The Fatadder

37675 was a repaint of the Bachmann 37672, with new windscreens & roof grills from Shawplan (and yes they do carry their full range at shows)

deleated

Having spent yesterday at the Nottingham show, I've finally got stocked up on some new projects to get cracking on. First up the bargain of the day, a slightly damaged Hornby 1928 pullman bodyshell for £1. This is going to be rebuilt with some new etched sides in order to model Ibis for my VSOE rake. Will need to scratchbuild a new interior, and try and get hold of a cheap chassis to go under it (else scratch build one) along with the underframe and bogie modifications which were described in my earlier VSOE blog posts. This means that the only coaches for which I do not currently have a donor for are the pair of ex Brighton Bell coaches. Sticking with the VSOE, a visit to Comet has supplied me with new etched sides and underframe bits for the mk1 RKB coach which will be used at one end of the rake. The plan is to use these sides along with a Bachmann mk1. As is usually the case I have come away with another batch of parts from Shawplan, including a set of Class 50 windscreens, some BR Arrows (which it turns out I dont have anything suitable to fit them to right now...) Nameplates and depot plaques for 33116 (Which I really should get on and order from Hattons!) Some of their new laser cut glazing for a 37 (so that I can finally get 37675 finished). A set of Class 47 boiler port plates for 47709 and finally a set of lifting brackets for a peak, The final area of buying is some bits for the layout, I figured even if I cant build the layout yet there's no reason not to keep making structures for it... Anyway, lots of big sheets of South Eastern Finecast's embossed brick sheets means that the signal box and bridge can now be finished, along with blocks to clad the retail park. Also came away with a ratio footbridge which with a bit of modification should look the part.

Afraid I've put it back together now and dont really fancy trying to get the keeper plates off and risk damaging the buffer beam detail, so some drawings will have to do. I've added a drawing to the first post which should explain things a bit better. Basicly on Dauntless there is a raised bit next to the gear, with the axle being a single diameter. On the Ultrascales there is a step in the axle which pretty much matches this raised bit. Net result is that when fitted the Ultrascales cease up where the step on the axle comes into contact with the raised bit on the chassis.

Nice job on it, but I'm still not too sure on the profile in the centre. Certainly a big Improvement on the standard though. Really like what you've done with the weathering! As for 33116, I havent even brought it for myself yet!!!

While that may be true with the Gibsons, all the other wheels tested were solid metal and inspected prior to testing to make sure that there are no tooling marks on the inside face of the wheel.

A little more playing with my new back to back. I've always found my Hornby 50s to be particularly bad runners, so I've removed the wheels of the one I have to hand here (50037 in early NSE) Testing has shown that on this loco, 3 axles were perfect, and 3 have seriously bad wobble. Looks like the cause of this is the plastic centre deforming when the new wheels were pressed in. My first thought was to fit Ultrascales instead, however it looks like at some point Hornby changed the design of the chassis so they no longer fit..... So the evening has been spent trying to force them back into shape..... edit: Diagram for comment:

One of the biggest causes of derailments in P4 are having incorrect back to back settings on wheels, Even checking each axle in a quality back to back gauge can still leave significant variance. A great new product designed to combat this is the Gravity Back to Back designed by Tony Sissions (modelmaker87) and available to members through the Scalefour Society's stores. The basic concept is that you put a wheelset at the top of the incline and if it rolls down and stops between the lines, the wheelset is good. The metal plate that forms the gauge has been stuck to a sheet of 12mm thick tufnol carp, giving a smooth hard base. I decided against screwing the plate on as the screws would stand proud of the plate (Which was getting a bit too near to the gears on a set of Ultrascales), instead I fitted it to the tufnol with double sided tape which seems to have held it on well. A couple of off cuts of card were glued under the tufnol at one end to make the incline (this was determined through trial and error to find an angle at which the wheel rolled all the way down, but not too fast that it jumped off. One of the other advantages of this design is that it can test wheels when they are fitted to stock (as can be seen by the VAA shown below) in this case both axles were too tight requiring some adjustment. In the photo the 'safe' area starts about where the hand break leaver is, so the wheels (in this case Maygibs) are a fair bit under gauge. This photo shows a bit clearer an out of gauge axle which is too wide(this time from Branchlines) Finally this is what you are aiming for right between the lines (An Ultrascale set after adjustment) I mentioned at the beginning there is a fair bit of variance even when the wheel is tested on a back to back first. So I have a little test, 10 axles (2 Gibsons, 2 Ultrascales, 2 Branchlines 12mm, 2 DC kits 14mm and 12mm, and 2 Maygibs 14,5mm) All were set to the 'correct' back to back prior to starting with an Exactoscale gauge. The Results: Gibson: The first was too wide, the 2nd varied between too wide and just in gauge indicating a wobbly wheel Branchlines: 1 was 3mm past upper limit 1 was 6mm past upper limit DC Kits 14mm - just past centre - OK 12mm - Same as with Branchlines, too wide Maygibs 1 was dead on the line 1 was 14mm past upper limit Ultrascale Both approximately 2mm past upper limit So out of a batch of 10 70% were completely out of gauge, 20% were in gauge 10% were useless due to poor fitting wheels. Seems that I have a lot of work ahead of me before I next exhibit a layout redoing the back to backs on the vast majority of my stock. The thing that was of particular interest to me was that all of these were a tight fit onto what is regarded as the 'best' back to back gauge on the market, yet when tested the majority fail to get a consistent result.

I did think about that sort of approach, but given the shape of the roof I was thinking its a lot more effort to reprofile it (and then scratch build all the detail which will be lost) than it would be to fill in a couple of holes on the end. I was under the impression that other than replacing the cutaway above the coupling and removing the air pipes etc the /1 and /0 were practically the same Rather annoying to hear that 116 has so many incorrect details, good job they are so cheap! Do you know if 33s suffer from the same problem of really thin paint (meaning that you start going through the paint before the plate/arrow is gone) that the 58s had?

Given that my attention has turned to Class 33s, it seems right to get something posted here about my plans for them. For my early period I am going for a pair of locos to share the engineers duties with my 73s, the first will be 33116 'Hertfordshire Rail Tours' in BR Blue, the other will be 33026 in Dutch. Both will be fitted with the correct style of fuel tanks, have the bogie springs modified into the correct position, and have all of the unpainted details painted. I also have a feeling that I remember Heljans model of 33116 having some kind of livery error so if this is the case it will be corrected (edit, at the very least it needs to have the solebar painting blue given that it looks like Heljan didnt bother painting it themselves....) The printed D numbers and BR logos look a bit crudely done as well, so hopefully the 33 isn't along the lines of the 58 in being a pig to respray... 33026 will be converted from a dutch 33/1 though I suspect this is more one for the future. Along with the detailing they will also need the roof grill painting, along with the rest of the unpainted details finishing. More long term I hope that some decent detailing parts appear on the market, as a replacement for the roof and side grills is definitely needed, the latter in particular is crying out for a very fine stainless steel mesh! For my 2003 running I have a pair in Fraggonset (33108 and 33202) Both have been fitted with the correct fuel tanks, modified springs, oldShawplan roof grill and some detail painting. As with the 1998 fleet at some point I want to replace the etched grill with something more accurate, and replace the side grills. The main reason for doing all this is that my DRS 33 is in the surplus pile, and prior to its appearance in the classifieds it needs to be converted back to OO and fitted with coupling boxes (hence buying 33116 and taking the appropriate parts from that.)

The roof is full of errors as well, so if they did scan a loco they really didnt do a very good job of it. likewise its not just the window which is wrong at the front, the profile of the top of the nose is incorrect as well. Lion was fetching very low prices a couple of years back when I brought mine, I guess as a result of this all the cheap ones have finally been sold. Now that is a worry, especially as its going to be a fair while until I can check mine.........

I'd agree that the new model has more going for it than the old, but how exactly does weathering hide fundamental shape errors?

Whats wrong with the wheel size? I thought the new Hornby model was fitted with the correct 14mm wheels (unlike the old one which had wheels which were much too small.) There are also issues on the new one with the shape of the hopper (especially around the cradle), though I'm not sure if the old model was much better in that area. Chassis is a lot better looking on the new one, and as has been mentioned they run a lot better as well.

Its been a while since I've done any modelling, a combination of starting work, the amount of sport on tv and starting studying again has eaten up free time, coupled with loosing motivation on the projects I had ongoing. This is all compounded by being not able to get back down to Devon any time soon to pick up new things to work on. Having spent much of the last week spending work thinking that I'd like to get on with some modelling, I've finally done some. I have decided that for the time being I am not going to bother fitting the new con rods to Clan Line and will for the sake of getting it running fit the Hornby ones. So today I set to work with the soldering iron adding washers into the holes on the rods to reduce the diameter to match that of the Gibson crank pins. Once that was done I fitted the con rods and did a little testing, unfortunatly this was complicated by only having a 9volt battery and a couple of wires + a yard of track to test on (I dont want to risk a decoder in it until I am sure all is ok, and the powercab cant handle DC locos... This was a bit suspect with very jerky running, however given that the wheels/track havnet been cleaned and the supply was a bit iffy that was to be expected. In the end I decided to just unscrew the motor and test by hand to make sure the rods were moving freely. Now that I am fairly certain the rods are ok, the next job will be blackening the areas where I have cleaned up after soldering. The problem here is that I only have blackening fluid intended for Steel not brass and I'm not sure if there will be an adverse affect here......... What I really want to do now is cut back the lead axle's crank pin so that I can get on with adding the next bit of the motion, however this cant really be done until a) the rods are painted/blackened and b ) I have fixed the nut in position. I would have just locktighted this in place, however im a bit worried that would risk locking the rod as well, but also at some point I want to be able to remove the rods when I get round to fitting the replacement parts. Not really sure what to apply here...... I have also ended up buying a set of Ultrascale Class 50 wheels (along with some more Branchlines 14mm wheels) off Ebay, The intention here is to use them to replace the wheels in one of my Gibson fitted 50s (hopefully allowing me to cobble together enough working wheels from the gibsons to fit the rest of my fleet where the Gibson wheelsets fitted have failed.) The alternative is that they will be fitted to my untouched model of Superb that I failed to sell last year, my thinking here is that with Shawplan starting to release their Class 50 detailing parts it would be worth starting to think about how to upgrade my 50 fleet. Detailing and respraying Superb would also give a set of OO wheels to fit to one of my weathered pair (allowing that to be more easily sold on) and intern freeing up a set of Branchlines wheels to start replacing the Gibson fitted locos (Elgar, Hood and Defiant) again hopefuly getting enough working Gibson wheels from Defiant to fit to Elgar and Hood. The other thing I want to consider is going to be whether or not I have to repaint the whole fleet while I go though these upgrades. While some (early NSE for example) the base models paint is rubbish anyway, I dont really fancy respraying Elgar and Defiant for example.... The work on Superb should show just how much damage is caused to the paintwork, particularly when it comes to the ends and sides.

Afraid there are none left at the moment, more are in progress however at the current time I dont know how long this will take.

Car problems have got in the way of getting to Stafford today so not been able to buy any regional railways blue paint, so wont be able to paint up the etches until I next see Brian to pick some up. Next job will be working out how I am going to repower it, The choice at the moment being between one of Bill Bedford's underfloor chassis which is due later in the year, or a black beetle. The black beetle option would be an easier installation, however the lack of etched bogie spacers availability is a problem at the other end (there are 2 options available, the A1 etch is next to useless as most of the brass is visible around the edge of the sideframe where there should be open space however it is a nice thick graded of brass. The Hurst ones are a tad on the thin side, but iirc are shaped to match the sideframe so no brass where there should be air. Unfortunately they are out of stock, and have been for a rather long time. Other sprung/compensated options suffer from the same issue as the A1 etch in having most of the brass visible after fitting the side frames. This leaves a problem as to how to attach the bogie at the non powered end. The Bill Bedford option gives a better engineered solution, and negates the problems with the inner bogie given that the chassis covers both. However I am not a big fan of the method of springing used on his other sprung bogies where there is a fold up block that is sprung in a wide slot (I assume that the 150 will be done the same way.) I much prefer the method he uses on the sprung W irons (having a bearing running in a narrow slot). There is also an issue with potentially having to loose underframe detail in order to clear space for the motor. At the moment its probably a case of wait and see what the Bill Bedford chassis is like when it (hopefully) appears in a couple of months time, otherwise I guess it wouldnt be too much work to draw up an etch for a suitable bogie subframe. Another consideration is what to do about the interior, here I think I have found a solution. A future project I fancy attempting is a model of the departmental 150 (particularly given that I've heard of a couple of sets of etches in development for them.) My thinking is tending towards buying a cheap Bachmann 150/1 to use as a basis for this conversion. Given that the departmental unit will not require seating, that frees up the interior from this unit which can be transferred into my 150/2. That said I will still have to work out how to do the interior for my Bratchell kit built uni at some point, so maybe some resin casting from the Bachmann interior might be an option.......

Suppose thats the good thing the NRM have in their favour, if they want to get more sales out of one of their unique toolings they just need to change the livery on the prototype...

Finally got some new nameplates fitted to my model of 66705, and made a start on the weathering. Not very happy with the affect that I ended up with on the sides, so started trying to wash it off, the Tamiya powders just arnt working very well over the ribbed sides so its going to need a different method. the sooty roof did come out a lot better (although the silencer looks awful...) Comparing with photos it looks like the flag is completely wrong, in length, hight and colour which is rather annoying. I suspect that this is going to end up resulting in a full respray at some point and starting again.....

I'd be surprised if they aren't available by Ally Pally, Certainly makes a huge difference to the time taken to use Jim's etches, I doubt that my bratchel kit would have ever got finished if I had to cut each window out individually! Saying that god knows how long its going to be until I do get round to getting some paint onto it anyway....

Little more testing, The shawplan windows comes with enough on the fret to do all of the variations (it has 12 large windows and a toilet window) This left 2 side windows and a toilet window which were left over. Logical thing to do with them.... Test fit it in a Bratchel model... The fit is a lot better (as you'd expect given this is what they were designed for) however this time it will require a bit of glue to hold them in place.

Now finished fitting the windows to the unpowered end of the unit, the powered end will stay with the Bachmann windows for comparison on Saturday (and will need an interior building along with a new mech before I get round to changing the windows.) I have found a lot of variance with the fit, not sure if this is down to the amount of filing on the new window when removing the tabs, or amount of glue seapage on the bodyshell (causing an obstruction on the inside of the window hole)

Better make sure that I remember it then! Will be interested to hear what you think about the use of the Bachmann door windows with them as well, Either way I should have the rest of the glazing parts fitted, though the actual window frames will have to wait until after the show as I forgot to buy any Regional Railways blue paint.....

Today I have received a pre production pack of Shawplan's new mk3 unit windows intended for use with Bratchell's multiple unit kit range (and Jim SW's etched windows). Deciding to be awkward I have set about fitting them to a Bachmann 150 instead. I have discussed before the advantages in accuracy that Jims etch brings over the Bachmann part, so see my old workbench thread on RMweb3 for more details on that. The first thing you notice is how thick the new windows are compared with the Bachmann ones (approximately 4mm compared with 2mm), however once fitted the Shawplan window looks like the thin one, with none of the dodgy edges that RTR windows suffer from. Fitting: The first job is to carefully cut off the Bachmann window frame with a sharp scalple, and then to prepare the new windows. Unfortunately either the Bachmann or Bratchell (I havent worked out which) has incorrect door windows, the Bachmann ones being a fair bit bigger than Bratchels. that means that for the time being you have to reuse the Bachmann door windows (hopefully Brian can be persuaded to do some Bachmann sized windows for it...) Upon removal from the fret you are left with 4 fine tabs to file off, and a protective film that needs to be removed from one side. The new window has a tapered edge, so lining this up with the inside of the window with the thick side (that was covered by the film) on the inside. This is then pushed into position until the window is flush with the bodyside. I then painted up the new frames using Jim SW's etches. The outside half etched section should be painted body colour and the inside of the lower main window should be black (see this photo of Martyn's for a clearer view of this. http://ukrailwaypics.fotopic.net/p6366918.html). Once this is done the window is then sanded back to get rid of any paint thats got onto the full thickness part of the etch. I then use Jon's method for applying the windows, using a masking tape hinge to move back the etch, apply glue, and then push back into position. The attached image was a bit of a rush job to get something ready for Stafford at the weekend, as such its unpainted still. Even so I think it has made a big difference, correcting the colour of the tint along with getting a better looking window frame.

Going through something of a modellers block at the moment, the projects I have on the go either aren't capturing my interest, or are stuck awaiting components.... Clan Line is now once again hold up awaiting components, having realised that I dont have the right grade of wire for soldering up the con rods. I also havent managed to separate the long rod from the cylinder assembly, so will probably just live with the Hornby part there. I am also thinking about soldering some washers onto the Hornby con rods so that I can fit them for the testing, then go back and fit the Bedford bits once I know it all works (too many bad experiences with bent Class 08 rods...) The Class 59 again has hit the blocks, a combination of the fact I really hate painting on one (particularly with the buffers getting in the way of masking) and the tedious task of removing materiel before fitting the triangles behind the headstock on the other. Will probably get on with the latter at Stafford and may try and get on with the paint tomorrow so I can have a finished loco at Stafford... Bogies are on hold until I decide if I can be bothered with the casting... Finally the PTAs, again this is a painting problem. It takes quite a while to carefully hand paint the black chassis and I just cant be bothered at the moment. Maybe once I have the bogies for them sorted I will be more inclined to get on and finish them..... The only real modelling I have got done this week, has been building 3 pairs of ASF bogies for my Cambrian Salmon. Again they are now on the pile to be painted, although I am in no rush given the actual wagons are back in Devon... I will be at the Stafford show on Saturday on the DEMU stand (though hopefully will be escaping early to get home/to a pub for the rugby). Hopefully this will motivate me to get going again. Another thing I have just ordered is a new type of back to back testing device from a design by Tony Sissions (available from Scalefour Stores to members, or at S4 North), its basicly a tapered strip of steel with 2 lines forming a 'good' area. The wheel is rolled down its length and if it stops between the lines its back to back is ok, if not it needs correcting. The accompanying article mentioned very good results in terms of improved running as a result of this device, so rather looking forward to getting on with sorting out my fleet. On top of this things are about to get a lot more busy, given that I've finally found an internship that is suitable so will be doing the 9-5 thing + coming home to study afterwards. On top of that its still a case of keep on applying for grad jobs for September... For some reason I suspect free time for modelling is going to be a lot less than it has been from now onwards..........

Completely agree there... How exactly is it any different for Bachmann et al to announce xyz today and release it in 2011, than for them to announce it in 2011 the week before release. the latter dosnt mean that you get it any quicker, just that you lose the ability to plan future modelling around it!