jdb82

Been a bit slow progress this week. Suitably grubby weathering effects have been played with, some more successfully than others. Not entirely happy with how the chassis has turned out, but it could be worse. I might have to do something with the wheels. I'm quite pleased with how they've turned out colour-wise, but in some places, theres a bit of an edge where the pain has met the masking I put over the tread/flange. I wonder if I've been too generous with the paint and made too thick a layer. The coupling rods have turned out nicely - a bit of thinned black gloss paint was used for the oily areas. And this is what I'm aiming for..... I'm not quite there, but not a million miles away. Next job is to put everything back together again and see if it still runs!

Wheels all masked up and primed, ready for their red coat, and the chassis has it's red coat too. 'Hamburg' has it's outer frames painted red as well as the inside. Result - it all (currently) looks very red! Especially with red coupling rods and red wheels.....It won't stay that way though, lots of black and 'frame dirt' will be applied, black weathering powders and some kind of glossy thinned black to make the oily bits, errr, well.....oily.

It turns out ultrasonic cleaners work. Just given the tank in mine a wipe with some kitchen roll, and this was the result - the only things I have cleaned in there are the cab pieces, chassis, brake hangers and coupling rods in one session! Dread to think what it will be like after the main body has had half an hour in there!

Good to see you back at the bench! The Johnson looks interesting.....is it all coming apart, or just the chassis?

Thanks David, a useful tip! I’ll be sure to give it a go

Cheers Simon - need to think about the glasses, and how to make a brass casting look clear! I need to get hold of some suitable white paint. Maybe a tester pot of white gloss from the local hardware shop, in the absence of any 'proper' modelling paint

National Day here = model day! I've painted up some of the cab parts, and have been playing around with some weathering. After painting most of the surfaces black, and the floor a dark brown, it all needed some muckying up. A combination of a light misting of a black/brown/grey mixture with the airbrush, and a dusting of smoke and rust weathering powders give it that used look I'm after. Not perfect, but not too bad for a first go. The rust colour just above the firebox doors needs toning down a bit maybe....looks a bit too red in certain lights. All of the weathering done so far are what I would term "dry" effects. Next I need to make some kind of rain-effect streaks on the can roof. I have the Vallejo rain effects wash, as well as the streak grime wash, but I've not had a lot of success when practicing on scrap pieces with this yet.

certainly for the time being, mine won't be having any footplate crew.....they missed the plane over here, and will have to wait until the summer.

I much prefer the Canal tanks.....always think the long tanks look a bit out of proportion. I have a few photos of No.67 that my dad took, which although is a long tank (Sweden type), will be good for the chassis and cab details. Give me a shout if you want them. I never made it up to the KWVR to see Hamburg that I'm modelling, and have just had to make do with photos from the web.

Thanks Steve! Been a bit of a learning curve for me but it all seems to be coming together quite nicely now. My plan for fixing the cab interior is to add short lengths of square brass bar (I think 1.5mm) to the cab walls for the drop in floor, tank extensions and backhead to butt up against. I'll then add a drop of Araldite to each one to glue them in place once everything is painted up. Not sure this is very conventional, but I didn't fancy my chances of: a) getting my soldering iron in to make a neat enough job without access from the back, and b) having enough room to paint it neatly, as space is pretty tight on these small tank engines. Just out of interest, are you building the long or short tank version? John

Thanks Simon, I'll give that a go when I'm ready to prime the loco body. Quite a bit of cleaning and polishing on that to do first mind.....

Lots of bits and pieces from the cab, and the rods cleaned up and reading for priming. Cab pieces, rods, brake hangers and chassis after priming. Even priming is a bit of a learning curve... having practiced using a 0.2mm needle in my airbrush, I swapped to a 0.4mm needle as it kept becoming clogged up. This obviously delivers a significant amount more paint, and I ended up getting a bit of a 'drip' on the left hand end of the chassis side. At the moment, I'm unsure whether to leave it and put it down to experience, or use a fine grade of wet/dry paper and sand it down a bit. Also managed to pull a bit of the primer off the front face of one of the rods as I removed it from the paper I'd painted it on to, so will need to tend to that too.

I have the gravity riveter from Eileen’s - it’s basically a a sharp-pointed steel rod with a weight that you drop from a pre-defined height. It works pretty well as long as the rivets are half etched. Anything scratch built and you’ll need to pre drill the rivets about half the thickness of the brass for it to be effective.

One step at a time! Build a few kits first, then scratch building after that! Painting is the bit I'm least sure about, so I thought using these spare bits would be could to develop a bit of confidence before tackling the real thing

Not forgotten them - they have been ordered (not part of the kit unfortunately), but post out here can take 7-8 weeks to arrive from past experience! Depending on when they do finally turn up, they may be soldered on, or they may be an Araldite addition! They'll make it on to the model at some stage though......promise.

Just been playing around with my airbrush was kindly bought for me at Christmas - first time out of the box and the first time I've ever used one. It is a thing of beauty, and very simple to use and strip down. The Agenoria kit comes with the option of making either the long or the short tank versions of the loco, and so I had a few spare etches to experiment on. To keep it über simple, I cleaned the etches up an gave them a coat of surface primer. To my delight, I got a silky smooth, even finish. I have an energy saving bulb in my lamp at the moment which seems to cast some very bright white areas of light, as well as some yellower areas - it's a much more uniform covering than it perhaps looks in the photos below. My question is how much paint would you expect to use on what is essentially 2 long tanks of a model? Although I didn't fill the colour cup full, it took 2 cups of primer to cover these 4 etches. It probably amounts to about 3-4ml. It seemed to disappear very quickly - am I using far too much paint, or does that sound about right? I only brought 2 17ml bottles of primer out with me, and I'm worried I won't have enough!

Agreed! Really good weathering that we could all learn from :-) Show us how!

Folded up the steps and soldered them together this afternoon, and attached them to the running plate. Just the lamp irons to attach, and then that's everything built up and attached. That being said, I'll need to do some work to make the cab roof detachable, and I've still the pickups to do, although that's a job for after I've painted it.

Ahhhhaa! The lightbulb above my head has finally come on! Sorry....that took me a while. I had it in my head that the tube would go on the inside of the frame. Now it makes sense! Next job is to find some suitably sized brass tube....

Sand pipes and boxes now soldered on - not cleaned them up yet. Now going to strip the chassis down ready for painting.

Hi Simon, Yep, I'm still planning on following your advice, although I do need to try and find some brass tube of a suitable size somewhere - the only length I have with me here in Brunei is a little too wide. I'll cut the top wire to make them removable - these haven't been soldered to the chassis frames yet. As you say, the brake linkages are keeping everything at the correct angle - it was putting all that lot together that I was finding difficult! Once I have the tubes in place, what stops the whole brake assembly from sliding around side to side? Plug the tubes up with something for the top wire to push against maybe?

Yep, I'm using 145deg solder. I do have some low melt solder too, so maybe I solute try that.

Brake hangers now installed. Clearly I haven't yet discovered an easy set of working methods for this - I found it very difficult to hold everything in place, straight, in line with everything and the same distance from the wheels, without everything waggling around and moving. To compound this, the (what I assume is ) 0.7mm nickel silver wire that came with the kit was very reluctant to solder, and I end up with dry joints all over the place that probably need redoing. I think I wasn't holding the iron in place for long enough to provide enough heat, for fear of moving everything out of line. Still, it doesn't look too bad as long as you don't go looking too closely from the underside ;-) I will sort it all out to make it 'good' at some stage! Not too much left to go now - sand pipes, steps and a significant amount of polishing and cleaning to prepare it for painting. Edit: Oh, and pickups....... forgotten about them!

Just a thought on the brake hangers.....the blocks are obviously going to sit pretty close to the wheels, which is going make taking the wheels off/putting them back on a bit tricky to do without damaging the hangers and bending a wire somewhere. Do you think it's worth me not soldering the top wire (that they hang from) that stretches across the frames yet? That way I can take them off, paint them by hand and glue it all in place after I've painted it and put the wheels back on? Or am I fussing over something that's really not a problem?!

All 6 brakes & hangers laminated, filed, cleaned up and ready to go.