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D869

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  2. D869

    Hawksworth Full Brake

    By D869,

    The class 22 is in the paint shop (scary) so something new has taken its place on the workbench - an Ultima kit for a Hawksworth full brake.
     
    These coaches survived well into the 1970s in rail blue, so this will fit neatly into my chosen period. I also happen to think that the Hawksworth coaches are some of the finest looking coaches ever built, so I don't need much of an excuse to build one. I'm planning to make life difficult for myself by painting it maroon and using my new Bob Moore lining pen - rail blue seems a bit too boring for this vehicle.
     
    This is the first Ultima kit that I've built. It consists of brass sides and floor and plastic roof and ends, so I'm a bit concerned about the strength of the finished article. I'm also rather reluctant to follow the instructions and glue everything up into a closed box because I just know that I will need access to the inside at some point in the future.
     
    The kit is not a beginner's model - for example the instructions seem to be 3 years older than the brass floor etch and suggest that the floor is made of aluminium. I'm guessing that this also explains why the moulded bumps on the back of the ends don't seem to be at the right height to match up with the floor.
     
    On the plus side, the etched sides seem pretty clean, as do the moulded roof and ends. In particular the roof is devoid of any bowing, so I'm contemplating fixing the sides and ends to the floor and making the roof removable.
     
    Interior access probably doesn't matter too much for the full brake, but if this goes OK then I am hankering after a couple more Hawksworth vehicles to make up a more mid-60s formation for St Ruth even though the passenger carrying vehicles were all withdrawn by about 1967 and therefore are just a bit too early for me. I seem to be having a bit of a coaching stock phase at the moment - I picked up a couple more Farish Mark 1s at the RMWeb members day and I also have just sent an order to Masterclass Models for some Maunsell brake coaches to form a North Cornwall style 'P' set... which doesn't fit at all with my chosen period or St Ruth's geography.
  3. D869

    Your Starter for Ten

    By D869,

    Our next planned outing should be TINGS near Leamington Spa in early September although the show web site is curiously shy about our presence and that of another 2FS layout of this parish which I'm told will be in attendance.
     
    There are still a few more buildings needed and some of these may appear before September but I think it's time to make a start on another aspect (get it?) of the infrastructure - the signals.
     
    St Ruth needs a lot of signals so there is zero chance that they will be finished any time soon but they certainly won't get finished until we start on them.
     
    The first thing we need is a plan. This has been work in progress for a long time - the original plan was created before the control panel and then drawn using a PCB design tool. The printout became the template for the control panel. Our understanding of the way we will operate St Ruth has now moved on so there have been some changes such as adding full running signals to allow departures via the east crossover. I re-drew the control panel overlay using some free software called 'Dia'. The new plan is rather closer to the conventions used by the drawing office at Reading but it wasn't possible to get it exactly right because of limitations of the tool.
     
    Here is a PDF of the new plan. It is oddly shaped in places because it needs to fit over the existing switches on the control panel. struthsigplan.pdf
     
    We've tried to avoid inventing our own arrangements and have tried to find precedents from the prototype as much as possible. It's probably best described as a hybrid of the pre and post 1938 plans for Penzance with the addition of the branch line and goods loop. The signals for the east crossover are based on the postwar arrangement at Newquay which also gives us an excuse for a GWR backing signal. The trickiest part was the branch because there doesn't seem to be a perfect precedent for a single line junction joining a double track line within the limits of a terminus station. The closest I've found is the arrangement of the spur from Barnstaple North into Barnstaple Junction but it's not a perfect match and is only partly GWR.
     
    I am sure that signalling lawyers could pick hols in the plan but we've done our best to stick to the rules and get it right. Looking at the plan again I am thinking of some further minor changes - arm 62 might become a disc because it only covers shunt moves unless the branch points fail again and 65 should probably be lower than 15. The three doll bracket might also gain a slotted distant arm for the next box to the east.
     
    So far we have one signal which is mostly finished. This is the starting signal from the arrivals platform (number 68) and is one of the very few single arm signals on the plan. It has the extra advantages of lacking a rule 55 diamond and having its balance weights hidden below platform level. The intention is to operate all of the signals using servos as described in MRJ 201. This signal has been fitted with a servo on a test rig and seems to work OK.
     
    The signal also has a working lamp. This consists of a tiny white LED to which some enamelled wire is soldered. This is contained inside a short length of heat shrink sleeving in which two holes are drilled for the lens and backlight. A short length of 1mm styrene rod is pushed into the top and the whole thing painted black. It is pretty close to the shape of a GW signal lamp but perhaps a little 'chunky'. The power feed for the lamp comes via a resistor under the baseboard and then up the ladder as
    described in the 2mm handbook. The lamp man's platform is some thin double sided PCB with one side used for structural solder joints and the other side used for the lamp power feed.
     
    There is still some more 'development' work to do. We haven't yet finalised our servo controller approach. I used a 555 timer circuit (see photo) to get the thing working initially and we tried out a MERG SERVO4 unit yesterday. There will be some more head scratching about powering the LEDs on multi-arm signals because the easy thing to do would be to wire them in parallel but I'm told that having LEDs in parallel sharing a single resistor is a bad idea. I'm sure that using the first few signals at a real exhibition will also reveal some more problems for us to think about. The jury is still out on the colour for the post. I tried metalcote 'steel' but this was too dark so the signal was repainted in light grey which looks less wrong. I now have some metalcote 'aluminium' which I will try on the next signal.
     

     
    Here are some pics of the signal on its test rig and temporarily fitted to the platform at St Ruth. The clear signal was a bit of a cheat because the photo was taken before the servo was fitted. The servo is now in place, albeit with no controller or wiring yet.
     

     

     
    Now I'm working on the second signal. This one is rather more complex and provides lots of new challenges for me to think about, but more about that another day.
  4. D869

    Repeat After Me

    By D869,

    I haven't had much to say on here for a few weeks, not because I haven't been modelling but rather because it has been one of those periods where I'm doing stuff that is not particularly new, so there isn't a huge amount to say. In particular, I've been trying to trim my gloat box a little in anticipation of some re-stocking when some new kits arrive from Mr Higgs. The results are now ready for the paint shop when the outside temperature warms up enough for it to reopen.
     
    The first one is an Ultima Hawksworth TK (or SK if you prefer) - a straight repeat of the BCK build with very little different, so really nothing more to say.
     

     
    The next one is a repeat of the sleeping car build. I know that Farish will have an RTR one out soon, but we have shows this year and I wanted our sleeper train to be a little longer. I'd have built another one except that I only have one more set of the old Woodhead transfers. This one is a Met Camm built SLC, so will at least be a model of a vehicle that was part of the Penzance sleeper formation but which Farish aren't doing. Once again, Ultima sides on a body shell stolen from an old Fleetline kit in my gloat box. Please excuse the Blu-Tack.
     

     
    Finally I wanted to finish a build that I started at least 2 years ago of a kit that's been in the gloat box for more than 20 years. This is a Fleetline Mark 2 FK and a repeat build of its friend the TSO that I built in the early 1980s. My original plan was to build the FK as a Mark 2a and run it with its friend but then I found that the Mark 2 and Mark 2a FKs have quite different windows so I had to stick (more or less) with the original intention of the kit. As with my other Fleetline builds, all of the whitemetal end and underframe bits have gone in the scrap box and have been replaced with bits fabricated from Plastikard and wire.
     

     
    Now I just need the weather to warm up. Judging by other people's postings, I'm not the only one.
  5. D869

    A West Country Hero

    By D869,

    I thought it was about time we had another Hydraulic on this blog, so here goes...
     
    St Ruth is set in 1965 so by rights it should be overwhelmingly populated with Warships. No problem there, we have Cockade, Hermes, Druid and Zest of various ages, plus Cossack too of course. The snag is that in 1965 they should really be green. Maroon is a bit of a stretch - the first maroon repaints appearing in September 65 so we really need some green ones.
     
    The first Farish Warship I acquired was a blue D822 'Hercules' shortly after they were originally released. For some reason it has never been favoured with a finescale set of wheels and has languished in its original box apart from the odd bit of test running. Hermes and Druid were both acquired secondhand, rewheeled and set to work with no other changes in very short order to address motive power shortages at our first outing.
     
    Obviously livery is one reason why it has been on the shelf for so long but another is my dissatisfaction with the Farish model. The moulding quality is superb but for me it just doesn't say 'Warship'. I think that the biggest problem is the way that the windscreens have been done - and this is most obvious on locos with full yellow ends but there are other issues too so I've decided to bite the bullet and try to make it better.
     
    At the same time, I will backdate it to green livery and it will get a new name. The name I've chosen is D820 'Grenville' which was named after an Elizabethan captain belonging to a famous Devon and Cornwall family... partly because this seems like a very suitable name and partly because I don't want to sign myself up (yet) for a bunch of other Warship detail changes by stepping outside the range D813-D832. Anyway a nice set of red nameplates was purchased from Mr Shawplan at Nottingham a few weeks ago.
     
    Anyway, enough of all the waffle. Let's talk about progress. So far I've just been working on improving one end so that I can figure out what works and then copy the ideas on the other end.
     
    The offensive glazing unit has been removed and I'm trying out some of the replacement windscreen surrounds that I had etched last year. These were an absolute pig to draw but thankfully they fit very well. In my (subjective) opinion they are a huge improvement on the Farish effort. I've figured out some further improvements to the etch but they will need to wait until a future build.
     
    I've also sliced off the handrails and replaced them with 33SWG nickel silver wire. They aren't brilliant but slightly less bad than the moulded ones. This seems to be the thinnest handrail wire available these days - whatever happened to 36SWG steel? I started by using the 'shadows' of the Farish handrails to position the holes but wasn't very happy with the ones on top of the nose so I've moved the inner holes upwards and inwards which seems to give a nicer curve that follows the shape of the nose better.
     
    The central headboard bracket has been sliced off and replaced by one fabricated from 0.5mm brass wire and 5 thou N/S strip in the same way that I did for D869 several years ago. The trick here is to file away half of the end of the wire to make a 'D' shape. Cut this off and make another piece the same way and then solder the two back together so that they overlap and trap the N/S strip in between. Then just cut off the bits that you don't want and bend to the shape of the bracket. It's a lot easier than it sounds.
     
    There's still more to do. I'm intending to replace the lower lamp brackets with something more three dimensional and also deepen the undercut below the headcode box. The headcode box is not a great representation of the real thing either. Ideally I'd like to attack that too but I really can't see how to do it without throwing the baby out with the bathwater so I think that I'll live with it.
     
    Other plans include smoothing off the rivets at the edges of the roof panels (go and look at some photos - the real thing has countersunk or pop rivets so they are invisible in most photos). I'll probably open out the fuel fillers to make them look less flat. The cab interior needs some work - the top of the control panel should be very obvious through the windcreens but Farish's version is too low.
     
    The final puzzle (for now) is the two access hatches on the cab sides. For some reason these have been moulded by using a really obtrusive groove. The real things were flush fitting panels so Farish's interpretation is as subtle as a brick. I might have a go at filling the grooves and/or representing the panels with some 5 thou plastic but so far I haven't figured out how (or if) the Farish body is painted or whether it will take Mek Pak. Anybody know?
     
    Finally, a note of thanks to Brian Hanson of Shawplan for sending me a CD with more close-up photos of D821 Greyhound than you can shake a stick at.
     
    That's all for now... apart from some photos of progress so far, alongside Druid which is out of the box Farish.
     

    First trial fitting - not too bad
     

    Another one of the test etches - too small
     

    Surgery underway on handrails and headboard bracket
  6. D869

    The Flat Earth Theory

    By D869,

    As we all know, the Earth is anything but flat but a flat earth is quite a common sight on our models. Now it's pretty obvious that Hayle North Quay has some high ground at the back and a quay edge at the front, but is that the whole story? Well, no...
     
    A couple of examples from my visit in 2010 (the place has been completely rebuilt since then to provide flood defences).
     
    I'm not sure what this building used to be, possibly stables for the Steam Packet hotel or possibly something else. In theory this is on the flat part of the quay, but look at the ground line.

     
    The wagon weighbridge (in its original position) - pretty flat here but look in the distance - the road (and inset rail track) are climbing up to enter the former Octel bromine works site. In the 1950s this gradient was used for gravity shunting.

     
    The problem (for me) is knowing how much level change is enough. While puzzling over this I looked again at my many photos and found a little corner of a photo of one of the other quays which showed North Quay in a helpful way...

    So roughly speaking, the rear of the 'flat' part of the quay is higher than the quay edge by about the height of a car (A40?). I guesstimate about 5 feet.
     
    The bigger conundrum for me was to figure out how a small patch of ground in front of the Octel works 'fits together' from a height perspective. These level changes are less subtle but I found them quite difficult to figure out. A couple of snippets from 'Britain From Above'...

     
    Towards the rear of this little scene we have the rail line up to the Octel works... which is uphill but only up a railway kind of hill plus a non-too-steep ramp from the road back down to quay level at the end of the detached cottage. All quite subtle but on the other hand the two semi detached cottages have a retaining wall at one end which is is almost a full storey high and has earth to the top of it on one side and the ground level is similarly high where it meets the inclined front wall of the detached cottage.
     
    Now maybe it's just me but I couldn't make all of this fit together in my head... and also factor in some selective compression. In the end I decided that building a scenic mockup of the patch of ground and the incline to the Octel works was the only way to figure it all out. The mockup sits on an old piece of laminate flooring and is all done with cheap card, cerial boxes and Templot printouts. I didn't have any suitable 'ground' material to hand so I took a trip down to my local Hobbycraft and a bag of air drying clay was about the cheapest thing that seemed like it would do the job. It was quite fun to do - sticking extra bits on here and there or carving bits off and easily smoothed over with a dampened finger, screwdriver blade or an old butter knife. Have I got it right? I don't know but it doesn't look too far from what I see in the Aerofilms photos.

     
    What still puzzles me a bit is why they didn't just dig more of this ground out instead of building retaining walls and leaving it piled up against their back walls to cause damp. I have a theory but will leave this as an exercise for the reader.
     
    Wot, no tractor?
     
    Actually the tractor is part of this story because it will hopefully drive along the road and negotiate that ramp in order to get to the other end of its train. Using the info from the scenery mockup, I worked out how much extra 'padding' the ramp would need and added a functional but rather less scenic balsa wood ramp to the tractor test bed...
     

     
    I'm not sure how long the clay will take to air dry - it's had several hours so far and isn't showing any signs.
  7. D869

    Leamington 2017

    By D869,

    This weekend we blew the cobwebs off St Ruth after 6 months of exhibition inactivity by taking it to one of the bigger of our local shows run by Leamington & Warwick MRC.
     
    We haven't been completely idle during this period (almost... but not completely). The most noticeable additions being the ability for our 'sun' to gradually set allowing us to run the layout in darknes. Apart from a black cloth to keep out stray light from overhead this has entailed a lot of work putting lights (controlled by an Arduino under each board) into buildings and generally bringing into commission all sorts of lighting bits that had been built in over the years but so far hardly used. The signals had been built with working lamps from day one but this is the first time that we've wired them up other than for occasional photo sessions. One of our more recent members, Andrew Hyatt has also spent a lot of time painstakingly researching and then creating reproductions of the 1950s era street lighting that is evident in photos of Penzance up to the 1970s.
     
    The second major addition has been a shameless theft of Nigel Ashton's display board idea. We now have a board running most of the length of the scenic section containing details about various buildings and other stuff about how the layout works. For this show it was printed onto plain paper but eventually it will be done with something more resistant to sticky finger marks... because it does attract plenty of finger poking.
     
    Oh, and the show was fun and the food was very good.
     
    Some photos...
     
    The Leamington College provided a handy balcony just so that we could take some high angle photos...
     


     
    My attempt at photographing 'after dark'. In practice this is tricky because I didn't want to get in the punters' way. As you can see, overhead is not the only source of stray light - particularly when you set the layout up in an atrium.
     

     
    The roadshow crew doing their stuff
     

  8. D869

    Gresley BG

    By D869,

    A former member of the Midland area group recently donated his box of unfinished projects and other bits and bobs so that the group members could make use of them. I picked out a part built Gresley BG which looked like a nice model which was crying out for someone to finish it. I have a bit of a soft spot for parcels stock.
     
    Some photos and words about progress to date...
     

    The coach as retrieved - basically two sides, two ends and a floor
     

    I don't know much about its origin - this is the only clue. I assume it's a shot down 4mm etch but I'm really not sure. The scale seems to be about 1:150, so half way between 2mm and 'N'. A rather unusual choice... which made finding a roof a bit tricky.
     

    I cut the ducket and gangway ends from plain brass - a change from all that computer stuff... although I did draw the gangway ends in CAD and then stuck a print of the drawing to the brass.
     

    A gangway being assembled. No real plan here - more a case of 'make it up as you go along'.
     

    Seemed to work OK though.
     

    My original plan was to use an Ultima roof that had been in my gloat box since the 1980s. I think I bought it at IMREX if anyone can remember that far back. Unfortunately when I measured it I found it was pretty much right for 2mm scale and about 2mm too short for this kit. Instead I decided it was time to get to grips with 3d curves and then got Mr Shapeways to produce the goods.
     

    Still needs some sanding though - admittedly the 3d printing artefacts run in the same direction as the planking beneath the covering of the real roof but I think the finish is too rough.
     

    A somewhat ropey shot of the coach so far. The underframe fittings are a combination of 2mm Association and Ultima stuff. The guards footsteps still need to be done from scratch.
     
    The roof fits width and length-wise but I didn't try to fit it to the top profile of the etched coach end. Instead I used the prototype profile so I need to modify the etched end to fit the roof profile... which would have been easier if I had left the gangways off until later. Makes a change from my usual over planning.
     
    Oh, and it will be a 'BGP' - or pigeon van if you prefer because these lasted longer than the 'pure' BGs.
  9. D869
    In the previous installment the etches for the D600 bogies had just arrived in the post leaving me wondering whether I could actually build a bogie from them...
     
    Thankfully it turns out that I can
     
    Some of you will have seen the partially completed bogie at the AGM on Saturday (and a jolly good day it was too). I had hoped to have two bogies built, painted and on the loco before Saturday, but the etches arrived rather later than I had planned so it was too big an ask. Instead D604 had to go on show (again) with its class 47 bogies but the competition judge still liked it enough to award it a pot, as did the assembled members. I'm now glad that I was talked into entering it - thanks Chris.
     
    I'm now progressing at a rather less hurried pace. The first bogie is almost fully assembled. Here's a picture of it sitting near a photo of a rather bigger version.
     

     
    I was worried about a lot of the issues in the various 'how to' guides - mainly whether the thing would actually prove possible to build. Actually most of the things I was worrying about turned out just fine. Partly this may have been because I printed the most critical artwork out at double size and stuck it to some 0.5mm card so that I could mock up the parts and test things out in three dimensions before sending the artwork off to PPD...
     

     
    The main things that went wrong were those things that I didn't think about while drawing the artwork. I made the classic finescale mistake of scaling chassis components from the prototype and forgetting that our wheels need rather more clearance than the prototype ones, particularly to avoid short circuits. This was solved by building the sideframes using five layers instead of the six I had drawn. Then for some unknown reason while designing the front end of the bogie I temporarily forgot about the big lump of Farish plastic that was going to be sat in the middle of the bogie and put some bits of metal where the plastic would be and had to resort to chopping bits off the etch to rectify the problem. My test with the card didn't pick these problems up because I didn't have a twice real size Farish bogie to try it on.
     
    Finally, a photo of it under D604. Sorry about the flash bounce (and the slightly non-level body) but at least you can see all of the springy bits this way. You can also see that the Farish bogie wheelbase is just a tad short. I knew about this beforehand and compensated by doing the etch to 2mm scale rather than 'N', but I didn't want to mess up the dimensions any further. It's been a lot of work to get this far, but I'm rather pleased with the results.
     

     
    Update: I've been puzzling about the space between the back of the bogie and the battery boxes. There is stuff going on in there on the prototype but no detail is
    visible in most photos. The rear air cylinders were also 'whereabouts unknown' - I was pretty sure that they should be there somewhere because they were present on the EM2 version of the Ivatt bogie and also on the 2 axle variant used on the class 22.
     
    I think that I've now figured out what's going on - the back end is not (as I guessed when drawing the etch) a mirror of the front. The air cylinders sit on top of the transom facing backwards and tucked well underneath the body. They are just visible in the NBL factory photo if you look very hard. They should hide the retaining clip nicely. There is also a vertical rocker shaft outboard of these that I'll represent with some brass rod.
  10. D869
    After a somewhat late night yesterday evening getting them finally assembled, the two chlorine tanks are now finished.
     
    Here are a couple of photos.
     


     
    Overall I am really pleased with the way these have turned out. They have taken a lot of effort to build, mainly in the initial etch design and the painting and final assembly stages because they are such complex vehicles. I have also discovered a few tolerance adjustments that will be included in any future builds.
     
    As Association members will know, the AGM and annual competitions were held today and the chlorine tanks along with the semi-bulk bromine tanks and a brake van won the John Barker trophy. Mr Smith of this parish also returned home with a considerable and well deserved haul of silverware.
     
    It was great to catch up with friends today too and see four lovely 2mm Finescale layouts for the same very reasonable price.
     
    Finally, a note of thanks to Dave Millward for kindly supplying measurements plus a DVD of a video that he took showing one of these tanks at Embsay from every conceivable angle.
  11. D869

    Class 22 - Part 2

    By D869,

    In this post I actually start to build the kit...
     
    Folding the Body
     
    The one job that was worrying me most of all (and probably delaying me starting work) was bending up the single etching that makes the loco sides and roof. Logically this semed like the place to start construction, so at least I would get what seemed to be the worst job over and done with very early in the build.
     
    I'd built up some confidence (and tools) with the two wagon kits that I built as 'practice'. In particular I'd found that my solder sucker was a nice convenient diameter for rolling 2mm scale roofs. I'd also figured out a way to create some "poor man's bending bars" without shelling out any extra money. I did this by using two ground steel parallels clamped together using a couple of toolmaker's clamps plus the thick part of an engineer's square to bend the metal over. Parallels and clamps are the kind of stuff that tends to accumulate in my workshop on the grounds that it will come in useful one day. The parallels are something that I made myself on a workshop experience session when I was a student. The clamps were bought at a show many moons ago from Shestos or Squires. The photo below shows these tools (without the loco because I took this photo yesterday just for this posting).
     

     
    It took some thought to figure out the best sequence to do the rolling and folding. In the end I did it in the following order:-
    Roll the roof around the solder sucker and then gently increase the radius using my fingers until it matched the etched bulkheads.
    Clamp a body side in the bending bars at cantrail level and then make the cantrail bend by using the thick part of an engineer's square to fold the roof over, lining up by sight against the bulkhead. Do the same for the other side.
    Clamp the lower part of the body side in the bending bars and make the slight fold needed at the waistline.

    I then checked the final result by putting in on a glass sheet and manually trued up any twist that had crept in. The folded body looked like this
     

     
    Getting Ready for the Cabs
     
    The cabs are rather a long story, but I think they are crucial to the 'look' of the front end of the loco which is by far the most important thing in getting an end result that looks right. As a result, I spent a lot of time and effort trying to figure out the shape of the real thing and get this part of the model as 'right' as I could.
     
    This was the first point at which I started to depart from the kit. First of all, I wasn't 100% sure how the kit was intended to be assembled - should the ends fit between the sides or vice-versa? Having measured the bulkheads, nose ends and the backing etches for the nose I concluded that they were all of the same width so the ends were intended to be fitted between the sides.
     
    The published drawings all agree that the sides of the loco taper inwards from the cab doors to the nose ends - presumably to give better clearances on tight curves. This was also pretty clear from some of the photos, but it seems that the kit assumes that the sides stay parallel all the way to the nose, making the nose too wide.
     
    On the next point I am less certain, but my reading of the photos is that the sides of the nose ends are vertical and not sloped as per the kit. This then begs the question of whether the part of the main sides below the waistline are vertical or sloped inwards. My judgement (based on comparing the alignment of the handrails with those of the sides of the nose) is that there is a slight inwards slope to the lower sides, but less than the slope found on the bulkheads in the kit. If I'm right then there must have been a slight twist in the cab sides to give a smooth transition from the main sides to the nose end.
     
    Back to the kit… I don't yet have the chassis that I'm intending to fit but wanted to have some rigidity in the body so decided to fit a couple of bulkheads anyway. These were soldered in level with the ends of the main roof - this is not prototypical but gives maximum rigidity to the cab area during the next operations. I added some 5 thou nickel silver shims between the bottom of each bulkhead and the loco sides to reduce the inwards taper of the main part of the body below the waistline.
     
    In the next installment I will cover the construction of the cabs.
  12. D869

    Class 22 - Part 11 (The End)

    By D869,

    D6309 is pretty much finished now and is ready to earn its keep on South Yard and St Ruth. It even went on holiday (with South Yard) to its native Cornwall a couple of weeks ago.
     

     
    The trip through the paint shop was fairly long and painful, the lowest point being when I sprayed it with Humbrol matt varnish to protect the transfers only to find that this left a horrid translucent effect over the whole loco. I rescued this with an wash of thinned Precison green applied by brush. Thankfully this worked, otherwise it would have been time for the paint stripper.
     
    The lining was done with the Bob Moore pen. This went very smoothly and only needed a bit of tidying up to make the ends nice and crisp.
     
    The transfers are old Woodhead ones that I have had for many years. These were resurrected using Microscale liquid decal film thanks to a tip on RMWeb.
     
    Weathering was all done by brush - I am not yet confident enough to do this with the airbrush (certainly not on something that has taken so long to reach this stage). The effect I was looking for was to reproduce the very run down condition of these locos (especially the remaining green ones) circa 1969. I think I achieved what I wanted to do (they were really grotty), but after doing it I wasn't quite so sure that I wanted it any more.
     
    The glazing is 10 thou clear sheet glued behind the body sides using Formula 560 Canopy glue. I would have liked to do true flush glazing for the windscreens. I tried to do it but found that I couldn't persuade 10 thou glazing to stay put in a hole in a 10 thou metal loco body.
     
    The headcodes are done using some letters that I had specially produced for me by a local printing company a long time ago. They were photographed from my hand drawn artwork onto some sort of special printing film (not normal photographic film - I tried that unsuccessfully) so that when fixed into place the headcodes appear to be behind glass. I suspect that this way of doing things has probably been superseded by computerised printing so it may not be possible to do this again.
     
    There are still a few bits and bobs remaining - the cab door handrails are the main exterior items. I'm also going to try to fit a bit of cab detail if this can be done without it looking silly. There are still a few places on where too much daylight is visible through the side windows and louvres so I need to add a few more bits of black plastikard to block this.
     
    I'd also like to make the wheel flanges less shiny if this can be done without compromising the running, but I'm not sure how to do this.
     
    One day I might reinstate the lights to illuminate the headcodes from behind. I'd also really like to get a sound system working but I think that this would need to be under the baseboard both in terms of practicality and sound quality. So far I haven't found a good under baseboard system that can be set up with sounds to represent different loco types. I think it's quite a small niche market, so maybe it's too big an ask.
     
    Overall I am very happy with the end result. The loco (to me anyway) looks the part and moves very well indeed thanks to its Atlas running gear. I might even build another one... but not just yet.
     
    Here are a couple more photos...
     

     

  13. D869

    Warley 2014

    By D869,

    Back home now after our outing to our local mega-show. After a few comments from other people beforehand I was a bit wary of exhibiting at Warley but really enjoyed it. For sure, the NEC is a huge venue and this brings with it extra aggravation particularly during setup and packing up and for sure it was stacked out with people on Saturday but there is stacks of space behind the layouts and the food is good, even if the queue was a bit long. It was also great to spend some time again with the other 2mm folks.
     
    Here are a few 'behind the scenes' photos from Friday.
     

    Driving my car into the hall was a new experience. Driving out again we had to drive along one of the main aisles so I got to see Clarendon and Leicester South from a new vantage point. I'm not sure that drive through model railway shows will catch on though although it does solve the rucksack issue.
     

    There were white vans too. Especially worrying when they reverse up the aisle . I can't say that I'm a big fan of the lighting. It's not the camera. It really does look like this.
     

    Testing testing... oh dear . Friday turned out to be not one of our better days with all of the points on the MPD board refusing to respond to the correct button (or in most cases any button at all). John and Ian spent quite some time with their heads in the control panel. Fortunately they managed to get it working again before we left, although it meant that we were there rather later than we had intended. Not the best start to a show but fortunately things improved from there and the layout was pretty reliable with only fairly minor annoyances during the show itself.
     
    This morning a nice man called Mr Waterman interrupted our wheel cleaning to give us a plaque for the best modern image layout. Very pleasing given the standard of layouts at the show so thank you to whoever decides these things.
     
    I've posted some pics of other layouts on the show thread...
     
    http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/85146-warley-at-the-nec-2014-22nd-and-23rd-november/page-8&do=findComment&comment=1675581
  14. D869
    Not quite 'finished', but at least back in one piece (at the last minute) in a presentable state for Railex.
     
    On the whole it's far from perfect (and very shiny just now) but I am very pleased with the result.
     
    I'll say more later. For now, here are a couple of slightly iffy photos (dull and rainy day light available today)
     

     

     
    Off to load up St Ruth for Railex now.
  15. D869

    Progress and Holidays

    By D869,

    A few words on recent progress hereabouts...
     
    The second bogie for D604 is now complete and looks much like the first one, so no need for any photos there. There are a couple of small jobs remaining before the new underframe bits get painted and then it should be 'job done'.
     
    We've been away in Wales for the past week sampling the Garretts on the Welsh Highland. Definitely a good way to see Snowdonia but take a coat because this narrow gauge stuff has no heating... especially if you want to ride in the open air coach.
     

     
    As usual I took along a few bits and bobs to work on. I assembled a couple of my own GW NPCS bogie etches which went together reasonably smoothly barring a couple of minor mistakes in the drawing. When painted these will be going under the blue Siphon and the displaced long spring bogies will take up residence under an Ultima Hawksworth.
     

     
    ... which leads neatly on to...
     
    The kit selected to leave the gloat box on this occasion was an Ultima Hawksworth BCK. I have several different Hawksworths in the gloat box but selected the BCK because it can on occasions be used to make up an entire passenger train on its own, which might be handy for South Yard. It might also appear in the St Ruth sleeper formation because I have a photo of a 1960s sleeper at Penzance with just such a vehicle providing the seating accommodation. I got as far as assembing the basic bodyshell and attaching the bogies while I was away, but there is plenty more work to do.
     

     
    Coincidentally while visiting Llangollen on a rather rainy day we happened across a Hawksworth brake vehicle (BTK I think) apparently in use as sleeping accommodation.
     

     
    So I now have my own photo of a pressed steel bogie... long spring variant though...
     

     
    South Yard didn't go on holiday with me on this occasion. Instead it was loaned to John to take to the Peterborough show where he was helping on the 2mm Association stand. Hopefully that went OK, but I haven't had any reports back as yet.
     
    Of course on returning from Wales I found some heated discussion on RMWeb around the announcement of the Hawksworth BG by the N Gauge Society. I have rather mixed feelings about this. On the one hand the availability of another a decent RTR coach model must be a good thing. On the other hand my kit built BG will now be compared to (or mistaken for) an RTR model. Anyway, I'm getting fairly used to building things now and then seeing them announced as RTR models. Maybe I should take up broad gauge modelling.
     
    I must admit that I find it rather disturbing that an announcement of a single type of coach available at some future date in limited numbers and to a restricted community can prompt the discontinuation of an entire range of kits. I understand the reasons and I think that the motivations of all concerned are fair enough but the end result does seem rather a backwards step for the whole community, at least until a wider range of RTR models does become available (if that ever happens). It also saddens me to see the supplier of a range that has been supporting 'N' gauge modelling for many years apparently feeling aggrieved by the actions of the society.
  16. D869
    Fancying a break from slaving over a hot soldering iron I thought I’d have a go at a job that I’ve been failing to ‘get around to’ for a long time – making some loads for my mineral wagons.
     
    Naturally I thought this would be easy, but maybe I was wrong.
     
    The first bit is very straightforward - cut some rectangles of black card to fit inside the wagons and glue some lumps of foamboard and card underneath them to hold them at a sensible height. Then (assuming a fairly level load) coat the top with PVA and add the coal, right?
     
    But what to put on top to represent the coal?
     
    The classic modellers answer seems to be ‘coal’ (without saying what kind of coal). So I tried that. The first attempt was using bits nibbled off a lump of Daw Mill coal. I also had some BH Enterprises ‘coal’ (which may not be real coal at all) so I tried that on the second wagon.
     
    Comparing the results to colour photos of real 16 tonners I wasn’t too convinced. In real life daylight the full sized coal has a sort of bluish grey colour whereas both of mine were most definitely black. Size-wise the BH stuff was more even and smaller than the big lumps of Daw Mill stuff but some photos of the real thing show a huge mix of sizes in the same wagon, some of which are of small boulder proportions. I think it depends on whether it’s domestic or loco coal etc. I decided that I could probably sort the size out on future loads by using some effort with a hammer so I should worry about the colour first.
     
    I’ve thought about maybe changing the colour by spraying paint, but think this would need to be done with the coal loose to avoid losing the colour variations of the real thing.
     
    I had some other different samples of real and model coal kicking around in various places so I decided to try all of them as a second step. Here are the results so far.
    Back row:-
    Daw Mill (‘Warwickshire Thick’ seam) coal crushed to a powder with a hammer
    Some model coal I bought in the Early 80s at the Train Shop in Warwick… which still has a strange odour that I can’t quite place (the coal that is, not the shop).
    BH Enterprises model coal

    Front row:-
    Some coal from John Shawe that came with a live steam loco – no idea what type of coal but it’s very hard – almost like glass. Anthracite maybe? The steam loco runs very well on it. The coal was broken up with a hammer but tends to form flakes rather than coal-shaped lumps when it gets down to 2mm scale.
    Daw Mill coal nibbled off with pliers
    Welsh coal (that’s what the bag says) bought on a garage forecourt in Caernarvon – very dusty and crumbly in the bag but still surprisingly resistant to being broken into 2mm scale lumps

    The first three photos were taken near to the window from different angles.
     

     
    The last two were taken with South Yard in its normal spot at the back of the room – one with flash and one without. Unfortunately I swapped the front row of wagons round while moving the layout.
     

     
    I have my own thoughts on these but will refrain from sharing them right now. Any thoughts from the audience regarding which looks best or about better ways to model coal in 2mm scale?
     
    Of course… this may all have something to do with a certain 6 wheeled green mineral wagon that I need to load with coal soon.
  17. D869
    More steamy goings on from my workbench. Now that I'm not frantically trying to make South Yard look less unfinished I've got back to some of the other items that have been in progress for a while. The main build effort amongst these is the David Eveleigh chassis for the Dapol 45xx. The various bits of this have been liberated from their paint shop boxes and put together in hopefully something resembling the right order.
     

     
    Under the hood is a Nigel Lawton motor coupled to the worm via a UJ with the intention of avoiding any end load on the motor bearings. The motor is on a removable mount - the intention being to test some alternative motors. In practice the only other mount that I've made (for the Association can motor) does not align the shafts quite well enough so the Lawton motor and mount is the only one that works.
     

     
    Everything going to plan? Not quite...
     
    When initially put together the chassis (as an 0-6-0) ran appallingly. In fact I had to wire up some jump leads to a borrowed diesel bogie in order to get it to run up and down a reasonable length of track at all. Maybe I'm wrong but I think that a new chassis ought to move freely without any lubrication (not that I'd leave it like that) but this one didn't. My first gambit was to give it 20 minutes of running in (on Taw Bridge up in the loft) with this arrangement and then lubricate it. The chassis didn't free up noticeably during running in but ran quite smoothly once the gears were lubricated. So it stayed like this for a week or two.
     
    The first test run after Nottingham was terrible - like it had developed a severe limp. This was quickly traced to a crankpin (on the side away from me) that had been bent. Straightening this restored smooth running but when tested carefully it still wasn't quite right - there was still some slight binding and when run at low speeds it always seemed to stall at the same crank position which seemed to be the same spot as the problem I'd had before lubricating it.
     
    I'd proved already that the problem was not being caused by coupling rod binding - the mechanism had the same tight spot even with the rods removed so I decided that it must be coming from the drive train. I'd already found a few issues with this and I still wasn't really happy with it, suspecting perhaps some eccentricity in the spur gear on the axle. Last night I spent a lot of time fiddling and fettling the drive train as a last ditch attempt to get the loco working properly short of a complete strip down and rebuild.
     
    For some reason my drive train just doesn't seem to have gone together as it should. First I found that the wormwheel was fouling the shoulder on the centre axle muff so I had to move the wormwheel slightly off the centre line of the worm to solve this. I also suspected that the same thing was happening with the spur gear on the axle and the shoulder on the wormwheel muff and had found during 'dry run' assembly that I could not fully push the spur gear up to the shoulder on the muff without it catching the wormwheel muff. You probably can't see any of this in the photo, but here's a photo from underneath anyway.
     

     
    This last problem could also account for the binding - rather than being eccentric the gear could have been slightly askew on the muff and still catching the wormwheel muff at just one point in its rotation. Resolving this without a strip down involved some leverage between the shoulder and the gear - probably not something you will see recommended in the handbook of correct chassis building practice.
     
    I also found while fiddling with the gears that there seemed to be a definite machining burr on the edge of the spur gear. If the burr was uneven then this might also have caused the binding - giving the same effect as an eccentric gear. Fixing this without stripping down was not going to be easy but I used a small screwdriver to wear away the burr at bottom of each tooth gap and a thin strip of wet & dry attached to a stick of plastikard to smooth away the burr at the top of the teeth... followed by blu-tack to try to hoover up any filings.
     
    I still couldn't see daylight between the wormwheel and the axle muff shoulder so I attacked the shoulder with a needle file (plus more blu-tack to remove the filings) until daylight was visible.
    To cut a long story after all of this poking and prodding the chassis didn't seem to keep stalling at the same point . After so many problems I'm cautious about saying that it's fixed but we'll see how things go.
     
    The pony trucks are another story. I wanted to pick up from both sides on each truck. I tried connecting a jumper wire but this caused too much 'steering' effect on the truck so it kept jumping the rails. It did prove that the pickup was much improved, so I wanted to persevere with it and set to thinking about how to transfer a bit more weight onto the trucks.... which made me wonder if I could kill two birds with one stone...
     
    I wasn't sure if this would work but it was simple enough to try it and find out. The current arrangement might be described as a Simpson spring but I've not heard of anyone using them like this. Mine are 36SWG wire soldered to the frame spacers directly above the pony axles. They head back towards the driving wheels before making a sharp about face to come back and bear on the tops of the pony axles. Some adjustment was needed to get the pony trucks centred and to arrange for a reasonable amount of springing but so far the results seem encouraging in terms of staying on the track and electrical pickup is now better than ever.
     
    The plan now is to fit some DGs and send it for a spell of testing before thinking about fitting the cylinders or doing anything to the body.
    Oh, and I need a new controller. The Lawton motor doesn't like my AMRs when pushed to anything above a crawl (although the quality of the said crawl is exemplary!). So far I've been using an experimental battery powered controller for testing it but this is not a long term answer - the slow speed control is particularly hit and miss with this gizmo.
     
    A few other things are gradually emerging from a long stay in the paint shop. The Hawksworth BTK is currently being subjected to my attentions with the lining pen
     

     
    You can also see the BG creeping into the frame. This is in for repairs because one of its bogies partly collapsed at St Albans. The bogie has now been strengthened with some brass angle and now seems very strong. I'd forgotten until recently that the BTK build and BG repair are related because I built a set of NPCS bogies with the BTK with the intention of swapping out the (long spring) bogies from the BG so that everything winds up on the correct bogies at the end of the process. My plan for tonight was to sort out the couplings ready for the bogie swap but then I got diverted to writing on RMWeb. A valid alternative to real modelling
  18. D869

    Aldershot 2013

    By D869,

    Just back from an enjoyable weekend with St Ruth at the Aldershot show organised by the Farnham and District MRC.
     
    Getting the new sea siding crossover finished in time for the show was a bit of a struggle. We could certainly have used some more time to deal with the stickiness that always seems to happen as soon as new track is painted... and then again when it is ballasted. It managed to (mostly) make it through the weekend though.
     
    The other new items were a new goods yard shunting scheme to cope with the loss of the loop, Ian's new trees, Steve's mess hut and a revised backscene with a semi-3d effect.
     
    I think that John must have really burned the midnight oil on the backscene. It has been underway for most of the summer but last Tuesday it was completely white so it was a huge surprise to see it in glorious technicolour when the layout was put together on Friday night. It makes a vast difference to the visual impact of the layout. Here's John filling in one last bit of missing colour before the lighting pelmets went on. Is that a cup of coffee that I see on the beach?
     

     
    Chris also produced a special train to take full advantage of the new operational possibilities of the sea siding to show how the railway used the laws of physics to move empty coaches into the platform without the need for one of those costly loco things. It also produces some interesting effects if it isn't perfectly coupled to the loco when it departs for London.
     

     
    Thanks to Ian Morgan and David Stratton for stepping in to help out with operating the layout at short notice. Both of them got the hang of our schedule and St Ruth's controls very quickly and did a sterling job for the whole weekend. Thanks too to Mr Brummitt for delivering a certain trophy to us from far off Bolton and to the judges who awarded it to us. And finally of course thanks to Noel and the team for organising a great show.
     
    Next up... Burton on Trent in 3 weeks time. I think that the main work before then will be some more debugging of the new bits.
     
    A few photos of some other layouts that caught my eye. As usual my photos don't do them justice...
     
    Loch Tat - lovely colouring
     

     
    Brixcombe
     

     
    Westcliff
     

  19. D869
    Having been temporarily chucked back together for AbRail, the Hall is just back from an extended spell in the paint shop having its paint job generally finished off and some weathering applied... just in time for St Ruth to go to Macclesfield this weekend.
     

     
    My plan for the 'paint job' was to wash over the Dapol GWR green (or it it US Army WW2 geep green?) with thinned Precision BR Green, doing my best to avoid the lining. It's kind of worked, but it took a few more coats than I had hoped because just a single coat looked very patchy. I managed (mostly) to avoid painting over the lining and clean up those places where I didn't quite succeed but found that it was a bit tricky because if I was too cautious with stopping short of the lining then the lining had a sort of 'halo' effect from the factory paint showing through.
     
    I chose 'Patshull Hall' because I wanted a loco known to have been in Cornwall and also one that lacked the fireiron tunnel next to the firebox as per the Dapol model. 4950 is the subject of a nice Peter Gray photo waiting to depart from Bodmin Road with a down train on a sunny summer's day so I really couldn't resist. It looks somewhat grubby in the photo, which is at rather an oblique angle so I've used photos of slightly less dirty Halls as a guide for weathering, although mine has still come out a bit more grubby than I was aiming for.
     
    I couldn't find any name and number plates to buy and didn't want to wait for the N Gauge Society to sort themselves out so I decided to get my own etched, using Ian Smith's artwork to give me a head start (Thanks Ian!). Even with a head start, it was still a lot of work and it's probably an expensive way to get nameplates, but at least I've now got the ones I wanted (plus plenty more for other possible projects). I'm really pleased with the way these came out.
     

     
    There are still a couple of jobs remaining. Somewhere I have some fireirons which would look nice on the tender. There is also the question of a crew. I have a pack of Farish figures but they are typically in poses like mid-shovel swing which will make them tricky to fit into the very limited space available. Finally I need to decide whether to add some headlamps.
    Some more photos...
     



  20. D869
    There have been one or two models that have had an extended stay in the paint shop over the winter. Since we have the Epsom and Ewell show coming up later this month, I have knuckled down and managed to get everything out of their various paint boxes and back together into something resembling models. There are still a few finishing touches to do here and there, but here is the latest crop.
     
    Just back together today is the second of the Stephen Harris 35T tank kits. A class A version this time in its original livery with the long company name. The weathering job tries to replicate the state of tanks shown at Fawley in an early 60s photo in Euslin Bruce's book 'Diesel Heyday' - plenty of road grime and the effects of spilled petrol but with the Esso ovals cleaned. Coincidentally the same photo also includes some very clean looking black tanks although these are bitumen tanks rather than the normal class B tanks. I can't imagine that they stayed clean for very long. Just four of these left in the gloat box now. I'm not too happy with the look of the ladder though - this was just chemically blackened so it needs a bit of work with the paint brush - maybe some dry brushing.
     

    My oil train is still kinda short...
     

    The latest Ultima Hawksworth - a brake third (or brake second if you prefer). The roof came out a bit shiny but it's removeable so it will get toned down next time the airbrush is fired up. Two of these kits still in the gloat box, plus one Hawksworth from the Higgs stable and a bunch of Colletts and Maunsells.
     

    The Hymek (or Lowmek) received some toning down with the airbrush while weathering was underway on other items. The idea here was to reproduce the fairly clean example on the front of Hugh Dady's 'Heyday of the Hydraulics'. I think mine came out slightly muckier but not by too much - 'light touch' weathering is not as easy as it sounds. I'm quite quite pleased with the 'not quite black' of the chassis though - much better than the 'plastic black' that it had previously.
     

    Finally the class 47 is back together with the body lowered as described in other threads on RMWeb and has been tested on St Ruth. It's definitely still 'on probation' so no work beyond the chassis surgery at the moment.
     

     
    That's it for now. The remaining work before the show will be boring stuff like couplings and so on.
  21. D869

    50% More Sleep...

    By D869,

    ...ing cars
     
    The Met Camm SLC is the first of the four coaches built during the cold season to escape from the paint shop and take its place between its two friends.
     
    The build is almost identical to the other two. There are a few minor improvements because I now know more about the real things (and have of course now found mistakes on the other two). I also had a go at doing the roof overhang at the ends which is most definitely absent from the other two. This was done by adding a lip of 10 thou styrene rod (seriously useful stuff) to the end, following the roof profile. Once dry, the top surface was blended in with Milliput and the whole lot sanded smooth. I'm quite pleased with the result because how to do this was something that I've puzzled over for a long time.
     
    The paint job is part of my long term quest to find a mix for BR Maroon that reproduces the look of coaches in sunny photos of trains in Cornwall. This one is mostly Precision maroon mixed with some Humbrol 100 (a sort of reddish brown colour), which is probably a better option than 153 (a plain red) that I used on the Thompson BG. The result is closer to Farish's version of maroon - not that this is necessarily 'right'. It still looks a bit odd in photos so maybe the next attempt will start from somewhere else to avoid the 'purpleness'... like darkening Precision crimson.
     
    The lining was done without the aid of my Bob Moore pen. I got Ian Rathbone's book for Christmas and resolved to have another try with a bow pen (or ruling pen if you prefer). I've now invested in a couple of Haff pens which (if you try hard enough) are available from the factory in Germany. The lining on the SLC however was mostly done before these arrived. All of of the visible lines were done with a Riefler bow compass picked up for just under 7 quid on eBay and used to offset from the top edge of the sides before they were fixed in place.
     
    Rather than try for thinner lines (which the pens can do), I tried to do the lines to match the other two coaches (I know... why didn't I do the same with the maroon?)... except for the wobbles. This idea slightly backfired because I did the yellow waist lines as two separate lines and got them too far apart. Having left it too late to remove them easily the Haff pen did finally come into use to narrow them down by lining over them with maroon... which was a last resort but worked a lot better than I expected.
     
    The good news is that I learned from my mistake lining the compartment sides of the other two sleepers and put the line at the right height on this one so I can have the compartment side on public show without it looking silly... and post photos of both sides on here. Unfortunately the lines still don't align perfectly with the other two coaches. I think that the corridor side waist lining is a bit too low down but drawing the lines higher up doesn't work because the lining pen falls into the windows (guess how I know this?).
     

     

     

     
    In other news...
     
    The other three coaches are also (mostly) painted but the two Hawksworths still lack glazing and lettering and the Mark 2 is in the process of having the body side paint scheme wrapped around the ends slightly.
     
    The Manor has seen very little progress. It's waiting for new name and number plates before making the transition (aka body swap) to green livery and a new identity. Unfortunately the plates I want are out of stock and I don't know when they will be in, so it will probably still be early BR black for the Manor at Railex.
     
    I joined the 'N' Gauge Society after finding that the Modelmaster name plates were now only available that way (but sadly not the one I want). They did, however have plenty of coach transfers in stock... and now have a few less thanks to me.
     
    Grenville is progressing very slowly in between other jobs. There really isn't a lot to do, I'm just not getting on with doing it. I'm still hoping that this will be ready for Railex but time is getting short now.
     
    Another signal for St Ruth is also on the workbench. Some folks following the 3D printing forum may have seen a few words about finials, which it seems will now not be 3D printed, so back to turning them in the mini drill
     
    At some stage I need to give all of my locos a test run to make sure that we have enough serviceable for Railex.
  22. D869

    Last of the First - Part 3

    By D869,

    This is a catch up installment on D604... and quite a long one. I was quite keen to get it into a presentable state so that I could use it at TINGS, so that meant no mucking about on RMWeb for a little while.
     
    In the last installment the basic shape of the bodyshell was completed but the detail was yet to go on. There is a lot less to add to the class 41 than the class 22, but there was still some work to do.
     
    The roof has most of the right things in the right places. Unlike the 22 there is no overlay so the panel joins are etched into the main body shell. The snag with this is that the underside of the roof is etched with lines to make rolling easier. Where the two etches cross we get a hole. This means that the panel joins show a sort of morse code effect. I tried to fix this by filling the underside with solder but it needed a lot of cleaning up and tended to fill the whole panel join in places. After doing two joins I left the others in the hope that the paint might fill up the holes. The other thing that needs to be changed is the boiler top in the centre of the loco. There seems to be a misapprehension about what was on this panel. My old Ian Allen drawings book shows a circular hole with a grille mesh. This is what Allen provides, as does the Etched Pixels detailing pack. All of them are wrong. Photos show that there was indeed a circular hole but that this was almost completely filled by a solid disc with just a narrow gap around the edge. I used some dividers to mark out two circles and then filed out a disc that was a little smaller than the hole with some 'spokes' sticking out to the edge of the hole. This needed careful filing and fitting but was eventually soldered in place. As you can see in the photo it now looks just like a broken etched line but I hope it will look better when fully painted and weathered. The photo also shows the morse code in the panel joins.
     

     
    There was not too much work to do on the sides. For the boiler filler doors I used the parts from the Etched Pixels pack. The vertical louvres for the upper cooling group intakes were made from Evergreen car siding. This has very fine lines moulded into it, intended for American match board sided vehicles. Even so, the lines were too far apart for my needs, so I cut enough out to do all of the vents and then carefully scribed an extra line down the middle of each 'plank'. The results aren't perfect but I'm reasonably pleased with them.
     
    And so to the ends. I had chosen to model the loco in a form that was a close match for the etch in the kit. I used the oval vents provided by Allen and kept the horizontal handrail holes. One of the vertical handrail holes was drilled out to take a lamp bracket and an extra hole marked for the middle lamp bracket. The brackets themselves were cut and filed from 5 thou N/S strip and soldered in place. The (tail?) lamp on the right hand door had a surround added using 5 amp fuse wire wrapped around a drill and then cut to make a stack of circles.
     
    I changed my mind a few times about the headcode discs but in the end went for having them removable. The discs themselves are from an Etched Pixels etch and have a piece of 0.5mm brass wire soldered perpendicular to the back. The nose is drilled to take these wires, hopefully as a push fit. Three of these holes go in the middle of etched circles. The fourth goes at the bottom of the left hand door (Allen only provides an etched circle on the right hand door). The discs were then stuck into a piece of blu tack and painted. Each closed disc is different, depending on where it sits on the nose, so the result was like a little flower bed, as you can see in the photo.
     

     
    The buffers on the class 41 show a rather higher degree of design thought than most later locos - they have neat fairings to give a smooth transition between the buffer body and the nose. Naturally there is nothing off the shelf to suit this so I cut some short lengths of brass tube for the buffer bodies and opened up the holes to be a push fit for some oval plastic buffer heads that I bought years ago (I think they were labelled 'Lima' but don't know if that label was accurate). The surrounding area was then built up with Milliput and filed when set to give a smooth transition. One of the buffers lost its Milliput during filing, so I stuck it back on with super glue which seemed to do the trick.
     
    While doing the other nose detail I was getting increasingly uneasy about the oval vents. They just looked too long compared to the real thing but I didn't have any great ideas for how to make better ones. In the end I decided to bite the bullet and have a go at fixing them. I unsoldered them from the nose and then cut them in half with a string knife. I then filed down the cut ends until I thought that the reduced height looked right. Then I soldered them back together... easy to say, not easy to do. After trying a few ways the best way seemed to be to place both pieces on a flat card in the correct alignment and then trap them under a second piece of card to hold them still. Then add plenty of green label flux and apply the iron. This approach had a reasonable success rate without too many burned fingers. The reassembled vents were then cleaned up with a file and scraper and stuck onto the nose with super glue (there was no way I was going to attempt to solder them on).
     
    While out for a meal just before the body went to the paint shop I remembered that I had not done the 'eyebrow' vents. Once back at the workbench these were added using very thin slivers of 5 thou plasticard super glued in place.
     
    Next to the paint shop. The first task was to chuck the body into a bowl of warm water and scrub using an old toothbrush with Flash floor cleaner to de-grease it. This is also a good test to see if any bits fall off. After a rinse the body was given a blow dry with the hair dryer before being mounted (using gloves) on a block of wood and put in its Ferrero Rocher anti-dust cabinet. I noticed a few flakes of Milliput lifting from the roof area when drying the loco so these were carefully removed before going any further. The body was then sprayed with Halfords grey primer before being put aside to dry.
     
    On inspection a few hours later the results were not quite what I had hoped.Many of the places where the Milliput had been sanded to a feather edge had lifted a little leaving the edges of the filler looking quite obvious. Drawing on past experience with hairs in the paint on my sleeping cars, I got some wet and dry paper and used it wet to smooth down the blemishes. This was followed by another blow dry and a second coat of primer. This time the results were much better. The next coat was Humbrol matt white on the ends, followed by Humbrol signal yellow. At this stage the loco looked like it was in the old BR 'dutch' livery. Here's a photo, but you don't really get the full effect.

     
    Next the warning panels were masked (Tamiya tape) and the loco sprayed with Precision BR green. I mixed in some white again, but made sure it was a new tin on this occasion so there were no problems with white flakes in the final finish. I sprayed on quite a warm day so used plenty of thinners. I gave the loco a fairly decent coat, hoping that a smooth finish would allow neater lining. After a few hours to allow the paint to set but not fully harden the masking was removed. I'm always quite disappointed at this stage and wonder whether the end result is going to be at all convincing. Here's a photo.

     
    I scraped the paint off cab window frames before the green had fully hardened. This might or might not be good practice but it was probably motivated more by wanting to see something relieve those huge areas of dark green.
     
    The last paint job (after the green had properly hardened) was to mask around the roof panels and wrap the whole body in paper and then spray the roof grey. Once this was dry came the lining - a 2 day job using the Bob Moore pen. I have to say that the results weren't quite as good as I had hoped given the improved smoothness of the green finish.
     
    The transfers are a mixed bunch. I'm still relying on resurrected Woodheads for the BR totem and the electrification flashes. I'm running out of numbers on this sheet so I ordered some new numbers from Cambridge Custom Transfers. These came with D600 and D603 ready made up, but sadly not D604 so some degree of cutting and fiddling was needed.
     
    The CCT instructions recommend against using decal setting solution but I was not convinced. I did an experiment on a test panel and I thought that the result was better with Micro Set than without, so I used it on the loco.
     
    Regular readers may recall some difficulties with varnishing and Micro Set. I had resolved this problem last time around by a simple time saving expedient - just don't bother with the varnishing. The Woodhead transfers (in combination with liquid decal film) seem pretty tough. The CCT instructions and advice from others were, however, pretty clear - some sort of varnish is required.
     
    After discussing this question on the 2mm VAG I was recommended to try Testors Dullcote. This turned out to be tricky to track down but eventually I managed to buy a tin from a wargaming shop on the Internet. I gave it a try on a test piece and the result was very matt indeed. Although I intend to weather D604, I didn't feel ready to dull the finish to this extent. In the end I decided to go back and try the Tamiya varnish again, but making special effort to keep the coat thin. The photo below shows the result. Oh dear!
     

     
    Looking at this in reflected light it seems that the milky white deposit has a very matt finish in comparison to the unaffected area, so I think that rather than being a chemical reaction it might be something to do with Micro Set's surface tension affecting properties preventing the varnish from forming a smooth layer.
     
    I wasn't too downhearted this time because I'd managed to fix this problem on the Hawksworth coach. I did the same thing on D604 - using a fine brush and some well thinned Precision green I managed to erase the white deposits where they were most noticeable. I also tidied up the ends of the lining and a couple of slightly ragged edges as well as touching up a couple of paint chips on D6309. By now it was the Thursday night before TINGS and I was starting to be quite pleased with the result.

     
    By Friday lunchtime when I left to load St Ruth I still had no nameplates. I'd been asking Shawplan for these for quite some time but Brian had been away. I rang him when he returned on Wednesday and he promised to put them straight in the post. When I got home on Friday evening they had indeed arrived. I quickly fitted some windscreens cut from 10 thou glazing fixed with Formula 560 Canopy Glue and finally added the nameplates. I've always had kittens when gluing nameplates on, having tried epoxy (too slow and messy) and super glue (too fast and sometimes also messy) in the past. Since the Canopy Glue was to hand, I thought I'd give that a try. I found it ideal - applying a couple of small dots with a compass point and then putting the nameplate into place I could just see the glue squeeze to the edges. It also gave me enough time to make adjustments and after a short rest was sufficiently well set to allow me to do the other side without too many worries. The only real problem that I had was very odd indeed - for some reason when I did the second one everything had become statically charged and the nameplate is so small and light that when I put it on the loco side it stood right up on its edge and jumped away from the place where I wanted it. No amount of touching radiator pipes or other earthed conductors seemed to help but fortunately the Canopy Glue was stronger than the static electricity.
     
    Here's a photo of D604 ready to go to TINGS where it successfully started to earn its keep.
     

     
    Cossack is still far from finished. Most notably the chassis detail owes far more to a class 47 than a class 41 so this will be the next job on the agenda.
  23. D869

    More Coal

    By D869,

    Some further experiments based on the 'ask the audience' responses from last time with those mineral wagons.
     
    First the 'house coal' sized stuff.
     
    The outer two have heaps added using Das clay to look something like the grab loaded wagons visible in photos of Kingswear (which were probably destined for Torquay gasworks, but never mind). The coal is stuck on using Jerry's tip of mixing black acrylic with the PVA which seems to cover up the whiteness of the Das quite nicely.
     
    Left to right we have Welsh, Daw Mill (still without heaps) and Anthracite.
     

     
    I'll probably stick with different coals in different wagons because it's good to have some variety when portraying deliveries to a coal merchant.
     
    Then onto the more boulder sized experiments for loco coal...
     
    At the right hand end we have 3 wagons with mostly unchanged from the last posting - Anthracite, Daw Mill (with extra effort from the hammer) and Welsh.
     
    The two at the left hand end have been subjected to some coatings. The left hand wagon is Anthracite again but coated with Dullcote. This one definitely didn't turn out as expected and has completely lost the grey colour that I was trying to keep, so that'll be a failure. The second one is the original Daw Mill load (with bigger boulders) but painted with a thin wash of Humbrol mid grey enamel. It has made a noticeable difference but the wash tends to collect in the crevices between the coal lumps, so I'm not sure that I'll pursue this method any further. Spraying a thin mist of paint might still be an option but it seems like a bit of a faff.
     
    On the whole I'm preferring the untreated coal - both of the coated ones seem to lose a certain something and are heading back towards uniformity. Which one is best depends a lot on the light. In daylight I prefer the Anthracite but in other lights it can look pretty odd, so maybe the Daw Mill might be the best compromise.
     

  24. D869

    Hawksworth BCK

    By D869,

    After being on the back burner for a while to make way for the completion of D604 and work on the next signal for St Ruth, I finally got round to doing some more on the Ultima Hawksworth BCK that I started in October.
     
    The coach is now ready for the paint shop (I just corrected a typo there - 'pain shop' - quite appropriate really). Although the coach is ready, I don't think it will be going near any paint for a little while - it's too flippin' cold and dark out there.
     
    For the most part, the coach went together in much the same way as the BG did last year. The main differences arise from the fact that this coach is passenger carrying, which means bigger windows to expose the presence or absence of an interior, seats and loos.
     
    As with the BG, I've made the roof removeable and added some nickel silver strips as strengtheners towards the top of the sides. Predictably, this complicates the interior a little but I did at least think ahead and located the centre strip in the area of the division between first and third class.
     
    The interiors are built up on a false floor of 30 thou black plastikard. I used the printed partitions from the kit pretty much as intended (barring some alterations to fit around the strengtheners), stuck together with canopy glue. I added some seats by stealing DavidK71's idea of using coloured paper. Naturally, I had to agonise over the colour for a long time before actually starting though.
     
    As far as I can tell the Hawksworth seats had a woven pattern - fawn on a red background for non smoking and on a dark blue background for smoking. The pattern for first class was much larger than the third class one. Having said that, other photos show Hawksworth coaches with a completely different material so it seems that there were at least two types, possibly related to the use of either wood or formica for the internal panelling.
     
    The third class seats are a dark brown card (from a cheese biscuits box). These are coloured by lightly going over them with felt tips. The pattern is too small to be visible, so I didn't bother. The first class seats use a lighter coloured paper from a buff envelope. These are coloured with felt tips with some attempt to suggest a visible pattern. I think the blue works OK but the red is a bit too light and bright for my liking. The good thing about having a removeable roof is that I can change things if I don't like how they look once the windows and curtains are fitted.
     

     

     
    The loo tanks have been discussed on DavidK71's thread. Checking photos supports the view that the fillers are very much off centre with respect to the tanks. Actually the fillers seem to be on the roof centre line (presumably because that's the highest point otherwise the water would fall out) so perhaps it's more accurate to say that the tanks are very much off centre. The etches in the kit don't have the filler sufficiently off centre, so I made the tanks from 10 thou plastikard… stuck them on… realised the next day that they were on the wrong side… sliced them off, sanded everything down and did it right the second time. The filler is 1.5mm round section fitted into a hole drilled through the tank and roof.
     
    My original plan was to do the loo filler pipes using wire which would be held in holes drilled into the plastic rod used for the filler. I made a start like this but found it was very tricky to get the pipe runs to stay parallel and generally not look messy. I was contemplating how to secure them to the roof ends (as per the prototype) - ideally I wanted to fix them using a sort of mini handrail knob in a drilled hole but I realised that it was going to be tricky to fit these given that there was no room to do any gluing on the underside of the roof because the coach ends were in the way.
     
    In the end I went for DavidK71's dodge and used 10 thou styrene rod. This gave a much neater result and I was so impressed that I extended the same approach onto the coach ends. The result looks a little more two dimensional than wire would but it's a darned sight easier to do a neat job and it also means that the two filler pipes can indeed be separate instead of being one continuous semicircle.
     

     
    I dropped the idea of sprung gangways but after agonising again over the Ultima castings I decided to stick with making my own from black plastikard. Once again these fit into holes cut in the end. Since the BCK can run on its own, at the end of or in the middle of a rake, I wanted to have some options regarding gangway position so at the back of the gangway is a brass wire retaining pin that locates into one of two holes drilled in the floor to allow the gangways to be sloped in the clipped back position or held vertical if being coupled in a rake.
     
    At the moment my plan is to put together another Ultima Hawksworth so that the two can be painted at the same time. As a first step, the Siphon G has now given up its (incorrect) long spring bogies and has been fitted with a pair of the NPCS variety built from my etches. Here's a photo of it next to the Siphon that I built many years ago with scratchbuilt sideframe overlays onto a 2mm Association bogie frame.
     

     
    Finally a view of my entire Hawksworth fleet... excepting the stuff in the gloat box of course.
     

     
    EDIT: A photo of a Collett roof at Buckfastleigh related to my answer to DavidK71's comment

  25. D869
    Progress on St Ruth continues at its usual (ahem) pace. One of the more recent items has been the scenic treatment of the ‘grassy knoll’ (hmm… haven’t I heard that term before?).
     
    The first thing I tried out was surgical lint grass in the Barry Norman approved manner – in this case lint from Superdrug, dyed olive green and then stuck furry side down to the brown-painted landscape. Once the glue is dry, the lint backing is peeled away, hopefully leaving something resembling grass.
     
    The lint method didn’t work too well for us. I’ve used this method successfully on my own micro layout, but all the problems that I have seen before seemed to be worse when I tried it on St Ruth – the overall effect was too thin (I suspect that the Superdrug lint is less furry than the Boots stuff available when Barry wrote his book) and there was rather too much of the Sculptamold landscape texture ripped away along with the backing, no matter how carefully the ripping was done. The picture below shows the result after the glaring white patches of ground had been repainted. Overall, not a conspicuous success.
     



    The other method we were keen to try out was static grass. John has built a DIY applicator from a cheap electric fly swat and a tea strainer. We used this to apply various types of grass fibre to the hill in question after a spreading of PVA. We ended up using neat PVA because the recommended 50/50 mix with water seemed to be too fond of gradually creeping downhill. This was somewhat more successful but we’re not totally happy with the colour of any of the fibres tried.
     





    It’s also pretty obvious where adjacent patches of grass done in different sessions join each other. John has tried a light spraying of paint which seems to tone the colour down somewhat - you can see this in the foreground on the picture below.
     




    I suspect that we will be attacking some of the grass with tweezers and then applying some foliage to cover the more unsightly areas and create a more varied effect – hopefully more like a piece of grassland with some vegetation and less like a bloke with a crew cut and green hair dye. Time will tell…
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