Fastdax

Very neat Richard. Are the decorative window cappings 3D printed?

Ian Kirk Coach At last it looks like we're getting somewhere! Decals are on. Well - on the body sides at least. Technically there should be lettering to say "Pull & Push" and "Engine Bell" on the driving cab end, but I can't find anyone who makes decals like this. The cab end has had some weathering, as has the underframe and bogies. A whitemetal lamp with a hole bored in the bottom hooks neatly over a lamp iron, just as per the prototype :-) The roof isn't screwed down tight, thus the gap above the windows. I also need to add all the glazing - separately, as each group of 3 windows sit at different levels inside, necessitating 3 individual bits. Meanwhile, here's a quick video of the BR(M) Pull Push train arriving in Offerston Quay's station:

Ian Kirk Coach The driving brake coach has had some grime applied to the nooks and crannies. I did this using my lazy-man's approach to muck - slap it on liberally then clean it off so that it clings to the bits that would have been missed by the cleaner's rag: The more you wipe it, the cleaner it becomes. The paint is Wickes tester pots of emulsion. It's a mix of dark grey and orangey/brown. Even when it's been drying for some hours, it can be shifted with damp kitchen roll or cotton bud. The interior has been finished with painted seats and self-adhesive stickers for pictures and mirrors. Red for third class: The front pipework has also been painted. As best I can find out, the vacuum brake pipes and engine bell cables were in red, faded to pinkish, and the vacuum regulator pipe was yellow, faded to whiteish: This will be toned down under another layer of muck.

Thanks John. Just what I need to hide a brick wall with dodgy weathering!

Looks great Rod! How did you do the ivy?

Ian Kirk Coach The coach has had a spray of satin black on its ends and underframe. When the maroon was completely dry after a week, I polished it up with T-Cut to get the paint-on-metal look that I want. I also cleaned some lead sheet and cut it into 9mm strips: ... which I started adding to the underframe recesses of both the composite and the driving brake coach to add weight. This is the composite coach having the lead strips epoxied in place:

Ian Kirk Coach - Bogies I finished detailing the bogies, with cosmetic side-frames, step boards, brake shoes and stretchers. Both had nickel-silver wires soldered on the top bearing plate - one side-to-side and one front-to-back as I did to the composite coach. This time, I used the Kirk side-frames instead of the Wayoh resin ones as they are pretty similar in appearance, but the Kirk frames are much easier to file flat and drill for the top-hat bearings without them shattering into bits. The 'leading' bogie - the one at the driving compartment end - carries guard irons and sand pipes. The guard irons came from the same etch that provided the coach end. I also added some angle ironwork that is obvious on photos of the prototype. The leading bogie has two full-length step boards and the trailing one has a single short board on the left side, made from brass angle.

Be aware here that the bit you are referring to - the coupling mounting plate - is something I added to the Slaters kit in order to locate my Dingham auto-coupler more accurately than allowed by the rather big slot in the plastic buffer beam. It's a nickel-silver etching provided by Dingham for this purpose (although I use the 4mm version rather than the 7mm version as explained here). I don't think there's a coupling mounting plate provided in the kit as a separate item. It's cast into the buffer beam.

Ian Kirk Coach The driving brake end has had a coat of maroon/crimson/burgundy. It doesn't match the maroon Ellis Clark suburban Mk.1s that I got at Warley but could be toned down with a dirty wash to about the same shade. <Sorry - photo has been lost to the mists of time> The masking tape I used pulled a bit of primer off the brass end, which is a bit annoying, but I'll patch-prime that before I spray the ends and underframe black. Meanwhile I've been pressing on with the bogies.

Here's another option as I used on my (unpainted) vanwide: It's the etched brass compensation unit on the near axle which allows this axle to pivot from side-to-side. The far axle is glued solid to make a 3-point compensation system.

Hi Nieler, Have you got any photos? I have one of these DJH 2-6-2s (BR Standard 2MT) in the SABLE pile awaiting building.

Ian Kirk Coach - Bogies On the previous coach, there was a spacing washer between each bogie mount and the corresponding bogie stretcher. This made the coach body wobble from side to side a bit as it only had two small areas of contact with the the bogie tops. So I replaced the washers with nickel-silver wire of the same thickness, soldered to the brass bogie stretcher, with one wire running front/back and the other side-to-side. The side-to-side wire stops lateral body roll and the front/back wire allows the other bogie to roll as the track undulates. It's a primitive 3-point compensation system:

Ian Kirk Coach A coat of Halfords grey primer brings the coach body together: <Sorry - photo has been lost to the mists of time>

Ian Kirk Coach Here's the non-driving end in cruel close-up with all items in place, ready for primer: The driving brake thirds don't seem to have carried emergency brake cord equipment.

Ian Kirk Coach Trying to get the coach ends finished now. I added CRT steam-heat hoses but 'pinned' them to the buffer beam with 0.5mm brass wire drilled and soldered to the hose mounting plate as there's very little surface area for glue otherwise: Here's the finished 'face' of the driving brake end, with steam heat pipes, marker lamps added to the top corners of the sides and the vacuum regulator pipe under the running board:

Ian Kirk Coach The roof of the driving brake end is now a self-contained lighting unit in the same way as the composite described above. The gubbins fits in the guard's compartment and is much less obvious though.

Thanks George!

Ian Kirk Coach - Improved lighting Setup In my previously-built composite coach, the battery and dis/charge circuit were under the floor, connected to the LEDs with a tiny 2-pin plug and socket. This proved non-ideal as the flexing of the wires as a USB cable was plugged in eventually broke a couple of wires. So I removed the battery and circuit and put them in the end compartment below the TrainTech LED driver. This meant carving away part of the seat attached to the false coach end, in order to get the USB socket pointing downwards through the floor: Of course it needs tidying up, but the point is proven that the lighting is now a self-contained unit in the removable roof. I plan to disguise the electronics with some judiciously-positioned passengers and luggage. The USB cable now plugs in discreetly under the floor. And, yes, I checked that it still fits with the bogie mounted!

Thanks Simon. Yes, the lights stay on for a couple of minutes once triggered. When they run back and forth under computer control on the high level of Offerston Quay, they stay on for as long as the movements continue. Rattling over my badly-laid track provides enough jolt to keep the lights alive. I originally used this method to avoid having to put pickups on the bogies and run wires (via micro plugs) back into the body. So saying, I'm now considering installing a function-only DCC decoder in this driving brake end, to power a red/white tail/head lamp, so I may have to add pickups as well. A link would be appreciated, thanks!

Ian Kirk Coach I decided I didn't really like the vacuum brake and regulator hoses I made up (I'll use them at the other end of the coach perhaps) so I populated the "face" with CRT hoses and electrical jumpers. I also started the lighting fittings. Here you can see the 150mAh LiPo battery (lower right), charge/discharge board with micro-USB connector (lower left) and the Traintech motion-sensing circuit with a white test LED plugged in for now: All of this lives in the guard's compartment and will be disguised with luggage. The USB connector is accessible through a hole cut in the floor (which is just about visible in previous posts , in front of the vacuum cylinder), which makes it a nice. invisible set-up from the side and with no electrical connections between the body and the roof. I should improve the matching composite coach to suit!

Ian Kirk Coach I started to represent the brake gear with a mixture of Kirk vacuum cylinders and 'V' hangers, and scratch-built linkages: Here's the majority of the brake linkages and extra trussing, with provision for a rod to the driver's hand brake in the rectangular 'cage' at the near end and a CRT dynamo at the back:

No problem Hal and thanks.

Ian Kirk Coach The brass end was a couple of mm narrower than the Kirk plastic end (maybe I could have narrowed the whole coach a bit if I'd known in advance) so I needed to fill in the front corners. I didn't use filler as it may have chipped, so I superglued on strips of plasticard the same thickness as the brass: ... then cut it back to match the profile of the sides: Work on the underframe has also begun. Kirk plastic in black, additional trussing from plastic angle in white: I'm using The Model Railway Journal no. 49 as a reference for the brake-end underframe detail, which has more in the way of brake linkages than the plain composite. This allows the driver to wind the brakes on manually, using the handwheel in the driving compartment.

Hi Ray, The etches certainly are of great help. Many thanks again. The seats are Slater's. Each pack does 3 compartments: I may use plant-on arm rests for the first-class compartments in the composite coach already built, either JPL Models whitemetal or Slater's plastic arm rests as shown. The driving brake end is all third class so no arm rests are needed in the current build.

Ian Kirk Coach Time to make up the brass driving-end panel. I'm using the etch with provision for bolection mouldings so these were soldered on, but first I punched out the half-etched rivets with reference to photos: Here are the three panels from the etch. From left to right - plain (non-bolection) end panel, the bolection panel with window surrounds, rivets and sun-visors in place, and the driver's compartment divider with driver's seat soldered in (but not yet cleaned up): My GW rivet press makes fantastic-looking rivets with no distortion: To fix on the end panel, I first stripped off the protective film from the transparent styrene and replaced it with clear Sellotape. Then I held the brass panel in place and carefully scored round the inside of the window apertures with a sharp scalpel, which allowed me to peel away most of the Sellotape, leaving bare styrene to glue to, whist leaving masking in the window apertures. Then I could glue the end panel on with Vitalbond CA glue: Also in this picture, the lamp-irons have been sweated on and holes drilled for the vacuum brake and regulator pipes. Split pins hold the brass and styrene panels in alignment while the glue sets.