Keith M's workbench. Another day, another 'project'!

With the rear car seating in place, all that's visible wiring-wise is the 4 short ends which will go to a miniature 4 pin socket. This will take power from the middle car to the rear one by a plug on a short flying lead, the two short (Blue and Green) wires will go to the coach lighting which I will fit later in the roof after spraying is completed. At present I have not received the mini plugs and sockets, so I have no idea of the actual size or indeed how the socket might fit in the coach end......I'll make that up as I go along!

 

Here's the drive and rear coaches together for comparison. At this point I'm about to start on interior painting as I'm awaiting materials now before I can go much further. As these 3 cars will run as a complete unit, I won't bother fitting my usual Kadee couplings, since by the time I've added my usual corridor connections between the cars, little of the couplings will be visible, sort of 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it!'

 

The reason I've been quiet for a week is simply because We've been for a weeks holiday in Suffolk, a sort of 'Pre-Wedding Anniversary" break, as Mrs M and I will have been married 40 years on the 30th (tomorrow). I dunno how She's managed to put up with me for that long, deserves a medal as big as a dustbin lid I reckon!!! (.....and even multiple murderers don't get a sentence THAT long!)

Anyway, since my return, my mini plugs and sockets have arrived from China (still no wheelsets from Alan Gibson though!), and as I was hoping, they're rather small, as can be seen!

 

The socket parts in particular are going to be 'Challenging' to solder, and that's putting it mildly!

 

Anyway, I made a start, soldering one of the plugs into place at the rear of the driving car, cutting a small slot in the lower body end to allow the body to slip onto the chassis and leave the cable clear. Once the Lima corridor connector and a set of my suitably sized bellows are in place, with the plug black painted, the linking cable etc will be almost unnoticeable (I hope!). Coach bodies have yet to be BR/SR Green painted, but this hopefully shows how things fit.

 

The front end of the middle coach will have a socket, rear of this coach a plug, which in turn will feed a socket at the front end of the 3rd coach, thus feeding lighting throughout the 3 cars. This is the socket in the front end of the middle car, it's not glued into place yet, that will come after final painting, but hopefully shows how it all goes together.




To cover the 4 colour cable cores, I just slipped on a length of heat shrink sleeving to make the link cable less noticeable.

 

I've done a very similar setup on several other units Andy, with no problems. You'll notice that the emerging plug cables on the 1st and 2nd cars are at the bottom of their respective coaches, whilst the socket on each following car is arranged to be near the top. This setup allows a small loop of each cable sufficient and flexible enough to give an allowance for coach movement on curves, rather in the same way the real railways use their 'Jumper' cables. It doesn't need much 'slack' in each link cable to allow for the coach movement on curves by doing it this way, and keeping the cables black and tucked close to corridor connectors, they blend in nicely so as to be barely noticeable.
Keith.

 

I received the new wheelsets from Alan Gibson yesterday, so these have now been fitted and all 3 chassis line up height-wise nicely despite these wheelsets being fractionally larger diameter than those of the motor bogie, although we're only talking half a millimetre here! I've just done the first Green airbrushed coats of paint to the coach bodies, interiors are also in the process of being hand painted ready for 'passengers', and once I'm happy with the finished coach bodies I can then add the interior lighting into the roof of each coach. I'll re-use the original window glazing, no point in buying any other as they'll doubtless be made for the 'wrong' car at the rear rather than my now 'correct' profiled one, and I've already added a little extra weight to the rear outer cars chassis using lead flashing, as they're a little on the light side as supplied and the chassis run nicely as a 'train' now.
I'll likely run the centre cars lighting wires inside the roof rather than go under the floor/seat unit as otherwise the wiring may be visible at each inner end, one of the drawbacks of lighting coaches! When it comes to refitting bodies to chassis, I've removed the mouldings inside each roof which accept the fixing screws through the chassis and blanked off the holes in the seating/floor units, and instead will rely on the clips at each coach end. Perhaps not quite so reliable a fix, but once again, I don't want to see large blue plastic columns up the centre of each car which would again stand out like a sore thumb when the coaches are lighted and have passengers. Things are moving along slowly, and just yesterday I 'won' a Hornby "Lord Nelson" running can motor chassis on Ebay, which will hopefully mean I can complete another outstanding project, the "Lord Nelson" 'Keyser' kit, as try as I might, I just cannot get the valve gear on this 'Keyser' kit loco to line up sufficiently to make it run. Like Pete (Jakesdad), I hate "Valve Gear Wrangling" and when faced with such a problem, I look for an easy way out. Hopefully I can make the Hornby chassis fit the 'Keyser' loco body!
Keith.

 

Time for this project to surface again. Since it's been relatively warm (just over 10 degrees C) today and I now have the "DMU Green"paint, so I set to and completed the spraying of the 3 coach bodies, and once fully dry, hand painted 2 coats of Grey onto each roof, and cut and glued in my usual white paper liner into the roof of each coach ready for internal lighting to be fitted. I'll leave the bodies for a day or two to harden off before I go any further, and I have to order decals for them also.

 

I completed the assembly and lighting connections on the driving car today, and all works as I had planned. This is 'forwards' direction lighting.

 

.....and 'Reverse' direction lighting.

 

As can be seen, there is some slight 'light bleed' in the cab area, so judicious application of some 'Blu-Tack' soon sorted it thus. Not too tidy, but it won't be seen with the body back on. Onwards and upwards with the remaining two cars now! The 2 clear round ends embedded in the Blu-Tack are the ends of the'Lighthouse' type LED's.

 

Hi Andy.
Yes, I'm Lenz DCC. The internal lighting has 6.8 k ohm resistors in series with the lighting, external lights have only 1 k ohm so are brighter. I can easily adjust the relevant CV's and will do when I've completed the other two cars. I'll apply "Rule 1" regarding the red rear lights on a green DMU!

Keith.