvious thing to do was to build an interior. Which the kit doesn't have. So I dug out a copy of 'The World of Trains' from 1992 which included general dimensions and specs for building a carriage interior, and fabricated mine from 0.5mm plastic sheet.
     

     
    Very rough and ready, but then again the windows are rather small, the carriage isn't lit, and in those conditions you really can't see much of it and whilst you could go for a finely-detailed interior just for the pleasure of the thing, it seems to me a bit of a waste doing that if it will never be seen. So I tend to go for just enough detail to suggest the interior.
     

     
    Once fitted, even with the roof off you can see just how little detail you will be able to see in the completed model with the roof on and most of it plunged into darkness. In fact, the roof did go on just after this photograph was taken.
  14. James Harrison
    Finished; already. Well, the first day or two of work on the model did complete the lion's share of the work necessary.
     

     
    There will, maybe, be better photographs taken later, but this from the cameraphone really gives an idea of the completed model.
     
    That steampipe to the smokebox had to go; this is a wet 'un. Four-column Ramsbottom valves came out of my spares box. All that really had to be done then was to re-instate the black paintwork and line her out, and as usual I've used a couple of different methods. The tender is lined using HMRS LNER lining transfers. The cabside is lined using home-brew hand-drawn lining, and the boiler bands use a similar method. To be completely accurate there should of course be a red element to all of this but previous efforts have convinced me that when it comes to lining, especially when said lining has to be especially delicate, the choice I have is to leave it off and have a presentable model or try to show it and make a botch of the thing.
     
    My choice is to do the half-measure and who knows?- one day I might be able to do the more delicate bits, when I'll come back and add them.
  15. James Harrison
    For a given value of finished, this one is finished. I may, at some future point, come back and rebuild the interior.
     

     

     
    And in the background is the next project- the last (for the moment) of the large post-1910 mainline carriages.
  16. James Harrison
    I notice that my free storage allowance on Photobucket is somewhere around 70-75% used and therefore I am planning to delete a lot of my older photographs next weekend in order to free up storage space. I would therefore advise that if anybody wants copies of my photos, particularly the older ones up to around the beginning of 2015, that they download them in the next week before they are deleted.
  17. James Harrison
    So as you can see, since last time I have added the boiler fittings, a nice dark blue paint job, and fitted a spectacle plate (which still needs the brass spectacle rims fitting, as well as painting to be finished off). It is getting there; but increasingly into the realm of smaller detailing parts rather than big ticket items. Just to give an idea:
     
    -sandboxes
    -coal bunkers
    -springs
    -spectacle rims
    -backhead detail
    -dumb buffers
    -couplings
    -reversing lever
    -handrails
    -plumbing
    -crew
  18. James Harrison
    So I added a saddletank and firebox in the same fashion that I had built the smokebox. I then added cab sidesheets fabricated from 0.5mm plastic sheet. By painting everything black at this stage I can get a better idea of what the finished model will look like; also any bits that don't look right jump at you that bit more at a stage when it is easier to put it right.
     
    The postman delivered a small package this morning containing etches and castings from RT Models (thanks for telling me about them, 46444!)- chimney, saddletank filler cap, safety valves, smokebox door, springs and spectacle surrounds.
     
    So the next stage will be to fit the boiler fittings, and then start drawing up a spectacle plate.
  19. James Harrison
    After a bit of a break from my railway activities whilst building a 1/700 Dreadnought, I'm back with something a little different.
     
    A few years ago I bought a Bachmann Junior saddletank with the idea of turning it into one of the Metropolitan's 0-6-0 Peckett shunters. But what with Hornby bringing out a Peckett loco, and my interests starting to turn more toward the GC and waning a little regarding the Met, I have decided to turn it into something perhaps more interesting.
     
    I've always rather liked the Manning Wardle contractors locos used to build the GC mainline, so thoughts began recently to gravitate in that direction. Now I don't have any drawings for those engines; I haven't seen the preserved 'Sir Berkeley' in the flesh; the only measaurements I have are the wheelbase and boiler diameter- all others I'm guesstimating from photographs. This is therefore very much a project in the 'if it looks right it is right' vein and I am in truth building several models; a few attempts in paper to get it looking right before commiting to plastic sheet.
     
    So I began by splitting the body down into its components, leaving the running plate loosely fitted to the chassis. Once I was happy with my planning models I cut a few bulkheads in plastic sheet and fitted them in place. I have decided that the motor and gearbox will sit in the saddletank, which dictated the minimum height of that, and then sized the smokebox so that it is still vaguely in proportion, going off of photographs.
     
    With the bulkheads in place, I used paper to form the smokebox wrapper and fitted some plastic spacers to the saddle tank, to keep it all square.
     
    Looking towards the back of the loco, I somehow need to clear the DCC chip. This I would have removed, had not the pickups been wired directly to it. My idea right now is therefore to raise the cab floor over it; which would also have the effect of raising the firebox (a typical feature of Manning Wardle tanks).
     

  20. James Harrison
    Whilst I've been having fun these last few weeks rebuilding some clerestory carriages using a silhouette cutter, I've also been addressing the fact that at the present I don't have a suitable suburban engine to haul them. A fair few express passenger types, but nothing really appropriate for slower stopping trains.
     
    Now I have no shortage of the breed ready to go through the works; a Pollitt 2-4-2 and an atlantic tank amongst them, but my choice for a first backdated tank engine was an LNER A5/ GCR 9N 4-6-2. I think the main reason why I chose this one over the others was that it hadn't really responded well to my previous efforts at a repaint (which was into 1924 LNER black, the first time around).
     
    The model itself is one I bought off of Ebay, a few years ago, and in my ownership has now been in three liveries; firstly LNER green (I don't think any A5s actually wore this colour at all....), then LNER black and now GCR green. It is a whitemetal kit, I don't know by whom, and weighs an absolute ton.
     
    Alterations to the bodywork were minor, amounting to new cab side sheets in plastic card, removing the snifting valve, and fitting Kadee couplers fore and aft.
     
    The repaint was performed by my usual method of grey undercoat in enamel paint, two coats of gloss brunswick green enamel, and a top coat of matt brunswick green acrylic. Lining was my usual odd mix of HMRS LNER lining for the tanks and bunker and homebrew boilerbands, with the added fun this time of homebrew bunker back lining and cab sheet lining- cut out from paper.
     
    Well, enough of my waffling on; here are a few photos. I think that for a large lumbering beast it looks very graceful in a 'proper' livery, rather than plain black.
     

     

  21. 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.
     

     

  22. James Harrison
    Well, here he (she?) is, pretty much finished except for the reversing gear which I still need to build. Lining is an odd mix of HMRS lining transfers (tender), freehand (cabsides) and homebrew black-biro-on-paper (boiler bands).
     
    I am very happy with how this has turned out!- a huge improvement on what it looked like before.
  23. James Harrison
    With the loco suitably lowered on the chassis, I was able to start thinking about rebuilding had been wrecked. The firebox was easy enough- an overlay of paper covered the hole.
     
    With the valances, I started by tracing the scale drawing I'm following, and then comparing this tracing with what I actually have on the model. What with how it had originally been put together, and the donor parts used, means that the cylinders are set too far back, which in turn means that the valances have to take account of this. Once happy with the tracing, I glued it to a sheet of 0.5mm plastic sheet. Then I glued another piece of 0.5mm sheet to this, using PVA glue. Then it was left under a heavy weight to set for a few days. Once it had all dried out, I was able to cut and file until I had a nice neat valance. It was then left in a bucket of water... the PVA dissolved and I then had two identical valances. Neat little trick, that.
     
    Anyway, once these had been fitted to the locomotive with impact adhesive, and the whole left to set overnight, I was able to rebuilt the running plate, using paper and filler. It sounds very fragile and to be fair it is- to start with. Once the glue has dried and the filler hardened, however, it does become remarkably strong for what it is. A few coats of paint also lend it more strength.
     
    It was at this point I decided to see what could be done about the cylinders being too far back. I drilled a new ounting hole in the cylinder block, then was able to shunt the whole assembly forward by about 2.5mm. Unfortunately this then meant that the existing piston and connecting rods no longer fitted; with the piston rod at maximum travel it fell out of the cylinder. To get around this I ordered some piston and connecting rods off of another locomotive, however these had the same issue. I could keep spending money ordering random sets of connecting rods in hopes of finding a set that fit, but they cost £7/ pair and what with how many combinations I'd have to try.... there are other things I'd sooner spend my money on.
     
    Anyway, as of yesterday afternoon I had a model that now looks like this.

     

     
    And I am starting to paint her up in Great Central livery.
  24. James Harrison
    A few years ago I bought a hackbashed model of an LNER B3 via Ebay, and, after fettling with it a little, left it at that.
     
    I feel that the time has now come to do a more involved rebuild to bring it closer to the prototype.
     
    Now, previously, I had this.
     

     
    The body sits too high on the chassis and the front end frames are completely wrong.
     
    After a fair bit of surgery and a lot of remove material, to the extent of cutting out the top of the firebox and removing the splashers and then resetting them lower, I have this...
     

     
    It might not look pretty, but it sits at scale height at last which is half the battle won. (Now the rebuilding work can begin).
     
    Tonight the plan is to repair the firebox top and get to work on new running plates.
  25. James Harrison
    Another 'I'll get around to it one day' project left over from last year....
     
    I've wanted a couple of these imposing examples of rolling stock for a few years; more than anything else to go with the Fish Engine I built.
     
    Idly browsing Ebay about this time last year I bought a pair of GWR Siphon H vans quite cheaply, thinking at the time that they were close enough to build easily into convincing models of the fish vans.
     
    Errr.... nope.
     
    They're too long, too high, the roof profile is wrong, the bogies are too big, the layout of the external strapping is wrong, the number of doors are wrong...
     
    .... so since then they've sat on a shelf whilst I've gotten on with other things and considered how to go about a conversion.
     
    The first step is to lose the extra length. You need to remove 20mm, and this I took out of the middle of the underframe. I should point out I removed the underframe trussing first and kept it safe, intending to re-use it when the time comes. The two halves of the underframe were then reunited with a good piece of plastic sheet over the joint to reinforce it.
     
    Shortening the overall length brought the over-sized bogies into focus. Having removed them from the underframes, I cut either side of the mounting pins and set those bits aside. I had to lose 14mm from the bogie and by luck the bolster the mounting pins push through is 14mm in length! So that 14mm was cut away, then the bolster filed down (it wouldn't then fit between the wheelsets...) and the whole lot glued back together.
     

     
    White areas are where I've reinforced what's left of the bogie.
     
    On to the bodywork.
     
    Having cut 20mm out the middle of the underframe, it must therefore follow that I had to cut the same out of the body. Rather the simply cut it out of the middle, and end up with a weak joint top to bottom in the middle of the van, I took stock of what I had. Not only is the body too long, it is too high and the roof is wrong. There is nothing therefore to be gained by keeping as much as possible in one piece. Therefore I separated the sides of the Siphon van from the roof and the ends, and then removed 18mm (20mm less the 1mm thickness of the moulding at both ends) from one end of the van side.
     
    My intention at this point was 'simply' sand down the Siphon strapping, replace it with something more appropriate, and leave it there. But the more I thought about it, the more I came to the conclusion that this really wouldn't answer, and so I eventually decided that the upper halves of the sides would have to be scratchbuilt. Therefore I cut the sides down to 12mm in height, and as by this time they looked a little woebegone I mirrored them (so the right side becomes the left, and vice-versa), and scored planking on what used to be the inside face. I then glued these to the underframe to properly brace the joint.
     

     
    At this point I felt that the structure was solid enough to take a craftknife to the solebars and remove the footboards under the removed doors and suchlike. This done I then fitted 3mm strips of plastic to form a new solebar face.
     
    Casting around for a new roof, I found a Triang Mk.1 roof in my spares box. I offered this up to the drawing I'm working to (to be found in the back of Volume 3 of George Dow's Great Central) and found it to be a reasonably close match. I cut it down to 180mm in length, removing the excess out of the middle so as to retain the large mating surfaces at each end. All of the ventilators, panel seams, rainstrips etc. were then sanded off of it.
     
    The part removed from the middle of the roof was then used as a handy template to use for plotting out the roof profile when drawing up the ends. These ends were cut from 0.5mm plastic sheet, and glued into place. The roof was then glued in.
     

     
     
    Next stage will be to build the slatted upper sides and the external framing.
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