74009

A bit of cleaning up and reconstruction could commence. The centre cars are always easier so I did those first; at some point the original Lima motorisation had been replaced by a Replica Railways cast chassis, which seems very good.

I decided to separate the ends and sides completely, strip the paint then rebuild.

In some places, previous repairs had led to paintowrk damage too:

Hi all, As there's been nothing to post on my 4-DD thread for a little while, I thought I'd do a mini-thread about one of the two projects that needed to come ahead of it, being the restoration of this 4-VEP and the completion of a class 309. This VEP was originally built best part of 25 years ago by a friend of mine who has recently disposed of his model railway, and I volunteered to restore the VEP to traffic for another friend. The original build had been pretty good, using a mixture of parts mailnly from MJT, Southern Pride and Lima, but some damage had occurred over the years and the glue used for the main construction had completely given out, allowing the sides and ends to mostly separate from each other and from the donor coaches:

Hi all, Sorry for the lack of updates - I've got a couple of other projects running concurrently, which are the repair and restoration of a 25-year old MJT 4VEP and a pair of refurbished Clacton Units which are built from Worsley Works sides, 3D printed ends and Replica coach bodies. Both of these projects are nearing completion and getting them off the workbench will allow me to concentrate on the 4DD afterwards. I will put a couple of threads up about those too. For the 4DD I have decided on a final profile that I'm going to use for the coach ends, and below is the template (made from the photograph referred to 4 posts above.) So I need to use this to cut the ends out of brass sheet first, then use them to determine the final bending of the sides. It could be a while before I post again as I do want to get the VEP and 309s off to their new owners - but the 4DD project will continue straight after those Stuart

Hi Ian, Thank you for that suggestion - in fact that's exactly what I did When enlarged though, the route indicator window seems to be a pretty much a pixel perfect rectangle, almost no tapering at all - so whatever perspective distortion there is must be very tiny. I suppose though that the tapering will become more pronounced the further away you get from the camera height. I used the Perspective Correction Tool in Photoshop to bring the very top of the roof forward just a tiny bit and I think I'm pretty much there. I don't really want to post the images on here directly as they have a copyright marker, but below is the headcode panel with a rectangular box drawn round it. So now I just need to make 10 of those in brass - one for each inner end and four to represent the guard's van walls, as this will help to make the actual front end nice and rigid for fitting the cab front to. Overall this is quite an involved job - but for a rare kit of a unique prototype I think it's worth moving along slowly and getting everything as right as I can. All the best Stuart

Yes I think you're right Martin. I'm just looking at the ends now - a once only chance do decide on width, height and profile. I found a very handy picture taken directly head on with pretty much no perspective distortion - it's the third picture from the top here: https://www.kentrail.org.uk/Bulleid_4DD.htm You can just make out from the painted details on the end that the max width is 9' 3" - I've seen conflicting info on this but that is one of the quoted dimensions. What I'm trying to find out at the moment is how much the bodysides taper inwards towards the top - by measuring from that image, if it's 9'3" at the bottom then it's 9'1½" at the bottom of the cab windows, 9'0½" by the top of the cab windows and 9' exactly where the curve into the roof starts. If anyone has any info on this I'd be very grateful if you could share it. Best regards, Stuart

The next stage will be working out how the curve needs to be so that it neatly abuts a roof section; I do have a plan for this involving some strips of small H section brass. If I solder the flat edge of these just under the top of the curve using solder paint, I can clamp it really tight in the bending bars and heat with a flame - this will encourage the tops of the curves to stay flat and it will also give me the rebate of the 'H' to slide some formers into to put the roof section on top of. Hope that makes sense, I also need to be able to set the width between the sides so that I can size up the roof and the ends to fit. What I'm thinking about here is to accurately cut a few blocks of wood to go inside as templates, then I can clamp the sides to those with more strips of wood on the outside, held with screws going through the window apertures. So, a day or so's filing awaits, followed by the panel beating to the final shape. Stuart

Hi all, In the end I decided to use a Dremel to cut the remaining bodyshells up. Whilst I have an intense dislike of high speed spinning blades, it did do the job quickly and neatly; I laid a strip of masking tape down as a marker and guided it by hand. The result is sufficiently close to the line that I'll be able to finish them all off with a flat file - hopefully it won't take too long now that I've discovered that the file I used for the first side was blunt, and I do also have a sharp one.

I always thought it was the other way around - SUB coaches with an EPB cab grafted on. This is a pic I took in 1980 of a conversion being undertaken at Selhurst: https://www.flickr.com/photos/74009/4101945622/in/album-72157623555986986/ All the best Stuart

So, further progress has been made and all 4 bodyshells are now split into 2 pieces. I did the second one with tin snips, but there was an incident during this process last night which left me within a whisker of needing a trip to A&E. Fortunately that was avoided and all seems well today. All of the sides need further cutting then filing back to the rainstrip line, followed by work on the profile, so there's probably not going to be much to report on until that's all done. I'm hoping that by then the No Nonsense 4-SUB ends will have arrived and I can experiment with them to see if they can be made suitable. Sharp jagged edges after using the tin snips - they could easily do someone a mischief

In fact the flat part of the body sides taper just very slightly and are wider at the bottom than at the top. It's not much though and in many photographs isn't noticeable at all but I think you can see it in the top picture here: https://www.bloodandcustard.com/BR-4DD.html

I mentioned in an earlier post that MARC models had borrowed this kit a few years back, and when it came back to me one of the coaches had a couple of brass ends soldered in. Below is an image of what they are like. I also mentioned that I reckoned the MTK ends were too narrow, which is why they look too tall. I've done some measuring up now and the MTK ends are 32½ mm wide (8' 1½") and the MARC ones are 35mm wide (8' 9") so quite an appreciable difference. According to Blood & Custard the actual width at waist level is 9' 0" so the MARC ones are considerably closer and presumably they were intended to be soldered inside their body shells, which would make them spot on. Unfortunately I only have 2 so I either can use them as a template to make 4 more, or I can widen the MTK ones with microstrip. I'll wait to see what I'm dealing with when the body sides are ready and I move on to that stage. Hi all,

I definitely have a piece of super-8 cine film of a 12CEP formation with one unit Blue Grey, one Jaffa and one NSE. The earlier comments on here about CEPs continuing to be painted in Jaffa well into NSE days are correct - the original intention was to continue using Jaffa until all the blue ones were gone, and then start painting in NSE; the reason was exactly as stated above, i.e. to avoid having CEPs in all three liveries. At the time, I wondered whether the very last blue one would go straight into NSE and thus be the only one never to receive Jaffa - but it didn't come to that because the decision was changed and NSE started to be used when there were still a number of blue ones left, which is how I got my film. Stuart

Something that has been very helpful and is no more than blind luck is that the set of bending bars I have is pretty much exactly the same width as the distance between the solebars and the start of the curve - so I can still get the shaped sides in there and give them a good hammering to make them as flat as possible where they should be. That's it for tonight - time for some telly. Stuart

Hi all, Thank you for your continued interest and support. Only a quick update tonight. I finished filing down the second side to size - this was much, much quicker than the first side - I think the file must have been almost completely blunt compared to the one I used today. I then did a bit more 'light fettling' with the rolling bars and the big hammer. I think I mentioned early on that I wanted to get the profiles of the 4 coaches the same; by using the rolling bars it was actually quite easy to get a close match. At this stage that's all I'm aiming for - once all 8 sides are cut out and roughly shaped, I'll spend more time on getting them as uniform and blemish free as I can.

Hi Dave, I do have some rolling bars - they're only about 10cm long but it's still perfectly possible to bend a full length coach with them. (You can see them in the first picture on this page). I had been using thumb pressure on the bars to bend the brass but I had to push with all my weight and that, in combination with continually tightening and loosening the wing nuts on the bending bars, had started to get pretty uncomfortable. Last night, for the second side, I decided to try using a hammer on the rolling bars. Care is required but it works a treat, so that's what I'll do with all the other sides. It was reasonably easy to match the profile with the first side too. No more pics yet - and I'm having a night off tonight. Best regards Stuart

Thanks Dave. Trouble is I nearly destroyed my thumbs in the process - I actually think I'll only be able to tackle one every third day or so unless I can find a different method

Thanks Darius. Another advantage of doing it this way which has just occurred to me is that I can drill all the holes for the door handles and grab rails while the pieces are still in the flat. I could even scribe the insides and do them from the back, to avoid the danger of the drill slipping and marking the outside. Cutting out and shaping all the sides is going to be a long process but the advantages seem, so far, to outweigh the disadvantages. Incidentally, this is going to be in BR Blue. Cheers Stuart

The sides do have a tendency to bow slightly from end to end, but trying to permanently straighten them sometimes leads to a sudden kink in one of the thinnest areas, usually above one of the big upstairs windows. However the bowing is very minor, and there's going to be plenty of room to solder a flat brass bar along the insides if necessary. Looking at the ends, I said yesterday that I thought they looked a bit on the tall side. I haven't measured them but, comparing with some pictures of the real thing, I think in fact they're about the right height but a bit narrow, which is why they look tall. I compared them with the ends of an MTK 'Tin HAL' I have here and it's very clear that Colin used the same master, but with the tumblehome cut off at the sides and some extra material added at the top. I think what I might do is get a pair of 4SUB ends from the No Nonsense Kits range and alter them to fit - this will mean changing the headcode detail and adding material at the top, but there's no detail at all up there so hopefully not too hard. This will also help with the width as I can file whatever's required off the sides of the SUB casting then fill whatever gaps are left.

This is the current situation for the first side - I'm actually reasonably happy with it and it does seem like this method is going to work.

Thank you for all your comments - didn't think this would create so much interest. So, today I went down the road of no return and cut one of the etches along its length. I used tin snips for this but the brass tried to deform on both sides of the cut, so for the next one I'll try a saw, or maybe a slitting disc. I measured out where the first rainstrip will be (about 2mm above the top window line) and scored a fairly heavy line along the bodysides at this point. I then cut the etch in half down the middle of the roof, then continued to cut bits off until I was as close to the line as I dared get; with all the distortion going on this was about 4mm. I then used a file to get down to the line - a very long and arduous process with such thick, hard material. The cutting process generated large numbers of very sharp shards of brass, from the large to the very small, and these managed to get, and stick in, everywhere. I was reminded of the time some years ago when I couldn't sleep so I got up and, wearing only a dressing gown, used a fibre glass pen to clean and burnish some metal parts. Below is the beginnings of the result - the side I started working on yesterday held in the bending bars (with an extra g-clamp in the middle) and the other side basically still flat. You can also see the selection of tools that was used.

Hi Mike and John, I've got an original MTK 'Park Royal' class 103 kit too. The castings and bodies are very good indeed - cab ends will require almost no cleaning up at all. Mine dates from many years ago - I bought it from Colin Massingham in person at the Chatham model railway exhibition when it used to be held in the dockyard. As I mentioned on the other MTK thread, Colin's kits were variable - but the good ones were good. Best regards Stuart

Hi Mike Yes I'm not sure what happened with the MARC models one. Some years ago MARC models actually borrowed the very kit I'm building now - I think they were interested in looking at the area around the guards van doors. They must have made some progress because when it came back one of the coaches had a couple of brass coach ends soldered in, which weren't part of the MTK kit. I do think their kit was advertised for sale for a while but I never saw one. Best regards Stuart

Hi John, Yes there was a resin kit made by a company in Canterbury - the Engine Works or Engine Shed or something I think. Resin moulding of big parts like that is very difficult - they have a great tendency to sag. Ayjay models has recently introduced a resin kit too. I've only seen pictures and it looks ok, but to me the curve in the body profile seems to start too high up so the upper deck windows are more or less flat rather than curved in the middle. Looking forward to seeing one in the flesh though. Best regards Stuart