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James Harrison

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Blog Entries posted by James Harrison

  1. James Harrison
    This week then I have built an interior, fitted roof vents, painted the roof, and reunited the body and the chassis. Oh, and fitted some couplings.
     

     

     
    Now the next step of course is going to be building the solebars and everything below solebar level.
  2. James Harrison
    So I started off rebuilding a kit using my hackbash as a guide and I ended up rebuilding my hackbash using the kit as a guide....
     
    The DJH model is now completed and represents #871 as she appeared around 1912/1913 (as-per the photograph in Yeadons). My hackbash.... well I'm satisified with the splashers and beading now, so attention shifted to the smokebox saddle. It looked too angular... easy enough to rectify at the rear with a couple of files, but the front needed to but cut off and replaced (I filed up a new 'piano front' out of a sliver of balsa wood). You'll have to take my word for it that it looks a lot better I'm afraid!- at least until it is painted.
  3. James Harrison
    Hmmm, the beading to the splashers on my hackbash D6 really doesn't cut it, compared with the DJH example. So I did something about it.
     
    Some scrap 0.3mm plastic sheet and 0.5mm plastic strip later, and...
     

     
    Much better, I think. Even better when the varnish dries....
     
    Then I'll look again at the smokebox saddle and maybe the tender.
     
    Meanwhile the DJH kit has been fully repainted and lined out, and just waits on being given a number and final varnishing.
  4. James Harrison
    I've now reached the point where I can line out my DJH 4-4-0/ I have to say this is a very, very nice little kit, it's a shame it isn't manufactured any more.
     

     

     

     
    And with the loco at this stage, it seemed a perfect opportunity to haul out my hackbashed Pollitt 4-4-0 as a sort of compare and contrast exercise. I think it matches up quite well.
     

     

     

  5. James Harrison
    I got bored with the constant stream of carriages and wagons. So I pulled an engine out of my roundtuit pile.
     
    Just over a year ago I was able to buy a DJH Pollitt 4-4-0 and a scratchbuilt Pollitt single. The 4-2-2 is a lovely piece of work, the 4-4-0 is also very nice but for some bizarre reason the original owner had decided that a metallic light green was exactly the right colour for GCR green.
     

     
    It had to go...
     

     
    The physical changes I have made to the model took all of an hour- a new cast brass chimney and some coal rails to the tender- and now a repaint into the proper GCR livery is well underway.
  7. James Harrison
    A second session on the Mac B last night saw me picking fault with things that had been done the night before. The conversion is plainly possible, but in my enthusiasm to start I had overlooked a few things and got other bits wrong.
     
    I pulled it apart and set out to improve what I had already done. I had left the basic axleboxes alone, having stripped them of springs and surface detail, but now they looked not only very blocky but plainly too large. So I cut them off flush with the sideframe face, which left enough material to get a tophat bearing to sit in the sideframe. Fitting tophat bearings makes the wagon run more smoothly, but of course eats into the clearance for the axles. So I found a scrap of plastic sheet and glued it to the back of the sideframes to space them out a bit more to compensate.
     
    The sideframes themselves looked very thick and chunky compared with the drawing, and then I noticed that they were about 2mm too deep. So out came the scalpel and the hacksaw, and off came a 2mm strip on each side frame. It's difficult to see on the drawing that the sideframes were fabricated from steel channel section, but reference is clearly made in the text and it's also quite obvious on a photograph on the next page.... more strips of styrene sheet were added to create the channel profile.
     
    Once this was all done I reassembled the wagon and it looks a lot closer to the real thing. I then cut 1mm off the deck and sideframes at each of the wagon to reduce the overall length to scale.
     
    Then I turned my attention to the bufferbeams. Now the Dapol bufferbeams have absolutely nothing in common with the GCR Mac B, but I decided I would have a go at reusing them nevertheless. Firstly I cut away the lower half of the bufferbeam, then I cut away the steel sections over the buffers themselves. I then filed down the moulding to front and rear and ended up with a sliver of plastic that was the right size, but less than 1mm thick. The drawing shows quite plainly that the Mac B had thick timber baulks for bufferbeams... I packed the slivers out with some 2mm styrene strip and then fitted the buffers supplied with the kit.
     
    And the result? Well I think it looks rather close.
     

     

     
    Next stage will be to change the deck to the ends, and then we're onto the smaller details.
  8. James Harrison
    I was going to commence the last of my MSLR 6-wheel carriages after completing a pair of GCR clerestory carriages, but for 1. the discovery this afternoon that I am out of '1st' class transfers and 2. the domestic authorities being on hand to potentially pick fault with my fire hazard of a soldering set up. I prefer to solder when I am alone in the house.
     
    So I pulled a Dapol Lowmac kit out of my roundtoit pile.
     
    The BR Lowmac wagon was based on an LNER standard type of the 1930s, which in turn was based on a Great Eastern type. So why would I be interested in one?
     
    Well, Peter Tatlow points out in Volume 1 of his LNER wagons series that the GER Mac K was very similar to a type of flat wagon owned by the Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast, and therefore I could quite legitimately buy a Lowmac kit, make a few alterations and letter it GC. Which was my original plan. Where it fell apart was the discovery that the wheels supplied with the kit are too small for the GER Mac K but a perfect match for the GCR Mac B. I would have left it that, but.... the deck was also a close match and the overall length was close enough for me.
     
    All of which was enough for my brain to stir and for me to consider a conversion to a bona-fide GCR flat wagon.
     

     
    So this is the GER/ LDECR type that would be an easy conversion....
     

     
    .... and the rather different GCR wagon I've decided to aim for.
     
    First thing I did was to remove the surface detail on the sideframes, and reprofile the ends of same.
     

     
    Then I removed the outer ends of the bracing below the wagon deck and glued the basic body together.
     

     
    At this early stage it's difficult to say but I think it should certainly be possible to get a decent model of a GCR Mac B out of it.
  10. James Harrison
    I finished the second of the six-wheel carriages last week.
     
    I thi
     
    I think I have reason to be quite pleased with that.
     
    Progress has also been on-going with a few other projects too; I'm about at the point where I can't take any more on until I get my to-do list cut down a little. This is of course why I have ordered a pre-lettered Manvers Main wagon from POWsides, and a GCR horsebox and bogie brakevan from Brassmasters, but those are neither here nor there....
     
    A few weeks ago I spent a few evenings building a Cambrian pre-grouping coal wagon kit; the transfers went a little awry and so this became another war-damaged example, hurriedly repaired and put back into traffic.
     

     
    I still need to add some coal as a load...
     
    And so I now find myself with another two projects on the bench.
     

     
    Another pre-grouping coal wagon, painted but awaiting transfers and assembly;
     

     
    .... And another GCR clerestory carriage off my silhouette cutter. I think the blade is starting to wear out; this cut started well but by the end had become just a scratch on the plastic, and it was touch and go as to whether this was going to be a success or a scrapper. More blades are on order.
  11. James Harrison
    Works managed this weekend on the second 6-wheeler:
     
    1) Re-soldered the vertical screws on the chassis after they came adrift. Unfortunately the act of soldering these left the original carriage floor ruined, leading onto
    2) Building a new carriage floor.
    3) Couplings were then fitted, and the body test-fitted.
    4) One end of the body was originally glued up skewiff, so it was squared back up.
    5) Happy with the fit of the body, it was removed and the interior built.
    6) The carriage sides were re-glazed.
    7) Roof ventilators were added.
     
    The plan therefore for tomorrow evening is to paint the interior and repaint the roof. Then later next week I can start on the solebars and footboards.
  13. James Harrison
    When I started to look for photographs of 6-wheel stock to get an idea of what they look like below solebar level, I had no difficulty finding the basics out- the last of these carriages were built as late as 1899 and they appeared on London Extension expresses well into the 20th Century. There are even photos from the 1920s showing massive Robinson 4-cylinder express locos in Manchester with a couple of these archaic-looking vehicles behind the drawbar.
     
    What I quickly gathered from the photographs was that the solebars and the footboards stand out- there are two levels of those- but everything else sinks into the background, not surprising really as the axleboxes, vertical members and the like would be set back, inside the line of the carriage side, and would be if not in shadow then still in relative darkness. What I decided to do, then, was to model the solebars and footboards as-per the photographs, and then provide something workmanlike in the way of vertical members holding it all together. Once painted it will look the part and, like the photographs of the real thing, tend to blur into the background.
     
    So this afternoon was spend productively building the solebars and footboards, which are now fitted and waiting to be painted.
     

  14. James Harrison
    Immediately after completing my Parker all-first, I bought a portrait cutter, and my first efforts using it fairly knock the plasticard hackbashes into fits.
     
    More recently I bought a set of four Hornby clerestories with the intention of a simple repaint job, but a chance posting on Niles' freelance workbench by Skinnylinny showing cutting out the small compartment windows for a series of larger picture ones got me thinking.
     
    The upshot is that I am fairly confident, having compared the ex-Triang bodies against scale drawings of Parker stock in the Railway Modeller between 1980 and 1981, that it is possible to hackbash reasonably close lookalikes of the all-first, van composite, brake third and, possibly, buffet cars.
     
    The easiest of the lot is the all-first, and we start by disassembling the carriage and sourcing some spare Gresley coach ends. Now you could, I suppose, just sand the clerestory coach ends smooth and glue the Gresley end on and leave it at that, but I decided to cut away the clerestory ends completely. I took as my guidelines the outer edges of the outer windows on each end compartment. Taking this as the datum point it is very easy to get neat straight cuts to secure the new ends to. It is slightly complicated that before you can fit the Gresley ends they need to have 1-2mm snipped off of each side.
     
    Once they have been fitted and the glue has set, you can set-to with files to reduce the new ends still more- they overlap the tumblehome quite considerably and need smoothing back.
     
    Then work can start on the windows. Down the corridor side, three of the compartments loose their window mullions to give three picture windows. The remaining compartment windows, on both sides, lose the drop lights to the doors, so each compartment has three equally-sized window openings. The outer compartment at each end of the carriage have the windows blanked out, except for the window to the door. This window will eventually become that for the WC.
     
    Attention can now turn to the roof. I started by putting a large piece of scrap plastic into the roof, before cutting away the clerestory. That piece of scrap plastic keeps the roof in one piece as you cut away the clerestory in addition to generally adding stiffness and strength to the roof and carriage body. I don't know what sort of plastic these carriages are made from recently- but I don't like it.... it is flimsy enough that the sides begin to bow when the roof is removed. For that reason I try to keep the roof in-situ whilst working on the model, only removing it when necessary.
     
    Anyway; enough prattle. Here are a few photos of progress so far.
     

     

  15. James Harrison
    You may recall, just after Christmas, that I decided to try my hand at soldering and, as a first attempt, built a Brassmasters Cleminson chassis. I then plonked an old Ratio GWR coach body on it and left it, for the present, at that.
     

     
    With #858 off the bench, attention now turns back to this before bits start to go walkabout. As a first step, I separated the chassis and body and repainted both.
     

     
    The chassis gets just a plain coat of matt black.
     

     
    The body gets a scumbled coat of mid-brown.
     
    The next step is going to be to add some roof detail and repaint same. Then I'm going to start work on building an interior.
  16. James Harrison
    And.... she's finished!
     

     
    I have fitted a vacuum pipe to the front bufferbeam, glazed the spectacle plate, fitted the last of the handrails and filled the tender with real coal.
     
    I think this is probably one of the best locos I've yet built, certainly the best of my hackbashes. You really can't tell she started off, a few years ago, as a Trang Jinty boiler and a couple of broken bits of a Ratio Midland 4-4-0.
  17. James Harrison
    That's more like it!
     
    The lining is finished, having taken the better part of a week, and now I'm looking to the smaller finishing touches. Parts still to be fitted run to the cab handrails, reverser, the whistle and the vacuum pipes, the bufferbeams need painting and some coal and a crew need to be added.
  19. James Harrison
    I think I have good reason to be pleased with myself going over projects done this year.
     
    I've managed to get a reasonable number of locomotives repainted into Great Central livery, a couple of projects off of the to-do list and made a sizeable dent in the rolling stock gap; completing two mainline rakes of five carriages each and progressing a pair of suburban rakes. I've bought a silhouette cutter and used it to make a few carriages- and I anticipate next year I'll be making more use of it.
     
    So for projects for 2017, my first priority is going to be those which can be finished without needing to buy in more materials. For locomotives, this means the first to be looked at will be class 2A #858 (which I have already started), a second Jersey Lily and a second Immingham. This will use up all of the numberplates I ordered from Narrow Planet way back in January. I'll then put in another bulk order and this time around I will be concentrating on freight locos. So, later in 2017, at least one or two from the following list will be put into GC condition:
     
    - LNER J10 (two of these to be looked at- one needs a new chassis....)
    - LNER J11 (again, two to look at- one a BEC kit, the other the Bachmann offering)
    - LNER Q4 (Millholme kit)
    - LNER O4 (Bachmann)
    - LNER L1 (Dean Sidings kit)
    - LNER M1 (Dean Sidings kit- Barry Railway 0-6-4 to be hackbashed)
     
    I also have a couple of N5s and am gradually accruing parts for a hackbashed 8N (LNER B6)- so watch this space.
     
    When it comes to rolling stock, I have the following that I would like to get finished in 2017.
     
    - Ratio suburban carriage (which would then complete a rake of five)
    - Clerestories (Silhouette-cut sides fitted to Hornby underframes- three of these to do)
    - MSLR six wheelers (Ratio GWR 4-wheelers fitted with Brassmasters 6-wheel chassis)
     
    I have made a couple of attempts at some Parker 45' stock, but to be honest I've not been too impressed with the results of my hackbashes so that project I'm putting on hold for the present. I may, at some point, but some of the Worsley Works etches, but that will be some ways off yet.
     
    Now with freight stock, I have made a little progress this year- building a few Cambrian kits for pre-grouping PO wagons- and next year I have a few more of those to build. I also have a pair of DS GCR bolsters to build, a Dapol Lowmac to backdate into an LDECR example and am planning to replace my GCR 6-wheel brakevan with a new one made using my silhouette cutter.
     
    I have bought some Bachmann LNER fish and ventilated vans and comparing them with drawings in Tatlow's wagons book they are so close to GCR covered vans that I believe a conversion is not only possible but probably quite a simple thing to do.
     
    So, quite an exciting programme I think and one that should keep me busy for the year ahead.
  20. James Harrison
    2001, a secondary school somewhere in Staffordshire. "Yes, you've made a good job of soldering that LED in there James, well done." And thirty seconds later I picked the iron up by the hot end.
     
    2006, a halls of residence in Lincoln. 'I'll just solder these two brass rods together and then we'll see how it looks'.... HISSSSSS followed by my jumping around the room swearing.
     
    When I say jokingly that when I solder I generally pick the iron up by the hot end, I'm usually being completely serious.
     
    So why a few months ago I thought to try to tame the art I now forget, but I got as far as ordering a couple of Brassmasters Cleminson chassis kits and hunting out my soldering iron, and was about to start when the house got turned upside down for a few months and my modelling activities got put on hold.
     
    Anyway, with a week or so off over Christmas and an empty house for the afternoon, I decided to have a go at it whilst things were fairly quiet and I wouldn't be interrupted, not too much or too often at least.
     
    I ordered the Cleminson chassis in a fit of inspiration having seen a newly-restored GCR 6 wheeler, and when they arrived and I read the instructions it struck me that here is probably an ideal starter project. It's got very few parts, most of which are fairly big and chunky, and the remainder are either wire or smaller bits and there's the opportunity to get in one afternoon a (hopefully!) working chassis and some experience in soldering large and small pieces of brass sheet and wire.
     
    I'm happy to say that after a few hours of work I've got a functioning chassis.
     


    Now I do need to finish this off properly; I managed to flood one of the bearings with solder, so I haven;t fitted the ones in the kit and I will be buying some Romford top hat ones to fit instead, oh and I found that it really doesn't like the old plastic Ratio wheels so I had to use some Hornby metal ones (so I need to order another pack of those too before I can carry on with my carriage building plans), but it has been quite a useful experience and I'm at least a little happier now to solder. There are things that have mystified me though; the iron either getting red hot as soon as it was plugged in, or being plugged in for 10 minutes without getting warm. The solder either melting as soon as it sees the iron, or steadfastly holding on like grim death and refusing to melt even when the iron is glowing a bright cherry red. Places where the solder just refused to flow at all.
     
    Now I'm not going to go off and build my pair of Jidenco Barnums straight away, but I think once I have built the other pair of chassis I have I'll be ready to tackle at least one or two of the Brassmasters GCR wagons, and then we'll see about those big excursion carriages.
  21. James Harrison

    "King Edward VII"

    By James Harrison,

    And another one in GC livery! This took longer than planned, partly because I decided to do some work on the chassis (to stop the wheels and pickups binding against each other) and partly because for three weeks the kitchen table had the kitchen sitting on top of it. Which put a definitive stop to any modelling work.
     

     

     

  22. James Harrison
    Just a bit of a difference
     
    I'm about halfway through lining her out. It has to be done in stages over several days because there's just so much of it. Also I can only do so much of it in one go before I lose grip of my sanity.
  23. James Harrison
    Some of you may recall a few years ago that I mentioned I had bought a couple of locomotives via an auction website; as I remember in the course of maybe an hour I secured for myself a K's 'Sir Sam Fay', a Nu-Cast N5 and a scratchbuilt C13.
     
    Well since then I have of course rebuilt the 'Sam Fay', the N5 has been deemed perfectly acceptable, and the C13 until now has sat in a box waiting for me to decide what to do with it. Things moved forward a little late last year when I ordered some numberplates for it, but other than that nothing happened.
     
    Fast-forward ten months and having gone through a phase of building carriages I decided I wanted a change, so dug out the C13, volume 7 of the 'Green Bible', the December 1996 issue of Railway Modeller, my book of GCR loco liveries and the numberplates.
     
    I was able to identify that the model I had bought was a 9K (LNER class C13), but unfortunately the numberplates I had bought were for a member of the following, similar class, the 9L.
     
    Ah well, differences between the two are fairly minor and it allows me to have a little more fun with the model than a mere repaint.
     
    I started off by separating the body and chassis. The chassis is a hacked-up Triang type, with an X04 motor- now if I recall correctly the model was sold with the warning that it runs well one way but badly the other- but at least being built up of RTR components makes it a lot easier to eventually source spare parts and tweak the running qualities.
     
    Turning to the bodywork, I laid it on top of the Ian Beattie drawings in the December 1996 RM. It's a few millimetres too long, and the smokebox looks to have been stretched, but it's quite nicely made so I've no real desire to start cutting it up just for the sake of 5mm. That decision made, I removed the ross-pop safety valves and the push-pull gear, and the smokebox door numberplate. I then cut away the plated-over coal rails to the bunker and carefully carved the rear bunker sheet to introduce the graceful reverse curves.
     

     
    The major visual difference between the 9K and the 9L is that the water tanks and coal bunker for the latter a little wider; cab sheets therefore are not flush with the bunker and tank sheeting. I replicated this by adding a piece of 0.5mm thick plastic sheet to each side of the loco.
     

     
    I then went looking for a set of safety valves. I found a couple of whitemetal castings in my spares box, but they were all either too wide or sat on a base plate which was too thick, so I decided to try to make a set in plastic instead. I used a holepunch to create a 5mm circular plastic blank as a base, then I cut three piece of 0.5mm sheet, 5mm square. I glued these together to create a 5mm square block of plastic, 1.5mm deep, and then to get a bit of a shape to this I wrapped it in paper. Then I took a short length of brass wire and glued it around the top to form the lip. It's probably not totally accurate but it looks the part.
     

     
    I did find in my spares box a cast brass Robinson chimney; I think it is an Alan Gibson one for the J11 kit. I matched it up to the RM drawings and it seems to match pretty much perfectly; but when I placed it on the model it didn't look right at all. For the moment then I've decided to keep the original chimney; it's pretty firmly fixed on, so I can't be certain of removing it without breaking the model, and in a way it looks right (by which I mean it doesn't immediately jump out, to me at least, as being wrong).
     
    Now the next job on the model is to fit coal rails and then to start repainting it into GCR lined green livery.
  24. James Harrison
    I left off last time with the basic bodyshell more or less finished, but no glazing, no roof as such and no interior.
     
    The first thing I did was to build the interior; I again made use of the article in 'World of Trains' from 1991/92 to fabricate one from 0.5mm plastic sheet.
     
    I re-used the glazing strips supplied by Hornby; but I cut these up into smaller pieces and fixed them in place with 'glue 'n' glaze', which dries clear. Once it had dried, I spent quite some time trying to clean off the residue where it had crept over the window openings, but after doing maybe two or three windows I had the idea to just pour some more of the stuff on top of the plastic strip and let it dry, to see what happened. Surprise surprise it dried to a nice, clear, level finish- so in future rather than worrying about streaks of the stuff going onto the clear glazing strips I'll be flooding the window apertures out instead.
     
    I took a short length of 0.5mm square plastic strip and painted it brass, then I fixed it in place across the back of the three picture windows on the corridor side to form the handrail. For the toilet windows, I painted the inside of the plastic strip with correction fluid.
     
    For the roof, I glued a second sheet of paper over the first. I then raided my spares box for a sprue of roof ventilators left over from my last Ratio carriage kit, and I fitted two of those to each compartment, making a total of 14 in all. The drawings in Railway Modeller suggest there should be some also over the corridor, and some smaller roof vents to each compartment too, however no roof plan is given and the side and end elevations seem to contradict each other.... so I decided that just the ventilators over the compartments would suffice, until I have better information to hand.
     
    Now, all that is needed are some transfers and some varnish.
     

     

  25. James Harrison
    So; to recap; this started life as a Hornby clerestory carriage...
     
    I dismantled it, cut the ends off, fitted new gangwayed carriage ends, cut the clerestory off the roof and made good the resulting hole with plastic sheet and model filler. I removed some small areas of the beading and down one side cut away the window mullions too. New beading was then fitted where necessary using pieces of 0.5 x 0.5mm plastic strip (I must order some more of this).
     
    Now for the progress since!
     
    I have painted it teak brown all over; an undercoat of a yellow/ orange colour then solid mid-brown all over. I haven't attempted any real scumbling effect this time, the main reason being that the prototype was originally painted French Grey and Dark Brown (1898- 1903), then Cream and Dark Brown (1903- 1908), then teak (circa 1908 onward). I don't particularly think when this latter livery change was effected that the workshops would have gone to the effort of stripping painted carriage bodies down to bare wood- it would take weeks to do- more likely they would be given a couple of coats of brown paint as 'close enough' and returned to service.
     
    Bogies and wheelsets were reinstated; the original Hornby fittings were used throughout. Underframe trussing and gas cylinders were also refitted; again the original Hornby bits. Not quite right, but then if I were building a millimetre-perfect model I wouldn't be starting from a mass-produced toy. It looks the part, anyway.
     
    The roof had a couple of holes and gaps and a noticeable lip in it as a result of being lashed together from several pieces of plastic; I glued a paper covering over it to produce a nice level surface ready for painting and detailing.
     
    My usual buckeye couplings have also been fitted. I still need to rebuild the ends of the underframes and add an interior.
     

     

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