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Ian H C

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  1. Ian H C
    I think this will be the last entry on this subject, having started back in February. It all got done within a year, which is good going for me. Here's the picture of the finished model.

    In the end the salt weathering didn't work out very well. A lot of the salt crystals come off during airbrushing, so for any decent rust pattern you need to start with lots and lots of salt. Much more than you'd think. Because of that it's difficult to create the pattern you want. It's kind of random. Plus there is a lot of salt to clean off afterwards, it gets everywhere. In the end I went back to the paintbrush to create the base rust pattern and then added some airbrush over the top. I'll practice with the salt technique because I can see it has potential for some effects. There are also other techniques from the military modelling fraternity that might be worth a try, such as chipping.
     
    Having studied a lot of steel mineral wagon photos one thing that is apparent is that the rust effects are varied, and typically not just a few blobs and streaks of a uniform red brown colour. A fair proportion of them have the kind of pattern I've tried to represent here. There are patches of old rust that are a very dark brown, these are well defined and can be applied by paint brush. Around them there is often a kind of black/brown haze which really needs an airbrush to apply. I'm not sure what the haze is, corrosion spreading to surrounding paint, coal dust adhering to to the area. Don't know but it is a distinct and common weathering effect. And very little red/brown rust. The colour of rust is dependent on the chemistry of oxidising iron and that changes with time and environmental exposure. It often starts as an almost yellow deposit, darkening through orange/browns, darker browns and in some cases ending up as a deep purple/brown. Some of the lighter oxides stain the surrounding paint, often getting washed down in streaks by the rain.
     
    One other thing I've noticed in 7mm is that texture starts to become important. As it happened the legacy of the salt weathering left some texture (aka mess) that fortunately added to the effect. Since I paint mostly in acrylics there days there is the option to add some acrylic resin putty to areas of paint to create some subtle texture.
     
    Almost finished - the brake pin chain and one of the top flap pin chains need to be replaced.
  2. Ian H C
    Haven't been here for a while. Work and life getting in the way and all. Here's another new project, and quite a big one by my standards. An 8F in S7 from the MOK etched kit. I won't do a step by step account, there are a few excellent blogs out there already. I'll just post a few pics now and again and explain some of the things I encounter and choose to do differently.
     
    The first model railway locomotive I ever had was a Dublo 8F. The first serious railway book I ever owned was London Midland Steam in the North West by Bradford Barton, with some splendid photos of 8Fs. Some of my favourite Colin Gifford photos feature 8s. I have a soft spot for 8Fs.
     
    In spite of modelling in 4mm for many years I've somehow managed to not build an 8F. Having recently taken an interest in 7mm S7 and built a wagon or two I thought I ought to build a loco. I came across the MOK 8F, so why not? I've been stuffing notes into the piggy bank for a year or so and now I have the kit, a motor and gearbox and the wheels. No excuse not to get on with it now.
     
    The wheels are the Slaters set in S7 from the Scaleseven Society, complete with crankpin set. These wheels differ from the usual Slaters offering by having steel threaded inserts for the crankpins. Seems like good engineering.
     
    I thought I'd start by getting the wheels set up before I get on with the chassis. Blimey! Disappointment on day one! The wheels don't run true. I checked them all and some are better and some worse but none of them run true. They all have some lateral wobble and some have a bit of eccentricity. I don't think it's a case of sending them back because I think it's a limitation of the manufacturing process and the design. Having had a bit to do with injection moulding design I'm expecting that the relationship between rim and axle insert depends on accuracy of tooling and the cooling distortion of the plastic when it is free of the moulding tool. I have an old set of Slaters driving wheels from an aborted 0 Gauge 9F project from years ago. I checked them and they're just the same. I also have a set of AGH wheels from the same project and they run true (to eye at least), so it is possible. Looking closely at the Slaters design I guess they've decided to make quartering easy and compromised the fundamental ability to run true. There really isn't very much to locate the wheel perpendicular to the axle. Just a tiny land outside of the quartering square. I doubt that many Slaters driving wheels run true for these reasons. If I'm wrong then do let me know.
     
    What to do? The wheels look good cosmetically, and I don't know where else I can get a set of 8F wheels in S7 that look the part. I've read online that flattening the back of the wheels on a surface plate with wet and dry will put the back of the rims and the back of the axle insert on the same plane and reduce the run out. I've tried that and it does help a little on some wheels, but not enough and not on all wheels. Two options occur to me: tweak the wheels by hand to reduce the run out by essentially distorting them back to where they should be, or boring the wheel centres through 3/16"and using a telescopic axle. If anybody has any experience of either of these remedies then please leave a comment. Thanks.

     
    i think this project is going to take a while...
  3. Ian H C
    Painting and finishing. Quite few stages to this, and it takes some explaining. So here goes...
     
    Once upon a time painting was by hairy stick; black underneath, grey body, decals, and maybe a rinse with dirty thinners for weathering. Brushes got ruined poking matt black enamel into remote corners of the chassis and the enamel thinners gave me a headache. Can't say I enjoyed that part of the job. Martyn Welch's landmark book on weathering, the availability of many more good colour photos in publications and online, some of the remarkable work turned out by railway and military modellers in recent years and the availability of a whole range of painting and weathering products based on acrylic paints has changed all that. The painting and weathering challenge is more a part of the creative process now, and I find it more enjoyable. There's a downside though, painting and finishing requires a bit of planning, uses a greater variety of equipment and material and takes longer. I think the end justifies the means.

    I'm going to try a paint technique borrowed from military modelling, 'chipping', to have the rust coming through the paint on the body. The principle is that the body is under painted with the base rust colour, a layer of chipping fluid is painted on top of that, then the grey body top coat on top of that. The chipping layer effectively reduces the adhesion of the grey to the rust layer beneath and allows some of the grey to be 'chipped' or worn off to reveal rust beneath. The idea is to create the effect of patches of rust showing through poor paint, that is almost impossible to do by brush.

    Overall primer first, and I'm using rust coloured acrylic primer from AK Interactive. For chipping to be successful we need the base layers to stay stuck to the model when we distress the top coat. The primer needs to go on a clean surface. The model has had a final session in the hot ultrasonic tank and any remaining finger marks are removed with a wipe of IPA. The primer is applied by airbrush in a few thin coats. I effectively spray outside in the doorway of the garage/workshop. It's a good day for spraying acrylic today; little wind, cool and damp. The acrylic dries slower in these conditions and has less tendency to clog on the tip of the needle, but it takes longer between coats. In the summer when the air is warm and dry you can work at lightning speed with acrylics, one coat straight over the other, as long as you keep the needle clean.

    ——
    The primer has dried overnight and it's time for the chassis and undergubbins to be sprayed a filthy sort of black. I'm using acrylics for all of this. It's earth brown and rust red with a few drops of black. No need for masking since the airbrush is accurate enough and a little overspray on the lower body won't hurt at this stage. Then it's time to over paint the primer with the base rust colour for the body. Examination of colour photos shows that well established rust is very dark brown, certainly not a red rust. AK Interactive have a shade for just that purpose called 'chipping colour' and it looks about right to me. The inside of the body gets the same treatment. I add a drop or two of rust red at the end to produce a little tonal variation to the base layer. Off to a warm place to dry.

    ---
    There's some mottling over the base rust using a small piece of kitchen sponge and some red/brown colours; Vallejo Flat Brown and Orange brown. This creates a little texture, which will help when we come to rub off the top coat, and some variation in the rust colour.

    ---
    When that lot is thoroughly dry it's time to spray on the chipping coat. I'm using AK Interactive Worn Effects. This should produce a fine wearing away of the top coat with mostly small rust patches showing through. It's a colourless coating that is airbrushed on in a couple of thin coats and left to dry for around an hour. The top coat is sprayed on the body over the top of that. There's a lot of nonsense around BR freight grey and some far fetched shades that claim to be accurate. I have a couple of test strips with most of these greys painted on. Comparing with a variety of period colour photos, none of them seem right to me. The best match I've found is actually one of the acrylic primers that I use, Vallejo acrylic-polyurethane Surface Primer 73.601. It's far from an exact science of course, and weathering will alter your carefully chosen top coat anyway.

    ---
    The top coat is left to dry for about 40 minutes before we start to distress it. The top coat is moistened with water and can be scrubbed away with a variety of tools to reveal rust underneath. On this model I used an old toothbrush, an old stiff bristled paint brush and a cocktail stick. Have a decent photo or two to hand and use them as a guide. Initially scrubbing and stippling with the toothbrush takes paint off edges and texture, so the sponged rust texture starts to show through first in tiny speckles. If you work at those areas a bit harder then larger patches of rust are revealed. The cocktail stick is used to poke away in the corners where the brushes don't reach. When the rust is how you want it rinse off the debris under the tap and leave it to dry.

    ---
    There's some work to do with a small brush to touch in some rust patches that were missed, and there's some black/brown to add in areas that accumulated a mixture of rust and coal dust, typically around the bottom side doors and the lower part of the end door. There are a few bits of grey overspray to touch in on the chassis, and it's still quicker than masking!
     
    Time to add decals and markings before further weathering. The end door diagonal stripes are officially 2-1/2" wide, that is about 0.8mm in 4mm scale (and just less than 1.5mm in 7mm). All of the waterslide decals I've seen for these stripes are far too wide. You can cut a decal to width carefully, and then it's a pain to get on straight and in one piece. I find it easier to lightly scribe the outline of the stripe onto the paint with a ruler and the tip of a 10A scalpel blade. Painting carefully inside the scribed line with a loaded brush lets the paint flow to the line. Nice and neat, and it's easier to weather a painted line than a decal. I don't use pure white, I add a little grey to tone it down. Note that the position of the stripes varied. Officially they are supposed to point to the end door hinge line rather than the top corner of the body panel. Photos show that some went to the top corner anyway. The 24-1/2 ton yellow triangles are done in a similar manner using photos and features on the body as a guide. The yellow triangles seem to have faded significantly in use, some of them almost indistinguishable from the grey body in a black and white photo. Bright yellow won't look right on a scruffy wagon. I've used a sort of pale buff yellow for the triangles. Black number patches are painted on in black with a touch of white to kill the absolute blackness.
     
    Decals are from Fox. I'm building a 1/115, and from Larkin the number range is B281150 to B282149. The Fox sheet allows me to make up B281193. Tare seems to vary a lot, which is surprising for a a bunch of wagons to the same design. Maybe variations in steel plate thickness? Anyway, the closest reasonable tare weight on the Fox sheet is 10-5. Many of these wagons had allocation instructions on them - 'To work between xxx and xxx' sort of thing. Larkin lists the known initial allocations, and a few more can be made out from photos. Seems like these markings were not always respected and not always maintained once the wagons had strayed from the original working. Some painted over, some altered, some just left to disappear under rust and dirt. I've added a mostly disfigured legacy allocation from the ModelMaster 4698 wagon markings sheet. Waterslides on with no problems, and smoothed on with Micro Sol. Incidentally Fox recommend application to a gloss surface but I've never had any problems on matt. There'll be a coat of varnish on over the top to hold the whole lot together anyway.
     
    There are a few arcane shunters' chalk marks added with a grey /white and a fine brush. Best I can do but they're not entirely convincing. Scope for improvement here I think. Anybody know a better method for adding chalk marks?
     
    Rusk streaks go on next using artists type oil paint and solvent. Tiny blobs of rust reddish rust colour are placed on some of the rust patches using the tip of a fine brush. Once they've dried for an hour or two (they don't actually dry in that time, they just be come a bit less mobile) the rust streaks are added by dragging down from the blobs with small brush moistened with solvent, in this case an odourless turps substitute. Because the oils have a very fine pigment and don't dry quickly they can be messed and tweaked with almost ad infinitum, and can produce very fine shading. They can even be completely wiped off if it all goes horribly wrong. Take care to make all the streaks vertical as any gravity defying streaks really stand out. Some rust chips are applied by brush to the white stripes and the yellow triangles and rust streaks are added to make the markings become part of the wagon livery rather than something sitting on top of it. There's a lot you can do with oils, but here the technique is confined to simple rust streaks and staining. Again, this technique is borrowed from military modelling.

    ---
    Some more work with the airbrush to finish off. I've added a black/brown haze in areas where coal dust collected and didn't weather off too quickly, typically in corners, round doors and beneath the top coping channel. There's a bit more earth and rust around the chassis and the lower edge of the body. Finally a very faint overall coat of the black / brown tones it all down and brings the colours together, rather like a filter. When that lot is completely dry I apply a coat of ultra matt acrylic varnish (AK Interactive Ultra Matte Varnish) to hold it all together.

     
    Finally it's done! It took about as long to paint and weather as it took to build. Looking at the final photo I should probably have been a bit more restrained with the brown / black shading but overall I'm happy with the result. Unfortunately it makes my much older 24-1/2 tonner look a bit pants!
    ---
    There's still one more thing to do, add a load of coal...
  4. Ian H C
    It's railway modelling, but then again it isn't quite. I'm a great fan of Colin T Gifford's photographs so I thought I'd have a go at 'doing a Gifford' on some 7mm models I've been working on. Evening drawing in at a country station. Old hand and new recruit contemplate a wagon that's ended up in the wrong place for tomorrow morning's shunt.
     



     

    You could almost run a caption competition for it couldn't you?


     

    "Well young 'un, if tha' wants to move it then tha'd better find the pinch bar".


     
    It's a composite of 3 photographs. One with wagon and figures, one with distant landscape and sky, the other with foreground grass. The wagon and figures are 7mm. The figures are from Modelu and the wagon is from the MMP kit for the diagram 1/108 mineral wagon in S7 (though who can tell?). I'm starting out in S7 and there's all my 7mm stock in one photo! There's almost as much time faffing with Lightroom and Photoshop as there is modelling. Well, not quite.
     
    As somebody who doesn't have much room for a layout (certainly not in S7) this is an alternative. It's more like military modelling. Small scenes, dioramas, snapshots of everyday life on the railway.
  5. Ian H C
    I'm on summer leave for a couple of weeks. Time to decompress and do some modelling. My instinct is usually to start a new project, but I have a number of things on the workbench that I thought I'd better complete first, like the Bradwell kit for the Charles Roberts NCB hopper. So here it is complete.

    The NCB transfers are from on old Kemco sheet, but I note that Fox also do a sheet for NCB now.
  6. Ian H C
    Having torn up the old 0F test track, thoughts turned to creating an new length of track in S7. The idea was simply to find a suitable plank and lay a length of straight track to run S7 stock along. Well, I did find a plank, sort of, and then things spiralled out of control. After a few minutes with the table saw I had a 1.5m length of 18mm ply which seemed like a good start. Considering the weight of some 7mm stock I thought it might be a bit bendy when supported at each end across the workbench. So I screwed a strip of oak veneered MDF along the back to stiffen it. I though it might be nice to ballast up the track so I could photograph some stock (if I ever get any made that is). The stiffening back board suggested it might become a brick retaining wall to provide a backdrop to the scene. That was the end of the quick test plank. Here's progress so far...

    Woodwork in grey primer. Pleasant to work outside in the sun while spraying ballast everywhere. No need to vacuum afterwards 8-)

    A bag of old 4mm ballast, some sieved ashes, a few teaspoons of powder paint and a sea of builders PVA. Not the appearance I was aiming for, too brown. Try again tomorrow...

    That's more like it. A backwater dead end ballasted with ashes, clinker and assorted dross. Could do with a bit more fine material but it'll do for the plank.

    A vaguely plausible retaining wall was sketched up and some Slaters English Bond plasticard ordered. Arches would have been good, but too time consuming. There's acres of brickwork here and I hadn't realised how time consuming it was going to be. That's the price you pay for acting on impulse! Basic wall made in soft wood and fitted to the backboard. Then another happy afternoon in the sun fitting the brick sheets over it all.
     
    And still no track.
  7. Ian H C
    Here's my first Modelu driver painted. The photos are a cruel enlargement of a 4mm figure.
     
    Where the Modelu figures score is that they are modelled / scanned from real life so the proportion and pose is entirely natural. That shows up very well against most of the existing proprietary moulded or cast figures I've seen before. I don't know what the resolution of the scan is but at this size the figures lack a little facial definition. That makes them difficult to paint convincingly. You'll see this guy lacks eyes and mouth. That's not an easy thing (for me!) to paint on without it looking goofy. Some contour in this area would help to give the face some relief through washing or highlighting. On this figure the eyes are in the shadow of the cap so not really noticeable with overhead lighting. Is it a big deal in 4mm? When then figure is placed in a scene it probably isn't. Overall I'm very pleased with the result. 3 more loco crew to paint now.
     
    For those wot's interested I've painted these figures using some basic military miniature painting techniques. I use acrylic paints (Games Workshop) since they dry quickly and allow rapid progress when painting a small number of figures. Goes something like this -
    Base coat all over in matt black Foundation for face and hands in dark flesh colour Foundation colours for clothes in a dark grey and a dark grey/blue, leaving a little black in the folds and shadows Lighter shade of grey and grey/blue for the clothes, leaving a little more foundation in the foods and shadows. Don't bother to try and blend the colours, you end up with something like a black/dark/lighter contour map. Dry brushing and washing blend them enough at this scale. Lighter flesh colour on prominent areas like nose, cheeks, knuckles, ears Detail around shirt, tie, hair etc Dry brush highlight of pale grey and pale grey/blue over coveralls and jacket, picking out exposed surfaces like shoulders and edges of folds and creases Sepia wash over hands and face Finally a thin black wash to tone it down and bring the colours together


  8. Ian H C
    Cycling home from work through a hailstorm and icy rain today was rewarded by the arrival in the post of a 3D printed sample from Modelu. It is a 4mm 3D printed spring and axle box set for a Stanier brake van. This is something I've been thinking about for a while. One of my occasional projects is an etched brass brake van kit from Connoisseur Kits. Fairly straightforward etched brass stuff. I got to the stage where all I needed to complete it was to fit the axle box and spring castings. Now, the spring hangers, spring isolation rubbers and 4'6" leaf spring are distinctive on these Stanier vans. The white metal castings supplied with the kit are serviceable but a bit lumpy and don't really capture the character of the prototype. Geoff Kent shows a method for making these parts from plasticard in one of the Wild Swan 4mm Wagon books. I guess that's OK if you have Mr Kent's superhuman skills with polystyrene and a scalpel. I'm afraid I don't. You'd have to make 4 this way for a single van, and if you wanted more than one van... So the project was put in the 'difficult box' for a while.
     
    I came across Modelu on RM Web a while ago and saw some of the 3D printed output on the website. Reasoned that this could be a way of making some really good parts in any quantity required. I e-mailed a query to Alan Butler (Mr Modelu) and he sent me a photo of some similar items that he'd printed. Seemed feasible - game on!
     
    As it happened the prototype information wasn't too difficult to find. The axlebox looks like an LMS 10" x 5" ABW.52 type (corrections please if you know better!) and by sheer jammy luck there is a drawing of this in LMS Wagons Volume 2 (page 170). Not a full engineering drawing, but enough to model up the axle box from in sufficient detail for 4mm.

     
    I couldn't find a drawing for the brake van spring and hangers directly , but standardisation on the LMS means that the same 4' 6" spring and hanger details are used on other stock. There are a few decent drawings of fitted stock using these parts in Official Drawings of LMS Wagons Volume 2. (In fact there is enough information in those 2 volumes to be able to work out the detail on almost any LMS or related early BR wagon if you can identify the standard parts used - I wish there was more information like this published). Again it isn't a full drawing but there's enough to scale from to model the parts on CAD.

     
    A few evenings on the Mac gets you this solid model...

    Exported as an STL and e-mailed to Modelu for review. Alan suggested a few tweaks to suit it to the printing process. The updated model was sent to Modelu and eventually here are the samples. I think you'll agree they're a huge improvement on the original castings.




     
    Typically when I'm working on things like this I get so close to the detail that I miss bigger things. Comparing again with the prototype it is immediately obvious that I have undernourished isolation rubbers. I'll change the model again before I get some produced.
     
    Very happy how this has turned out. For me this is almost a revolution. From now on anything I can obtain prototype data for I can model. Once the CAD model exists I can STL it to any scale I like. The process isn't magic and it does have some limitations, but it seems they're not difficult to design around. On Modelu's advice I've flattened the spring and rubbers on the back so they print nicely on the machine platen, and I've added some extra material around the hangers just to make them robust enough to handle. Bonus feature, by the way, I've made the axleboxes hollow so I don't have to scoop them out to fit over the axle bearings - hooray a tedious, hated job eliminated. I'm already thinking about some distinctive LNER wagon axleboxes in 7mm. Maybe an anchor mount tank for a 14 ton tank wagon in 2mm. Driving wheel centres for some of the more distinctive locomotive wheels that are not well represented by proprietary generic wheels? Could be a long wishlist.
     
    Cost? The cost is derived from a fixed set up cost for a job and a charge based on the volume of resin used. Big solid things will be quite costly. Modelu will quote for the work when they've reviewed the model. For a few sets of small parts like this it doesn't cost too much. Probably what I'd expect to pay for castings, if they existed, but of significantly higher quality.
  9. Ian H C
    Looking at the High Level Kits Loadhauler gearboxes now. First up the plain Loadhauler.

    The motor sits very low in the boiler. Theoretically there's clearance, but in reality I'd want more than that. And the back of the gearbox intrudes into the cab through the backplate. So that's not going to work.
     
    Next is the Loadhauler Plus that has a swivelly extender section on the end.


    With the extender level it won't fit, but with it rotated 20 degrees the motor is raised clear into the boiler and the whole gearbox is contained in the firebox with no intrusion into the cab. From the end view you can see that the top of the gearbox would project through the top of the boiler but that section of the gearbox can be cut back to fit. I did consider taking the top off the boiler and using some of the space in the saddle tank to accommodate the gearbox but the structure of the tank doesn't make that too easy. The drive extender hangs down a bit on a loco with small wheels (3'8" in this case) and I'm hoping the brakes and linkage will disguise it. There won't be a lot of room to add weight in the boiler but some can be placed in the ends of the chassis and some could be added to the saddle tank.
     
    The Loadhauler Plus fits but there's one more problem to solve. The motor now sits well forward inside the boiler and it doesn't look possible to fit the body to the chassis if the cab and boiler are built onto the footplate as intended. I think the cab can be built on the footplate but the boiler and firebox will have to be built as a separate unit and fixed to the footplate with screws. That's looking like the best solution but it needs a bit more work on the details before I commit. I'll get round to actually building something eventually.
  10. Ian H C
    Who remembers Impetus? From the Golden Age of locomotive kits. Vanished more or less without a trace. I think the range of kits was sold to somebody else but never re-introduced. Shame - I wish I'd bought some when I had the chance. I was skint in those days, and that's the nature of cottage industries I guess.
     
    I managed to obtain the 4mm Hunslet 15" kit from a wanted advert in Scalefour news a few years ago. It's been one of those 'get round to it' projects. I just got round to it!
     

     
    I have a set of Gibson wheels that will do (not quite a faithful replica of Hunslet's wheels, but as close as I'm going to get without making my own). I have a few Mashima motors down to 1020 size, I'm sure one of those will do. What I don't have is a gearbox. There's a temptation to get stuck in and sort out a motor and gearbox when I get that far. But this is a small engine and there's not much room for improvised hacking about. So I've turned out a couple of spare gearboxes from the projects draw and modelled them on CAD along with a few key kit components to see how they fit.
     

    This one is an old Branchlines 2 stage 80:1 gearbox. It has been used on a previous project and it will take a Mashima 1020 motor. I'm aiming to build the chassis pretty much as intended with the rear axle fixed and the front two beam compensated. Therefore the motor will drive the rear axle. As you can see it sits too low in the chassis and however you angle it will project below the boiler and firebox. The only useful aspect of this gearbox is that it won't intrude into the cab much. Ugly!
     

    Next up is a Porter's Cap Compacto 108:1. It's nearly the right height and can be angled up slightly to clear the bottom of then boiler and stay within the firebox. The big problem with this arrangement is that it pushes a lot of gearbox into the cab. It would completely blow away the backplate, and angling it up makes it worse. Also ugly.
     
    No solution from what I have to hand then. The next step is to check out the High Level Kits gearbox range. There's enough information on their Gear Planner sheet to model some up.
     
    There's another benefit from modelling some of then chassis and footplate in CAD. The Impetus instructions show the chassis spacers in position but there are no locating features on the parts and no dimensions in the instructions. Rather than eyeball it I've modelled them too so I can place them to correspond with the holes in the footplate.
  11. Ian H C
    Dave Bradwell 14t Steel Hopper (Charles Roberts) 4mm P4
     
    ​This has been loitering with intent around the workbench for a few months. It's for my eventual, maybe, sometime colliery layout. I'm building up a collection of NCB internal user wagons. A real mixed bag of knock about, retired stock. Industrial wagons aren't that common as models so I was very pleased to come across this from Dave Bradwell. I'll probably build a couple more, but this one was to see how it builds. I've been getting some time in between episodes of the 7mm MMP 1/08 build.
    --------------
     
    20 March
     
    The etch is a single sheet, neatly laid out and of good quality. There are several A4 sides of printed instructions and a fair number of sketched diagrams. The diagrams are hand drawn, not the CAD output we're becoming used to, but clear enough. The kit provides the etch and a length of phosphor bronze wire for the springs. You have to find the other bits and bobs yourself. There's a list of the items you'll need to source, nothing too difficult to find.
     
    Under frame part 1. The easiest way to remove the Alex Jackson brackets is to score heavily where you want to cut them off, then bend back and forth gently with pliers. They'll fatigue off neatly.
     
    Solebars part 2. The way the W irons, steps and solebar flange are incorporated in one part is clever, maintains accuracy and saves the hassle of adding them as separate parts later. But study the diagram and work out how it folds. Some fold lines are on the outside of the bend; W irons and first step bend. Note also that the tread plate on the steps was slightly curved to prevent feet slipping off the edges. Bend the steps gently without breaking the half etch tab, it'll be a right faff to reattach the steps if you do. Don't be in a hurry to file off the remains of the reverse bend holding the steps to the solebar. Keep it on until the overlays are fitted and the solebar assembly is soldered to the chassis. File it off when there's no more risk of the joint becoming unsoldered.
     

     
    The red brown thing the chassis is sitting on is half of an old quarry tile. It's a heat proof, clean and relatively flat surface that doesn't conduct heat away from the work and doesn't char or leave crud on the parts being soldered. So far seems to be proof against all kinds of flux.
     
    2 hours.
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    Monday 21st March
     
    Solebar overlays. Solder paint or tin the solebar and sweat the overlays to the solebar. Opening out the three slots in the overlay is more difficult than you'd think. DB suggests a piercing saw, but you need a really fine blade, and even then it's a bit snaggy on the overlay. Could have been etched in the overlay: forgotten on the artwork or weakens the overlay too much? Clean up the solebars and that's all I have time for tonight.
     
    1 hour. Total 3 hours.
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    Tuesday 22nd March
     
    Cross members 8, 9, brackets 10, 11 and solebars all clip neatly together and hold each other in place for soldering. That's clever design. I started the soldering together in the middle at the V irons, the brackets 10, 11 and worked outwards from there. You don't need to solder everything to everything else. A few carefully chosen solder joints should do it. And there's the basic chassis.

     
    1 hour. Total 4 hours.
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    Wednesday 23rd March
     
    Fold over and solder brake tabs on 8, 9. Some tidying up. Cut out and bend diagonals 12.
     
    0.5 hours. Total 4.5 hours.
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    Thursday 24th March
     
    Diagonals solder into place easily. Platforms 16, 17, tin the back lightly before cutting from the fret. Sweat or RSU into place.

    Time for a trip to the ultrasonic bath.
     
    1 hour. Total 5.5 hours.
    --------
    Friday 25th March
     
    Wheels are Ultrascale P4 measuring 25.9mm over axle points. I ought to add that I rate Ultrascale wheels as better than any others by a long way. Never had a set that was less than perfect. Here we go - bearing faff. The first set of bearings soldered into the bearing carriers are much too shallow. The W irons are pushed too far apart by the axle. Same with the second set. The third set appear to have a deeper cone and they do fit. I have a collection of pinpoint wheel bearings from various sources over the years. They all seem to have different cone depths. The differences are subtle and not so easy to see by eye. Any more like the last two? Luckily yes, and finally we have four viable wheel bearings soldered in. Before adding the spring wire it is worth filing the excess length off the end of the bearings. Shorter bearings means less material to scoop out of the back of the cast axle boxes later.
     
    The tabs on the bearing carrier are not long enough to fold right over the spring wire, but bend them up 90 degrees and they help to locate the wire for soldering. Phosphor bronze wire solders far more easily than the steel wires sometimes supplied for this purpose.
     
    The little handrails for the end platforms bent up using the Bill Bedford handrail tool, spaced off the platform with a scrap of plywood sleeper and soldered from beneath. Hint - you might want to leave these off until the rest of the chassis work is done. With the handrails fitted you can't have the chassis flat on its back any more, it rocks on the handrails.
     
    Brake laminations. I drilled 0.8mm and 0.5mm to match the wire I have. Don't solder in the 0.8mm wire yet, just use it for location.
     
    3 hours. Total 8.5 hours.
    ----------
    Saturday 26th March
     
    Brakes again. Complete the lamination and add all the wire pins. Also added the safety loop from fine copper wire. I think the copper wire came from some old mains flex ages ago. There always seems to be a short length amongst the workbench clutter when you need it. Chamfer off the back of the brake blocks to improve wheel clearance.
     
    Handy hint for drilling small holes or clearing through small holes. I have a set of small drills with 2.35mm diameter shanks. Photo. They go down in size to 0.5mm. It is often easier to use them by holding the shank between finger and thumb and twiddling away than it is to put a similar sized parallel drill in a pin vice. There's plenty of grip for most drilling in the smaller sizes and you have more feel and control, so break fewer drills.


     
    I'm choosing to put on the outside V hangers now. The easiest way to make sure they all line up is to thread a length of wire through all of them across the chassis. Don't solder them to the wire, there's no cross shaft on this wagon.

     
    Quite lot of fiddling and tweaking to get the brakes in place and lined up nicely with the wheels. A few touches of solder and the brakes are fixed. It was far easier to assemble the brakes as a unit and fit them to the chassis than it is to assemble the brakes in situ between the wheels, as some kits have it.
     
    Buffer beam detail on by RSU. Align the buffer pads 5 and hold them in place with a cocktail stick through the hole in the buffer beam while you solder. Time for a break and a clean up.
     
    Safety loops, bit of a pain. Spring stops from strip 26, doesn't really work. Difficult to get them consistent and with crisp bends. A bit too big as well. Had more luck bending a U over the end of a 6 inch steel rule 0.5mm thick, tapping the U onto the ruler gently with a brass hammer to square the U, then bending up the feet with a small pair of flat nosed pliers, and trimming to length with snips. Not perfect, but much better. Soldered to the chassis by RSU and solder paint.
     
    Brake lever guards. More fiddly, faffy bits.
     
    8 hours. Total 16.5 hours.
    -------
    Sunday 27th March
     
    Add the stays to the brake lever guards. Always a trial trying to hold them in place and get one end soldered. These days I stick them in place with blobs of solder paint, they're light enough for the solder paint to grab them. Then trap the end of the stay against the W iron with the RSU probe and, without moving it, zap that end in position. Then tweak then other end to touch the brake lever guard and solder it with an iron.
     
    ​That's most of the chassis done
     
    0.5 hours. Total 17 hours.
  12. Ian H C
    Sunday 27th March

    The BA die for the buffer shanks hasn't been delivered yet. I really want to get on to the finishing and painting during this short Easter break. So plan B on the buffers, drill the shank and retain it with a wire pin.

    Buffer housing castings fixed with epoxy after scrupulous cleaning and degreasing. Don't want them to come off in the cleaning tank. A little epoxy squeezes out around the joint, but no bother, it can be scraped off when set. The housings are fitted with the short rib to the top. The reason for the short rib, I think, was so that the gap between the end of the rib and the collar on the end of the casting could be used by the shunter as a fulcrum for a coupling pole. The pole wouldn't slide off the housing when Sammy Shunter leaned on it to flip a link off the hook.

    Springs, buffers, preload, pins. Something's going to get shot across the room if I'm not careful. After a bit of fiddling around the buffers are all fitted and working.


     
    The wheels and axle boxes go in for the last time, hopefully. Spring retainer pins in and secured with a tiny touch of solder on the inside bracket. And last of all the axle box retainers are soldered in place with a little solder paint and the RSU. And with that, the build is complete (unless anything falls off in the cleaning bath!).



    2 hours. Total 93.5 hours.
     
    ​And in conclusion?
     
    As first real attempt at 7mm it's been an eye opener. On reflection it wasn't the easiest place to start. On further reflection it was probably a challenging place to start. But I'm a real 1/108 enthusiast so I couldn't resist this kit. 93.5 hours of work at the bench, that's a lot for one wagon. To a degree it was experimental, there was a lot that was unfamiliar and I took some diversions of my own. When I build another one (and I certainly will) it won't take as long - I'd guess maybe 50 hours now I know how it works. And if I build two at a time, probably less than that - batch building always saves time. There is some detail that you could omit if you wanted to build faster, but that's hardly the point - if you don't want the detail and the character then buy a Parkside or an RTR Lionheart.
     
    There are a lot of parts, and some of the assembly work on the fine detail I found hard going, close to the limits of my ability. I think you'd want some familiarity with working with etched brass before tackling this kit, and you need to be least proficient and tidy with the soldering iron. But if you have that experience then I don't think you'd find it a difficult kit to build. The quality of the design is first class and the fit of the parts is exemplary. There are a couple of things that I'd class as a brave experiment, the (not quite) working leaf springs for example. Minor points - the cast white metal parts were so-so; serviceable but I've seen better (and the kit deserves better), the springs provided are really too stiff, and I've no idea why steel pins are supplied instead of brass.
     
    ​The instructions are comprehensive and clear, with only a couple of minor errors (unless I misinterpreted them - always possible). I found it useful to have a few good prototype photos to hand to confirm some details.
     
    ​The kit stays true to the prototype construction to a high degree. Very few compromises are made to simplify the model. As a result I learned a great deal about how the prototype was made.
     
    ​Overall I've thoroughly enjoyed the build and the finished model in the brass certainly captures the character of the prototype. If I can do the painting and weathering justice then I'll have a real showpiece. I guess I'm a convert to 7mm and S7 then!
  13. Ian H C
    Thursday 17th March
     
    I think I'll return to the long ignored buffers. The body to chassis union can wait a bit longer. Chemically blacken the buffers. The buffer heads should be 1' 6" from the headstock, or 10.5mm in 7mm. The springs seem a bit stiff again with too much preload at the correct buffer length. With no experience of 7mm I'm guessing of course. Ages ago I bought one of those bags of 200 assorted springs, and by luck I have 4 matching springs that fit and have a lower spring rate. A quick experiment gives an acceptable result, so that's what I'll use. Getting the right length and soldering the retaining washer on without soldering everything solid will be a challenge. It would be handy to put a thread on the end of the buffer shank and use a small nut to secure the buffer. That would give adjustment for length, be easily fixed with thread lock, and removable if required. Alternatively I could drill through the shank 0.5mm at the right location (22.8mm from the buffer head) and use a wire pin to secure the buffer. Whatever you use to secure the buffer will run very close to the inside of the W iron. If it snags the W iron the buffer won't compress. Hmmm....
     
    1 hour of faffing, measuring and pondering. Not a buffer fixed.
     
    Total 84 hours.
    -------------
    Friday 18th March
     
    Preparing the buffer housing castings. A bit of cleaning up and filing on the back to make them sit flat on the headstocks. Gently countersinking the holes in the headstocks helps. I'll fix the buffers to the chassis after the body is fixed to the chassis.
     
    The small tabs on the end of the stanchions don't quite line up across the width of the chassis. They're about half a thickness out. Not much, but enough to prevent the body sitting perfectly flat on the chassis. Almost certainly due to variation in my folding and fixing of the stanchions. Not a problem though, just file the tabs off flush with the end of the stanchions along one side of the body. Sits perfectly now. I'm going to solder the chassis to the body using the top flange of the stanchion support brackets on chassis part 1. I'll use the RSU to do this, otherwise there's a lot of brass to heat up with a soldering iron. The whole thing fits together so neatly there are no gaps between chassis and body or at the base of the stanchions.
     
    Now I can fit the lower door hinge supports to body and chassis. Side doors fitted. Looking the part now. Ultrasonic bath to purge the grubbiness, and that'll do for tonight.
     
    2 hours. Total 86 hours.
    ----------
    Saturday 19th March
     
    There's not much left to do now. A lot of little complete and tidy up jobs. Probably time to do a finishing list.
     
    I'm thinking that cutting a screw thread on the end of the buffer shank and using a small nut is the right way to go. I've ordered a BA die for the purpose, so while I wait impatiently for that I'll turn my attention to the axle boxes.
     
    There's a choice of axle boxes, cast steel and fabricated. The impression I have is that cast steel were the more common type, but fabricated axle boxes were certainly not uncommon. They were interchangeable and tended to be replaced and mixed indiscriminately during repairs. I'm going for the classic cast steel type. There naturally follows the compulsory chore of making a hole in the back of the axle box casting to accommodate the axle bearing. You have to wonder why they are not available with a hole cast in. Working in 7mm brings you closer to the detail of things. As a wagon geek I've always appreciated that there's a huge variety of axle box designs and that they are an important part of the character of a wagon. Comparatively few are available from the trade (so far as I can tell), and some of those are 'representative' at best. I'm waiting to get some 4mm spring and axle box units 3D printed by Modelu, and if they turn out OK then I might consider modelling and printing some of the often seen but rarely modelled types in 7mm. Anyway, a blob of 5 minute epoxy fixes the castings to the spring carriers. Incidentally, a good way of mixing and applying epoxy is with a cocktail stick and a beer bottle top. Both disposable. And you get green credits for reusing the beer bottle top. Of course, buying beer to get the bottle tops leaves me with the occasional problem of how to dispose of quantities of beer.
     
    Since starting this build I've been oscillating between 0F standards and S7. In 4mm I work to P4 standards; I prefer the look of the track and wheels, certainly compared with 00. The difference doesn't seem so obvious in 7mm, and I thought that going 0F would give me reasonable prototype appearance without having to pull on the hair shirt of authenticity and suffer from tight tolerances, locos that don't go round curves and availability of parts. There seems to be good support for S7 from the trade so maybe that's not a problem these days. I started with Slaters 0F wheels for this project, but I never quite settled. I recently ordered a set of S7 wheels, just to compare, and when I placed them alongside the 0F wheels my mind was made up. It will be S7. That leaves me with one potential problem. A long time ago I acquired an MMP 9F kit, and a set of excellent AGH wheels in 0F. I wonder if they can be reprofiled to S7?
     
    Virtually complete and on wheels it weighs in at 108g. With a target weight of 125g that leaves 27g to add. Rectangles of lead flashing cut to fit neatly in the pockets in the centre of the chassis inside the frame channels, and fixed with epoxy.
     
    End door hinge blocks fettled and manoeuvred into place. Hinge bar cut to length and threaded through the hinges. Since this will not be a working end door it can all be fixed in place with three tiny drops of low viscosity cyano.
     
    Side door catches fettled, split with a scalpel, fed into the brackets from each end and secured with a drop of low viscosity cyano.
     
    Tiny parts 79, 80 at the bottom of the end stanchions. That's another part of 1/108 I'd never noticed before.
     
    Make up the axle box keepers 29, 30. End of shift tonight. In the cleaner and tidy up.
     
    I'm getting close to the end of the build now, really just the buffers to install before it all goes together. Thoughts turn to painting and finishing. Usually when I'm painting and weathering wagons I work from a photo. It helps me to capture then distinctive patterns of use and dirt. Random, made up rust and muck rarely convinces. I guess it is even more necessary in 7mm, it's quite an intimate portrait of the wagon at that size. On this one I'm looking for a wagon that's seen some use (1957 to 1965 ish) but hasn't reached the state of decrepitude common later in the life of a 1/108. There will still be more paint than rust! Ive seen some impressive paint over corrosion effects on military models created by a salt weathering method. There's plenty of You Tube tuition available. So I guess the order of work will be - etch primer undercoat, rust colour base coat, salt deposition in rusty areas, top coat, and then removal of salt to reveal rust. While there's a pause in the build I'll paint up a trial panel to practice salt weathering.
     
    5.5 hours. Total 91.5 hours.
  14. Ian H C
    Monday 7th March

    More body detail. Won't fix the body to the chassis yet. Parts 5, 6 are the strangest, awkwardest little bits to fit. I'd never noticed them before, but a look at prototype photos shows them there. They required a little fettling to touch in all the right places. Solder paint and RSU to hold and zap them on. Corner caps 7. All easier with the body separate.

    That's all for tonight, and not worth a photo!

    1.5 hours. Total 61.5 hours.
    ------------
    Tuesday 8th March

    Looks like side doors coming up. This is the point where the body and chassis have to be united. But I'll kick that down the road a bit and do some door sub assemblies first.

    Tiny parts X17, X18. Check that you can get the pins through the etched holes and drill through if required before you cut them from the fret. They're almost too small to drill afterwards. The brass pins supplied turned out to be steel pins. I substituted some real brass 0.55mm pins as they're easier to work and solder. The pin heads look too big to me. Put them in a Dremel and turn the heads to a smaller profile with a file. X17, X18 are so small that when the pin is inserted they're hardly visible. You have to wonder if they're worth the effort. The wire hoops are easily bent to size using a Bill Bedford handrail bending jig E017, using the "7" setting. It's such a simple thing but it saves so much time a gives a consistency of handrail length you'd struggle to achieve by pliers alone. Eventually that's all the parts 8, 9, X17, X18, pins and hoops ready for soldering, but it's enough for tonight. Can't say I've enjoyed that session; fiddly, faffy, irritating work. Or maybe I'm not in the mood today?

    1.5 hours. Total 63 hours.
    --------------
    Wednesday 9th March
     
    More doors. On reflection, and having looked at more photos, the pin heads are too large, even when reduced. I'll use 0.5mm wire to represent the rivet / bolt. How to solder this lot together? The only way I can think of is to pin the lot into a piece of balsa. There's a photo. A pretty bad photo, but you get the point.


    Tin the pins and wire hoops to help the solder flow between the parts first time. Get the whole lot lined up, check the clearance under the wire hoops, apply some flux and go for it. I have to say it's a pain in the backside and, for such an insignificant part, the most difficult bit so far. A real test of patience. Pull the assembly out of the scorched balsa, cut off the wires and clean up. The photo shows the result. Far from perfect, but the best I can do.


    2 difficult hours for not much progress. Total 65 hours.
    -------------
     
    Digression- sort of. Today I received the ultrasonic cleaner I'd ordered from Maplin. Read about them often enough and wondered if they'd be useful for cleaning models under construction. Found a 'used' one on offer at Maplin, a JPL Ultra 8050D-H. The bath is big enough to get a few 4mm models in at once, a couple of 7mm wagons or a mid sized loco. Set it up after tea tonight. First thing in was my specs, and shazam, all the cruddy organic stuff that finds a home in odd corners of the frame came wafting out in a scummy cloud. 100% clean. Thus encouraged, in went the 1/108 chassis and springs previously cleaned by warm water and toothbrush. Interesting to see how much muck was coaxed out of the recesses of the chassis. I'm impressed - so thumbs up for ultrasonic cleaning.
  15. Ian H C
    Sunday 6th March
     
    Body details. Folding up the stanchions X3-X9 took a bit of experimentation to find the easiest way. The Hold & Fold made it easier. I found the best method was to make one inside bend, and then the corresponding narrow outside bend, trying not to change the first bend while making the second. Then make the inside and outside bends on the other side. I found it easier with the Hold & Fold set to bend over the edge (if you have a Hold & Fold you'll know what I mean, and if you don't you really ought to buy one) , and position the part so that the whole half etch bend line is visible at the edge of the blade. The small profile template is useful, but you also need to get the overall width of the stanchion correct to fit the half etch locations in the main body. Ten stanchions, but they get quicker with practice.

    Pre tin the flanges of the stanchions and the locating grooves in the body. Body side stanchions are easy; just hold in position with the point a scalpel and apply iron. Be careful at the corners not unsolder the existing joint. The two end stanchions proved more difficult. There's a tendency for the end of the body to bow away from the stanchion when it gets hot. I persevered with the iron; I would probably have been better off using the RSU. All on now, so clean up any stray solder and scrub up.

    All the body detail gives a real insight into how the prototype was fabricated. There's an interesting thing; given how many 1/108s were made, and how many companies were involved in their manufacture I'm surprised that I've never seen a photo of them being made. Any ideas?

    5 hours today. Total 60 hours.


  16. Ian H C
    Sunday. The dog is walked, the dishwasher is emptied, the week's shirts are ironed, ashes out of the stove, laundry hung up, chores done. Back to business. Regarding the dog walk, it felt like spring was just around the corner this morning. Cool breeze, but you could feel the warmth of the sun on your shoulders for the first time. Ground gradually drying out as well. Summer's on the way.
     
    Don't fit parts 29, 30 yet unless you want the wheels captive for ever. I'm aiming to keep the wheels removable until late in the build.
     
    Looks like brakes are next. Nice to have a template for the brake shoes. Pencil lead it up before stacking and soldering the shoes. About 10mm long wires are ok. Make the three brake block wires slightly different lengths so you can thread the holes one at a time, and slightly chamfer the wire ends with a file. One thing about soldering brass wire; it sometimes seems to have a solder resistant coating on it so clean it with some wet & dry before you cut off the short lengths you need. Pre tin the parts on the etch ,trying not to get the holes blocked with solder, then all you need to do is heat up the pinned stack while pressing them together and the job's done. A little paste flux around the pins helps them to take solder. Keep solder off the template, you won't enjoy trying to unsolder it! Here's a caution that I missed; the lower hole in each brake block should be empty, it isn't pinned to anything. Check prototype photos. Take that wire out before soldering. I didn't figure this out until later on, and unfortunately it'll have to stay there now. That will irritate...

     
    You need to make an RH and LH assembly, but so far as I can tell they're the same unless you use part 35 on the back face, then they become handed. I'm not fitting a 34 or 35 on the back face in order to increase clearance to wheels. Saves me filing it off later when I need a bit more wheel clearance! In which case they are handed. Take care, it's so easy to make two of the same hand!
     
    "The brake shoes should all be fitted via lengths of 0.8mm wire through parts 36 & parts 41 (which were fitted to parts 2a & 2b earlier)." They were? No they weren't! Must have missed the 41s. See? Aren't you pleased you can still remove the wheels?
    The diagram shows the clevis on part 41 projecting out of the flange side of the cross channels 2. That doesn't seem right. A check with the chassis drawing for the LMS D2109 steel mineral (a predecessor for the BR 1/108) shows the clevis projecting on the wheel side, which makes more sense. There are plenty of differences between the D2109 and 1/108, but I'm guessing that's the same.
     
    Suspend the brake shoes from 41 with a short length of 0.8mm wire. Taper the end before you cut it off. With the wheels fitted turn the chassis the right way up, load it to the intended weight (125g) and move the brake shoes into position. Use a small blob of blutack to hold the shoes at the right distance from the wheels. Solder the pivots from above to secure the brakes.
     
    Brake linkage cranks 48, there's a mystery. The centre hole in them is about 1.5 mm. The brake cross shaft on which they sit is 1mm. That can't be right? There's also another mystery in the kit, a length of 1/16" brass tube. It's there in the contents list, but I can't find a mention of it in the instructions. I'm guessing that the parts 48 are laminated on this which then forms a collar to slide over the cross shaft. It would look more like the prototype that way. Here goes...
     
    Tin the 48s on the fret. Don't gum up the holes with solder. Chamfer the end of the tube and gently reduce the diameter for a few mm at the end by filing or emery, just enough to allow the 48s to push on. A gentle push fit helps hold them in place together while you solder them to the end of the tube. Clean up with a file while still on the tube. Open out the centre of the tube with a 1.0mm drill to just beyond the 48s. Clear through the small holes with a 0.5mm drill. Cut the part off the tube about 0.5mm beyond the 48s and clean up the tube ends. It'll now slide neatly on the brake cross shaft ready to be positioned for the brake push rods. Another photo...

     
    I'll call it done for today and tidy up the workbench a little.
     
    7.5 hours today. Total 47 hours, a week's work with some overtime, and we have a rolling chassis with working suspension and the start of the brake gear. That's another learning; there's a lot more work in 7mm, although that might be because I've chosen to jump in at the deep end.
    -----------------------
    A digression. Thinking back to the introduction to this blog, my Dad was a railway modeller and I suppose that's where I caught the bug. He was a die hard LNER enthusiast and I imagine him as a schoolboy, growing up in London between the wars, spending time at 'the cross', on the platform ends, watching the greatest free show on earth. He was an ardent supporter of everything Gresley and mention of the hated Thompson in the house was blasphemy. Inexplicable vitriol. I never understood that as a kid, but I read about the Thompson revolution years later. Back in the mid 60's modelling was different, as a look at copies of the Railway Modeller of the day will reveal. Dad was 00, and he had an extensive collection of stock that he ran at his model railway club, Church Gresley ironically!
     
    Often he'd clear the table after lunch on a Sunday, take his toolbox out from under the sideboard and get on with the latest project. I'd sit at the end of the table watching everything. Railway modelling as a spectator sport! I'd sit patiently through what seemed like endless faffing around waiting for something I'd consider real action. Back in the day that might involve an Isinglass blueprint, a ruler and a razor saw for a brutal conversion of a Triang B12 to an approximation of a D49. It might be repainting a Trix A4 into green livery. A4s, A3s, B12/3s, J39s, teak coaches from printed paper sides, a K3, but never a B1. There was a test track that was a few lengths of straight track on a plank of wood with buffer stops at each end. Watching locos on test with the old Hammant & Morgan controller was a highlight. Occasionally I'd be allowed to work the controller under stern direction not to hit the buffer stops. Once, briefly there appeared a...diesel. Bit odd that. I think it belonged to a friend or fellow club member. It was a Deltic in two tone green. The successor to Gresley's pacifics. What caught the eye (apart from it being a diesel of course) was that it was 'weathered'. I'd never seen a dirty locomotive or piece of rolling stock before. It just wasn't done. This Deltic had been weathered by somebody getting mucky grey brown paint on fingers and putting a barrage of dirty fingerprints all over it. That was weathering 1964 style.
     
    I remember the occasional trip to the Church Gresley club house at the weekend. Exciting and a bit intimidating with all those serious looking grown ups. Earnest blokes in shirt and tie or knitted pullover. GWR badges on tweedy lapels. Some with specs or beards. I'll always remember the smell of the place, damp, insulation board and stale fag smoke. Lots of talking went on, but as a kid I'd come to see the trains. Disappointingly they were less frequent than on the real railway. I always wanted Dad to build a layout at home. He had a number of layout planning books, notably those purple 'Plans for Small Layouts' type books by CJ Freezer, published by Peco. I spent hours reading them, scheming and daydreaming. I still have them. A start was once made on a garage layout. A big oval around the walls. Chipboard supported on angle brackets. there was going to be a station at one end and a big bridge on a removable section by the doors at the other end. Or that's how I imagined it. Never did see a plan. No track was ever laid. As time went by the layout became just a series of shelves for garage clutter. Under the big shelf at the station end there lived the largest spiders in England. Me and my brother never dared to go underneath, although we might poke the webs with a stick from a safe distance. The remains of the layout shelf are still there at Mum's house, like the trackbed of a Beechinged line about which Betjeman might have written.
  17. Ian H C
    So, the super stiff springs. I could modify the chassis and fit compensation; don't want to do that. I could try and incorporate an different kind of suspension: don't want to do that either. I want to retain the prototype fidelity of this model. So I'm left with the task of making the suspension work. I should add that on a different blog this subject has come up and Mr Parkins suggests that the springs are mostly cosmetic and the axleboxes allow the wheels to drop into depressions in the track providing a kind of compensation. Well, maybe. But I've set myself the challenge of making the springs work so that's what I'll do. Whereas parts scale down the physics doesn't.
     
    Could the springs be made from another material? I don't aim to get too far into the science, but what we'd want is a material with a lower Young's modulus, a spring that bends more for a given load. Of all the traditional spring materials phosphor bronze has by far the lowest modulus, so we already have the best easily available material. There are obviously materials that are more flexible but they don't make good springs, often because they have a correspondingly low yield strength and would be more likely to bend than spring back. Again avoiding the maths, the deflection of a spring made from a simple strip is proportional to the cube of the thickness. So reducing the thickness of the strip to a half (in this case to 0.2mm) would reduce the spring stiffness by a factor of 8. For a 125g wagon we'd then expect a spring deflection of about 0.65mm. That's close to being practical in 7mm I think. If we look at the actual spring we see that, just like the prototype, there are two leaves that span the distance between the spring seats on the chassis, and a number of shorter leaves that don't, but do increase the effective stiffness of the spring as it deflects more. The spring leaves only work together when they are in contact so if we can separate them they'll work in isolation until they touch. The plan then is to reduce then thickness of the top two leaves to one half of the original thickness and bend them carefully so that when loaded with their share of 125g they are slightly separate from the leaves below. That way we can have the wagon 'floating' on the top leaf and bending under load for short distance until it contacts the leaf below, also thinned to half, and from that point the spring progressively stiffens until it contacts the unmodified leaves and becomes effectively solid. The top two leaves will be less than scale thickness but material science doesn't care about this and I'll have to accept the compromise.
     
    Having got the fuzzy, low wattage science done it's back to making stuff.
     
    Or maybe not. I foresee another problem. It isn't possible to remove the wheels with the bearing holders in the W irons, and it isn't possible to remove the bearing holders from the W irons once the springs are fitted to the chassis. That would mean that from this point in the build the wheels are not removable. You'd want them in for positioning the brake shoes, but I'd want them removable for further work, cleaning up and probably painting. I should be clear that this a personal preference and not a 'mistake' in the instructions. Maybe keeping the wheels in from now on is viable in 7mm, I've no experience to guide me. It's not what I'd want to do in 4mm.
     
    I think the best solution is to have the spring retainer pins on the chassis removable, or at least fitted much later. These are the short lengths of wire that were soldered into parts 25 earlier in the build. I made a tidy job of fixing them and now they have to come out. Pants! And there are 8 of them. More pants!
     
    A relatively easy and accurate way of reducing the thickness of the top two leaves is to solder a couple of 0.2mm brass strips to a bigger lump of brass leaving enough space between them to solder in a spring leaf. There's a really sub-standard photo to illustrate. Then with a big flat file simply file away the phosphor bronze until the file skims the two flanking strips. Unsolder the spring leaf and clean it up. Quicker than it sounds. Be careful though, the thinner springs are more vulnerable to bending, particularly in the centre where the hole is. There is a spare of each of the leaves on the fret so you have insurance.

     
    Because we've thinned two leaves to half thickness we've effectively lost a leaf in the spring buckle. We need a tight fit. The cheat is to make a tiny spacer from 0.4mm etch scrap and solder it to the lower face of the smallest, lower leaf. It restores the depth of the assembly and it sort of vanishes when the spring is assembled. It is arrowed on one of the photos below.
     
    Ok, this time we really are back to making stuff. Thread the spring leaves through the spring holder and line up the holes. I found it easier to line the holes up with a pin first and then a piece of 1mm wire with a point filed on the end. Make a couple of temporary spring retainers for the chassis holes from 0.8mm wire, and long enough to push in and out easily. Drop the axle box into the W iron and rest the spring on the spring seats each side of the W iron. Insert the temporary retainer wires. Bend up the ends of the top 2 spring leaves to approx 90 degrees. They don't wrap around the retainer pins as much as the instructions suggest, check prototype photos for this. Leaf 2 will be slightly too long once bent, so mark where it needs to be cut. Either take it out and cut it now, or leave it until the next time the spring is out.
     
    To set the camber of the springs we need to know where the axle centre should be relative to the solebar with one quarter of the wagon weight on each spring. That should give us correct buffer and coupling heights and a prototypical gap between spring holder and bump stops 26. This works out as 15.5mm from top of solebar to centre of axle. Measuring from the top of the solebar is convenient since we're working with the chassis upside down on a flat surface. To weight the axles I'm using a steel parallel that weighs about 125g. Lucky coincidence.


     
    Lots of faffing now. Springs in and out and tweaked gently until the ride height comes right. Make sure the pin through the spring assembly isn't touching the bump stop on the chassis and preventing the proper spring deflection under load. Get the camber of the top two thinned down leaves correct first. The other unmodified, leaves will be flatter and don't have much influence. When you get the camber of the top leaves correct then take the spring apart and carefully tweak the camber of the unmodified leaves to nearly match the top ones. I say 'nearly match' because in normal running we don't want them in contact with the top two, otherwise we'd be back to very stiff suspension again. Leave them slightly less curved so there's a small gap between the thick and thin leaves. Hopefully a photo will make all this clear.

     
    Once happy with the spring setting I committed heresy and soldered the lower leaves to the spring holder, the 1mm pin and each other. Tiny amount of paste flux in the right place and a minimum of solder. It prevents the leaves rotating around the pin and shuffling around keeps the whole spring assembly stable and looking tidy. Be careful not to get any solder on the top two leaves. I covered them with graphite from a pencil before reassembly and soldering. Pencil lead graphite makes a very effective anti solder coating. Cut off and file the excess length of the 1mm pin. The top leaves need to be free to move on the spring seat as they change length under load, otherwise you end up with a very stiff spring again. Phew - finished one. Three more to do.
     
    And finally, there it is sitting on its wheels with working leaf springs. A quick roll along the workbench shows that it glides along smoothly and the wheels do move up and down to accommodate irregularities. Happy. Surely that's the most difficult bit over?

    I'm hoping that when complete, painted and weathered the thinner top leaves won't stand out. We'll see.
     
    7 hours today. Total 39.5 hours.
  18. Ian H C
    Having measured and pondered I think spacing the bearings inboard to eliminate side play is a better proposition than sleeving the axle ends. Side control will be on the point of the axle rather than rubbing on the wheel boss face, and it reduces the amount of material that will have to be removed from the inside of the axle box casting.
     
    To the lathe ! The lathe is an old Hobbymat I acquired many years ago. It's a bit 'amateur' as lathes go but it does what I need it to do and I've accumulated enough tooling to make things easy. The lathe lived indoors for a long time, but now it's outside in the workshop. That means an excursion in the 'fresh air'.
     
    There was a lot of measuring, drawing and calculating to make sure I knew what to make. I noted the details of Slaters axles and bearings for future reference.

    One thing worth noting is that the end of the axle is only 0.3mm from the outside face of the bearing cup, so no opportunity to file excess material off the end of the bearing like you often can in 4mm.
     

    For reference the bearing cup spacers need to be 1.2mm long, or if you wanted to make axle end spacer sleeves they'd need to be 2.5mm long. If you don't have a lathe then you could improvise with suitable washers or cut slices off a brass tube of the right diameter.
     
    Having survived UV light, oxygen and weather walking to and from the workshop it's time to unsolder the bearings and add the spacers. Photos should make the modification clear.

     
    Rebuilt axle boxes back in and it works perfectly with free rolling and no side play. Well worth the effort, and for the first time B560792 is standing on its four wheels. Feels like progress, but there's more hard work just up ahead.

     
    The springs are scale working leaf springs. Individual leaves are etched in 0.4mm phosphor bronze. Because I have no experience here in 7mm I'm going to use the rolling stock weight recommendations in the Gauge O Guild technical manual. That's about 125g.It's a chore cutting out and cleaning up all those spring leafs. They seem pretty stiff to me, and I'm not sure this is going to work out well. The spring leaves are close to scale, or as close as sheet thicknesses will allow. The prototype spring leaves are 4" x 1/2". Engineering calculations predict 0.08mm spring deflection for a wagon weighted to 125g just using the top leaf in simple bending. Almost no suspension. And it will be stiffer than that when the influence of the other leaves is added. So if we build as the instructions we'll have good looking cosmetic springs and effectively no suspension. Some rough experimenting with the suspension parts suggests the calcs are about right. Some thinking required before we go any further.

    4 hours today. Total 29.5 hours.
  19. Ian H C
    I just stumbled over Dave Parkins' MMP 1/108 kit while I was searching for something else. I confess to being a wagon enthusiast. The 1/108 and its brothers and sisters are one of then signature items of my chosen period. A super detailed 7mm 1/108 in brass - how could l not buy one instantly? It was love at first sight. And here's the story...
     
    I started on 14th Feb when I probably should have been paying attention elsewhere.
     
    Tools for the job, accumulated over the years. Even though there's a hoard of them the stuff listed here is what tends to do 95% of everything.
    Files - 2 little and one big. 40W soldering iron. 25W soldering iron. Paste flux (my Dad's old tin of Fluxite from probably the bronze age), phosphoric acid flux. RSU - an old Exactoscale unit - isn't essential but makes some things much easier. Solder, not fussy, using some RS 60/40 tin/lead thin solder wire - rarely find the need for exotic stuff or temperature step solders. Triangular scraper, faster and cleaner way of removing excess solder - if you've never used one I thoroughly recommend trying one. Stanley knife and small square of lead sheet for cutting parts from the fret. Scalpel with 10A blade, for poking things and holding things in position during soldering. Actually there's a low rent, grubby scalpel for poking and soldering, and a clean, sharp one for cutting things. The blades get handed down one to the other as they lose their edge. Small vice - actually my late Dad's vice. Somewhat beaten up and the jaws aren't exactly square, but it works, and there's sentimental value. Small toolmakers clamp. Usually gets held in the vice above to act as a mini vice. Very good at holding the tiniest things. Precise and very hard jaws. Small square nosed pliers Tweezers - my late grandmother gave me these when she thought I needed to take up stamp collecting, about 45 years ago. Straight into the modelling box and never touched a penny black. Glass fibre scratch brushes, small, medium, large. Odd scraps of wet & dry paper. IPA for cleaning parts before soldering. Avonside hold & fold 5.5 inch version - again not essential but makes some etched brass work so much easier and faster. Engineers square GW Models rivet press - seemed like an extravagance when bought years ago (when we could scarcely afford it!). Great piece of kit.

    ​-------------
    The first thing that struck me was the quality and detail of the etches. Beautifully laid out and presented, there's almost a Zen garden thing going on with a tidily arranged fret. Seems a shame to start cutting things out.
     

    The instructions look comprehensive, cover several sides of A4 and there are decent diagrams. Dave Parkins emphasises the need to read and follow carefully. They assume a certain common sense and an ability to work things out - bad luck if you have neither. A familiarity with the anatomy of the 1/108 helps as well. As we'll see there are some tiny traps for the unwary to fall into.
     
    I started with the chassis, because that's what comes first in the 'structions.
     
    Parts 1,3,2a,2b remove the etch cusp for accurate fit.
    Can miss the rivets on 2a, 2b if you wish, only seen from beneath!
    Folding easily done with Avonside hold and fold tool. Get the folds square, necessary to make the chassis assemble accurately. Take the time to get parts to fit perfectly.
    Soldering this lot. Don't tin the parts before soldering together. Solder in the half etch location grooves will prevent the parts fitting properly. Everything clean, 40W iron, phosphoric acid flux. Solder 3 to 1, then 2.
    Get 2a, 2b the right way round. Look carefully at the instructions. Takes some mental dexterity this, because the diagram is drawn with the chassis right way up, yet you'll be assembling it upside down on the bench. Beware! This determines which end the brakes are relative to the end door. Important for 1/108. Probably unfixable later in the build.
     
    First lesson : 7mm work takes more heat and uses more solder than 4mm work. Hardly ever use the 40W iron on 4mm work, but seems about right on this.
    Solebars 3, file a tiny bit off the ends to fit neatly into the buffer beams. Make sure 3 fits in all the half etched guides. Tin the face of the sole bar and the back of the overlay so you can sweat them together in situ.
     
    Solebar overlays. Tricky things overlays. Take a tiny amount off each end of the overlay to reduce the tendency of the overlay to expand against the buffer beams and buckle up when heated. Put the lower edge of the overlay in first, over the rivets in the lower flange of the solebar. Gently push the top into place. With two tinned surfaces in contact the best way of soldering the overlay in place is by RSU. Make sure all the slots are aligned and start with the RSU in the centre of the sole bar and work towards the ends. RSU on low setting, don't overheat the assembly and unsolder earlier joints.
     
    Basic chassis done. Not bad for one evening's work. Scrub it up in hot water with a drop of Fairy. 4 hours.

  20. Ian H C

    An introduction

    By Ian H C,

    Why blog at all? I model quite a lot, on and off. I've found out how to do things over the years and solved lot of problems. I've learned a lot from reading what other folk get up to on RM Web and other sites. Maybe what I post here will be of interest to others. I hope so. If readers find anything of use here I'll be pleased enough with that.
     
    How did I get to here? We grew up in the 60's not far from the mighty Toton and within earshot of the approaches. Distant, spluttering class 25s could be heard frequently, and it wasn't unusual to be stopped at the level crossing in Long Eaton while a pair of green class 20s and a long train of clumping 16 tonners passed, Toton bound, up the Erewash valley line. For many years as a kid I didn't have a model railway, although I wanted one. Eventually Dad relented and I had for xmas, a long time ago, some sectional track, a Hornby Dublo 8F and a few random wagons. Happy enough for a while. One year I had a Bradford Barton book as a present, London Midland Steam in the North West. I examined every detail of the railway revealed in that book and came to the radical conclusion that my railway models didn't look much like the real thing. Attempts followed to add missing items like brake blocks to locomotives. Wagon kits were built with varying success. OO made way for EM. A Wills 4F was built, with brakes and other details, mostly from scratch and with the most basic of tools. I didn't know any better. University and work intervened. Settled in Gloucestershire and found the time to take up the hobby again. This time BR green in EM. That quickly became P4. Acquired skills and tools. Moved to Derbyshire and settled again, closer to the North Staffs than the Midland. Unsatisfactory excursion in N gauge, soon given up. Since then most of my time has been spent on P4 BR green period and industrial railways. I tried a little 7mm, enjoyed the change, did nothing much with it other than a couple of coal wagons. Recently I've taken a renewed interest in 7mm, it's a little less model making and a bit more engineering, which I enjoy.
     
    The workbench in the photo is tucked away in the corner of an upstairs room in a laid back, flaky, unfashionable old house. A happy refuge surrounded by part of a huge collection of railway reference books, too many unstarted projects and boxes of parts and materials and a decent tool chest.

     
    Modelling time comes and goes. Sometimes things get plenty of hours and effort and results emerge rapidly. Other times life interferes and then timescales for getting stuff done become geological.
     
    Right now I'm working on a Dave Parkins 7mm etched brass 1/108. That'll be the subject of this blog for a while, probably with excursions along the way.
  21. Ian H C
    Fits and starts. After a determined and productive period of modelling earlier in the year real life (work, gardening, hospital appointments (not mine), dog, keeping air in bicycle tyres, more work etc) has seeped back in somewhat and I haven't spent as much time at the workbench. Modelling has been happening but it's not been much to shout about.
     
    The S7 test plank - since the last entry on the subject I've got bogged down rather on the brick retaining wall. Getting the wall built was easy enough. Getting it painted turned out to be a test of character. Started off well enough. I painted the base colours for the engineering bricks and the red bricks with matt enamels. Then I made a mess of the mortar courses. Trying to run a mortar coloured paint into the grooves didn't work well and I ended up with some avant grade paint effects. Then reading up about painting bricks (after the attempt you'll note!) I discovered that I'd have been better scrubbing the mortar into the grooves first and then dry brushing the bricks over that. I found an old tinlet of approximately mortar coloured paint and applied that, only to discover that what I thought was matt turned out to the glossy side of satin when dry. Great, shiny mortar! Gave it a break for a few days to let the disappointment wear off. Then to dry brush the bricks, except that's more difficult now because the enamel brick colours won't dry brush as easily over gloss. Pants! But press on. I also discovered that where I'd washed some of the brickwork sheet joints with solvent to merge the gaps I'd managed to wash away some of the brick relief so there wasn't as much texture to dry brush. The only option was to paint those bricks individually. Double pants! That's 1.5 metres of 7mm brickwork to laboriously dry brush and pick out the missing bricks. At this point the excitement had worn off and the creative impulse to make a quick test track was well buried. I also found that the layout of the work room and the amount and direction of natural light meant that it was getting more and more difficult to see properly to work on it in the evenings as I worked from one end to the other. Finally got the chance to take it outside in the sun at the weekend and complete the brick painting. With just the basic colours it sort of shouts, so I've started to tone and weather it down so it will sit in the background visually. It's not as good as I'd wished but I can probably live with it. I'll post some photos when its finished.
     
    The 7mm MMP 1/108 kind of stalled at the painting and weathering stage. The experiment with salt weathering promised much but didn't work out as expected. Some military modellers get great rust effects this way, I need to practice more. So I'm back to my usual technique of painting on the rust pattern from representative photos. This portraiture takes a while on 4mm stock, and it takes a whole lot longer on 7mm stock. I do a bit when I'm in the mood and It's getting there. Again, I'll post photos when there's something presentable. I have some decals for it now as well.
     
    The 4mm 3D printed springs and axleboxes from Modelu have been fitted to the Stanier brake van. The brake van construction is complete and it's now in primer. The 3D printed springs and axleboxes really look the part and although they are relatively small details it makes big difference. The character of the Stanier brake van is captured very well. Somehow I managed to miss some noticeable gaps in the soldered body around the duckets. Goodness knows how I didn't see them when I was cleaning it for paint, but the primer showed them up straight way. They've been filled and it's waiting for me to rub it down and repaint in places. There was an interesting diversion to evaluate several shades of grey paint to see which best matched BR freight grey. There are some right funny shades of grey masquerading as BR grey! I'll post the results some time.
     
    I have some more parts to build the P4 Impetus Hunslet15" but that's about to be overtaken by a new project - an 8F in S7. That'll make a blog or two at some point when I actually get started.
     
    Yes, 7mm is addictive, but I don't think it will displace P4 from my life completely. I'll wander from 4 to 7 and back again as the mood takes me. Another great way of starting more projects and finishing less! I've joined the Scaleseven Group and I've applied to join Western Thunder because there seems to be a bunch of accomplished and knowledgable 7mm folk in that group. Apparently my request is being considered by moderators. Obviously they're particular about who they admit. I guess they hold long meetings in darkened rooms to review applicants
  22. Ian H C
    Following on from the entry about modelling and 3D printing some springs and axleboxes for a Stanier brake van, here's the end result, a scruffy, well travelled unfitted van. It'll look just right waiting engine and brake in the colliery sidings.


     
    The brake van was built from a Pocket Money Kits brass etch (PMK 00/31) that I acquired a long time ago. There are RTR Stanier vans available now, but I enjoy building things more than buying them. The springs and axleboxes are a distinctive feature on these vans and I think the Modelu printed springs and axleboxes really look the part.
     
    The etched kit is quite old school in its design but goes together well enough. The castings for springs, axleboxes and buffers are serviceable but lacking detail. There are some compromises like the verandah corner posts that should be solid timber but end up as angle section on the etch, but not very noticeable. There's no provision built in for compensation or suspension, so you'll have to work that out for yourself. But you get a flat floor to work from, and I used some MJT compensating W irons that fortunately came out at exactly the right height. The buffers are from then Lanarkshire Model Supplies range - Wagon Buffer B013, 1'6" - 1'8 1/2", 13" head - and these really are excellent white metal castings. The handrails are a fiddle. The holes etched in the body for the handrails are oversize for scale diameter wire (0.3 mm), and it really is very difficult neatly soldering thin wire into oversized holes. Also some of the holes shouldn't be holes where the handrails are fitted to the prototype with small brackets. I filled the holes and made some tiny brass brackets.
     
    I'm not entirely sure which diagram of van this kit is supposed to represent. It's either D1919 or D2036. The difference is in the duckets, D2036 being a little wider. The model measures up over the buckets as closer to D2036, but the duckets look more like D1919 in proportion. I decided it was a D2036 and chose a number accordingly. You'd not have known if I hadn't told you!
     
    Overall, I quite like the result. If I can find another of these kits I'd like to build on with the external diagonal strapping that some of them acquired in later years. After all, I have plenty of springs and axleboxes now.
  23. Ian H C
    You'll have noticed from the frequency of blogs that a lot of projects are getting completed while I'm on summer leave. Apparently one's quality of life is increased by doing lots of things you like. In which case I'm right on it. Here's another long term project brought to completion.

    The side tipping wagons are from the splendid RT Models etched kit. The Hunslet 50t 325hp diesel hydraulic is from the Judith Edge Kit, which I bought at an exhibition in Burton some years ago. I designed and built my own chassis and gearbox for this in order to get a P4 compensated chassis with the drive line completely out of the cab.
     
    I can just see this lot storming the tip road. Lurching and swaying on the shonky track with a plume of black diesel exhaust trailing behind. Although for storming you really need a steam loco. Couldn't help noticing that Judith Edge do a 16" Hunslet as well. Another new project?
  24. Ian H C
    Here's a small project for the Christmas break. A BR 24.5 ton welded steel mineral wagon to diagram 1/115 in P4. I built one of these years ago when I was starting out in P4. It was pretty much pure Parkside with compensated W-irons wedged underneath. Time moves on, and the Rumney Models etched chassis kit designed to sit under the Parkside body offers a much better solution.


    I'm building an early 1/115 with 1' 6" spindle buffers, oil axleboxes and single door springs. The kit makes provision for the later 1/118 with double door springs, and alternative buffers and roller bearing axleboxes are available from various suppliers.

    One Parkside kit PC04 and one Rumney chassis kit B.21. All the Parkside chassis mouldings go straight in the bin. The end door gets some handles from 0.3mm wire. The moulded features on the underside of the floor are cut off and filed flush. Then the body takes a few minutes to put together. There'll be some detail to add later.

    The basic chassis is a simple, accurate fold and solder. The dimensional accuracy comes from the etched parts, not the care taken in positioning parts for assembly. Good design and very easy to get an accurate chassis.


    There's a little fettling of the body to fit the body supports on the chassis. Two minutes of minor surgery with a scalpel.

    Starting to look the part already.

    -------
    A few hours at the workbench today; wheels, bearing carriers, suspension, solebars, door springs and body supports.

    A hint when adding the solebar overlays. Be sparing with the solder. You don't want to block up the tiny holes for the locating tabs for components fitted later, like the body supports. I've done this before on a Rumney chassis and it's a pain to rectify. With clear holes and properly fitting tabs it is easy to add all the fiddly little parts.

    I'm using Ultrascale wheels with pinpoint axles in this build. I prefer to use the Exactoscale parallel bearing axles these days, but I don't have any, and being impatient I'll use what I've got to hand. The bearing cups are four matching ones from a collection of various bearings accumulated over many years. For something you'd think was a standard component there's a lot of variation. I've chosen bearings that appear to have quite shallow cones as experience suggests that deeper cones require more spacing out of the bearing cups in the bearing carriers. With bearing cups straight into carriers there's too much side play. A single half etched washer, thoughtfully provided on the Rumney fret, under each bearing cup does the trick.

    The axles seem to find the right ride height with a straight spring wire, which is merciful as there's no faffing around bending all the wires to match.

    A properly sprung chassis for less effort than it takes to fit compensation to the Parkside chassis. Easy.

    -------
    Into the more challenging stuff now. Took a good few hours to get the brake linkage together. I appreciate the simplification from the single fold up brake shoe and linkage but l still find it difficult. There are fewer parts but overall it's no easier than the legendary Masokits etched brake gear. Doesn't seem to get any easier the more you do either. Maybe it's just beyond my competence threshold! I deviate from the instructions here. I find it easier to build the brake linkage with the cross shaft in place.

    --------
    The dog beast has had his walkies on a bitterly cold morning wrapped in freezing fog. It's not walkies so much as cyclies. He's trained to run with a bike, so I get a few miles of off road cycling and he gets to run free, chase pheasants, jump in every mire in Derbyshire, stick his nose in every hole and finish up with a swim in the river, from which he emerges nearly clean. He loves it, and my duty's done for a while. Dog snoozes in front of stove and I'm back at the workbench.

    The brake levers and lifting link go together nicely. It's easier than it looks.
     
    The axle boxes and springs are whitemetal castings from Wizard Models/51L. The prototype seems to have had 8 or 9 leaf springs fitted so I'll need something chunkier than normal. BR split axleboxes BRC019, BR heavy duty wagon springs BRC042. Very clean castings requiring a minimum of fettling to fit the chassis. Incidentally Mr Wizard, thank you for sending them so quickly during the Christmas period - first class service and much appreciated. They are fitted to the chassis with medium viscosity cyano after cleaning the mating surfaces with isopropyl alcohol (IPA). Adhesives really do work better on a clean surface.

    Buffers are from Lanarkshire Model Supplies (LMS), 1' 6" spindle buffers, steel buffers and spindles cast into whitemetal housings. LMS whitemetal castings really are of the highest quality. I didn't think you could cast whitemetal as cleanly as this, but these guys can. Nearly as good as an injection moulded part. Hard to believe? Give them a try. Buffers are fitted using a rapid epoxy. That gives a couple of minutes to tweak the buffer alignment as the epoxy sets.

    Couldn't resist dropping the body on for a photo.

    --------
    Coming next - finishing the chassis, some additions to finish the body, painting and weathering.
  25. Ian H C
    A Stanier brake van from the Slaters kit. BR unfitted brake van from LMS diagram D2068. Number M731497, one of the last brake vans built to this design. Built in the period 1949-1950 and entered service with the M prefix under British Railways ownership, so it says in LMS Wagons vol 1.
     
    Mostly standard Slaters but I've added the label clips to the body near the verandah ends where most vans seemed to have them, and I changed the curved rain strips to the straight type. There are etched works plates left over from another kit; wrong number of course but, who can tell under all the muck? Paint is acrylic and some oil for weathering all held together by a coat of acrylic ultra matt varnish. Decals are from Fox.
     
    Turned out to be a bit of a bogey project. I bought it years ago from Ace Models in Launceston when I lived in Plymouth as a first look at 0 gauge. Didn't get finished and ended up in a box under the bed. It was rediscovered recently but it isn't a practical conversion to S7 from the stage of assembly I'd got to. Too much faff and carving to move axle guards, brake shoes etc. It sat on the workbench taking up space for a few months until l decided to complete it. Not a favourite but it turned out OK in the end. No use to me as 32mm gauge 0F, so it'll be on Ebay shortly. Everybody needs another brake van, right?
     




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