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Will Vale

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  1. Will Vale

    Norwood Road bridge

    By Will Vale,

    There isn't going to be much in the way of elevation on this layout, and what there is is nearly all at the road bridge and embankment.
     

     
    This has been quite tricky to research, since everyone seems to stand *on* the bridge and take pictures of locos for some reason The roadway and path are nicely visible on Google street view, and there are a couple of small pictures of the bridge itself on Flickr, taken on the open day I think. Unfortunately the photographer doesn't have larger versions available, although he was able to dig up useful a wider view which shows the wing wall:
     
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/17889585@N03/1859050951/
     
    http://www.flickr.co...N03/4705921484/
     
    It looks like the abutments are some kind of dark engineering brick, but I can't really see. The central pillar has curved ends with coned tops which should be fun to build - at least I only have to do one
     
    I don't have room for anything like the scale bridge, at least not without reducing the embankment to nothing, so some selective compression is in order. I widened the openings in the profile board to try and get a better sense of the (quite spacious) openings, and built a framework from foamboard. Dimensions are eyeballed from the photos.
     

     
     
    The girder in the first picture is a bargain bucket stand-in. It's about the right length for my compressed bridge, but it doesn't have the features or geometry of the real thing, which has a flat base and bows up with the bridge deck. It's also completely different as regards the bracing. So I really want to scratchbuild one, but it depends if I have time or not. If I don't, I'll probably need to add some more depth at the very least. The good thing is that with the abutments more-or-less defined, I can build the embankment and trim the profile boards back.
     
    In other news, I fixed a minor rail kink and ballasted the double slip in place. There are quite a few spots in the ballast where you can see edges resulting from multiple ballasting sessions, I suspect sanding or light remedial ballasting will cure these.
     

  2. Will Vale
    Bolstered by a cup of coffee, I thought it was better to attack the single slip before I chickened out. Inspecting Man was less than impressed:
     

     
    I should point out the rationale for doing this - the single slip really doesn't make much sense for the layout as it is, and if I'm going to be operating it on my own for a two day show I think it's worth some pain and delay now to make the operation as simple and sensible as possible. With a double slip, I can bring trains in on the correct line, and then work them into the yard with a single movement as opposed to a shuffle. It'll also be possible to bring longer trains in and it'll avoid clogging up the depot and loop to boot.
     
    So... having bought the slip, does it fit? I know it's supposed to, but nothing beats checking. Plus this bit was easy
     

     
    Next step was to disconnect the feeds to the stock rails and frogs, and remove the point motors so there wouldn't be any stress on the operating arms. Then I removed the paint from the rail joiners, and was pleased to see I hadn't soldered the joints because all the rails are powered by wires anyway. I cut through the rail joiners with a Xuron cutter for the meta ones, and a knife for the rest. Naturally this was after a couple of abortive attempts to open them out with a screwdriver Cutting them makes a lot of sense - it's easy to pull the remaining half off the rails that remain in situ, and there's no force applied to the rails.
     
    With all that done I went from one end to the other gently levering at the sleeper base with a small screwdriver.
     

     
     
    ...and with a bit of fiddling the feed wires through the holes, out it came. The surrounding trackwork is almost unscathed, but I did lift the rail from a couple of chairs at the lower left - odds of getting it back in are low, but I can trim half the chair away on the side away from the viewer so the rail sits flat, and trust the double slip to set the gauge, possibly with the aid of a drop of superglue.
     
    Cleaned up, the damage doesn't look so bad. I need to make some modifications and solder feeds to the double slip, spray it brown, and install it.
     

     
     
    Just hope I'm not chasing poor running gremlins for the rest of my life - the trains ran through the single slip very nicely indeed
  3. Will Vale
    I was unhappy with what I'd managed last time, so I thought I'd have another go.
     

     
    The H&S poster is from a photo, printed on the computer - the paper is a bit thick, but the real thing appears to be a metal or plastic plate rather than a sticker, so some relief is OK. I should have used a low pass filter to remove the ambient light before resizing though! I've also painted the armrests and the knobs on the handles black as well as a couple of other details, and dusted some grot around the floor and bulkhead. I decided that the vest was a bit big so I repainted it into a vest and overcoat, sort of like this picture by Carl Davis.
     
    The driver is a second attempt as well, still not too happy but he looks a bit better than last time. This is by way of a practice since I'd ultimately prefer to have a 4mm scale figure in here rather than 1:87 - he looks tiny next to Inspecting Man
     
    I really should stop messing around with this and and get on with the layout - I'm not really following the Principle of Greatest Suck * here...
     
     
     
    * Work on the worst (suckiest) bit until it is no longer the worst bit. Then work on the new worst bit.
  4. Will Vale
    I thought I should take the plunge and get a test item of motive power finished up ready for Rail-ex in November. I like 60s, so it's going to be 60014, which I bought locally a year or so ago but hasn't been out of the box much in the meantime apart from the occasional ogling session
     
    First step was to fit a sound chip and speaker - this is using the Howes class 60 chip with a DCC supplies bass reflex speaker fitted above the twin grilles in place of the "doughnuts". Since my chassis is an 8-pin version, there wasn't initially room for the speaker at this end, and it doesn't really work at the other end either because the cutout for the cooler intrudes too far into the body. My solution, which may not be the best one, was to cut off the PCB mounting pins from the chassis casting and move the whole thing up a bit. I remounted the PCB on narrow strips of foam tape.
     
    It's still a tight fit, but it's possible to get everything in this way. I did cut a roughly 2mm bevel into the body shell on the edge of the cooler cutout, this doesn't go through to the outside but gives just enough space to clear the PCB at that end. I put the decoder underneath that area as well. At least there's plenty of room for the wires The speaker wires were cut short (why do they fit this hefty wire?) and soldered end-to-end with the decoder speaker wires, a bit clunky but it's wrapped in heatshrink and then tape to keep it all together.
     

     
    With the body off, I removed the jelly-like glue on the cab bulkheads and took them out so I could fit a driver. I also painted the small marker light lenses a warm yellow since they seem to be orangey-yellow rather than white on the real thing, and re-fitted the fire extinguisher which has been rattling around in one of the cabs for ages. The driver is from a cheap box of random Atlas figures, so he's a bit small. I'm almost embarrassed to show the close-up, since I haven't painted any 4mm figures before and this is painfully obvious. But better to be honest about these things I suppose... His shirt and tie colours are copied from a picture of 60014, and his jacket and trou are mixed up from a Vallejo dark blue and black. Unfortunately the blue was terribly glossy, so I gave him a coat of Humbrol Matt Cote which has helped a little. There's a little bit of "theatre makeup" shadow and highlight on the face to help it read better through the cab windows.
     

     
    I made two other small changes to the cabs - one was to touch in the door frame in silver paint, since you can see this glinting in pictures of 60014 when seen end on. The other was to add a hi-vis jacket hung up behind the second seat, again based on pictures. This is just a bit of paper painted orange, with the reflective stripes added with white paint and finished in silver.
     
    Through the cab window it all looks a lot more restrained, thankfully!
     

     
    Next job is to fit the bufferbeam details and install wire loops for the Sprat and Winkle couplings. The intent is to lightly weather the loco (gulp!) to represent its condition around 2005-2006, before the beastie stickers got torn.
     
     
     
     
     
  5. Will Vale
    More scrap etch and superglued fingers have resulted in the following progress:
     

     
     
    The grease blades are pieces 4x1mm (ish) scrap brass glued to the inside of the rail below the railhead, with some finer scraps folded into L shapes and slotted in under the rail to make the brackets that hold them in place. I had to make a tool (well, a piece of plastic filed to a wedge) to hold them in place against the bottom of the rail while applying glue, then carefully withdraw it before it too got glued in place. The pump and (I think) switch block is folded from yet more scrap etch with 1mm square styrene strip fitted over length and then trimmed down. I drilled shallow 0.5mm holes in the undersides and inserted lengths of what I think might be "tiger tail" - it's a plastic coated wire from the local bead shop.
     
    The wire is maybe a bit too whippy, but it will hold a bend (sort of) and hasn't come undone yet. I'm not sure how I'm going to fix it to the grease blades since there's no real contact surface to work with, so I might end up wedging it under the rail and just trimming it short there.
     
    I have another lubricator pump block fitted but it's on the opposite rail so I probably won't bother with the grease blades, or at least not the brackets! They were fiddly to fold up with fingers + pliers, then I pinged a couple off and had to make more. Still, it's starting to look like the picture, and wagons roll through happily so hopefully I won't be filing or prying it all off again... I did try and file the row of little notches into the tops of the blades but gave up - it would have been overscale anyway
     
    There's a fair bit of glue and detached paint residue to clean up, but given the kind of gunky awfulness that builds up around the grease blades maybe it should stay
  6. Will Vale

    Flange lubricator

    By Will Vale,

    As a change from ballasting and installing cable troughs, I went and raided some plastic kits to make this:
     

     
     
    Not that exciting in concept, but exciting for me because I
     
    1) Saw it in a prototype photo
    2) Guessed what it might be
    3) Confirmed my guess (thanks helpful RMWebbers!) and got some more information
    4) Figured out some rough dimensions
    5) ...
    6) Made it!
     
    As someone who's relatively clueless about the real railway this was obviously quite satisfying. The system works!
     
    The component parts are two plastic N gauge wheels from a Green Max kit I've had for ages, face to face, for the inner barrel. These are capped with roadwheel hubs from a 1/35 Trumpeter Flakpanzer I bought cheap since I wanted the drivetrain parts for another project. Pleasingly it has with different caps on different faces to reflect the profile of the real lubricators. None of this is exactly right (there should be ribs around the inner part of the drum 'bobbin', a conical fitting for the grease pipe, and more of a shoulder on the drum faces) but it's close enough and picks up some nice-but-a-bit-overscale features like the securing bolts.
     
    Next step is to clean it up a bit, paint it yellow and figure out how to make and fit the pump, piping, and a representation of the grease blades.
     

  7. Will Vale
    Having posted a lot of pictures of bits and bobs as I work on them, I thought I'd share an overview, to better show the warts. Click for big:
     

     
    Note: Includes a loco for James, albeit an out-of-the-box RTR specimen! Blue Lightning has been helping me test the uncoupling magnets again now that they're ballasted. So far so good.
     
    I'm afraid the layout plan evolved before the adoption of Whitemoor as a prototype, hence the "inspired by" name. I'm pretty sure I've made all kinds of gaffes operationally, for example using a single slip to create an Inglenook doesn't make much sense in the scope of the entire layout (although it does mean the left-hand board is operational on its own). The original plan was to have a fenland (and Dutch) layout - the left hand end - with an extra bit to add space - the right - which would be UK-only. Since finding Whitemoor things are trending more toward the UK although I'm still not planning to put many regionally-identifiable features on the left board so I can pose my Dutch stock on it from time to time.
     
    Given that I don't have much space for the whole thing, the operational plan is to add a four or five foot traverser fiddle yard at the left for the show, and treat the front running line as leading back to the main line, with the rear one going to the yard proper - an imagined fan of sidings. At Whitemoor this would be at the opposite (right hand) of the layout from the bridge. So operation will mean bringing trains in and reversing them into the yard, plus the near-obligatory D&E fuelling point shuffle with TTAs etc. This bit isn't at Whitemoor (I think locos go to Peterborough for fuelling?) and I'm using bits of Ipswich Freightliner depot instead since I like it so much.
     
    Scenically, the front left area is intended to be a field with a beet or potato clamp, and a drain running around it and back under the track. There is some water by the real East and West curves so this isn't completely out there. The front right might well be the depot car park, I'm not sure yet. Left hand end is the Norwood Road bridge and embankment, and I may add a bit more height at the back since there's a nice cribbed retaining wall/grass bank in real life running gently down to ground level. Rear right will be a shallow grass bank supporting the NIMBY screens. I'm still not sure if I should try and squeeze a diesel tank in at the right rear somewhere, or just have it offscene or underground.
     
    One thing I'm discovering is that a long thin layout is hard to take pictures of with a pocket camera, but here's the view you might get from the Norwood Road bridge if you were very very tall:
     

     
    and here's more the kind of thing I'm expecting to see, although more depth of field would be nice!
     

     
    So... what's next? I'm still working on ballasting the last couple of feet, and a bit worried about how little is left in the jar, so I've ordered some more to be safe. That probably means I should stop until it arrives, so I can gradually mix in the new batch in case it's not exactly the right colour. The Klear does make it an easy process, but because it's non-discolouring it can be hard to see if you've added enough to get into all the corners. I've taken to going over the track after it's set firm using the hoover with brushy bit and being fairly vigorous - this opens up any voids, which I can then fill one at a time. The ones that've been filled have survived re-hoovering so hopefully the job, once completely done, will stay done.
     
    There's some remedial work required near the crossing as you can see - I usually manage better than this!
     

     
    I may sand ballast lightly in a few places since it looks a bit rough from ground level. It's also getting towards time to weather the track. So much to do...
  8. Will Vale

    Dirtier

    By Will Vale,

    Martin prompted me to weather the concrete - good advice - hopefully this looks used but not too old:
     

     
     
    I added a wash of Devlan Mud, sponged off in places, and then stippled/drybrushed on some dark grey (Adeptus Battlegrey) and finally some white to bring the corners out again. You can see some brush-tip tidemarks from the wash on the square pad, but unless you know to mentally join them up I think they just read as scratches. The mark in the middle of the pad is a drilling pip for when I get around to fitting lights.
     
    (I must admit to feeling a bit sheepish every time I list a GW paint colour - they have such stupid names...)
  9. Will Vale
    He's no pointing man, but inspecting man came out this afternoon to check out the path for size.
     
    [
     
    This was really to test a couple of things - how does the fine grit on the path photograph, and how the concrete looks. I'm fairly happy on both counts - in the flesh I think the path is a bit too heavily drybrushed, but in the picture it's not *too* bad and the grain size looks very believable. The concrete colours are working well - this is a drybrush of Tamiya Buff and then white (very gingerly) over the base coat.
     
    Sorry about the soft-focus picture, although it does give inspecting man a romantic quality.
     
    "You've got this dead wrong John, there's supposed to be a load of blue lines all through here."
  10. Will Vale
    I finally put some ballast down! Not very much, since we were just off out, but enough to get a feel for it.
     

     
     
    I'm after the look of (what looks to me like) pale grey ballast as used at Whitemoor, still fairly fresh. At the moment it's much much too stark, especially since I washed the track with a fairly heavy concoction of burnt umber and black to add a bit of variation to the sleepers yesterday. The hope is that everything will tone in when some brake dust and other colouring is blended in. Hope - such a good word It does make some sense though, since everything that happens after (drybrushing highlights, possibly a wash for shadows, and powders or aerosol dusting) this will tend to unify and desaturate colours - i.e. it can't get more contrasty than it is now.
     
    The ballast is a 4:2:1 mix of Hornby fine light tan, tan, and light grey. The tones are close enough together that they don't look like salt and peppery, but the mix does relieve the monotony a bit. I've used the Hornby light tan on Tanis, albeit coloured with powders, and I fixed it with Klear which worked really well. I did the same thing this time without any powders, and had a bit of trouble with the Klear not penetrating instantly. It didn't ball up or anything like that, but the drops (from an eyedropper) were able to get a bit big before they wicked away. This meant some of the dry ballast was lifted and I had to very gingerly pat it back into place. It looks fine in the above picture, but you can see here
     

     
     
    that there are some divots between the sleepers that probably oughtn't be there. I might go back and touch in the worst of these with a bit more, or might rely on weathering reducing the contrast enough that it won't be so obvious. That said, is there anything which can be added to Klear to make it "wetter"? Would Klear and IPA be compatible?
     
    In other news I've finished (for now) the hardstanding area. I spent loads of time smoothing the clay and thought I'd got it to a baby's bottom-like finish, but it was not so
     

     
     
    It's relatively *smooth*, but the low light reveals some fairly massive low-frequency undulations. I grumbled and cursed a bit, left it all to dry for another day, and applied a skim of gesso mixed with a bit of raw umber to make it grey, and lightly thinned with water. This has plaster in it and can be used as a filler in very thin layers, but it does shrink. However, it evened out the surface a bit, and created some new divots on a much finer scale which look more like damaged concrete, so they can stay:
     

     
     
    It's not a completely fair comparison since the light isn't consistent, but the worst of the big pits have been filled in, and the added fine detail (shallow flat pits, some ridges) from the gesso helps to mask those that are left. I think this will weather up fairly well now, although I might need to do another pass of cleaning out around the chairs, at least on the rear (upper) road which won't be covered in oil and gunk.
     
    Next job is to add more troughs and pipes, and extend the ballast as they get done.
  11. Will Vale

    Hardstanding

    By Will Vale,

    The right hand end of Whitemarsh has a couple of little sidings. Just space for some TMD-esque stuff.
     

     
     
    I picked Ipswich Freightliner stabling/fuelling point as the inspiration for this - it's the right area of the country and a neat little depot in a tiny space. Not as tiny as the space on the model though! I also think it'll add some personality missing from Whitemoor, which is really clean and tidy and new-looking. There's a useful picture by Colin Brooks which gives a reasonable view into the fuelling point:
     
    http://colinpbrooks..../p56888483.html
     
    From what I can make out, there's hardstanding around the track at sleeper height with a half-hearted bund around that. I thought this'd make a nice change from inset track at rail height, so I've tried to replicate it. I didn't fancy cutting plastic to fit around the chairs, so I've had a go with DAS clay - this is relatively easy to shape and not very messy. The down side is that you can't level it like you can with plaster, it's much more organic. I think I've managed to get a reasonably flat finish (wet fingers help, as does an X-acto handle as a rolling pin) although I had some minor subsidence where there were small gaps in the cork layer. Luckily it's easy to blend in more clay.
     

     
     
    I have to pick around the chairs after letting it dry for a bit to clean them up - this has been done by the pit, which was started last night, but the rest is only just laid. Between the rails, I've been along with a cocktail stick, but left the "burr" of clay until dry, since I don't think I can get it off without marring the surface in some way.
     
    I suppose this is rather an unorthodox approach, but it seems to be working so far, and if it all goes horribly wrong I can just cover it up with rail-height inset track using the usual plaster or plastic or cardboard
     
    I've also done some more trunking and fitted lamp bases along the pathway - this is nearly ready for ballast.
     

     
     
    Sorry about the picture! The path is just sitting there while I make up my mind about it - it's supposed to connect the TMD with the far side of the track via an occupation crossing over the board join. The idea is to in-fill between the path edges with finer chippings as per the prototype, see for example this picture by Geoff Tibble:
     
    http://geoffsangliap.../p63401988.html
     
    I was going to make it from wood, but realised the scale timber I'd bought without really thinking about it was much too thick, so my plastic mock-up might become the real thing!
  12. Will Vale
    At long last I've found the ballast I wanted and have started preparing the track surrounds - sorting out levels, etc.
     

     
    I've also started doing the around-track detailing - orange pipes and cable troughs are this year's GWR branchline if you like modern image stuff, but they look so good
     
    The orange pipe is leftover from my layout wire, with the conductors (mostly) stripped out and the end opened out slightly with a knife-point. It seems to be the right size, I think the Peco sleeper spacing makes it look too wide, but ballasting will hide some of this anyway. This pipe is carrying the entire wiring run across to the far side of the track since the trough ends on this side.
    The trough parts started off as a big pile of Evergreen strip, 1/8th" square. Most of it is closed and uses the cheaper square section, the open parts use H section beams. These are only half-depth, but they're a much better option than the Evergreen U-section, which is far too shallow. I suspect that when properly painted, buried in ballast, with some cables and things added, it's not going to be too noticeable. For the end piece I've cut the web of the H back a bit so the opening will appear to be full-size. Cutting up the pieces into 14mm lengths (should be 13mm but I scaled at 1:72 by mistake ) made for pleasant busy-work in front of the TV.
     

     
    It's laid with the ubiquitous PVA, along a ruled line which I haven't been too careful to follow. I thought I was going to fit lids to each piece afterwards, but the H sits a bit lower anyway, so I decided not to bother. Paint is a splash of one of the Games Workshop foundation paints (Dheneb Stone - presumably they were unable to trademark Deneb...) which is a nice concrete colour - it needs touching up, weathering and detailing with cables and things still. I'm not yet sure how much of this to do before ballasting, and how much to do after, but at least ballasting is getting closer now!
     
    Thanks to Merfyn and Jim S-W for dimensions and other tips for the troughs!
     
    The other thing I did recently was ballast a couple of inches of track to check colours. This is Hornby's fine light tan, which is sort of greenish-grey to my eyes. I coloured a portion of it with MIG beach sand to warm the colour up and provide some variety, and fixed it with clear. The final ballast is likely to be a mix of light tan and tan, possibly with some light grey added as well. The Whitemoor ballast was a pale grey when new, as far as I can make out, but I think in the model it should be a bit warmer and less consistent.
     

     
    The test piece is in-situ on the layout - although I did a test card first. It's fixed with Klear, which makes the job a lot quicker and easier, and is kind to the colours as you can see from the unfixed ballast lying around on the baseboard. I'm not sure about the sleeper colour yet - the base coat is Tamiya Red-Brown, I'm not sure whether to weather (haha ) it before ballasting, or after - it needs to end up a lot greyer than it is at the moment. If I do change the recipe, it doesn't matter too much since this is the end of a siding which needs to be trimmed back to clear the earth bank and Norwood Road Bridge wing wall.
     
    Hopefully there'll be some more progress next week since I expect to have a little downtime between contracts.
  13. Will Vale
    I finished painting the last two limpets (the ones with the finer springs) today. First, here's another Dutch one:
     

     
     
    based on this picture of 390317 by Andy Jupe: http://gingespotting.../p32727072.html
     
    I really liked the detail of the TOPS panel covering an entire bodyside panel, and done recently enough that the black paint and axleboxes were relatively clean. Unfortunately I assumed that because I could paint out the dashed outline successfully, I could also join up the dots neatly. Not so! As you can see it's a bit freehand looking, I think the best fix is probably to paint out the white box entirely and leave the printed numbers and recoded M as-is. That should let the machine-printed horizontal number be the strongest feature again, and hide the fact that the M is hand painted.
     
    I also have a single example in Loadhaul colours which is supposed to be following the picture in Nigel Burkin's book, but got a bit busier than I wanted it to.
     

     
     
    I found fading the black difficult to do without getting blotches or tide marks visible - possibly because acrylics don't give much working time. I also found that one the printed panels came apart almost instantly the acrylic thinner hit it, hence the spot of patch painting on the right hand side. It's odd, the others were perfectly robust, but this one came off on both sides of the wagon. To hide the blotchy wash I made the spots and runs a bit stronger than the picture. I also had trouble with paint being knocked off the ribs leaving very strong black vertical lines - I've partly touched these in, but it looks like I might have to go back and redo this area now that I can see the pictures - far too much contrast.
     
    The other side is similar, plus a bit of patch painting to cover up a bad job of a graffito from a picture of a another Loadhaul wagon. I made it too big, and blotched the lines, so it had to go. The replacement was a lot easier
     

     
     
    I haven't recoded this one as an MKA since the prototype was still coded ZKA when the picture was taken (2004 IIRC) which is in-period for Whitemarsh.
     
    That's about it for limpets at the moment, I do have a couple more but I think I need to see something else for a while having done five without much of a break! They do make a nice rake though, they're surprisingly massy and satisfying for four-wheelers. Next might be a Loadhaul shark, which I want to run with these to relieve the "odd one out" effect of the single orange and black limpet.
  14. Will Vale
    I finally got hold of a Bachmann SSA locally, which I've wanted for ages in order to try Nigel Burkin's underframe conversion from the Modern Wagons book.
     

     
    I followed the book's recipe fairly closely, although I cleaned up the original SSA buffer mouldings (which had a fair bit of flash) and used brake details recovered from the PNA's underframe. Not strictly correct, and I suspect there should be more stuff under there but I can't figure it out from the pictures in the book. To fit the chassis to the body without shortening it, I had to trim off the uprights flush at the end of each wagon, I'm intending to make some replacements from thin plastic strip to try and give the right impression.
     

     
    More interestingly, I found myself looking at the left over ex-TTA chassis, and the Hornby PCA 3-pack which was my first wagon purchase when I got back into UK outline. The PCAs are attractive but completely wrong for Whitemarsh, and I've been wondering for a while about using the (very crisply moulded) Gloucester suspension components to add some more variety to the PNAs. When I realised that the wheelsets from the SSA had brake disc detail, it was impossible to resist. The body isn't strictly correct but I don't really mind about that - 5mm too short isn't something I'm going to worry about.
     

     
    I cut up the PCA chassis roughly with clippers, and carefully detached all four suspension units with a fine razor saw. The TTA (PNA) chassis had all the detail below the solebars removed, and I drilled out the pinpoint cups on the suspension parts so they would fit the Bachmann SSA wheelsets (keep drilling carefully until there's around 0.5mm between the moulding and the wheel's face). These were then glued to the cleaned up TTA chassis solebars, trapping the wheelsets in place at the same time. I got it as square as I could - so not desperately square - but I think it'll look OK under some paint.
     
    Additional details are the brake calipers, hand wheels, and some other parts recovered from the PCA and SSA underframes, fitted according to photos as best as I could make out. The prototype doesn't have much detail.
     
    It's very rough and ready but runs quite nicely, to my surprise. I'm looking forward to getting some paint on these (and fitting the coupling chains) in the near future, but ought to do the MKA underframes first really.
     
    [Edit: Had the prototype suspension type wrong - Gloucester not BSC - that'll teach me to try and use big words!]
  15. Will Vale
    The first set of springs I made was a bit too heavy, so I picked up some finer strip. Using 0.75x0.25mm allows the correct four leaves, and looks reasonably close to scale:
     

     
    They are less wonky than they look in the picture, honest - I think it's because the picture is much too wide-angle!
     
    These are really easy to make - if you cut one length of Evergreen strip (as above) into four, you can stack the pieces and build four complete springs flat on the workbench. The end brackets are 1mm slices of 2mm U channel, and the middle one is a 1.5mm slice of 2.5mm channel. These dimensions are eyeballed from prototype photos - I can't cut any more accurately than that anyway I formed the curve freehand, the end brackets hold it in place as soon as the glue grabs.
     
    To show off the individual leaves, I scraped down a bit of leftover strip to make it thinner, and cut it into tiny slices. Two of these are popped between the leaves (insert a scalpel point and twist to open) before fitting the centre bracket. Fiddly but satisfying. The combination of these and the shallow curve makes the wagon look like it's running loaded, I hope. One problem I had was while mounting the springs on the underframe, adjustments to position tended to compress the leaves and make them look a bit concave. I think gluing in the centre only (and to the spring hangers) might be a solution for this, I'll try that next time.
     
    The hard bit is still paring off the old mouldings. I managed to do four while watching (or at least listening to) a Bond film, but I did stab myself twice in the process. More practice needed, but at least I have enough underframes now for the remaining MKAs
  16. Will Vale
    I made an unpleasant mistake on this one at 2am, which took quite a bit of fixing. Came out pretty well in the end, I think.
     

     
    I wanted to make something along the lines of these pictures of 390181 by Martyn Read:
     
    http://ukrailrolling.../p36338863.html and http://ukrailrolling.../p24117355.html (large image!)
     
    The disaster was deciding to fade the paint too late - I applied a wash-like layer of MIG white pigment with their fixer, and of course with the fixer you can't really see how much you're putting on. You can see where this is going... As the spirit evaporated my nice rust was suddenly buried under a blotchy white bloom rather than a gentle fade.
     
    I managed to get it back by remembering some advice from Pugsley that you could re-wet the pigments. Much careful damping and dabbing with tissue later, I got rid of most of it without doing too much harm to the paint underneath. When dry, there was an odd look at glancing angles, possibly from a combination of surface relief in the remaining pigment and their very matt surface. I rubbed it down gently with my finger, then worked a small amount of rubble dust into each panel with a makeup applicator to even things out.
     
    That got me quite close to where I wanted to be - the panels were gently faded (probably not enough, to be honest) and more-or-less consistent. But it all looked a bit flat and boring. I ran some dark grey + black washes around the panel edges to get more definition, and a final very thin dark wash over each panel to tone it all down. Then I touched in the larger rust streaks again and repaired the damage to the data panel (I'd painted out the dashed lines but some of this came off when the panels were cleaned of the horrible whitewash). Finally I added a bit of graffiti to distract from one panel where I'd cut through too much of the weathering and there was a shiny patch. The interiors of this one and the previous have been painted now but need a layer of powders to show where the load has been.
     

     
    I quite like the colours - the rust is all Tamiya red-brown acrylic, it looks good on the yellow and in real life, but slightly blue in the picture - I might try mixing in a tiny spot of e.g. raw siena next time. Still haven't really got how to do the rusted-through paint on the lower bodies of these, but hopefully getting closer.
     
    The real issue is that I like the look of the new springs despite them being a tad overscale. Which might mean a lot of work paring off the leaf springs on another half-a-dozen MKAs
  17. Will Vale
    I thought I should man up and have a go at paring the Bachmann leaf springs off the TTA underframe and replacing them.
     

     
    So armed with a new scalpel blade I set to. It's really fiddly work and quite tedious, I would guess it took me about an hour to get rid of all the mouldings and clean up, and of course I managed to make a few small gouges in the chassis which oughtn't be there really. Then another hour to make new springs from styrene and curve and fit them. That was a lot more fun The new springs are 3 strips of 0.5x0.75mm styrene, with 2.5mm U channel on the front only for the bands. They're a bit heavier and there should be more than three leaves, but they look reasonable and will probably paint up OK.
     
    I can see the point of doing it - it's a visible difference - but I have another dozen 4 wheel wagons sitting on the shelf waiting for couplings and weathering, and I think maybe this is one job too far. I'm still in two minds about whether to just leave the leaf springs, or fit the "fake Bruninghaus" spring ends as per this one. Trimming the bottom off the leaf springs is almost as tricky as paring them off altogether though - I found it hard to get a clean edge. It would be more straightforward if the axle guards could be removed from the chassis, but they seem to be part of the core moulding - presumably this is why Bachmann haven't wanted to alter the chassis to offer the more modern springs?
  18. Will Vale
    As requested, here are some pictures of the dents in my limpet and a spiel on how I did it.
     

     
    (Please forgive the image quality - I can't find the charger for my SLR battery so these are taken with a Sony digicam. It's a nice camera for a lot of purposes (fast, accurate colour, decent metering) but it seems to have a lot of problems with macro focus and general softness, especially at the telephoto end. Oh well.)
     
    I wanted to try some denting since lots of real MKA/ZKA wagons have dented (bowed out) lower body panels, presumably as a result of unloading. Most of the model denting I've seen involves softening the bars at the top of the frame, but that doesn't seem common in real life - the bars are box section so they're likely a lot stronger than the panels. Denting the panels is tricky because the Bachmann body is pretty thick - this is probably a good compromise on their part since it stops the sides bowing in and isn't that obvious thanks to the box section frame around the top edge, but it made my life quite difficult!
     
    I tried using a soldering iron held near the inside, but while it will create nice gouges, it's too localised to soften an entire panel and bow it out. I had a go with a bit of sheet brass as a heat spreader but it didn't really help. I didn't pursue this - I should have tried with a 40W iron instead of a 20W really, but instead went for the halogen work light I was using since it was nearby. I should add that I did some tests on a Hornby railroad mineral wagon which was a similar size and shape first (and only the centre section of that, since I'd already cut the ends down to make a narrow gauge tub for another project (throw nothing away!) The halogen light was warm enough to do the job, and the heat was spread over a wide area. There's a very fine line between "not long enough" and "too long" in terms of when to take the model away from the bulb and try forming it - in my case it was the difference between about 10 seconds and 10.5 seconds.
     
    To make the dents, I removed the body from the underframe and held it to the light (avoiding touching the glass cover!) at an angle so the base of the body was nearer - this was to try and convince the panels to soften at the bottom and not the top. As you can see in the picture I managed to bend one of the bars inward, which I'd really wanted to avoid - possibly because the bars are proud of the body they tend to soften first and are then very delicate.
     

     
    I got on better using a panel-sized mask cut from a postcard. I held this over the model to expose one panel at a time, which made the heating take longer and the bending more difficult, but kept the body and framing the right shape.
     

     
    To be honest I'm not sure I'd bother doing this again with a limpet - maybe once more to confirm my suspicions? I know this is going to make me sound lazy but it seems like a lot of difficult nerve-wracking work for small reward. I had a lot of trouble photographing the results in daylight, although I can imagine that a couple of dented wagons at the start of a rake would make a nice photograph with low afternoon or evening light along the body sides. I guess looking for that was what got me to try in the first place. And if I had a suitable cheap wagon with a thinner body moulding I'd be more inclined to have another try.
     
    Good things:
     

    The dents are mostly in the right direction and look believable. The bars are mostly intact. The factory paint and markings coped fine. The scratches I added afterwards were quite successful. I didn't end up with a pile of melted goo.
     
    Bad things:
     

    Hard work - requires good timing, vigorous pressure (I used my thumb and a dental tool) and very quick work before the plastic firms up again. I distorted a couple of panels slightly too far up the body and ended up with a wavy edge on the yellow stripe. I touched this in with a brush and it's not too apparent under the weathering. I needed to fill in some soldering iron dents on the inside. The small panels don't dent as much as the large ones - there's more plastic closer to the frame so it doesn't move as easily - which looks a bit unrealistic given that they're cut down from large panels.

     
    Has anyone else tried this, and if so how did you get on?
  19. Will Vale
    I did some more work on the limpet I started the other day. I applied the modern warning flashes (very nice Fox transfers) and blacked out the DC prefix on the data panel which I forgot to do last time. The body has had a little bit more work with washes and powders to try and tone down the contrast a bit, otherwise it's much as before. The white filler on the inside is to cover a soldering iron mark from the denting process, it'll get sanded down and painted over tonight hopefully.
     
     
    The other main job was the underframe - I fitted Smith's instanter couplings (my first time!) and had a go at a cheapskate modification to the springs to make them look a bit more like the correct Bruninghaus variety. I had a quick try at paring off the originals as suggested by Nigel Burkin and James Hilton, but found it really difficult. As a compromise, I fitted slices of Evergreen U channel about 1mm by 2.5mm to each end of the Bachmann moulding using styrene solvent, to represent the collars around the real springs. This was quite easy (and cheap!) and does kind of suggest the Bruninghaus springs, but I don't know if it falls under the category of "best left alone" - in a sense it replaces the accurate-but-for-wrong-prototype originals with something which is closer to the prototype, but less accurately made. What do people think?
     

     
    I've been looking for a convenient underframe colour to use as a default on these 4 wheel wagons, and I've ended up with Vallejo "Leather Brown". It's a pretty good base, and it's nice to have something which doesn't need mixing. I shaded it with a black ink/grey paint wash and then drybrushed lightly with Games Workshop "Graveyard Earth". Various details were picked out with powders, and a few final spots washed to give deeper shadows.
     
    I have another 4-ish to do in this livery, comments and criticism would be welcome before I start painting them in a batch. Any pics of slightly less battered examples would be useful - I've seen several modellers do nice weathering jobs with mainly small rust spots on (faded) factory paint and these look very nice, but I haven't found pictures as a reference so far - is it because ZKAs/MKAs all got tatty before digital cameras were commonplace?
  20. Will Vale
    I've been sitting on some limpets for a while (ouch!) and thought I should make a start on dirtying them up:
     

     
    The real things seem to be utterly filthy - I think other spoil wagons hang out with them since it makes even the muckiest PNA look classy by comparison. After a false start searching for ZKA images and not really finding any, I discovered that Limpets ended up coded MKA, which was a lot more fruitful. I started with this picture of 390327 by Richard Jones as a reference.
     
    I've only done the body so far - the underframe in the picture is borrowed from one the MTAs I did last year. The only thing I've used to this point is acrylic paint and ink. It's quite high contrast (partly because the GW inks dry glossy) but I'm assuming that a gentle application of powders and some matt varnish will take this back a bit. I'm pleased with the hand-lettered "TIGER" branding cut off by the yellow stripe. Less pleased perhaps with my attempts at the "M" for MKA, although I've seen a couple with data panels which have been recoded without the benefit of a stencil so it's not wildly incorrect.
     
    The real problem is I don't think I've got the base colour right. I patch-painted the grey below the cutouts to get some variation, but I can't work out what the base colour for the other panels is supposed to be - whether it's ARC mustard or departmental grey I have no idea - there's so much rust that it's hard to tell. It looks OK on the model, and Bachmann's grey is warmer than the neutral colour I used for the patches so it hits the right notes as far as hues.
     
    The other thing I tried with this one was bowing out the panels at the bottom somewhat to represent digger damage. I used a halogen desk lamp and held the wagon up to it (the bulb's shielded behind glass in the one I have) for 10 to 11 seconds before pushing from the inside with my thumb and a dental tool. It's very hard work, and not entirely worthwhile since you can't see any evidence in the picture I used a cardboard mask so that I was only heating one panel at a time, which stops the ribs bending, but the mouldings are thick and you're basically fighting against physics to get the bend in the right place - it should bow out more at the bottom than higher up, but that's where the most plastic is so it doesn't really happen. I sort of want to do them all to get a nice effect when you look down the rake and see the bulges, but it was so much trouble I might only manage one more!
     
    Next job is to tackle the underframe and apply some post-1998 warning flashes when they arrive. Then powders and varnish to dull it all down a bit. Comments and criticism very welcome since I have another half dozen to do and lots of room to improve. Particularly hints on the base colour would be good - is it paint, rust, or something else?
  21. Will Vale

    Wagons in 1:35

    By Will Vale,

    As a lead in to building my Schoema, which is still languishing on my bench as a pile of plastic rectangles, I've started to build some rolling stock. I like this as a way to get a feel for the scale, although making locos is probably more fun because they go Anyway, I've built two (and a half) flat wagons as the base for a light HIAB-type work crane. The wagons are based on some tunnel construction stock used at the Neuer Distelrasentunnel in Germany - I found some detail pictures which I've since lost, so I can't post those, but you can see the general sort of thing in this image from Wikipedia:
     

    Image from de.wikipedia by Reinhard Dietrich. Public Domain.
     
    Edit: found the detail picture I was after here: http://fotoportal.fo...2&s=akt14&b=107. Still not sure if my representation of the brake line attachments is anything like the real one but it looks OK on the model.
     
    The chassis are from Hornby Railroad mineral wagons with some bits trimmed off, and everything else is styrene with a pinch of brass wire. Given the chassis choice, mine are much shorter than the real thing and have fixed knuckle couplers (Kadee no. 148) rather than the pivoted ones on the real thing. The HO knuckles are under scale here, but better than nothing. I kept the recessed mounting because it looks cool, and built a representation of all the end fittings since there isn't really any other detail on the wagons!
     

     
    Here are the two together with the start of the crane. The parts are from a 1:35 scale Trumpeter kit of the LAV-R APC, which I got for a bargain price - I was originally considering taking something from a die-cast toy, but didn't find what I wanted. I'm almost sorry not to make the kit up properly since it's really nice, but it's also full of lovely bits (and etched mesh, and other details) which are going to help me detail the crane's hydraulic power unit.
     

     
    I'm not sure if the second wagon should be a match truck pure-and-simple, or possibly carry some kind of unitised freight with the crane boom supported above it? I'm leaning towards the latter although I don't want to give away what the cargo might be for fear of incurring mockery...
  22. Will Vale
    I've been thinking about making something in 1:35 for a while, since like Tanis's 1:48 this allows a wide range of good quality cheap figures, vehicles etc. from the military modelling community. A representation of 60cm gauge using OO/HO track and mechanisms isn't that far out of scale so it's relatively practical from the railway side too. So I went looking for modern narrow gauge industrial stock to build and found Schoema, a German manufacturer. I knew about their Feldbahn locos, but didn't realise they now mainly concentrate on locos for mining and tunnelling projects. (Incidentally does anyone know a way to post o-umlaut on here? ALT-0246 and ö both didn't work...)
     

     
    Their stock has a fantastic functional aesthetic which is also quite friendly to modelling - no tricky curved bits to worry about! After a lot of searching I found this one, which is pretty small but has all the right features:
     

     
    Image from de.wikipedia by Reinhard Dietrich. Public domain.
     
    I've made a drawing (from perspective photos, so it's likely not that accurate) and that scales out nicely to match the Bachmann On30 trolley wheelbase at 1:35. This means I get to make a relatively accurate model as opposed to a might-have-been. The gauge will be a bit narrow, but they produce them down to 750mm gauge (and the gearboxes are narrower than that, so they could probably make a 600mm version if they really had to )
     
    So far, all I've done is cut out a few frame parts from 2mm styrene, and have yet to pluck up courage to do all the shaping. Once I have something more than a small collection of rectangles I'll try and post some pictures.
  23. Will Vale

    Noisy gronk

    By Will Vale,

    Just finished installing a Howes LokSound micro in my Christmas present - a Cotswold Rail 08 intended for duty as the Whitemarsh Yard pilot. It wasn't particularly fiddly, only a couple of hours' work really, although I underestimated the care required to cut out the body shell behind the front grille. I started off drilling the four corners and thought I could then cut through the edges with multiple passes of a knife - bad idea A slight slip left a mark on the warning stripes, but it isn't too bad and will probably disappear after weathering.
     
    Edit: See here for pictures to go with this text.
     
    What I ended up doing, and what I should have done all along, was drill 1mm holes all around the hole, join up a couple on each edge with the knife (carefully) and then use a fine razor saw (Tamiya handheld one) to finish the job. Much easier that way, especially since the moulded interior grill provides a good guide for positioning the drill bit.
     
    This was my first sound install, and it went quite well apart from breaking one of the speaker connections and having to re-solder it. I cut a blanking plate from 1mm plasticard profiled to the interior of the body - this fits behind the speaker, and the decoder goes on top of the motor block where the 8 pin socket was. I wired the motor terminals directly but spliced the pickup wires to avoid having to dismantle the mechanism. Pleasingly, the cab is still pristine and there was plenty of space to tuck the unused function wires away without having to trim them off.
     
    Best experience - after sealing around the speaker and sound chamber with Blu-tak, and screwing the body back on after an initial test it was suddenly much louder and clearer since the sound chamber was properly sealed. I know this is what's supposed to happen, but it's an eye-opener (ear opener?) when it does. I'm now wondering if I could make a hole in the corner of the back plate and run a thin styrene tube back along the inside of the body as a bass pipe? It'd only get to go as far as the gearbox top, but it's still a 40-50mm run, and well away from the front of the speaker. Hmm...
     
    Off for some shunting now, plus with its electrics done I can think about weathering that pretty paint job.
  24. Will Vale
    I thought I'd share a picture of my workspace on Saturday morning before the exhibition - I like working on the kitchen table, but I'm beginning to see why Mrs. V. might not be so keen.
     

     
    There is yet more mess out of shot.
     
    To be fair, after working until 2am two nights in a row to finish the layout and rolling stock, I did come home from day one of Railex and spend my evening tidying up. Perhaps that's why I'm not sleeping on the sofa?
     
     
  25. Will Vale

    Finished MTAs

    By Will Vale,

    I've been distracted recently by the re-release of Space Hulk (a boardgame idolised by many of my generation) hence the lack of updates since I've been painting monsters - and working to finish a contract. It's over a decade since I did any figure painting so I'm a bit rusty, but it's definitely good practice for brushwork and related skills. I just need to figure out how to get some of the crazy paint colours onto a railway-related project - Warlock Purple for graffiti maybe?
     

     
    I've weathered the last one of the four MTAs, and done the interior for the grubby one. I then had to tone down the exterior from sandy coloured mud to something darker in order to match the inside, which was a bit fraught but appears to be OK. The tag is intended to draw the eye away from the mud a little bit
     

     
    I also added a tag to one of the others and made some experimental loads (which look appetizingly like Weetabix or those sesame biscuits you get in health food shops). The loads need another layer of (finer) ballast but I can't get any locally at the moment. I'm also intending to build a plastic box to assemble them inside so that there's more of a 'meniscus' effect around the edges rather than the steep sides you see now - they look great from glancing angles but silly from above. For photos I could always sprinkle a bit of ballast around the edges of the load once it's in the wagon - I think removable loads and edge-to-edge coverage are always going to be rather at odds with each other.
     

     

     
    Here's the complete rake - if you can call four wagons a rake...
     

     
    and here's another view of the grubby one to show off the still-drying-out wet mud on the inside. This is a few coats of Johnson's Klear over a very smooth dark patch of paint, with the first coat blotted out around the edge to get a damp-looking fringe. I then stippled a lot of paint and powder around it to make the drier mud. I've only done one like this since it's a bit of an experiment, but I do like the results:
     

     
    I think I'm going to claim the MTAs are now finished. I'd welcome more tips but I'll aim to use them on the next lot of wagons (I have some PNAs and Seacows on my shelf) since all the shiny ones are looking a bit silly next to these. Then I might pluck up courage to do a loco!
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