Colin parks

Hi John, An 8 LAV combination will look a mighty fine sight going over the viaduct! Re. the two later 4 LAVs, there is a very good picture of one in pristine condition going across Balcombe viaduct in David Brown's Southern Electric Vol. II. It is seen running with a 4 SUB at the rear. Gosh! You are going to be building EMUs for years! All the best, Colin

Hi John, I can see what you mean now! I thought brass coach sides would have had a fold-down strip at cantrail level to strengthen the top of the side. It looks as if the metal has expanded due to heating when the side was soldered up with all those details. Given the size of the Balcombe project, will you be making more than one 4 LAV? All the best, Colin

Hi Howard, The door tops were the easy bit, and no, I hadn't noticed that missing hinge! Sorry to disappoint, but the units will remain blue. Re. repair strips, of the set of photos of a 2 HAP unit at Brighton and so on, there do not appear to be many strips at all, so I will add less than on the 4 SUB: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/15056-bulleid-2hap-emu/page-8 All the best, Colin

Almost finished the bodies, with just some remedial work to do around the cab side windows which have been altered as they were a tad too deep. An interesting thing cropped up when I looked at dasatcopthorne's photos of 2 HAPs in service. There was a bit of window framing which I hadn't noticed before. I seem to have omitted this from the toilet window of the Tin HAL. Ho hum! Next up is painting and finishing. It will be nice to see these 2 HAP units along side the 4 SUB as the windows are now truly the same shape-phew! Colin

Hi John, The coach side looks good from what I can see of it. In which plane has the distortion occurred - outwards or upwards? You wisely have bitten the bullet with a trailer vehicle. The motor coaches will be fun with their slab-sided van ends. All the best, Colin

Hi Mike, What an excellent bit of coach building! I would have commented earlier had the topic not been tucked away in the Special Interests sub-forum. Re. solvents it looks as if D Limonene and Humbrol Liquid Poly are both safe solvents (in terms of distortion) for working with styrene sheet. The photos of your work in post #95 are very impressive. All the best, Colin

Hi Pete, The Hastings unit is looking quite magnificent! I especially like the fact that you have added the resin cast engine too. All the best, Colin

Thanks Mark, As I said before, I don't envisage having to do this sort of thing again. It really was the fact that the window shape and depth was wrong that drove me to do this. All the best, Colin

Hi Bernard, The cantrail strip did help tremendously in the successful removal of the old sides. I was surprised at how tough the body shells were and the end joints put up a lot of resistance to being parted. The worst is behind me now, with just the making good of the side to end joints to be done. Then there really will be a sigh of relief! All the best, Colin

Hi Peter, The coaches are an upgraded version of the same prototype design. I had made the mistake of trusting plans which turned out to be wrong in many respects. I had built the two units before photos by dasatcopthorne and a vey good dimensioned photo by Ceptic came along. These units should have identical window shape and depth to those of the 4 SUB I have just built and the Tin HAL which was built a while ago. Added to that, these models had home-made flush glazing which was a press-fit in the window opening and was liable to fall out unless handled carefully. All the best, Colin

Thanks Adam, Brave or reckless, this was a job that either had to be done or otherwise condemn the models to sit in a box, not fit to be seen in public with the 4 SUB! All the best, Colin

The work on the 2 HAPS reached the crucial stage yesterday with the removal of one side from each body. (It didn't seem a good idea to remove both sides at once, leaving the ends unsupported.) I even put a new blade in the knife for the procedure: Before (I had forgotten that the second HAP to be built was dated on completion.) First incision! Etc. Running the blade along using the cantrail as a guide the sides did not put up much resistance. Care had to be taken not to run the blade onto the roofs as there are no plans to re-paint let alone repair them. At this point I felt a little scared by what I had done! The fist side in place with no damage to the roof or ends. It is in the raw state with the end to side joints yet to be smoothed down. Another benefit of Liquid Poly is that it doesn't act like paint stripper when in contact with the painted surfaces. This made installing the new sides much less fraught than it could have been. (It was fraught enough.) Today the second side will be fitted to all bodies. Each side has had to have new clips added on the inside to locate to the floor clips. That was easy compared to fitting the new sides exactly to length between the existing ends. I will not be doing this sort of thing again! Colin

Hi Peter, Re. Humbrol Liquid Poly, my local model shop is now selling new stock of the product with a Hornby logo on the label. I do hope this has the same properties/ composition as the 'old' stuff. All the best, Colin

Hi Peter, I look forward to seeing your work on the Ironclads. I should think that the methods shown here would work in 7mm, although from what I now know about solvents, it is best to use Humbrol Liquid Poly for making them this way. How you will get Liquid Poly in Brazil I do not know! All the best, Colin

More work on the 2 HAPs' new sides has included completion of the third layer of lamination using 10 thou. sheet. This brings the sides to 40 thou. thick or 1mm as close as doesn't matter. Using this method of layering turns the rather fragile 10 thou. surface layer into something quite robust. This is the third EMU made this way and also the third permutation of laminating, with each side having a continuous strip of 20 thou. (with venting holes) and on this set of sides the vertical panels extend from top to bottom for extra robustness. The bottom edges still need trimming, but the method is clear: The second cantrail strip is made of 20thou. sheet, 2.5mm wide which brings the top edge to 60 thou. wide. The strip also creates slots at the top of the glazing recesses. Due to the toplight laminations these slots are narrower over the doors. The glazing for the doors will be made from 20thou. PETG from my dwindling stocks and the fixed panes from new stuff which is, as mentioned before, nearer to 30 thou.. The slots can just be seen in this shot: Work has turned to detailing the sides on the outside, with the production of the cab window frames. This has been done in much the same way as the frames made for the 4 COR, cutting a strip to height, making light cuts to the width of the frames (the second man's side being narrower, there are two sizes), cutting in the verticals and horizontals then cutting the curved corners with the point of the knife. Once separated, the corners of the frames were rounded. A cab side window frame fixed in place. It will be refined in shape and sanded down to about 5 thou. once hardened off. Colin

Well, I hope it is apparent which toplight has its inner frame added! (The background could have been better admittedly.) There is still all the surface detail to add to the sides, but, the time is approaching when I have to take a knife to the original sides - gulp! Colin

Thanks for the clarification re. Humbrol Liquid Poly Martin. I have always found this particular solvent easy to work with and perhaps it is similar in composition to Limonene then? All the best, Colin

Hi Adam, Funny that you should have slippery Ultrascale wheels at the same time as there has been a (sometimes) heated debate on the subject of fixing wheels to axles. I would stand by the idea that if a wheel is slipping on its axle then there must be enough clearance between the two to successfully apply some Loctite 603 retainer that will then keep the wheel in place. I am going to use this method on various motor bogies, but the real test will come when the Ultrascale P4 wheels come for my Hornby 08. It looks as if Ultrascale use ABS plastic for their wheel centres. Perhaps ABS is more 'waxy' than the material used by Gibson, but then again, there are plenty of people who say that Gibson wheels have their problems too. All the best, Colin

Hi Peter, The van is looking very good indeed with its lettering now applied. Well done! All the best, Colin

Hmm. I should have been more specific about the solvent that I use. Howard is right in saying the stuff is Humbrol Liquid Poly. I must admit to not realising that Daywat Liquid Poly is different in composition and effect. I can see now why other solvents are causing problems which I seldom have. It seems as if some of the solvents have to be applied in large amounts to counteract the fact that they evaporate so quickly. This would account for David Jenkinson's use of quite large brushes for applying Slater's solvent, which I seem to recall smells like the butanone which I use for ABS plastics. I honestly have only used seven bottles of solvent in over during my adventures with plasticard and I am working on bottle no. eight! I can only say that the Liquid Poly I use is similar in its characteristics to Limonene, which I haven't tried, but hear much about. Meanwhile, using one of the etched templates from Howard's scribing template set, the droplight/toplight layers have been roughed out. As can be seen, these have been cut from a large strip and the individual parts will be separated and cut to size in due course. There are seventy-six of the blighters to fit, but once in place they will hold the glazing on the doors at the right relation to the sides and the top lights will have their inner frames - missing from the original models. Colin

Hi Peter, That van is looking really nice now. So, almost finished then. What will you be making next? All the best, Colin

Hi Mike, I am using Liquid Poly applied with a very small brush! All the best, Colin

Hi Peter, I am only cutting through 10 thou. sheet, so this is the method I use. The outlines of the windows are scribed in with the etched template as used on the 4 SUB sides. I then cut the straight part of the vertical and horizontal window openings. Then with the scribed line as a guide, I cut the corners with the Swann Morton craft knife using a No.1 blade. What I now do is hold the knife point steady in the cutting mat and rotate the side around the blade. It does work for 20 thou. sheet too, which would be more appropriate for your 7mm work. All the best, Colin

Yes. Here it is: Colin

Hi Miss Prism, Well spotted! I hadn't mentioned that on these sides the cantrail is made of 30 thou. strip. On the 4 SUB I had used only 20 thou. and it was difficult to insert the glazing up into the slot (which will is formed with a further. slightly wider capping strip of 10 thou. sheet not shown here). (I think the sheet of what was sold as 20 thou. PETG glazing sheet is closer to 30 thou. in reality.) All the best, Colin