Macforrest

Starting point....

Hi Will, these are 12.1mm diameter which work out at a scale 36.3", 'as near as' to the 3'1" diameter of the real thing. These suit the B4 & BT10 bogies on the Mk2 & 3 coaches I'm working on. Hope this helps?

New Project!! Dapol/Airfix Mk 2d BSOs….. I had picked these up on separate occasions from the ‘second hand’ section in a model railway shop for £6.50 and £8. At the time they were the only suitable brake vehicle for an Inter-City formation if you wanted to avoid placing a Mk1 BG in the rake when trying to form a typical air-conditioned train. These are still good models as they are far more detailed than the lima ones and had a good representation of tinted flush glazing. However, I will replace this with Lazerglaze to match the Lima coaches.

Thanks Mike, can't find any suppliers but worth trawling ebay in the hope some might pop up! Have A1 products been discontinued?

Does anyone know of a manufacturer/supplier of rectangular etched brass buffer back plates that are suitable for wagons? I've remove the moulded buffers from a couple of Lima bogie pallet vans and the back plate that is leftover is uneven and not very sharply moulded. The plan is to fit Accurascale sprung buffers....Thanks!

My solution has simply been to buy a stock of decent wheels! Colin at Alan Gibson was able to supply enough axles for this project! Another shortfall not mentioned yet and is probably obvious to you from the short axle length of the Lima wheels is the dimensions of the Lima B4; some rough caliper measurements show the length between axle centres to be 33.78mm against 34.88mm on the Hornby ones. Width wise, the measurement from the outside of the axle 'bearing' boxes is 27.33 for Lima and 31.09 for the Hornby. Drawings and calculations for scale would tell you exactly what they're supposed to be, but the Lima ones are definitely under scale! But.... who has time to REALLY worry about this?!!

The finished TSO (I only completed a pair of modified bogies, these will be fitted to the BFK which is not quite finished yet!)

The original metal tyred plastic wheels don't run particularly well and the there's little depth to the moulded detail, again mostly due to the technology of the time.... Detail was deepened by cutting away the moulded brake shoes and fixing MJT cast shoes much closer to the wheels. Primed and sprayed in the same way as the undercarriage, and with the addition of Alan Gibson 12.1mm (scale 3’1”) wheels, the improvement is quite significant!

Apologies for lack of updates!! As a bit of an experiment, I've looked at how I can improve the bogies.....

The bracket for the distributor valve was fabricated from 40 thou plastic strip and fixed in place with liquid poly. Behind this sits a casting of the Westinghouse distributor valve and associated air tank (Stenson Models), connected by a ‘pipe’ made from .45mm brass wire bent to shape and located in 0.5mm holes drilled into the castings using a pin vice. This is mounted on strips of 60thou x 5.8mm plasticard fixed across the underframe to raise (or lower!) the detailed parts to be flush with the solebar. MJT buffers were fitted and some profiled plasticard added to deepen the bufferbeam before the whole lot was sprayed with grey primer. Left overnight to dry, several coats of Railmatch satin black aerosol were then applied. The overall look is less plasticky than the original finish, so worth doing.

Undercarriage modifications were straightforward; buffers removed with a razor saw and centres marked and drilled to take the MJT cast buffers before sanding to a smooth finish with 320 then 400 grit sanding sticks. I find these really useful for get into small spaces or for fine detail work. I had also previously cut a gap in the original buffer beam to accept a Kadee buckeye coupling, so had to work around this. All of the West of England Mk2 stock will eventually be fitted with these.

Now the paint has dried, a coat of gloss varnish has airbrushed on. Rub-down Howes Network SouthEast brandings were added where the ‘Inter City’ logo once sat and as this is a ‘conversion’ to a BFK, first class ‘1’s added to the passenger access doors. Coaches were renumbered 17082 & 5355, which would have been in blue/grey livery around the time being modelled and allocated to Laira for use on West of England trains. Load limit and vehicle data and restriction decals were also applied, a mix of standard Railtech and bespoke Rainbow Railways products, before a final coat of Humbrol satin varnish was brushed on. I had also previously (over 20 years ago) fitted South Eastern Finecast flush glazing; this is a relatively fiddly but not difficult job, which entails carefully filing out the internal edge of the window frames with a selection of flat and radiused mini files. The glazing can then be pressed in place from the back of the window (having cut each set of window mouldings into separate pieces). A lip was left to prevent the glazing from pushing all the way through and this can be secured to the shell with a light brush of liquid poly adhesive to the back of the window frames. The flashing from around the edge of the window mouldings could be completely trimmed allowing the glazing to be pushed further into the frame for a more flush fit, so I might try this another time. Finally, .45mm brass wire, painted grey, was fixed to represent the window bars in the brake compartment.

Martin, it would be interesting to see how this turns out it if you'd be happy to share some pics? I used SE Finecast vac formed glazing on the Lima Mk2bs I started working on 20ish years ago and still have some left over packs so I'll be using these....a bit tedious filing out the window frames to get them to fit though!

Absolutely, it certainly captures the essence of the prototype.... I'm sure a lot of work went into the design and moulding, the limitations were the technology and processes of the time!

Coaches ready for painting....

First step was to remove moulded detail from the coach ends and finish ready for spraying. This won't be a full repaint, the blue plastic can be seen to be inconsistent between the Hornby models, and different again to the Bachmann model pictured for comparison. Although the white lining enclosing the rail grey is absent, the goal is to keep this fairly simple, so will not be attempted! The usual trimmings of brass handrails and lamp brackets were added and several coats of Railmatch BR blue will be applied using an airbrush.

Next project.....! A Hornby Mk2a BSO was my first ‘modern’ model carriage, bought at a station open day in 1988 for £4. It’s quite an old moulding, with a number of flaws namely the over-thick window frames, deep window section (due to the thickness of the plastic bodyshell, see cravensdmufan's suggestion above for improving this), metal tyred wheels and probably a host of other features not wholly accurate to the prototype. With a bit of effort though, I feel this, and a TSO bought at a similar time, can be made presentable.

Before re-assembly, battery boxes were filled with ‘liquid lead’ from DC Concepts, and seating attached with adhesive to the underframe. It’s a shame that the printing of the stripes is not very precise where the doors wrap around the coach ends; some touching in was done with a brush but I will have to look at a better solution on the next ones as under scrutiny it does not look terribly neat! Apologies if some of what I've described here is just repeating modifications seen from other projects; but the obvious stuff is often the thing that provides the biggest visual improvement....! The next job is the pair of Hornby/Triang Mk2a’s….

A couple of other features were incorporated into underside detailing, these items also available from Stenson; brake actuator valve at the compressor end, which is obscured if viewing from the side, and air distributer valve and associated air tank. Lima mould the arm which attaches to the distributor, so locating it in a 1mm hole immediately behind this is simple. Behind again sits the large air tank and adding these features provides several layers of detail depth. These were separately painted as I did not want the additional work of priming and airbrushing the entire chassis.

Coach ends were then sprayed gloss black; a look at a photo of the metalwork on the real thing showed quite a glossy and dented finish, so I tried to recreate this. The handrails were picked out in satin white and a selection of Railtec decals applied. The moulded jumper cable does not leave much room for this, and the underside of the tank filler moulding could do with a little paring away, but the most noticeable legends can be incorporated. Rainbow Railways supplied me with some ‘AC2F’ decals to finish this off. The existing buffer beam was cut off to its full height but ensuring a protrusion was left where the end body clips are located. A new one was fabricated from 60 thou plasticard using a paper template scaled down from a drawing I found online. Even then, the dimensions did not quite match the model and some gentle filing was necessary to get a good fit. Buffer centres were drilled out and MJT cast retracted buffers fitted as well as their dummy buckeye coupling in raised position. These really add some bulk to the look of the coach end. With at least 8 more lima Mk2s to work on, I’m going to have to look at a better way of producing identical parts such as buffer beams. Steps were also added; these are from Stenson Models and are for HEA wagons, but with some slight modification fit easily to the underside of the coach. I made them a bit shorter than the prototype to clear the tension lock couplings, but I think the effect is still good.

First job was to cut away the moulded handrails and the lump representing the lamp brackets. The gangway connector can be removed to avoid damage, two clips at the back of this makes taking these off a doddle. Brass fittings were added; 0.45mm wire for handrails and Shawplan etched lamp brackets; it would be nice to not have to bend each bracket individually but handrails are easy enough with a small pair of round-nose pliers. The roof was removed by carefully twisting the coach ends in opposite directions until you hear a ‘snap’. Roof and glazing then just pull out, but with the locating clips now broken the seating will need to be fixed in place with adhesive to stop it coming loose and moving around once the vehicle is re-assembled. Glazing was cut away, leaving a slight overlap again to locate the roof on the model and Lazerglaze fitted with a film of Clearglaze applied to the frames to hold them in place . The backs of the toilet windows were painted white, but I don’t feel this gives an accurate portrayal of the frosted finish so if anyone has any suggestions? ‘ No smoking window decals were applied as the finishing touch; Railtech produce reverse printed waterslide decals of these, and they look really good, as they are applied to the inside of the window just as they would be on the full size version! The added bonus of this is they cannot be accidentally 'flaked off' by a wayward hand or lineside scenery. They have not yet produced the later Intercity style square ones (1st class and no smoking emblem on white background) so hopefully there’ll be enough demand in the future to justify production. However, this coach models an example of the earlier Intercity stock, so the round ones are well suited.

The Lima Mk2f is strangely(?) numbered as a Mk2e which means a number change for starters. The detailing is also limited, and whilst the gangway doors are nicely represented, equipment below the solebar is scarce and lacks ‘depth’. The buffer beam is too shallow and the buffers look a bit scrawny. All of this can be easily remedied. It's a fairly basic model but at the time not bad for a tenner! For the cost of today's models you could almost buy a whole rake!!

The finishing touch is the ‘No Smoking’ window stickers, again by Fox. The end result is a reasonable representation of a HST trailer for minimal effort! Next up will be something a bit more 'meaty', Lima’s air conditioned Mk2.

Attention turned to the interior, the second class seating being painted with an orangey red, tables in satin white. The 2+1 arrangement is not prototypical for the SO coach but making do with what I have I will just have to ensure the 2-seat side always faces the viewing side! Vestibules were painted, first matt white then gloss yellow and this can still be seen with the roof fitted, so worth doing. Coach ends are a clip fit, so I removed these and gave them a spray with gloss black. Once dry, Fox C3 restriction and data panels were applied, being sealed with a coat of satin varnish. I used these as they are the correct type for HST trailers (TF, TS, TRUB etc) whereas Railtec’s versions are FO, SO etc. These decals are about 20 years old and the film appears to have yellowed a bit. It would have been interesting to see if applying them on top of a coat of gloss varnish instead of paint would have made a difference. Final job was to fit Shawplan Lazer-glaze, which really makes a huge difference to the look of these early models. I applied Humbrol Clearfix on the inner edges of the window frames to bond the windows in place. Again you have the option to go the full distance and fit etched window frames, but the scalpel work required to remove the moulded frames, the preparation and painting and to really highlight the difference, painting of the inner part of the frame silver as per the prototype would add hours to this job. Fine if you have them to spare, not to mention the patience!

Once out, I cut away the plastic along the line of the window tops using a mini-drill cutting disc. This left enough plastic to positively re-locate the roof section. The next thing to come off were the buffers, as Lima model the loco-hauled Mk3 variants. After removal with a razor saw, a light abrasion with 320 then 400 grit mini sanding sticks followed by a coat of satin black paint is all that’s needed here. The shortcomings of Lima bogies is well discussed, but the cost of the common solution to replace them with spares from other manufacturers and work entailed with modifying the underframe to fit these is more than I wanted to commit to with around 15 coaches to do. Anyway, I think the BT10 bogies look quite good! Instead I used Gibson replacement wheels and to these I fitted the rather lovely Stenson 9mm brake disc inserts. The final modification to the underframe was to attach two M6x25mm washers for a bit of extra weight (7g!). These fit rather handily around the moulding which locates the push-fit bogie pivot and were fixed in place with epoxy.