eldavo

My mother insisted I have piano lessons from the age of 7 but I hated it!  After the 11 plus (shows my age!) I chose to go to the secondary modern school because they had a brass band.  I played cornet, trumpet and flugel horn mainly in brass bands for something like 35 years.  I was fortunate to play in the top levels of brass bands and at most of the top contests as well as innumerable concerts including radio and TV.  I gave up playing in 2000 when I felt the commitment of time and effort had become too much.  The instruments have only come out of the case on a couple of special occasions since.

Cheers 

Dave

First stage of rework is a bit of a step backwards.  Some of the gold lining is a bit ragged or too wide so needs to be trimmed up. I could overpaint with crimson but getting red paint to cover gold is a challenge especially when it has to be decanted from a rattle can.  My usual approach is to gently scrape back the excess using the point of a craft knife.

This is a bit of a tricky job and is very easy to overdo it.  There are a couple of patches where I've been a bit heavy handed and will have to touch in the red.  Other slight scratches should(!) disappear when the coach is varnished.  I tend to solder in the door handles and grab handles so the paint has to be removed from these at the same time.

Next up I have to touch in some of the black.

Cheers

Dave

Starting to get some gold paint on now. This time I'm using a much finer pen that came in an old set picked up from an "antiques" shop. No idea who made it but it can produce a pretty fine line (in the right hands!). Sometimes I can get a good result but I'm inconsistent. It'll take some rework but should be ok in the end.

Cheers

Dave

The crimson paintwork looks to be pretty good so I've set about adding the lining.  First up all the beading is painted black. Up till now I've always done this freehand using a 5/0 paintbrush which is a slow and tedious job.  After reading posts by folks, who know what they are doing, I decided to try doing this with a lining pen.

Rather than trying to get the thinnest line possible which is what you normally do with a lining pen, in this case I need a fairly wide line.  Fortunately in my collection of lining pens and assorted bits I have just the right tool.  Some considerable time ago I invested in a couple of pens to experiment with.  These came from eBay and were vastly expensive (£1.50 for 2).

They do the job fine and as these are Clayton period coaches with square panelling I can use a straight edge for almost all of the work.

Why did I not try this method sooner?  It is so much faster and easier!    Onward.

Cheers

Dave

Well the weather was warm, and more importantly dry, today so good progress made.  Managed to get 3 coaches and the horse box through the grit blaster. That cleaned them up a treat.  Although it was a bit more blowy than I would like in my spray booth (the compost heap) I managed to get a coat of etch primer, a coat of red oxide primer and a top coat of Ford Burgundy red applied to all of them. Also sprayed the horse box underframe with satin black.

These will be left to harden for a day or two before I start the tedious bit of adding the black panel lines by hand.  I've also finished building the interiors and painted them so all in all a productive day.

I may have to take a trip to Halfords soon though as my rattle can collection has taken a bit of a hit.  The dead men...

Cheers

Dave

Definitely in need of some calm warm weather.  Getting a bit of a paintshop backlog!

I've had success with Cataloy knifing putty available from Halfords. Easy to apply and goes off pretty quickly and as it's designed for car body repairs can be sanded etc.

Cheers

Dave

PVA requires at least one of the pieces being bonded to be absorbent and so a join between two pieces of foam will never fully cure.  I've used solvent free grip fill (Screwfix cheapo) in the past and even though that is probably PVA based it produces a pretty good join.  There are also specialist foam glues available at a cost.

Cheers

Dave

What with the RMweb machinations and working on the club layout as part of the build up to Ally Pally not much has occurred on the layout.  I have though been having a bit of a stock building session.

At the start of lockdown one of the Winchester railway modellers decided to have a clear out of his kit collection and so money changed hands and I ended up with 6 kits.  You might ask why I was mad enough to buy a bunch of Janick kits when I have been warned about them many times.  I think the most flattering description I heard was "they can be made up into decent vehicles but...".  They were for interesting prototypes that nobody else makes so...

In fact the body etches aren't too bad and go together in a fairly straightforward manner.  Some of the details are a bit sketchy as are the instructions.  Bits of the wrong diameter wood dowel for the cylinders are far too crude but can easily be sorted with a bit of 3D printing. I also have all the key books so can fill in some of the missing detail.

The bogies though were another matter.  The kit has a bunch of etches and white metal castings. None of the castings fitted and the etched construction was seriously flimsy. I ditched them.

I had previously done the CAD work for a 3 piece Clayton 10ft bogey so modified this for these kits.  The central framework and bolster are printed as a single piece in rigid resin while the sideframe assemblies are printed in a tough flexible resin.  If I had printed the side frames in the rigid resin the footboards etc. wouldn't have listed 5 minutes.

Assembly is simple. Insert bearings into the sideframe position the wheel sets and bang it all together with super glue.

They aren't overly detailed bogies but they look ok to my eye when under the coach.

I have four of these 48ft clerestory coaches to build and so far one is completed.

In the photo above you can also see a mostly completed MSE horse box kit waiting for the paint shop.

Lots to do.

Cheers

Dave

Go radical, use copper tape on the top of the baseboard for the bus. Thin gauge wire for the feeds to the track on the surface will be adequate unless the layout is going to pull serious amounts of power.  I seem to remember using this method for a common acquaintance.  :-)

You can be sure lots of folk will tell you it won't work.

Cheers

Dave

The Winchester Railway Modellers will be there with Redbridge Wharf.

Cheers

Dave

21 minutes ago, Dragonboy said:

I would add a touch of rusting to the chairs Kevin we as if they’ve been in use and have been lifted and are now being taken away.

 

if the load is intended to be new sleepers then I’m not sure that the chairs would already be installed. 
 

Brian
 

I'm not sure about the practices of the Generally Wet and Rusty but some other companies certainly shipped new sleepers complete with chairs, chairs having been fitted after creosoting.  The chairs would probably have been rusty whether they were new or old. Did they paint individual chairs at that time?

Cheers

Dave (who for his sins has had to 3D print chair and sleeper stacks for the club layout that is based around a sleeper works)

Had a couple of K's kits way back when.  Never managed to get any of them to run properly.  Where would the average modeller have documented their pain before the days of the internet?  I don't believe the magazines would have printed criticisms.

Cheers

Dave (who wasted considerable amounts of his pocket money)

On 31/01/2022 at 06:46, KNP said:

Who says model railway building is stressful?

 

A truly great piece of modelling.

The DAS experiment seems to be progressing OK.  The clay has dried without cracking (yet) and I've thrown some paint at it.  Looks vaguely sett like.

Given that this isn't even visible from the public viewing side of the layout, it's good enough.

I've also been working on more ballasting and an access road into the goods yard area.  Trying to replicate the way prototype track is practically buried in ash ballast is a bit of a challenge given the flange sizes etc of finescale O gauge.  I've tried to give an impression using tile grout.  It might work.

Lots to do.

Dave

The goods yard track has now all been wired up and seems to work, mostly.  I need to fettle the pointwork a tad as a couple of wagons are a bit jumpy.  In the mean time I have been doing some ballasting of the new track and bedding in the goods shed.  I decided to add an area of stone setts on the road vehicle side of the shed so I've started an experiment with DAS clay.  It's the first time I've used the stuff so who knows how it will come out.

The clay is laid on a 1.5mm card base to bring the level up.  I coated the card in PVA so hopefully the DAS won't break off.  I decided to scribe a pattern into the clay while it's half dry.  It's a bit crude but it might work.  We shall see.

Onward.

Dave

It's a landmark day today.  The last of the track on the scenic part of the layout is now complete all bar fettling and detailing.  I could probably have missed out the brake van spur to make the goods yard a bit more spacious but hey ho it's down now.

Better get on and wire it all up.

Cheers

Dave

At a guess super glue (cyanoacrylate) is probably your best get.  The most common materials used in 3D printing are PLA, for filament extruded printers, and photoreactive resin.  Neither of these have commonly available solvents that you can use as an adhesive.

Cheers

Dave

Is the H bridge connected directly to your bench power supply?  Sounds suspiciously as though the power is being taken from the microcontroller so that when you have 2 decoders on the train the whole lot shuts down due to excess power drain.

Cheers

Dave

No huge progress but I've been tinkering with a few bits and pieces.  Knocked together a Slater's kit for a 4-wheel passenger brake coach that seemed to drop into my last order for rail (must have clicked the wrong button 😮 ).  This has been sprayed up along with another coach and is currently being lined out.  Quite nice to work on a fairly simple kit for a change.

I've also been making progress on the goods shed.  The office building now has windows.  These are one of the few bits of laser cutting on this building.

The roof is currently under construction and I'm working on the tedious tiling bit.  The slates are also laser cut.  I've got a whole stack of slate strips somewhere but I'm blowed it I can find them so I had to cut some more.

The large doors have also been sorted along with some basic internal details which are of course invisible when the roof is on!

The roof lights are awaiting glazing bars which are currently sat on my workbench.  The shed is capable of taking 3 wagons so it's a reasonable size but I think it will fit in the space quite nicely.

Hopefully I'll have the roof work completed in the next couple of days and then I need to build a crane.

Cheers

Dave

That's 2 posts in a year!  You wanna go a bit steady me old mate.  ;-)

Love the general grot and grime around the engine shed.  Still trying to get a similar effect on me own trainset.

Cheers

Dave

Duplicate post

Still waiting for rail chairs to arrive so my focus has turned to the goods shed.  Rather than draw the whole building in a 3D CAD program as I did with the engine shed I thought I would wing it.  Things were going well till I came to bed the building in to the baseboard at which point I realised it was a bit too low.  The old adage of measure twice cut once is all very well but you do have to measure the right bit twice!  Somehow I had managed build the walls 10mm too short.

As you can see the walls now have a 10mm plinth around the base to get things back where they should be.

I also decided to add an office at one end...

It's getting there but it still needs doors, windowframes and a roof before I add the fiddly bits.  No time for that in the next few days as I will be eating and drinking too much as seems to be the norm for this time of year.

Cheers

Dave

Good work on those Slater's bogies.  They are hateful things to build and I invariably end up with bits falling off!  I ended up creating a 3D printed version which is just 3 parts and goes together in a couple of minutes.  Doesn't have the same level of detail but I get to keep my sanity.

Cheers

Dave

Well I think the radius of the 5.5 route on the tandem should be ok.  Templot suggests it has an effective radius of 73 inches but I did check it with a couple of wagons once I got the stock rail in place.  I just need to make sure I don't put too tight a radius in further down the siding!

The assembly has been installed and I've laid some plain track in the goods shed siding.  As ever my estimating skills have been found sadly lacking and I've run out of rail and chairs again.  Orders have been placed but I'll have to look at other things for a while.

No shortage of things to do as I need to build some more point actuators/servo mounts and servo control boards amongst many other things.

Cheers

Dave