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D869

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  1. D869

    Lowmek

    By D869,

    There hasn't been a great deal to report here recently. It's not that I haven't been doing anything, just that a good deal of it has been kit assembly or repeat builds.
     
    There is one job that I did started shortly after the 2mm Expo that I thought would benefit from a few words here. We were a bit more relaxed at the Expo with mixing and matching locos to different trains. At one point this ad libbing caused us to come unstuck. My Hymek was moved from its usual local passenger turn and put onto the mineral train. It arrived smoothly into the loop and then came to a sudden and mysterious halt. A little investigation revealed the cause - it was too high to go underneath the 3 doll bracket signal that had been installed just before Railex.
     
    The signal had been checked for clearance with various vehicles, but clearly not the Hymek. The fact that Dapol Hymeks are, well, too tall is pretty well known and Jerry Clifford has written a few words about how he improved one of his examples. I'd been intending to do something similar to mine for a long time but had never actually got around to it. I had no intention of modifying the signal, so the Hymek had to get lower.
     
    I read Jerry's description of how he did it. If memory serves, he said that he took out the PCB and also filed the bottom of the cab front panels to allow it to sit lower on the buffer beams. I started to strip my own loco down to see for myself what was needed to make it lower… The PCB came out and the motor wires were soldered to the pickups (see photos). Rather than start filing the body away, I just removed the buffer beams temporarily... No joy.
     

     
    I started to look at what was still propping the body up. I tried taking a couple of the engine bay windows out but that didn't help either. Some investigation with squashing lumps of Blu Tack between the top of the chassis and the body proved that there was loads of headroom over the chassis. After a good deal of rocking the body to see where it was being supported I found that it was the rear of the cab door handrail recesses. These stick out inside the body and their bottoms rest on the 'ledges' at either end of the chassis.
     
    I cleaned up the back of the handrail wire and chamfered the bottom edge of the plastic that surrounded it. I also made a chamfer on the top edge of the chassis (see the picture) to allow the handrail recesses to sit lower down. Success!. At the next group meeting the loco was tested under the bracket signal and it passed with room to spare.
     

     
    Having figured out the answer I then put the whole thing down and worked on other things for a couple of months.
     
    Now we have the Aldershot show this weekend, I thought it was about time that the Hymek went back together. There was still one job remaining though - I hadn't done anything about the buffer beams (other than removing them).
     
    My answer for the buffer beams is a bit different to Jerry's. I wanted to fix the buffer beam to the body rather than having it glued to the chassis and then modify the chassis to let the whole lot sit lower down. I first used a sharpened screwdriver as a chisel/crowbar to undo the Dapol glued joints and detach the buffer beam from the lighting surround and PCB. The coupling hook also had to go otherwise it would foul the DG coupling. The photo below shows the buffer beam stripped into its component parts and also how Dapol intended it to fit onto the chassis.
     

     
    I did a little bit of filing to the bottom edge of the cab front but only enough to allow the buffer beam to sit snugly where it should. The two central 'lugs' were cut off the buffer beam. The buffer beam was then glued to the body with Formula 560 Canopy Glue (this is my default glue for lots of jobs now), adjusted for the correct alignment and then left to dry before adding more glue to strengthen the job.
     
    Attaching the buffer beam to the body now means that you can't drop the body onto the chassis. There are two answers to this. My first answer was (after masking the moving parts of the chassis) to file away a rectangular chunk from the front corner of the chassis - see the shiny parts of the chassis in the photo below.
     

     
    While doing the second corner and congratulating myself on how careful I was being not to break the brittle Mazak chassis moulding… it snapped. So… method 1 is to be more careful than I was so that you don't snap off the end of the chassis. I then convinced myself that I had brilliantly invented method 2 and it was the better way because it avoided the risk of getting metal filings into the mechanism completely. I took some chunky wire cutters and cut off the opposite 'ledge' that I had managed to file without snapping. This also removes the need to file the chamfers to allow the cab handrail recesses to sit lower down. The disadvantage of this method is that the height control for the body moves elsewhere and is less easy to adjust. I think it is now the engine bay glazing but I'm not 100% sure. A small amount was also shaved from the bottom of the buffer beams to ensure that the body was not resting on the top of the DG coupling. Naturally it will also make it more difficult to re-fit the lighting unit if I ever decide to do that.
     
    The stats - before I started I measured the height as 28.5mm. The correct height should be 12.88 ft which scales to 26.55mm in 'N' scale. After all of the surgery so far it is now down to 27.25mm. Here's how it looks now.
     

     
    Incidentally, for the benefit of those DCC types… I think that there is probably enough room between the chassis and the body to leave the PCB in place. I now have some wires in the way though so I have not actually tried it.
     
    This is not the finished article yet but its appearance is much improved and I think it will be turning a wheel at the Aldershot show in its current state. If my theory about the engine bay windows is correct then it might be possible to lose another 0.5mm or so but I am undecided about whether that's a good idea. In any case it will involve taking out all of the windows so is definitely a job for another day. Once I'm happy that no further surgery is required then I might finally get around to weathering it.
     
    Edit: here's the front(ish) photo that Jerry asked for. Shows up the less than perfect paintwork around the windscreens nicely doesn't it?
     

  2. D869

    Pure Class (B)

    By D869,

    Some prototypes are just too much for we mere mortals to resist, even if we can’t completely justify them…
     

     
    This is a Stephen Harris 35T GLW class ‘B’ tank that I’ve been working on (very slowly) over the summer. My original plan was to build three class ‘A’s and one class ‘B’. I thought I’d do the class ‘B’ first as a one-off.
     
    While there is plenty of evidence of 35T class ‘A’ Esso tanks in Cornwall, I have not seen any photos of class ‘B’ tanks so had no good reason to splash out on a class 'B' kit or (even less) a set of transfers for four class 'B's but I do think that the photos of them when new looks rather more striking than the class ‘A’ so I could not resist building one. I like to think of it as a tribute to the Airfix kit and the artwork on the box. There’s also a nice photo of a very new looking D601 pulling a whole train of these (also looking very new) in Bradford Barton’s ‘BR Diesel Miscellany’. I have no plans to build a whole train of them though.
     
    There is not a vast amount to say about the build – Stephen provides very comprehensive instructions including photos. There is a lot of work to do but nothing particularly difficult – in fact the kit goes together very nicely and is a pleasure to build.
     
    I did of course find a few niggles. Stephen has provided for both of the prototype orientations of the ladder with respect to the chassis. I’ve used the Cambridge Custom Transfers sheet which only provides numbers for the earlier tanks so I had no choice about ladder orientation. This showed up a few things that needed me to go ‘off piste’ (even allowing for the multiple options provided in the etch).
     
    Firstly I could not get the correct arrangement of the brake changeover lever, ‘V’ hanger and bottom discharge pipe shown in photos of the real thing so I had to remove the changeover lever plate and reposition it.
     
    Then I noticed that the class ‘B’ tanks have some plumbing on the bottom of one tank end, possibly for heating the contents while unloading. The prototype (3300) has a very chunky looking piece of kit there but later vehicles have a fairly simple horizontal pipe that looks a bit like a handrail with what might be a small ‘T’ piece in the middle. I have a photo of 3331 when brand new that shows that it has the smaller pipe. 3328 is coupled next to it so hopefully I’m safe with 3329 having the same arrangement.
     
    Finally the dimples in the tank top which provide guides for drilling for the catwalk supports invite you to fit the catwalk the wrong way around for the early class ‘B’s. Naturally I drilled the holes by following the dimples and only found out quite late in the build that the ladder should be closest to the bottom discharge handwheel rather than the filler hatch. It was a fairly simple matter to drill new holes for the two centre supports in the right place and fill the other two with superglue.
     
    The above issues were very minor. This must rate as one of the best kits that I’ve put together.
     
    And then we come to painting and lettering…
     
    I’m intending for this to be nice and clean as in the early photos so the whole thing was sprayed with Humbrol satin black in the hope of providing a better foundation (than matt) for the transfers. The finish came out very well but I still found that the transfers showed a lot more silvering than I was happy with. Black bodywork turns out to be very unforgiving of decal imperfections. As I intended to use Tamiya varnish, I’d avoided the Microscale fixing solutions and stuck to water (as also recommended in the CCT instructions). I tried to resolve the silvering by brushing well thinned Tamiya varnish around the transfer edges before the spray coat of Varnish went on. This helped but the big transfers with the long company name still show some silvering. Maybe I’ll spray the tank (but not the chassis) with gloss paint next time around too.
     
    Due to some changes of plan involving a couple of ‘extra’ chassis etches that I bought I now have one more class ‘B’ to build (as well as four class ‘A’s instead of three). Next time I will opt for a completely Microscale strategy for the decal fixing using Microset, possibly Microsol if the transfers don’t behave at the first attempt and finally their satin lacquer. Somehow while on the phone to Stephen for a second class ‘B’ tank body I also managed to buy one of his 45T GLW tank kits. Oh well.
     
    I’ve also finished and painted the two mineral wagons that I started in Italy and also painted another one that has been languishing for years waiting for the paint brush. While doing the couplings I also took pity on a 12T van that has been floating around unloved since I stole its couplings a while ago for another vehicle that needed some in extreme haste.
     

  3. D869

    Reducing Gloatage 2

    By D869,

    We set St Ruth up yesterday to test some recent work and get some photos that we've promised to exhibition managers using the layout's own lighting.
     
    I also took the opportunity to get a move on and finish painting a couple of vehicles that I've been working on.
     
    I mentioned the Thompson BG here a little while ago. This has now been painted in unlined Precision maroon. I didn't make any attempt to lighten the colour on this occasion because colour photos of maroon parcels vans in service often shows them looking very dark. I did the painting during the recent hot weather which caused a few problems - even though I'd thinned the paint to the usual consistency the maroon paint looked more like pebbledashing because it was drying before hitting the coach. I was able to rescue things by spraying a coat of thinners to re-wet the paint. Unfortunately while doing so I also managed to make the thing fall over so one side had to be rubbed down and resprayed.
     

     
    The other vehicle is a Siphon G. This started out as a secondhand Lima model from eBay. These received good reviews when first released - the body is a good representation of the prototype and dimensionally pretty accurate. The snag is that pretty much everything below the bottom of the solebar is hopeless - heavy handed battery boxes and truss rods and bogies that are probably best described as shrunken BR1s - certainly nothing like GW pressed steel bogies. The gangways are also a pretty strange shape. Here's a photo of the Siphon. I'm not quite sure what's going on at road level though.
     

     
    The solebars themselves are very good so the chassis was rectified by using a piercing saw to remove the entire 'floor' just leaving the solebars and headstocks as an empty rectangular frame. New plastikard floor pieces were then added to mount the bogie pivots, battery boxes etc. The truss rods should have been from Ultima but I managed to order the wrong size so they were scratchbuilt. The bogies are from the 2mm Association but not quite right for the Siphon - they should have shorter springs and small footsteps. I intend to replace them one day and reuse the coach bogies under some Hawksworths. New gangways were fabricated from 15 and 20 thou black plastikard.
     
    I decided it was time for another blue vehicle after the recent run of maroon ones. Transfers for both vehicles are from resurrected Woodhead sheets. I was a bit worried about how the blank sides of the Thompson BG would look - they certainly looked very stark just after painting but I'm quite pleased with the outcome now that the lettering and handrails are in place. Finding lettering for the Siphon was a bit of a challenge and the result is probably best described as a close approximation. Many of them carried the branding 'Siphon G' in the centre of the sides but I didn't have anything suitable. My chosen vehicle (W2800W) did not have this branding by the time of a late 1970s photo, so there is at least some excuse for leaving it off.
     
    Both vehicles will go into St Ruth's mail train. This train is not an accurate representation of the Great Western TPO because two of the necessary types of TPO are not available. Instead it is somewhat closer to the formation of 1M99 which ran later in the day and carried a single TPO (from Plymouth) and lots of vans as well as passenger vehicles. In our reality the train stands in for the Great Western TPO.
     
    Here's a slightly wider view of the front end of our mail train. I don't know whether Thompson BGs were ever used in this way but they certainly look the part.
     

     
    I also took the opportunity while the layout was set up to photograph the sleeper train in context.
     

     
    EDIT: Some pictures of the chassis of the Siphon as requested by DonW. I also included the one that I built about 20 years ago. This has the old 2mm Association compensated bogies. I de-compensated mine by soldering strips across each end because that was the only way I could stop the wheels falling out. You can also compare my scratchbuilt sideframes on the old bogies with the etched ones - the older ones have the correct length springs and the smaller footboards as used on parcels stock. The older Siphon is in a sort of indeterminate dark reddish shade - if memory serves it is a mix of crimson and mucky brown but it looks more like maroon... this vehicle must have the record for being the most overdue for some lettering but I had no Siphon branding then and I still have none now.
     



  4. D869
    I was going to find some modern marketing speak for 'digging up the track' but the language used by the real railway is now so far detached from reality that I decided against it.
     
    As most readers will know, St Ruth is 'based on' Penzance but exactly how far that goes is rather flexible. Starting from the pre-1938 track plan, the very first departure from reality that we made was to add a headshunt to the goods yard and then continue this along the sea wall as a goods loop. This has been very successful in allowing operation to continue in the yard without interfering with trains on the main line as well as making life easier for arriving and departing goods trains.
     
    So... we're going to change it.
     
    No, we're not going back to a strict adherence to the pre-1938 plan. Instead we are stealing a little bit of the post-1938 layout in this area. The new plan will still have a loop (which will double as a headshunt) but we will reverse the crossover that provides access to the loop at the 'up' end.
     
    Why would we want to do that?
     
    Well, it allows some prototypical empty coaching stock moves that we currently can't do. The real thing (both before and after 1938) had the ability to push empty coaches back out of the platforms and into a siding on the sea wall called the 'sea siding'. After 1938 there were two of them (called the long one and the short one). We only have room for one (like the pre-38 plan) but we will keep the loop line between the sea siding and the goods yard (like the post-38 plan).
     
    The work on this started several months back - the new control panel diagram and the starting signals that cover moves over the scissors crossover already assume that the sea siding is there but we've always had things coming up that have put us off actually making the trackwork changes. Nobody has complained about the rather spurious extra signal arms. Now we plan to make the changes before the next show (Aldershot in October). Here are some photos of the new crossover on my workbench. It's built with the now discontinued 'Easiline' chairplate system to match the rest of St Ruth's track... with thanks to several people who sent me their left over stocks of chairplates.
     

     
    The template was done in a slightly convoluted way. First I took a paper 'brass rubbing' of the track. Then I left this in my bag for several weeks. With the next meeting approaching I finally got round to plotting the curves out in CAD by measuring the XY coordinates using a ruler and then joining the dots. I did an initial rough stab at drawing the pointwork using the same CAD templates that we used for the rest of the track before finally deciding that Templot might be a much better bet for drawing curved pointwork. The original CAD tracing was then loaded into Templot and used to locate and 'bend' the templates for the new points at our last meeting.
     
    The resulting template is pretty rough and ready because there was no time (or expertise) to sort out niceties like correcting the sleeper spacing but having printed it and checked it against the real track, that became the template for the job.
     
    All being well the saws and scrapers will be out to do some serious track modifications at our next meeting on Tuesday. We need to make a gap for the new crossover just east of the scissors and (hopefully) slot it into place. Then we need to rip out the original crossover which is even further to the east and replace this with some plain track, plus shift the point motors and associated gubbins. The job will also entail moving one of the signals - naturally it's the route indicating home signal with call-on arm - the one with 5 servos underneath. I will probably use the opportunity to fit some beefier wires to this signal because it does have a tendency to get stuck.
     
    Another job (later) will be to have another crack at the 3 doll starter bracket for the scissors. This was fitted in time for Railex earlier this year but the 3 foot arm that covers the sea siding shunt never quite worked properly once the thing was painted - not too big a problem when it covered a move over a non-existent crossover.
     
    Finally of course we need to re-jig some of the empty stock moves in the operating sequence and figure out how to arrive and depart good trains from the already cramped goods yard without using the loop.
     
    UPDATE:
     
    We've passed the point of no return now I didn't quite get as much done as I had hoped tonight though...
     

     
    I also found a couple of photos on my camera that I took during the earlier stages of the build and then forgot about so thought I'd add them so that you can check out my hi-tech crossing soldering jig.
     

  5. D869

    Made in Italy

    By D869,

    Just back from my summer hols during which we spent a couple of weeks in Italy.
     
    As relaxation was definitely on the agenda I thought it reasonable to take along a few modelling bits just in case the opportunity presented itself. Most days were spent playing with the traffic on the Italian autostradas to tick off the usual Tuscan destinations but I managed to grab a couple of spells on our quieter days while the other members of the family were keeping out of the heat and struggling to find something comprehensible to them among the hundreds of Italian language channels on the telly.
     
    I took the precaution of buying up some plastic mineral wagon kits at the recent Expo because these can usually be relied on to keep me gainfully employed - having just enough work involved in thinning the sides and converting them all to top doors to provide some challenge while not being too big to show some visible progress.
     
    Sharp implements were not too much of an issue provided that they were suitably protected and put into the checked luggage. The bigger challenge was polystyrene solvent - as far as I can see this is a complete no-no in either hand baggage or checked luggage so I had to be more creative.
     
    My answer was to try to figure out (before leaving the UK) how Italians might stick plastic kits together, print off a picture along with some suitable words prepared using Google translate. Said picture was then presented at an Italian modelling emporium and surprisingly produced the goods in return for a modest financial outlay.
     
    The above process was rather complicated by the Italian idea of a lunch break. This seems to consist of a variable period of time, usually at least 3 hours between midday and 4PM... plus they have Monday mornings off too. The Italian lunch break was rather a challenge for the whole trip really, not just for modelling emporiums.
     
    Unfortunately after getting hold of the Tamiya stuff I found that I didn't really like it - it is not pure solvent but rather a mix of 88% solvent and 12% resin so it leaves a visible residue behind and doesn't flow into joints using capillary action like normal solvent does. The other big snag I found with it was that the resin had completely gummed up the brush I was using after a fairly short spell of use. In the end I assembled just one body this way before deciding to bring the remainder home unassembled. I'd still quite like to know for future reference whether normal solvent is available in Italy and other European countries.
     
    My 'workbench' and travelling toolkit in its landscape context.

     
    A close up of the one assembled wagon plus the essential fluids required for its construction.

     
    A couple of other items of interest that I came across on my travels...
     
    The shunter was attached to a work train parked at Porta al Prato station in Florence.

     
    The MU was passing under a medieval bridge that we were visiting near to Bagni de Lucca.

  6. D869

    Handle with Care

    By D869,

    Fresh off the workbench (as usual, that means almost but not quite finished!) in time for ExpoFest.
     
    These two probably don't quite sit well together... geographically they both carried loads to or from the Hayle Wharf branch but the Esso tanks appear in late 1950s photos and the Bromine tanks around 1970.
     
    The 14T class A tank is a 2mm Association kit with Alclad paint (thanks to Mark 46444 for the tip) and Cambridge Custom Transfers.
     
    The Bromine tank is my own 3d print sat on a Parkwood Lowfit on a 2mm Association chassis. It's fair to say that this one is based on rather sketchy information in the form of less than ideal 1970s photos and some (hopefully) informed guesswork based on a slightly different design of tank for which a query on the RMWeb prototype questions forum managed to track down a drawing.
     
    They still need some paint in places to touch in those securing chains and the places where the crud coloured enamel has rubbed off the Alclad while I was assembling the thing but I wanted to grab a photo while there was still some daylight. The 14T tank also needs its hold-down straps adding, but that will need to wait until after the Expo.
  7. D869
    The latest of the coaches that made it to Railex but weren't quite finished is now done… barring the usual few bits waiting for some crud coloured paint.
     
    To recap for those just joining the story, this is a Fleetline kit bought in the 1980s which has languished in my gloat box ever since. The kit has been assembled mostly 'as intended' except for discarding every whitemetal part (including the coach ends) and replacing with Plastikard.
    I suspect that some readers may have been expecting me to finish this in blue/grey but looking critically at the etched sides I decided that they did not look quite right in terms of the window proportions and spacing so I decided to resort to a slightly different vehicle that really has different window proportions, namely the prototype Mark 2 FK W13252. Use of the present tense is deliberate, because happily it has been preserved on the Mid Norfolk Railway. Having gone for the prototype instead of the production model it wasn't much of a further step to paint it maroon. I could have done the same with a production FK, with the exception (I think) of the rather natty grey underframe.
     

     
    EDIT: I just noticed that one of the '1's has come off the door on the compartment side
     
    The kit comes with no interior so I decided to make my own. At the time I started it the moulded seating was unavailable so I got my own seating made using 3d printing. This has the advantage of being made to the correct width so there is no mucking about cutting it to length. The interior itself has a floor of 15 thou black plastikard and partitions cut from 20 thou white plastikard. I considered printing the corridor partition on acetate but I didn't have any of the right stuff for my printer, which in any case is playing up at the moment so I decided it would be just as quick to do it the old fashioned way. I cheated a bit by cutting every opening all of the way to the top and then adding a separate strip across the top, which is where the pelmet for the sliding door would be.
     

     
    The thickness of the clear sides of Fleetline kits makes them less than ideal for interior detail partly because there is less room available than there ought to be and partly because they cause a prismatic effect that distorts the view of the interior. The first problem is solved by making the whole interior narrower than it should be. The second was solved (partly at least) by removing the passengers after I took the photos because they made the distortion really obvious. Still it wouldn't be the first empty first class coach that I've ever seen. The curtains are cigarette paper coloured with watercolour and then stuck inside the glazing.
     
    The paint job was… err… entertaining and having decided on maroon it was a case of 'in for a penny'. I experimented by trying to get thinner lines than on previous coaches and this worked really well. Wrapping the lining around the ends was a bit of a conundrum. In the end I used the bow compass to offset from the buffer cowling underneath each corner. This idea would have worked really well if I'd planned it earlier - then I could have made sure that the cowling was actually properly level so that it would have made a better datum. As it is some of the corner lines are less than 100% level and a bit wobbly in places but I'm quite pleased… at least with the better corners anyway. The transfers are Modelmaster from the NGS, except for the OHLE flashes which are Fox.
     
    The real W13252 started life allocated to the 'Bristolian' with occasional weekend trips to Weston. I was thinking that I needed a hefty dose of modeller's licence to run this at St Ruth but it ran at Railex anyway… and then in answer to a question on the BRCS Yahoo group yesterday I found out otherwise. This turned up a photo on the rail-online web site that shows D1000 in maroon entering Plymouth from the west with W13252 as the second coach in the train. The headcode indicates the Cornish Riviera around 1965 so it seems that I need no modeller's licence whatsoever. As a bonus, the first and fourth vehicles are Hawksworth SKs so we also have a nice contrast between modern styling 1940s style and modern styling 1960s style.
  8. D869
    With a little less time pressure, I thought I'd take the time to write a catch-up installment of the account of Grenville's build.
     
    We left things with the windscreen frames and most of the front end ironwork fitted but with a remaining question mark over the access panels on the cab sides.
    To finish off the ends, the lower lamp brackets were sliced off and used as a guide to drill 0.5mm holes. Into these holes were pushed some brackets cut from 5 thou N/S strip… these are probably a lot easier to make than they sound. Then a couple of squares of plastikard were added to represent the parts of the brackets that are flat against the nose.
     
    And so to the access panels… after some indecision I decided to bite the bullet and try to improve these. I wasn't too keen on trying Milliput here so instead I filled the Farish grooves with some 10 thou round styrene rod after first scoring the inside of the grooves to expose the plastic. After leaving these for 24 hours to set I scraped and sanded them smooth. New panels were added using 5 thou plastikard sheet using the outline of the original panels as a guide. The result is far less obtrusive than Farish's interpretation but I will probably use 10 thou next time and thin it once dry because there is some bubbling on some of the 5 thou panels.
     
    The cab side window frames fitted quickly with very minor fettling of the plastic. Normally I find cutting the glazing (from 10 thou clear sheet) rather a time consuming job but with the frames separated from the body it's pretty straightforward, although the windscreens still took some time and care due to their almost complete lack of straight lines. I test fitted all of the glazing by using an amazing (and environmentally friendly) temporary glue that I discovered. It's called spit and it does an excellent job of holding things in place for long enough to check the fit.
     

     
    Looking at the Farish skirts, I'd say that one side is better than the other. The asymmetric side looks pretty reasonable but things are a bit more suspect on the other side. On this side I drilled and filed away the opening containing the fillers because these are very two dimensional. I also used the styrene rod trick to fill in the panel grooves on either end of the central skirt but left the battery box covers alone. I also fitted the front ends of the skirts that come in the box with the loco.
     

     
    The cab interiors needed some attention. Farish seem to have got the general shape right but they have made the top edge of the control console about 1mm too low so it is not very visible through the windows in the way that is so characteristic of the real thing. I solved this by adding 40 thou plastikard to the top of the Farish moulding and filing to shape. I also added some plastikard to make the face of the secondman's console vertical (which it certainly is in the photos of Greyhound kindly provided by Brian Hanson). The seats are too high and too far forward so I chopped them off and just added a representation of the top of the seat back which is more or less in line with the back edge of the side windows. Finally the drivers console is a bit undersized but rather than scrap the whole thing I extended the rear edge a little towards the crew using some microstrip. The console and rear bulkhead were painted light grey with black for the false floor. Some of the 'controls' were then picked out using a fine tipped black marker. I thought I'd taken some photos of these before I glued them back in but I was wrong.
     
    And so to the paint shop…
     
    Some will have read most of this sorry tale elsewhere already.
     
    After unsuccessfully trying meths and T-Cut to shift the painted on nameplates I eventually resorted to 1200 grit wet or dry on one side. I left the other side alone after figuring out that the etched plates would cover it anyway.
     
    The whole body was then given a scrub (using gloves) with dilute Flash and an old toothbrush, followed by a further scrub under the hot tap. The body was then mounted using Blu-Tack on a suitably shaped block of wood for painting.
     
    I have rather an aversion to yellow paint due to its poor coverage so I decided to take a short cut with the warning panels. I just masked off the shape using Tamiya tape after checking which shape was correct for Grenville (it had a fairly rounded top with higher corners rather than the variant that rises to a more obvious 'point' under the central headboard bracket).
     
    In spite of not actually needing to, I removed the headcode inserts before painting. This was probably a mistake because it damaged the fine beading around the opening on one end and needed some touching up of the yellow. Some yellow painting was of course needed around the new lamp brackets.
     
    I was also very keen to avoid filling the fine roof detail with paint so I also masked off the roof panel… I probably won't do this again.
     
    The whole lot was then sprayed with Precision BR green (no messing with the colour this time) and I was very pleased with the finish achieved when the tape came off.
    After 48 hours drying I masked around the roof panels and sprayed Humbrol 27. The first two bits of masking tape came away just fine but then disaster struck. On peeling back the tape from the first body side a whole lot of the green paint came away with it. Because the green had a masked edge it also pulled away some of the edge of the grey paint on the roof panels. You can read all about this over on the painting forum.
     
    I decided to try to fix it by some careful sanding to feather the edges of the remaining green paint (which didn't really want to be feathered), brushing in the small damaged areas of grey and then (after drying) masking the roof and ends and respraying the damaged area from directly above. The result was better than I had hoped. You can still see some of the damage if you look hard for it under strong lighting but you would not notice it unless you knew where to look. I think it was a better bet than a full strip down and respray. There was also some matting of the sides from overspray but (after more drying) a rub with a cotton bud improved matters.
     
    The photo below shows the side that was repaired. Most of the upper part of the side at this end was showing rail blue before the repair. I really must brush the dust off things before getting the camera out though.
     

     
    The lining was done with a Haff ruling pen. Dealing with the line ends was a bit of a puzzle. On the class 22 and 41 I just drew the line a bit over length and then chopped off the ends by painting over it in green but I was less keen on that approach with more prominent waist level lining. Instead I tried putting a 2mm vertical strip of masking tape lined up on the handrail recess to define the ends. This worked reasonably well but did disturb the pen a little at the ends of the line so I think I might look for another approach in future.
     
    The numbers were done with CCT transfers (as used on D604). I must admit that I'm not too happy with these. They seem a bit 'fuzzy' compared to other transfers but they are still the least bad green diesel numbers that I have now that the Woodhead ones have pretty much run out (in comparison, some of the numbers on the Fox sheet are barely legible). I might order some Modelmaster ones now that I've joined the N Gauge Society and see if they are better. The BR crests are from a Woodhead sheet and the OHLE flashes are from Fox. After problems with fogging the varnish on previous builds I avoided using Micro Set on the transfers and stuck to plain water… which left the transfer carrier edges looking very obvious, especially on the numbers which also showed some silvering.
     
    Once the transfers were dry the whole thing was sprayed with Tamiya varnish. Given the dodgy appearance of the transfers and the previous problems with paint fragility I opened up on it rather more than usual so the loco is now pretty shiny and will need some careful toning down when it comes to weathering. As expected, avoiding the Micro Set meant that I had no issues with fogging of the varnish.
     
    The windscreen frames were cleaned with a fibreglass brush and then sprayed with Halfords primer followed by Precision BR Green. Once dry the paint was carefully scraped away from the window frames, including the inside edges. The side window frames were left completely unpainted.
     
    Assembly
     
    Most of the reassembly process was (in the immortal words of the Haynes manual) 'the reverse of removal'. The tricky bit was fitting those windscreens. I was in two minds about how best to do this. In the end I tried both ways. Both are pretty darned difficult.
     
    The first way is to glue the glazing to the frame before it goes onto the loco. I did this by fitting the glazing 'dry' and then adding spots of canopy glue to fix it in place. Getting the glazing to stay in place was very fiddly this way and I didn't get it positioned quite accurately enough. The result was that the whole assembly was a slightly less than perfect fit onto the hole on the loco body.
     
    For the other end I tried the other option - fitting the frames to the body first and then fitting the glazing from behind. This was also very tricky and I needed to trim the glazing a bit further to make it fit so clearly either my test fitting before painting was wrong or else there was enough paint and glue to mess up the fit after assembly.
    For both ends the frames were fixed in place by running some super glue along the join on the corner pillars. I am intending to tidy this up with green paint but I haven't got round to doing that yet. I also added some spots of Canopy glue from inside the cab to give some support in the middle of the frames. Adding some plastikard cubes to support the centre pillar before painting might have been a better bet but I forgot to do it (this would probably rule out the 'frames first' assembly option too).
     
    For the side windows I tried a third way - putting tiny spots of Canopy Glue onto the corners of the frames (off the loco) and then carefully dropping the glazing into position. I think this was a better option and the side windows went in very easily indeed.
     
    Handrails were done using Albion Alloys 0.2mm N/S rod as recommended to me in the discussion on part 1 of the build. This looks a lot better than 10 thou N/S wire… although it is surprisingly stiff and a bit tricky to form into a curve.
     
    The cab handrails are factory fitted wire jobs so these were carefully scraped clear of paint.
     
    Couplings were rather a pain. The quick and easy answer (as I've done on my other Warships) is to leave the front skirts off and glue some DGs to the top of the Farish coupling mount. As I've fitted the front skirts to Grenville I decided to do it properly. Unless I've misunderstood something I can't see a way to have the front skirts on without attacking the bogie mouldings with a knife, so that's what I did. The DGs are soldered to some 15 thou brass strip which is bent to pass below the skirts and super glued to the bottom of the bogie keeper (after scoring both surfaces). The hard part is making this strip so that the coupling sits in the right place in all three planes. I was a bit worried about the strength of the glued joint but after trying unsuccessfully to shift one that I wasn't completely happy with I decided that they were probably strong enough.
     
    The final job on the night before RailEx was to fit the nameplates… and I managed to mess one of them up when trying to clean up the etch tabs so Grenville appeared at the show with just one nameplate on the public side. I think I was treating them like nickel silver… which they are not. They are stainless steel and a lot harder. I picked up another set of plates at RailEx where Brian Hanson recommended sharp scissors as the best way to separate the nameplates from the etch.
     
    Still to do
     
    There are a few jobs left. I still have the red route availability dots to add. The main job is weathering. I intend to keep this fairly light - some crud on the skirts and sooty deposits on the upper surfaces. I found a photo of Grenville in November 65 which shows the paintwork in pretty good nick but with a fair bit of road spray on the lower parts of the bodywork. It's always summer on my railways, so I will skip the road spray.
     
    I'm pondering the ride height. It does look a bit tall so I don't think that a little bit of lowering would go amiss. I haven't looked to see how feasible it is yet though.
    Apart from that the only other things missing are some fillers to go in that hole in the skirt - another job that didn't quite get done before Railex.
     
    So What?
     
    This has been a very experimental build and one which I fully intend to do again because there is plenty of scope for more D800s in my fleet. I am very pleased with the appearance of the new window frames but the fit of the windscreen frames has room for improvement - partly this needs some small adjustments to the curve of the bottom of the etch and partly I think it's a matter of being a bit more bold in filing back the front edges of the corner pillars to allow the frames to fit a little further back into the recess.
     
    I'm also intending to try out a 'minimalist' upgrade on Hermes to see what can be achieved in a shorter space of time and without resorting to major paintwork (or put it another way… I don't have any way to replace those ship's crests on the cab sides).
     
    As evidence of my lack of forward thinking, the next 'full' upgrade is planned to be on another maroon 'Druid' (picked up brand new for a very reasonable price) which I intend to respray into… blue.
  9. D869

    St Ruth at RailEx

    By D869,

    Just back from RailEx with St Ruth all packed away safely. It was a very enjoyable show and an excellent mix of layouts to look at.
     
    St Ruth behaved itself and performed well, including the new operators (Ian and Stephen). All four signals kept working for both days which is good news given our lack of mileage with them (and particularly the servo drives). The route indicator decided not to play on Saturday but was persuaded back into action today and was fine after that. I think that the new screens displaying info about the schedule were well received. By coincidence, St Merryn were also giving the first outing to a display screen explaining their operations to the public. There were a few minor niggles but I can't really think of any major problems and we certainly got plenty of positive comments from a knowledgeable audience.
     
    Some photos... as usual not exactly comprehensive coverage.
     
    Getting the legs levelled. Apparently the Stoke Mandeville floor is very level so in the end we used a ruler to set all of our adjustable feet to the same height.

     
    Blurry photo of me fitting the signal that was only finished the previous day. Not my best side really.

     
    Us in the RailEx hall. Jerry's Tucking Mill was the next layout along and Fencehouses behind us. With the Association stand we had quite a 2mm island going on.

     
    The late Phil Kerr's KGV got an outing late this afternoon... appropriately with one of my Hawksworths in tow.

     
    And I couldn't really leave without a taking some photos of the latest two items to make it out of my paint shop.

     
    I didn't get out much but did manage to get a shot of Bucks Hill's remarkable backscene.

  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. D869
    In a scandalous misuse of the limited time remaining before Railex, Jackie and I took the Cheltenham Flyer from Tyseley to Paddington and Back with 'Castle' class 'Earl of Mount Edgcumbe'.
     
    The run was superb - a storming ascent of Sapperton and some fast running in both directions on the main line. 40 minutes early into Paddington and then an hour early back to Gloucester. A shame that NR couldn't find us an earlier path back to Brum so we all had to sit in Gloucester for an extra hour forlornly hoping that we would get underway.
     
    Cream crackered now - very long day.
     
    Pics from me. Vids from other folks.
     

    Waiting to leave Gloucester this morning
     


    I can't really call this 'old and new'. How about... 'old and very old' at the buffers. I haven't checked, but I wonder which has had the longer time in main line service.
     

    Back in Gloucester this evening.
     
    A couple of vids on Sapperton and one on the main line.



  13. D869

    Licence to Model

    By D869,

    Things are pretty hectic right now getting stuff that we have planned finished in time for Railex but here's a little photo taken at a recent meeting.
     

     
    Those longer in the tooth may remember this loco on our old group layout 'Helsby Tumill and Haddon'. It was built from a Foxhunter kit by the late Phil Kerr, a member of the Midland Area Group, talented modeller and a very helpful chap too. I think that Phil also did the masters for the kit (he definitely did the masters for the A1 kit). As far as I know Brian Badger did the paintwork.
     
    The loco has recently been passed to the group for safekeeping so it may make the occasional appearance at St Ruth in violation of any weight restrictions on the Royal Albert Bridge. Oh well, at least it's not a Shay.
     
    I posed the photo thinking that it would make a nice little scene, but I rather forgot that it means that you can't see the running gear.
  14. 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
  15. 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.
  16. 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.
     

  17. 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.
  18. D869

    To The Manor Born - Part 2

    By D869,

    A quick update on the Manor...
     
    The crossheads and conn rods are now fitted... and remarkably the loco still runs well.
     

     
    This doesn't look like a vast amount of progress, but there was some tricky work involved... especially for someone who has never built a steam loco before.
     
    I found assembling the crossheads pretty tricky, largely because their final 'I' shape means that there is no obvious place to apply the soldering iron to get a good 'flow' when you get to the last stage. I did one by trying to run solder in from the edges and the other by pre-tinning the layers. Both ways worked eventually but neither was easy and I had a layer come adrift and need refixing in both cases.
     
    It's not practical to fit the conn rods without biting the bullet and actually soldering on the washers to the front crankpins. Until these are filed flat there is not enough room for the pins to clear the conn rods... regular steam loco builders please excuse me for stating the bleeding obvious.
     
    I used the oily Rizla paper trick to solder up the crankpin washers. This worked OK on the first crosshead pivot but I managed to solder the second one up solid by putting too much heat in. I had to dismantle the thing again (which caused one layer to come off and need resoldering), fit a new pivot pin because the previous one was nicely tinned and have another go. At the second attempt I erred on the side of less heat and solder and things were fine.
     
    This evening I fitted the front and rear crankpin washers, all of which went well. I had to fiddle with some washers behind the coupling rods because the centre driver balance weights have a raised section and so need some clearance behind the rods. For some reason one wheel was OK with a single washer but the other side needed more room. Using two washers was too much so I had to rub a washer on some wet and dry to reduce it to 5 thou.
     
    The conn rods are still held on with insulation sleeving so that I can take them off again.
     
    Yesterday we had the main boards of St Ruth out to figure out the plan for signal controls. While it was out I took the opportunity to give the Manor a spin (sans crossheads). It seems to go through the points pretty well. The loco had its bogie fitted for this test and I was expecting trouble. I got some trouble but not quite what I expected. It ran fine with the bogie leading but for some reason when running tender first the bogie seems to like to derail on points and pull the rest of the loco off with it. On the whole the bogie is quite unconstrained (even more so than the Ixion original) so I'm going to put my thinking cap on and try to devise a different pivot arrangement that will impart a little weight and some guidance to the bogie.
  19. D869

    Off my Workbench

    By D869,

    Some folks may have seen several episodes describing this under construction on the workbench thread in the 2mm forums. Last night it was planted on the layout and given a quick test.
     
    All seems to be working OK.
     

     
    Which frees up my signal building board for the next one... plenty more to do!
     
    We also have some new buildings... must try to get my camera and the buildings to be in the same place at the same time.
  20. D869

    Merry Christmas

    By D869,

    Seasons Greetings from all at the Midland Area Group of the 2mm Scale Association.
     
    Hope to see some of you at our next outing - Railex in May, if not sooner.
  21. 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

  22. D869
    D604 is now ready for traffic. I'd like to say 'finished' but I suspect that some further attention to the chassis paintwork may still be needed.
     
    There was one body detail issue that needed to be sorted - I was not too happy with the empty rectangular vent openings in the roof. After trying to find prototype photos to figure out how to make them more realistic I noticed that they were only visible as openings in early photos of D600 and D601. Later roof photos of these and roof photos of D602 onwards are quite hard to find and not totally clear, but it was clear that these holes had been plated over on the whole fleet. This would have been easy to fix before painting but not now. Correcting it involved cutting some 5 thou nickel silver to fit snugly inside the holes and then a second slightly larger piece to overlap. Both were then curved to the roof profile and soldered together. Cleaning and painting such tiny bits of metal was a challenge, but after doing this the completed blanking pieces were glued in place. I'm a lot happier with these than I was with the empty rectangular holes.
     
    The main items missing at the AGM were the completed bogies. These are now done and painted and on the loco. Painting was done (after degreasing) using Halfords grey primer and Humbrol enamels. Putting the bogies back onto the loco proved to be enough to dislodge some of the paint from the raised ribs on the bogie sideframes, so I suspect that the future may hold a strip-down and repaint starting with the Precision 2 pack etch primer that I've been too scared to use until now for fear that it will etch the inside of my airbrush.
     
    Fitting the proper bogies also provided some extra clearance below the body so that the ride height could be lowered. This apparently simple task proved to be a long and difficult process…
     
    The body to chassis fixing is probably the part of this build that I am least happy with. I tried to figure out a way to arrange a robust screw fixing but in the end it defeated me and I resorted to making some wedge shaped clips from plastikard to replicate the ones inside Farish bodies. Some large plastikard strips were glued inside the body and the clips attached to these with solvent. The body height is governed by some spacers attached to a plastikard tray that sits on top of the chassis. For the most part the body stays put when I want it to and can be removed when needed, but it is far from perfect.
     
    In my previous post I mentioned that one end of the loco appeared to be sitting slightly higher than the other. I first noticed this problem late on the day of the AGM and it had not gone away. My first step was to carefully measure the roof supports and then file them down by 0.5mm to achieve the lowering that I had intended. The result was that one end got lower but the other end didn't budge.
     
    After a lot of peering inside the body under bright lights, assembly and disassembly I finally tried putting just the plastikard tray from the chassis inside the upturned body and noticed that it was slightly too wide and jamming between the plastikard inserts behind the cooler intakes. A bit of filing solved this. I reassembled the loco… problem solved? No.
     
    More peering through the windows revealed that the parts of the chassis cover that were intended to hide the worm gear were fouling the cab detail insert at one end, so I disassembled, cut this back to provide some clearance and reassembled. Problem solved? No.
     
    Next I noticed that the high end still had a block of plastikard underneath the cab detail insert. I needed this to provide something to grip with pliers while positioning the cab inserts for gluing. Some tricky work with a sharpened screwdriver removed this. Problem solved? No.
     
    Finally I noticed that the bogie at the high end was not free to tilt in the same way as the other end. Forcing it to tilt caused the end of the body to rise even further. More peering into the cab under bright lights revealed that the cab detail insert was sitting on top of the plastic housing for the front worm bearing. Solving this involved removing the cab insert to allow it to be filed down so that it fitted up against the windscreen more snugly and also trimming a little off the rear. Problem finally solved!
     
    Once the painted bogies were refitted to the loco I added the couplings. Then I noticed that they were not sticking out far enough at one end. Close inspection showed that the body was not quite central in the fore and aft direction so the cab footsteps didn't line up in the same way at both ends either. Fixing this entailed slicing off the body fixing wedges and re-attaching them after moving them along by 0.5mm. After setting overnight I reassembled the loco… and the body was then sitting too high at the other end :angry: . I figured this problem out in one attempt - the ends of the chassis block were now fouling the cab inserts. I tried shaving the back edges of the cab insert, but it seemed unlikely to get me enough clearance so the fix was… disassemble the whole chassis and cut some more metal off the block, clean everything up again and reassemble. It took rather longer to actually do it.
     
    Since I haven't said much about the chassis and I had it in pieces to fix the ride height, I thought I'd take the opportunity to grab a couple of photos.
     

     
    It started as a Bachfar 47 chassis bought secondhand. Unfortunately it proved to be a less than perfect runner and the previous owner had tried to 'repair' it by filling every available crevice with oil. It had to be completely stripped down to remove the resulting gunge after which it ran rather better but was still not satisfactory. Swapping in a motor borrowed from the Bachfar Western transformed the running, so a new motor was ordered for D604 and things got better.
     

     
    One bogie pivot has been moved inwards by 3mm using the notches provided on the bachfar chassis block. This needed a new driveshaft to be made from brass.
     

     
    Some metal has been removed at both ends to allow the body to fit and daylight to shine through from one cab door window to the other.
     
    The battery box detail has been fabricated from plastikard and attaches to the chassis in a similar way to the original Farish class 47 fuel tank moulding.
     
    The bogies have been hard-wired using the 2mm Association flexible wire to a couple of tags that are held by the main chassis block screws. I think that this is a much more reliable pickup solution than a bit of phosphor bronze rubbing against the bottom of the chassis casting and have used it on several of my locos.
     
    A plastic tray has been made to sit on top of the chassis. This holds the body at the correct height, carries the cooling fans and provides a guide to keep the pickup wires in place. It also has extensions at the ends to prevent the shiny brass worms from being visible through the cab windows.
     
    Another photo of the finished article on its own and one with its partner in crime. Now D6309 is modelled in a condition that's about 4 or 5 years later than D604's presumed date, but I can't really resist running them together ... especially now that D604 sits a bit lower so their heights are a reasonable match.
     

     

  23. 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.
  24. 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.
  25. 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...
     

     

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