plasticbasher

Final installment for now. The Plan: The assembly of the Airfix Staniers is different to that of the Dapol / Hornby 12 wheel Restaurant cars, despite the design work for the 12 wheelers being started by Airfix (the coach was slated for their 1981 range I believe). That release never happened as Airfix were taken over by Mainline and in the end the 12 wheelers were completed and released by Dapol in the late 1980's...before the moulds were then sold to Hornby in the 1990s. Anyway, the Airfix Staniers have a separate roof and the bodyshell has an integral floor; whereas the Dapol / Hornby 12 wheelers have the roof moulded with the bodyshell and no floor. I decided (for strength) that I would splice the two half coach bodyshells together and then glue a roof on (with a 2 cm bit chopped off one end) and add a section of another roof to complete the coach shell. When the glue (Revell Contacta and EMA PlasticWeld) has set rock hard I'll remove what's left of the coach floors, so I can fit the "new" bodyshell to the Hornby / Dapol 12 wheeler chassis. So where am I at? The coach bodies have been glued together. All raised detail (door hinges, handrails, door handles etc) on the sides removed and smoothed flush. One end has had the top part of the curved water pipes removed (I wish I'd done both ends now). One Airfix roof has a section removed from one end and was glued to the bodyshell (ensuring everything stayed square). The other roof had an appropriate section cut from one end and glued in place. Main things still to do: Remove floors from bodyshell when glue is hard. Make body fit 12 wheel chassis. Sort chassis - lower 1mm, fill solebar cutouts, remove gas cylinders (not present on a Sleeper) and so on. Remove ribs from roof (to be confirmed - I am pretty sure the 68ft vehicles didn't have them but need to check) Mark sides where I need to remove bits for windows; remove those bits and glue sides on. Hack existing Airfix interiors (it's a sleeping coach, so you can see much) Paint, glaze and whatnot. Should be about 2025 when this one is finished then!!

Progress update: 1. I have been swapping the plastic wheels out for metal Hornby 14mm coach wheels and replacing the bogie securing pins with machine screws and nuts (you can see that in the photo's attached to the first post). The machine screws are trimmed to length obviously. Another thread on these coaches mentioned filing down the screw head to allow clearance for the middle axle in each bogie. I can confirm that is time consuming but very necessary. 2. To create the bodyshell for the 68 ft Sleeper Composite I took the two Airfix Stanier Brake coaches and: Chopped the brake compartment off one just by the double doors in both sides (so it now measures 155mm long). The other one also had the brake compartment removed but more of it (so the part that was left measured 117mm). The second photo showed the faint pencil line where I initially cut (by a door, but it left a passenger section that was about 1.5mm too long). I used the passenger compartments and not the brake compartments as I didn't want the extra hassle of filling end windows and chiseling off the guard's duckets. Using a small flat file, a set square and some fine sand paper I tidied up both sides and adjusted until they created a square coach shell exactly the same length as the etched sides.

Hi All, While the (glacial) progress on my Triang / Hornby / Ratio Midland 3F build has not juddered to a halt (I am actually doing two simultaneously now!), I felt like doing something a little different. A little while ago I bought a job lot of coach bits to fix up some broken coaches of my own. After fixing a couple of broken coaches, amongst the pile of new bits I'd acquired was: A Hornby (or Dapol) 68 foot, 12 wheel dining car chassis, with a broken buffer. An Airfix Stanier 57 foot corridor brake bodyshell repainted in primer on one side and gloss maroon the other, with a matching interior and roof . There was also a spare Airfix 60 foot composite coach roof. I already had a similar Airfix LMS Stanier brake body / interior / roof assembly stripped of paint. What really kicked this little project off was noticing a pair of Hornby 12 wheel Restaurant Car bogies on eBay (I think they were about a tenner with postage). I then ordered a pair of Comet M24 etched coach sides for a Sleeper Composite from Wizard Models (again about £10 - although I ordered some other bits from Wizard at the same time). So I shall use all of the above to create an LMS D1844 12 wheel Sleeper Composite coach. I also have two of the Hornby / Dapol 68 foot 12 wheel Restaurant Cars and have found some very useful threads on here covering improvements to these coaches. Inspired by these threads the principle improvements I plan on making are: Fit metal wheels (Hornby 14mm coach wheels) Fill in the cut-outs in the solebars. Lower the coaches by 1mm Lower the interior so the tables line up with the base of the windows - since seeing a post highlighting how the interior is way too high in these coaches, I can't unsee that flaw... The sleeper will also be lowered and have the cut-outs in the solebars filled in. Here are some useful links: https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?%2Ftopic%2F98352-Hornby-12-wheel-lms-ex-restaurant-car-mods%2F Here are a few photo's to show: The pile of bits I'm using to make up a Sleeper Composite The excess height of the Hornby / Dapol Restaurant Car chassis when buffer to buffer with Hornby's latest Maunsell coach (slightly damaged but sitting at the correct height). The Restaurant car is about 1mm too high and this is noticeable. The solebar cut-outs that need filling in (the Restaurant car on the right has the optional Dapol chassis without cutouts - the bare chassis on the left is the Dapol version with cutouts that is (sadly) the only version Hornby manufacture.

If you're sticking plastic to the Thomas / E2 body, I think any plastic solvent or polystyrene cement sold for model making (ie. Revell, Humbrol, MekPak, PlasticWeld etc) will be just fine for any loco bodies made by Hornby since the start of the 1970's. That's been my experience anyway. Yes they will melt the plastic, but that's exactly how they create a strong bond...they literally fuse the two parts together. Just go carefully and only get glue where you need it. There are some YouTube short films made (I think) by Airfix or Revell as an introduction to making plastic kits and if you watch how the parts are glued together (with polystyrene cement) that is an excellent example of how to do it without slathering glue all over the place..! Superglue or epoxy resin as others have suggested would certainly be good choices if adding parts made of metal. I'm interested to see how you address the coal rails and the cab side sheets too. Although I already have a number of variously battered E2 bodies and the later (China made) chassis to power them (when I finally get around to that project).

A "ditto" to all the above positive feedback (I'm a first time customer incidentally). Placed an order for a new project on Tuesday AM. The correctly picked, well wrapped little parcel was on my doormat today. The components I purchased were Comet and Mainly Trains branded (ie. produced in house) and look to me to be great quality. I am pretty sure repeat orders will follow from me, now I've discovered these guys..!

Those spikes are lamp irons I think. I agree with Cypherman; it strikes me as easier to convert the Hornby "short water tank" LBSCR E2 into the "long water tank" version the LBSCR E2. To convert a Thomas would involve undoing the changes Hornby made to turn the E2 into the Thomas toy: the cab sides, the bunker, removing front splasher, adding front steps and probably still needing to rework the extended water tanks as they are not entirely prototypical. But then the entire E2 model won't satisfy ardent rivet counters..!! Hornby Thomas's are a potentially good source of a very sweet mechanism though and the bodies seem to fetch a good 10-20 on eBay if in sound condition. There was a 2 part article in Airfix Model Trains magazine in about 1980 where they really went to town detailing a Hornby E2 and converting it to the long water tank version.

I've got one of those Amercom Compounds and a Hornby Compound somewhere "in storage" and am watching this thread with interest. @GarrettTheThief I am convinced that your Amercom Compound has already received quite a lot of attention such as: Moulded handrails and boiler pipework near the smokebox replaced (very neatly) with separate components. At least a partial repaint Is sitting on a Hornby tender-drive Compound loco chassis (I presume the wheels rotate - which they definitely do not on the Amercom ones). Amercom pros: is copied from a Bachmann Compound, so fundamentally more accurate than Hornby (I presume...) Amercon cons: mine is very poorly assembled, lining is a mess; a surprising amount of plastic underneath needs removing to fit a proper mechanism, all Bachmann's separate detail (handrails etc) is moulded on in the Amercom static model. For the sake of sharing ideas, my current future intention with my ones are to put the Amercom loco body on a modern (loco-drive) Hornby Schools / Compound / Hunt / D49 chassis (with the appropriate Compound cylinders and valve gear obviously) and use the Amercon tender pretty much as is but with "proper" wheels. Caveat: I know that technically the Amercom tender is of a type that wasn't paired with the Midland Compounds in service but has been paired with engine 1000 in preservation (I think that is mentioned further up this thread) The compromise is that correcting the Amercom body (poorly glued components, 100% moulded handrails etc) is probably more effort than doing what ianLMS is doing to the Hornby body (but should be fundamentally more accurate in the end?). The best answer may be fettling the Hornby Compound loco body, Hornby (motorised) loco chassis and Amercon tender (or a Fowler tender from a Mainline/Bachmann Jubilee/Crab/Scot if going for one of the later builds). Which is why I'm eagerly awaiting ianLMS finishing his Hornby Compound to see how good it looks..! ------- EDIT ------- I've just read the first page of this thread again and see GarrettTheThief is actually responsible for the improvements to his Amercom model - so nice work..!!! Especially the lining and the separate handrails (both are nice and straight!!)

Hi All, Does anyone have a complete set of coupling rods for a Dapol or (first generation) Hornby Terrier available? I believe that means any 00 scale Dapol or Hornby Terrier produced up until about 2018. Finish or colour is unimportant. Thanks in Advance, plasticbasher

I also recently obtained a copy of the December 1975 edition of Model Railways magazine from Ebay, specifically because I discovered in my researching on 3F tenders (I was planning on scratch building) that it contained scale plans of the 6 wheel Johnson tenders as attached to 3Fs. Unfortunately I discovered when the magazine arrived a few months ago (in much better condition than me...and we are of a pretty similar vintage!) that the drawings were reproduced to 7mm (O-Scale). Today I spent a little time playing with the printer and managed to stitch together .pdf scans of both pages the plans appear on (it's actually a centre-spread). After much trial and error I was able to print them out to 4mm scale - although maths says I should have reduced the image by 54%, my printer finally spat out exactly 4mm plans at 58%...go figure! I now see my effort to carefully drill out the rear handrails on the Ratio tender may be a bit of a waste of effort as I think I probably need to fill those holes back in and drill for a total of 4 lamp-irons (photos will be googled for verification). I can also see I need to scratch build some toolboxes for the tender too. Anyway, if anyone would like: 1. A copy of the .pdf file for their own personal use, feel free to PM me. The stitching of the two images is not 100% perfect, but when printed at 4mm scale it is almost imperceptible - see last photo. 2. The Model Railways magazine (for the cost of postage). It also contains: 7mm scale drawings of the Midland 2P (the ones with 7 foot drivers, but otherwise much like the Mainline / Dapol / Hornby ones but fitted with the Johnson tender). 4mm drawings of the L&Y Director's Saloon. Some wonderfully quaint English language usage. Lots of adverts for stuff at what are today rather odd-looking price points (£3.46, £7.16, 87p, £4.84 etc). plasticbasher

A little more progress today. Tender buffers pared off. I found some suitable sprung buffers which will be fitted to loco and tender. Loco chimney finally installed - it's only taken me a year since I bought it from 247 Developments!! Bits of old lead flashing added to bring the loco up to 212g and the tender to 78g. Since the photo's were taken, I've also reinstated the top of the water tank and coal divider on the tender (using bits of plastic left over from the tender for no better reason than waste not, want not) and made an attempt to repair the extremely brittle coal rails. Today's mistake was excessive / careless use of superglue. I used builders' two-part "Mitre-Bond" which is great stuff (much better than the normal stuff you find in supermarkets), but I managed to block up about half of the holes I drilled for handrail knobs..!

Some more (slow) progress to report. The bashed about Ratio tender has been reassembled into a rolling "wagon" that is an awful lot squarer than it was a couple of weeks ago. I remove the moulded plastic bearings and added brass top-hat bearings and replaced the plastic wheel-sets with metal ones of unknown parentage (axle length is 26mm, diameter is 14mm). Luckily, before assembling with glue, I realised I needed to pack the brass bearings out as the replacement wheelsets were too sloppy. Small M2 washers were used on each bearing. It actually rolls quite nicely now! Next steps - top of the tender needs building, tender and loco body both need weighting and then the loco needs to lose the skirt under the boiler and have the missing chunk of cab roof replaced; finally details can start to be added.

Success...well mostly! It must have been superglue used throughout as none of the plastic seems to have bonded, as it would have if a plastic solvent was used. Method was soaking in warm soapy water for a couple of hours, then a good spell in the freezer followed by careful but firm bending, prying and separating with a sharpened screwdriver. The sides and ends are pretty much all I intend on re-using after a bath in Mr Muscle to strip the paint off.

Thanks Northmoor. It's plastic (the maker is Ratio). I soaked it for a couple of hours in the washing up water without much effect (other than letting me pop the piece of plastic off that was where the coal should be...oh...and getting rid of decades of dust!). I then dropped it in the freezer and will see if that has done anything tomorrow morning. I have a Plan B...I will carefully saw the sides off intact and use them as the basis for a semi-scratchbuilt replacement...

Hi All, Some thread resurrection...after a few false starts (see some of the more recent postings from me in this thread) I finally have a tender..! I was browsing job lots on eBay and say a lot of 7 tired and broken tenders. One was unmistakably a somewhat hacked about Ratio Midland tender. I bid £13.50 and won. I think three of the other tenders are repairable - albeit of no particular use to me (but possibly saleable with a clean up). The other three are probably too far gone for any real use. Anyway, on to the point of this post. The Ratio tender has been assembled very badly out of square in two planes, with what appears to be a mix of superglue and plastic cement. To be usable I need to take it apart and put it back together properly. Has anyone got any special tips?

Silver Tay Models' eBay account is "silvertay". He can and does consider requests for nameplates and smoke deflectors if they are not in his current catalogue. The number of eBay listings I currently see is around 750. The ones for the Hornby Superdetail Schools are one of the options in a "muli-listing" for about 30 different smoke deflectors: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/283536610878 Again, I've no connection here, but as a very satisfied repeat customer, I more than happily recommend Silver Tay Models. Plasticbasher

Hi All, SilverTay models does them for the current Hornby superdetail Schools..! I know because I asked him to draw up and etch some for me about a year ago. He's on eBay and can be found via Google. No connection other than a genuinely very happy customer of his etched nameplates, smoke deflectors, Merchant Navy window frames and such like. I'll try remembering to post his eBay account user name and his contact details tomorrow. Cheers, Plasticbasher

The Britannia used the same chassis as several other Minitrix models (I believe all other contemporary Pacifics, both UK and German outline). I quickly googled Minitrix motor and there are a fair few on the German eBay. I think if you pull the service sheets for this model from Lendon's very useful website (http://www.lendonsmodelshop.co.uk/?button=button2&servicesheets=none) and cross reference them with other Minitrix pacifics, you'll considerably ease your seaching. And the German eBay site looks to be a better place to look than the UK site. Wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Minitrix locos use what is essentially the same motor actually... Hope that helps? plasticbasher

Funnily enough the older model (which started life as the Triang model) looks to me like what I "believe" a B12 should look like. Whereas the real thing (and the super detail Hornby model) don't..!!! I still remember my parents taking me to a toy shop a few days before my birthday sometime in about 1980 and telling me I could have any loco up to a certain price in their display case. I very quickly chose a second hand B12 in lined BR black. Loved the shape of them ever since. It's such a shame the real B12's were so inaccurate. Someone really should get out an angle grinder and MIG welder to sort out the jarring visual discrepancies on the real B12 to make it look a little more like the Triang / Hornby model....

Hi Everyone, After a bit of a hiatus, I'm back and keen to crack on with the 3F. The big problem when I left this at the start of the summer was the tender. I refuse to use the old Triang tender as it doesn't even look like the real thing. I also won't attempt to buy a Bachmann one as the price will be too high. So: 1. I bought a resin moulding of a Johnson 4F tender body from Golden Arrow models (intended for the Airfix / Hornby 4F). This was £12 as I explained what I was trying to do to Chris Meacher at Golden Arrow; he kindly dug out an imperfect casting and gave me a few quid off. 2. As mentioned previously somewhere in this thread I also have the complete tender from a GBL Midland Compound (in other words a 'rip off' of the Bachmann moulding. The underframe is the part I will use here. Both the above will be combined and hacked around to create a "reasonably" realistic tender. I have been looking around for a drawing of the Deeley tender that was most commonly coupled to the 3Fs, but have thusfar drawn a blank. I can see the 4F Johnson tender is essentially the right shape, but it is definitely higher (and I think possibly longer) than the 3F's Deeley tender. Request. Can anyone either point me to a source of a suitable drawing (preferably in 4mm scale)? Or alternatively, if anyone has a Bachmann 3F and a few minutes to spare, could you please give me a few key dimensions of the tender: overall tender length (excluding buffers) length of the tender body side height of the tender body side (excluding the separate coal rails) Those dimensions are really the only ones I believe I need Thanks in advance! plasticbasher

Actually - ignore about the chimney. Called the chap at 247 Developments. Neither of us knew for sure, but as he pointed out...a Jinty and a 3F were much the same "under the hood", so I've bought one (it's only a few quid with postage and comparison of the photos shows they are very similar to my eye). So the only question I'd like some more learned input on is whether I can get away with using a GBL Compound tender as the starting point for a Deeley tender!

A plea for a bit of help here. 1. I'm trying to source a replacement chimney. The one that came with the 3F body was a large rivet and so has to go - well in fact it didn't survive the removal of the moulded handrails... Can anyone tell me if a Jinty chimney is the same as a 3F chimney? I can find a supplier of a whitemetal Jinty chimney (247 Developments), but not one for the 3F tender loco. 2. Tender: I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that finding one for an outlay commensurate with the budget for this loco is nigh on impossible. I have a GBL static model of a Midland Compound - in other words, it's a copy of the Bachmann mouldings. Is that underframe correct / correct enough for a Deeley tender (I'd turn it into a rolling chassis and scratchbuild a Deeley style body)? Thanks in advance!!

Sorry - forgive my ignorance...what does "RWS-accurate" and "TVS flavour" mean? I definitely agree about their current loco drive mechanisms.

Okay - some more progress to report. I have adjusted the clearances on the underside of the body-shell to allow the wheels to rotate freely. This was quite nerve-wracking as I carved a lot of plastic away. The splashers actually probably do have enough space for 21mm wheels (see DavidCBroad's comments on using Airfix /Dapol/Hornby GWR 14xx wheels). 21mm wheels would necessitate dropping the body a further 1mm onto the chassis and I reckon that is perfectly do-able: Easy-peasy at the front. At the rear I'd probably try to file 1mm off the "deck" at the back of the chassis block - not much fun doing that accurately without a milling machine though (my cab floor rests on the chassis block)!! The problem is the comparatively long throw of the cranks on the Hornby wheels. The crankpins and coupling rods bash into the footplate - that is what the plastic needed to be removed for. So I started by using my sharpened screwdriver like a chisel to carve "moon-shaped" cut-aways on each splasher's inner front face to clear the crank-pins. On the center splasher I really must be approaching the limit of how much plastic I could remove (the centre crank pin is longer than the outer ones and so needs more clearance). See the first photo. Now the wheels revolved freely, but as soon as I refitted the coupling rods they hit the underside of the footplate. Only a little, but they still hit it. That meant that I needed to use the same sharpened screwdriver to gently and slowly chisel away plastic from the underside of the footplate between each splasher. About 2/3rd of a mm of plastic was removed and then the wheels rotated freely. The photo's aren't great (they show all the splashers done but the footplate only carved away on one side for clarity), but I hope they make sense.

Thanks! In some ways that might have been the better way here (a Bachmann Jinty chassis). I have EKM Exhibitions' Bachmann spares price list sitting next to me as I needed a wheel-set for a Royal Scot. It looks like you can assemble most of a rolling Jinty chassis for about £30 (block, gears, wheels, baseplate), but not motor. Way beyond the budget of this build though...and I presume the splashers wouldn't line up with the wheels, which would mean more work! Yeah - fully agree; however: The Bachmann tender is simply likely to be too expensive and I've not seen one for sale. It also defeats my personal objective somewhat - this is (generally speaking) a make-do-and-mend type build whilst still attempting a level of realism (note that I didn't say "total accuracy"..!!). I also don't have a 3F Triang tender. And, as it is wrong, I'm not prepared to invest in one frankly (the chassis looks too deep, so I don't even judge it a suitable starting point). The money will go on a replacement "Type 7" motor and a chimney (I'm hoping they can be procured for less than a tenner all in with postage).

Photo 2 above make the body look wonky on the chassis - it's not when assembled properly...I must have nudged it..!