Evan's workbench

Gary, Bravery would be me cutting the carriage side without the mitre block once I found the saw didn't fit.... Like I did with the CAM

 

Another weekend sitting down at the workbench has gone by, and progress has been made on a few carriages
1st class corridor sitting car BR1228. This car is a bitsa made up of sides from Ian Lindsay Models and a roof and ends from Stephen Johnson Models. The roof still needs to be cut and lengthened with styrene before final assembly will occur.


At the same time, composite sleeping car ACM1838 has been undergoing final assembly, including repairs to a bogie which snapped after being dropped on the floor

 

We'll see how the painting goes when I get to that stage... First attempt at two tone colour schemes

 

Cheers for the tips Paul and Gary.

Any others I should know?

 

The joys of urethane kits:


Floor recess on both cars is not only askew but curved..... Sides are straight in spite of this. Looks like this one will have to be sidelined for a while until a solution can be created.

 

Chris, a solution will present itself eventually. At present, I'm thinking a mill would do the trick (If I had one)

Gary, I did consider sanding or filing to shape by hand, but decided it to be a very awkward way to go about it with no guarantee of getting a true and straight edge.

Paul, Fitting cross members to secure the floor is my preferred way of assembling carriages. The problem here is that the curve in the recess runs in opposite directions, and the shallow end of the curve is not deep enough to fit the floor at the correct height, so I need to try and bring the recess back into true so that I can fit cross members which will be level and square

Hopefully that all makes sense

 

Just to prove I don't just build passenger cars, here is one of the projects that has been lurking on the bench, making progress over the last three months, a pair of HBW class ballast hoppers (normally sold in packs of 3 kits) from the Peter Boorman's Workshop range.


HBW9330 in perway service, C.1960s


As supplied, the kit offers the option of either using rather large drawhooks or fitting kadees to a mounting block which fills up what is meant to be open space on the prototype


Not happy with this offering, I decided to try and fit an M2 brass nut between the frame members, which occupied significantly less space, while still offering a decent mounting for kadees, and after trimming the drawhooks down with a dremel, came up with something that allowed for both to be used, while giving the appearance of the open design of the real deal.


Another thing needing modification was the solebar/W iron etches, which also included the handbrake linkages. As a result of this, a model built as supplied suffers those infamous floating brake shoes. In order to move them back to the correct position, the original V hanger has been removed entirely, and the brake shoe arms cut at the solebar, ready to be placed in the correct position during final assembly.


Which brings us to tonight's progress. The axleboxes and leaf springs have been soldered onto the W iron etches, and permanently glued in place on the underframe casting and some trial running done to ensure smooth running.

Next up - Brake rigging, piping and door release, followed by final fitting of the kadees

 

Thanks guys. It's been a bit of an interesting build.
Paul, I definitely think I will be toning the weathering down if I build 3216. A bit too dirty for a loco working in the suburban setting of my planned layout

 

Yet another wagon which has been on and off the bench at times:

This time it's a Shell 3110 gallon oil tank, being converted from the Austrains ready to run 4 wheeled tank wagon.

The Austrains model, as a starting point is a reasonable base, but it does have some noteable errors which need addressing to produce an accurate model. So far, the model has had the top of the dome trimmed down by 2mm, the saddles reduced by 1.75mm and the walkways raised by 2mm. Still yet to be done is detailing of the underframe, replacing the W irons and axleboxes with more accurate etched and cast brass parts and a better breather vent on the top of the tank.