Departmental203

Good afternoon everybody Good news! My MTA which had running issues (395161) is back on the road after wrestling with brass bearings and wheelsets....but that's not the reason why I'm posting here! Since the two MTA's, stuff on the workbench was shoved onto the back burner as I turned my attention on the layout but I have made some progress with some of the usual and some things I'm not usually fettling with.... To start off with the latter, I was fashioning some bogie sandpipes and sandbox fillers on a pair of Hornby Class 60 bogies. The "Tug" itself was a real bargain that I picked up for a very respectable £70 at the Glasgow model show back in February but as almolst expected with such finds, a fair few detail parts were (and still are) missing! To replace the missing (or broken) bogie parts, the sandbox fillers were made from a short stub of Evergreen 2mm rod and the sandpipes were made by soldering two bits of 0.6mm wire together after many, many attempts! Not a 100% match to the Hornby moulding but I recon it'll still pass! The eventual aim is that the Class 60 will go into Colas colours but the running number is yet to be decided. Ach, I think getting an airbrush is the first concern!!!! Staying on the theme of bogies, another long term plan of mine is to model 37610 in its final years with DRS with cast bogies but Bachmann only do the fabricated type. So, for the bogies from my model of 37411, the casting lip came off quite nicely with a scalpel blade but so did many of the brake actuator pipes!😅 Replacement ones were made from 0.5mm brass wire which in retrospect is fairly over scale but then again, so are the Bachmann ones. Little details added onto the bogies were a speedometer cable (one bogie only), the one axlebox that has a protruding part which is a feature on 37610 (and a few other 37's) built from two diameters of plastic rod on the left on the top bogie of the 2nd pic and the funny looking bits on the corner of the cast 37 (and Deltic) bogies built using 10 thou plasticard, if anybody knows what these are I'm all ears! To finish the bogies off, I painted all of the details using photos of 37610 as a guide with acrylics, a fine brush and a steady(ish) hand! The hope for 37610 is that I can buy another Bachmann 37 with the correct nose grills (dividing bar on drivers side, none on the secondmans side) and swap chassis with my model of 37411 which has nose grills with dividing bars on all 4 cabsides (even though it's incorrect for the real 37411, we'll save the rant for later....) The final bogie related thing for this update is for my old Hornby 156, I felt the trailer bogies in buchered form would lose grip of the wheelsets over time so I looked to get the Stenson's etched "Sprinter" type bogie frames only to discover that the website had shut itself down! (all OK now as their products are on the Will's Workbench shop, wishing Phil and co all the best for the future of thier range) By complete surprise, A1 Models had a range going through eBay and they had an etching to build 8 bogie frames (4 trailer cars in total) for £7.95 which I felt was a steal! Little hesistation was made in the purchase and it came a few days later. If you want to see what A1 is selling right now, plese click here👈. They were simple to solder up, even the bearings posed little hassle and that's saying something even for my poor soldering skills! The wheels used were 12mm ones from Bachmann sold as a pack of 10, I felt that was the best route to represent Sprinter wheels and also be easy to have pickups on. Once assembled, the bottom of the bogie frames was filed at an angle to match the Hornby sideframes as seen on the example to the right. And the example to the left demonstrates my clumsy soldering! The expectation was to glue the Hornby sideframes onto the frames with superglue and paint the brass parts black and away they went. However, after gluing the Hornby sideframes, they popped out as soon as the wheelsets went in so looks like I need to come up with a plan B! I'm thinking of gluing them with epoxy to give a stronger and slightly more flexible bond but right now, they're as separate bits. Back to more familiar territory, work re-commenced on one of my Hornby MHAs which suffered from a broken brake lever guide. Re-kindling my inspiration for this wagon, I decided to portray one from the early batch with original font EWS lettering and script lettering data panel and after a trawl through my growing wagon photo collection, a candidate was found in the form of 394036. Just like the MHA I did about a year ago, I stuck on worksplates and fitted the fiddly brackets in the middle of the wagon which I believe are related to the door mechanism back when the wagons were HAAs? With the axleboxes and details painted, I contacted Railtec and used their new custom wagon data panel to get exactly what I was hoping for and a spare thrown in for good measure! All within 3 days of ordering which resulted in one happy customer! If you want a custom data panel, simply email them after your order with all of the content you want in the data panel (number, tare weight, TOPS code etc) and if you can, provide a picture of what you're going for and hit send. Much easier than fiddling about with digital drawing software! With the decals in, the wagon was matt varnished and now its ready for a good dose of what every engineers wagon needs which is weathering! Well that's that for this update! I do have two projects under wraps for now which I hope to present sooner rather than later. Until then, happy modelling! Jules

Hi again EWS60065, thanks for the kind words there mate! To be honest, the colour I used for weathering the bodywork has settled to be my go to colour for road dirt, it's mostly Humbrol 29 with a little bit of Humbrol 62. Of course how much Humbrol 62 I put in depends on how dark the final colour becomes and I find that experimentation is the name of the game! Oh and by the way, good job with your wagons too! Look forward to seeing some more! Jules :)

Well I can't believe it myself, has been almolst 2 years since my last update!😶 You may ask, what's happened in the intervening time? The answer some stuff has happened however it was a case of one step forwards, two backwards.....doh!!🙄 The issue was the Sundella surface was warped (fairly badly on one board in particular) which led to extremely bumpy track. A coillery, maybe? A modern mainline? Definetely not!!! This led to the ripping up of the entire track on the worst board and I had to sand the top until it was (reasonably) level which as you could imagine with Sundella, resulted in quite the mess!!! After about a year or so on and off (mainly off as you could probably tell!!) I eventually got the baseboard to a stage I was happy with although the trackwork is still not perfect but I'm not prepared to face more hours of sanding, checking and sneezing like crazy! At least it was far better than before so that's what counts! Silly me wasn't in the right mind to take any photos while the work progressed, so I can only show you the end results (serves as a nice reminder as the old photos went down the drain with the RMWeb update....) The board that was done up is shown below, some of the brown paint was worn away in the process due to the sanding! No changes were made to the track layout (on this and the fiddle yard boards anyway, more on that later....) In the fiddle yard, some of the flexible track (mostly the curved parts) was replaced with Hornby Settrack to help the rail ends align at the baseboard joins. Onto the other board (with the station and fiddle yard), I made a few changes to the station area, so as opposed to one bay platform and one "through" platform (which stops at the end of the baseboard), I decided to change it to two "through" platforms, imagining that the line at Torness was a through route at one time but due to the el infamous "Fat Controller", the line was severed here. The old platform (which I wasn't entirely happy with) was broken up and a new platform awaits to be built. I'll let the photos explain below: Before After As you can see, there's an awful lot of work still to be done, but hopefully that will happen sooner than later! At the Perth model rail show, I picked up some static grass, flock, rubberised horsehair and a signal box kit so watch this space I guess! It's taken a mere 5 years to get this far, hopefully I can give this layout of mine some justice! Thanks for reading Jules

Wow this is looking pretty good there, even the courage to hack up the Dapol ED I'm pretty impressed about I have to admit! Just a minor point, I feel the grille surrounds have sharper corners on the real thing but then again, scrachbuilding involves a lot of trial and error until it looks right with your own eyes! If you wanted to improve the finesse of the grilles, you could try picking up some Shawplan examples and modifying them to fit the 73/9 unfortunately they (or any other detailing manufacturer to my knowledge!) don't have a pack to cater for the 73/9. A possibility is to use the Class 60 Grilles (catalogue number DP60-02) after having a quick look at the Hornby model, the grilles should be large enough to cut down and use for your model, using a sharp pair of scissors. As I echoed earlier, nice work and I look forward to seeing the completed model, I only remember one other person trying to build a 73/9 so it will be a model to be proud of! Good luck!💪 Jules Link to Shawplan : http://www.shawplan.com/fittings.htm

Well what can I say? It's been over 6 months since the last update.....hmmm!😲 I have to admit railway modelling has been on the back burner over this period with the reality of university and also chasing real trains.....has now become a hobby in its own right! With uni over for the summer hopefully some progress will be made! The (mostly idle) project sitting on my workbench for this time was a pair of Bachmann MTA's numbered 395083 and 395161 (latter was a renumber) which were awaiting new parabolic springs to replace the incorrect leaf springs as supplied on the model and something that any engineers wagon needs in my opinion is a good dose of weathering, which also took a mere 6 months! Removing the moulded springs involved some careful work with a scalpel and side cutters before some very nice whitemetal replacements from Stenson Models were glued into place. Before ......and after! Must say they do make a difference and well worth the effort With the springs attached, the weathering slowly built up until the chassis looked like this: The underframes were plastered with my now standard "road dirt" mix of Humbrol 29 Dark Earth with a dash of Humbrol 62 Leather and dry brushings of lighter shades of muddy brown, rust and even light grey (Humbrol 147, to represent stone dust) were added to break up the uniformity. 395161 in particular had a large buildup of stone dust around one W iron which was copied on the model. Oil stains using Humbrol 27004 Gunmetal were applied in strageic places and some was poilshed to give an oily sheen. Once complete, matt varnish was used to seal the weathering in and the wheels were given the Humbrol 29 treatment. The same "road dirt" mix was brushed on to the bodies and partially taken off but intentionally left in some areas such as the side capping to represent heavy dirt deposits. Once dry, some light grey and rust was drybrushed in streaks so the bodies weren't boring and uniform! All of this was sealed with some matt varnish to finish. The finished models are shown below however, 395161 is back on the workbench to sort out erratic running and given the current pace, how long will that be?🤔😅 I also have been working on the layout over the last month or so, hopefully a (much needed!!!!) update will be on the way soon and I'm also dabbling in some other odd projects as well so watch this space.....I guess! Thanks for reading Jules

Hello there Jack, nice to get an update from you in a wee while! I must say 47813 and the 37 bogies are looking superb! And a 14k word dissertation.....yikes! It makes you wonder what the uni professors are getting high on! But good luck with it mate, sure you will ace this!💪 Looking forward to seeing more progress here! Jules

Well I'll be looking forward to its progress Caz! Only advice I can give you here is take your time with the masking. I'm no airbrush user but the advice has helped me out big time! Jules

For the gold stars I'd probably go with 2 options, the first one being to contact Rainbow Railways to see if they can provide you with decals for the livery. Personally, I've had no problems when I wanted (and commisioned) some custom wagon decals from them and the whole process took something around 6 weeks (well it was only a few markings!!). The second option is to probably mask up the stars using some masking tape and then paint them on. I've seen it done on an N gauge Class 142 "Pacer" with amazing results. I know that RMWeb has been a bit funny with the new server update so photos might not be avalible but the NWT Pacer project is found here: Well the final thing I can say is good luck!💪 It will certainly be a unique model to add to the collection and although I can't say I'm a big fan of the livery it does look fairly striking! Jules

I have (unfortunately) been a bit inacive around here but wow, it was very nice reading all about the "Mentor" conversion here and I must say, it's looking fantastic! The details on the ends are very nice touches IMO😍 and its all in N gauge! I do wonder, would we see an RTR version of "Mentor" in any scale at some point? I recon other people are hoping for one as it is a popular coach from the test fleet. Jules

Nice work on the 156 there, it's still a good model as it is IMO but is severely let down by that underframe!! What lighting kit do you intend to use? I have one that's been sitting on the 'bench for about a year now, need to get on with it! Thanks, Jules

Very nice work on these locos and coaches Andy! Out of curiosity, where did you get the Poppy plates from 68033 from? Thanks Jules

Thanks for the kind comment EWS60065! Well I hope to eventually get around to weathering it at some point but I don't have an airbrush so this will put me off to getting round to it! I still have to varnish the body and I'm having to wait until a warm day comes so I can get the spraycan varnish out! Jules

Ah the perils of uni life! Almolst 4 months since my last update and I don't have a mountain of stuff to show! Anyway, I'll jump straight in and present the wee bit I managed to get done Turning to the underframe (the bufferbeam area specifically) of my maroon "Shed" 66111, the first job was to cut away the extra lashing eyes. On most EWS/DB 66's the left two aren't there (to clear the coupling arm) but for some reason, 66111 is one of the oddballs which retains the top one on the left side. Unaware of this, I cut both the left lashing eyes only to have to add one back on! They all had a 0.7mm hole drilled through to represent the real thing a bit better. Goes without saying my "mishap" is the one in white, which was made from 60thou plasticard. The knuckle coupling assembly (the knuckle head is Bachmann's, the rest was done by me a few years ago) is too high on this end and I sort this out later, as well as the very thick paint on the light clusters. Given the state of the ends at this point, I had to do some repainting, the yellow is Humbrol 69 Yellow (not a perfect match for Bachmann's but decently close enough) and the black is just Tamiya XF-1 Matt Black, all varnished with Humbrol Satincote. The next job was scratchbuilding the coupling levers (I think EWS/DB Bachmann Class 66's have a pair in the detailing packet but mine didn't!) which was soldered up from 0.6mm diameter copper wire and painted with Humbrol 69. One problem I had for years was one of the bogie steps on the model was broken (a 3-foot drop speaks for itself!!) so I wanted to sort it out while I had the soldering stuff out, so using a strip of brass shaped until it was 2mm wide and 0.4mm thick, I fettled one up. Despite my terrible soldering skills, I think this will pass! At the same time, as I ended up breaking one of my brake pipes while stripping down the ends to help with the repainting, I made my own from 0.8mm copper wire with 0.2mm silver wire wrapped on the top to form the tap and lever. The photo below shows the pipes without any solder on them Then, I'd flood the tap part and the bottom part with solder to give these bits more bulk and a lot of filing later they were ready to paint, with the finished result below. You can also see the finished step The black on the pipes is Tamiya XF-85 Rubber Black which actually gives a decent representation of rubber and I recommend it! The red and yellow were just Humbrol acrylics. With these details soldered up, they were fitted onto the model with superglue and here's a shot of the bogie with my scratchbuilt step added. Well it's at least better than half a step! Back to the coupling which I mentioned earlier, I had to remove my old mounting assembly to be able to position it correctly, so I knocked up a new one from plastic rod and strip, and some copper wire to add some rigidity and to use as a mounting pin. Basically the same process I did a few years ago, I did this so the buffers would retract properly without the coupling getting in the way. With this coupling painted and installed, the bufferbeam detailing was done and I can now focus on getting the cab interiors painted and various other wagon projects on the go. The finished result can be seen below Before I conclude, I mentioned about the light clusters having a thick layer of paint on it. It turns out that they are made from black plastic so using a knife I scraped off the black paint, followed by the yellow paint underneath to get to black plastic! I unfortunately lost the bolt detail on the clusters but imo the result looks better than overly thick paint. The surface of the clusters were polished with increasing grades of sandpaper and micro mesh to eliminate the scratches left by the knife and afterwards, I painted on a white line to represent the marker light. I'm no electronics wizard, so I decided this was good enough! Well, we have once again hit the festive season (time slips away!) so I wish all my readers and followers a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Jules

Stunning work on these Grids James, really see that the 56's look like they're on their last legs with the weathering! To think 56019 was on Virgin services....wow! Unfortunately, I was only a toddler around this time and compared to now, these were really glory days! PS, I'm listening to Bruce Springsteen's "Glory Days" as I type... Jules

Fantastic job on the 222 there mate, hard work has certainly paid off! Would certainly like to see it in the flesh sometime soon! And the little jobs on the wagons, they don't seem like much indivually but they do add up and certainly make them different! Jules

Nice video of 37716 there, can't beat some good old "Tractor" thrash! Although I'm scracthing my head at why it's being used at Peak Forest again when it wasn't deemed satisfactory when it did the same job three years ago, read that the loco was put under strain At least it's something special, albeit it's about 300 miles away from me! Jules

Excellent job there Andy, must be great soaking up the satisfaction of making a unique model! Could last a couple of years seeing Bachmann.... Jules

I have to say very neat work with these resprays, I can imagine it can get quite fiddly working with tiny N gauge models! Regarding the brake cooling pipes fitted on 47/7's and 57/3's, Precision Labels do a 3D prined representation in 2mm scale and the link can be accesed by clicking here. All the best for the next lot of resprays! Jules

Impressive work on the aubergine "Meridian" Jack, must be satisfying to have such a unique model! And yes, I feel your pain for university, really eats up your modelling time. Not just that but its consumed my mojo too! Just look ahead, time will fly much faster than you think... Kind regards Jules

As usual, some very fine work with the resprays and the rescue jobs, I'm probably not the only one tempted by the blue 4-VEP 3417.... Just a quick word about the 117, when refurbrished (and in blue/grey livery) ventilation grills were added on the bodysides, they weren't present when in unrefurbrished all over blue condition. Seems to be a common theme with the longer lived 1st generation DMU's. Jules

I am in love with these fine window etches and especially the open window, in N gauge as well! I'd probably go bonkers doing this to a N gauge model! Jules

Thanks for the kind words again! For the OBA, I used just the letters from Fox Transfers' white stencilled data panels, they have the stencil "gaps" if you look closely! As they are individual letters, patience is the key to applying such tiny transfers and do not be surprised to lose a letter/number or two. If you don't fancy the idea of sticking individual numbers and letters, Precision Labels, Railtec and Rainbow Railways can help. They can be quite busy but they can produce custom transfers to order and service is mostly favourable. If you get round to decalling your OBA, good luck with it! Jules

Finally, another long due update! I can now declare my Cambrian OBA is....finished! (It only took 7 years!!!!) The rusting on the ends and solebars was Revell 84 Matt Leather, a useful shade for representing old rust due to its purpleish tinge, applied with a 10/0 brush, trying to restrain myself and keep the rust effects varied! For many of the rust spots, I (you could say) drybrushed some of the paint downwards with the 10/0 brush to represent rainwater washing the rust downwards. On the solebars, I painted a series of dots to form a line (as per the prototype) of rust breaking through the paint and was tamed in places with some downward motion with a flat brush moistened with thinners, concentrating around the door hinges as they seemed to get pretty shabby! The solebars and bufferbeams were weathered with a 50/50 mix of Revell 84 Leather Brown and Humbrol 29 Dark Earth to give it that darkened apperance, with some Humbrol Rust and Dark Earth weatering powder on the W-irons to represent brake dust. The single links were highlighted with a reddish mix of 70:30 mix of Revell 84 and Humbrol 73 Wine and Humbrol 27004 Gunmetal represents grease on the handbrake levers and buffers, the latter getting my usual protective coat of satin varnish. Wheels painted with Humbrol 29 and wiped to represent the disk brakes polishing the surface. Well I have to say this weathering, although time consuming (my fickle motivation can testify!) is very enjoyable and satisfying to put your own personal touch to an otherwise standard model. Now who's next for the paintbrush....? Upon completing the OBA, attention switched to the MHA 394395 (original 16 rib body with Gill Sans lettering) to add some small but noticeable parts to an otherwise glaring gap on the model. These I belive, were brackets for the door operating levers back when the wagons were used for MGR hopper operations which was absent from the Hornby model! I initially struggled to work out the shape of these brackets from photos but closer observation cracked it. As a further curveball, they're different on each side! (I know the wheelbase markings are wildly innacurate, I used what I had to hand, came from Railtec's HKA hopper detail pack) The white bracket parts were built from 20 thou plasticard and the "L" shaped hangers were cut and bent from scrap etch. To anyone replicating this add-on, I have attached some rough drawings of the plasticard built brackets below (apologies, it's quite crude!!) Again, these are different on each side side so care must be taken to get the different ones on the correct side if you do crack out the plasticard! And finally, I have a LOCO (yes, a loco) on the workbench which has underwent a simple rebadging job with Railtec decals. This may be familiar to some long term readers on the thread, but to recap, this is a limited edition Bachmann Class 66 representing 66111 with Highland Rail logos. To replicate the loco in 2016 condition, the EWS logos and one of the Highland rail logos had to be removed, I used a cocktail stick and the printing came off quite easily. Then the replacement logos went on the secondmans side and the smaller cab front logos were added. I'll also get to the other Highland rail logo and distressed doesn't describe its condition! Anyway, that is it for this update, I have a few projects I really need to get off the back burner however, university is now a thing! Therefore, my workbench time will take another hit sadly. Happy modelling and stay safe! Jules

Wow, this is some nice work on the OBA, I really like the painting on the planked bodysides, it really gives a "wood grain" effect and replicates the very patchwork nature on these wagons, it will look great with some distressed and weathered MFA/MHA/MTA and other appropriate wagons in the same train I also like the ends of the wagons as I feel the rust effects are restrained and well done, from personal experience, it's very easy to get too carried away and the effects start becoming unrealistic I'm sure somebody on this thread will know better, but from my knowledge, from 1990, quite a few ZAA "Pike" were converted to ZCA "Seahare" by simply welding the doors shut, putting a top capping on the top of the doors and repacing the floor with plain sheet. They came into privitisaton in significantly reduced numbers, so I assume most were converted into ZCA "Sea Urchin" in the early EWS era. The conversion of SPA's into "Sea Urchins" only occured in the EWS era. In model form, the Cambrian SPA or Kernow's RTR SPA can be fairly easily converted into a "Seahare" by removing the bolsters from the floor and sanding it flat, in addition to adding some plastic strip over the top of the doors. The few "Seahare" that made it into privitisation unscathed were mostly found in rusty "Dutch" enginners grey and yellow livery or Loadhaul livery I did this Seahare conversion 2 years ago using the Cambrian kit as a base and as Loadhaul livery suited these wagons I couldn't resist! The particular ZCA "Seahare" I'm modelling is DC460254 which survived in this livery into the EWS era (I haven't got to numbering it yet!) I hope this little insight into Seahares helped and as I say, keep up with the good work! Jules

Hello again, Some interesting projects going on in your workbench! The MTA's with extended ends (and the ZKA Doorand) are rarley modelled so it's very nice to get a few unique gems into a fleet of wagons! Also, the Hornby TTA, although a fairly basic model, can be served as a base for detaling/conversions especially as they can be picked up for a few bob online! Unfortunately, my TTA project has ground to a halt due to a lack of detail parts and inspiration. I plan to model one of the BP Green TTA's used on the Fort William/Lairg oil traffic with full length walkways numbered in the 53XXX series. To get some more food for thought, I recommend checking out these two excellent workbenches, they have plenty of projects right up your street! Both threads have been here for years so it might take a lot of flicking through pages to find exactly what you want but it's worth having a nosey and trust me, you might spend more time than you anticipated reading these threads! I hope to post an update in the next couple of days as I've finally made tangible progress through some projects! Until then! Jules