On SRman's Workbench

Hi Ron. No. No overhead is planned. This will be on (cosmetic) third rail, and will never quite reach Farringdon where the changeover occurred!

 

I am making progress on glazing my Q Stock train. The latest addition is the Q38 car. I tried Phil Radley's moulded flush glazing but didn't like the effect at all. I pulled the bits I had already done back out, and started again from scratch. The four large windows in the middles of each side were glazed as two pairs, and will have the window pillars painted back on from the outside. Likewise, the angled vent glass will have the dividers painted on by hand.

The Krystal Klear I used as the glue was still wet and milky coloured in places when I took the photo.

 

[font="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"]Glazing of my Q Stock train continues apace. The Q31 DM has now been completed, leaving only a Q23 DM to be done. The latter is also the only motorised car in the train, with two Black Beetle motor bogies wired together through a TCS T1 decoder.[/font]

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Another recent project on my workbench: an LT pannier tank, L91. This is actually a new locomotive wearing old clothes! L91 was an earlier release from Bachmann with the dreaded split chassis. I hard-wired a DCC decoder into ti, and the running was good apart from a constant waddle. I replaced several of the wheelsets, but still none were entirely concentric. Eventually, I managed to get a much newer pannier (BR black 9759) with a decoder already fitted. With some very minor modifications, the old pannier body sits very nicely on the new pannier chassis.

I replaced the cheap Bachmann decoder with a TCS DP2X-UK decoder for better running (not that the Bachmann one was too bad, but the TCS one allows a lot more fine tuning).

I need to repaint the wheels and coupling rids on the new chassis, but that won't take long to do.

L91 is seen here with much newer DCC-ready L89 behind. The shades of red are quite different, but looking at photos of the real ones, it seemed to darken considerably over time with age and weathering.

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[font="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"]I may try to sell off the old chassis and the black pannier body later. The new body doesn't fit the old chassis particularly well.
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As I cannot justify the costs of a train of LT Dreadnought coaches from Radley Models, I have been using old Graham Farish OO non-gangwayed 'generic' coaches painted brown instead. I recently purchased off eBay sellers two more all-seconds to go with the two brake coaches and one all-second I already had. One of the 'new' coaches was in fully lined Great Western livery while the other had been very well repainted into BR blue with a first class section designated in the centre.

It was a real shame to paint over the lovely finishes on these two but it had to be done.

All five coaches have only had one coat of brown so far, but they are starting to look the part. The two brake coaches have Cherry Paints' LT brown, while the other three have two different standard Humbrol browns while I assess which colour best represents the rather dirty brown these coaches ended up in. The Humbrol leather #62 used on the two most recent ones seems a little light but may actually weather down better.

Anyway, here is the full train posed with Heljan LT ex-Metropolitan #8, Sherlock Holmes[/i].





Also off the workbench is a class 25 which has been on the bench for a very long time. It is a hybrid Hornby body on a slightly shortened Bachmann chassis. The underframe still requires me to build a new boiler water tank, because the Bachmann model was a later style locomotive built without this feature. It has been numbered as D5183, which I have photographic proof of having visited the Southern Region. It was also a complete repaint from a blue TOPS numbered body shell.

D5183 is seen here at the end of a line of Derby Sulzer type 2s, on the viaduct over Newton Broadway LT station, with the other two locos being Sutton's Locomotive Works class 24s, D5017 and D5000, which were both Southern allocated locomotives between 1959 and 1962.

 

Gary wrote:

I never thought of that!



Presumably when getting ready, someone steals and hides the coach set, and Sherlock Holmes then has to search for them, using deduction to work out where they are (they're in the hidden siding, mate!).

 

I have just had a long session adding transfers to the whole 5-car Q Stock train. Using ModelMaster's Q Stock numbers, I have been able to number the Q23 cars and the Q38 trailer correctly, but there were no suitable numbers made up for the Q27 cars, so, being lazy, I used existing (incorrect) pre-made numbers; for the Q27 DM I actually used an R Stock number inverted with a '2' cut off, to get 6011 (which was 21109). The Q27 trailer received a Q38/O/P Stock trailer number starting with a '0'. I can live with the compromises!

Also added were 'London Transport' underlined fleet names on the DM cars only, and 'No Smoking' roundels on appropriate windows, gleaned from photos in various books I have.

 

I have given each of the five cars in the Q Stock train a coat of satin varnish to seal the transfers and also to tone down the high gloss finish (which has the added benefit of hiding some of the blemishes in my paintwork!).

This is a combined photo of the two Q27 cars - the mixing of the two photos into one can give a few minor odd effects.

 

Moving on, I have commenced work on the A60 Stock bogies and motors - unusually for me, I'm using two Tenshodo SPUD motor bogies that I have had in storage for years. I have tested these and they run fine on DC, so the next step is to wire them for DCC. To that end, I have pulled the brass contact strip out that connects with the brushes, and folded it upwards outside the motor housing to allow direct soldering of the pickups to the red and black wires on the decoder. the brushes have two tags sticking up out of the top of the bogie, which I previously soldered wires from remote pickups to, but which will now receive the orange and grey wires from the decoder.

I have some TCS M4 decoders free, so will use two of these (one for each power bogie). The four functions available on these decoders will allow for future lighting options.

Anyway, here are a couple of photos showing the very early stages, where I have screwed the adapters to the SPUD motors and glued the sideframes on to those, and I have glued the top-hat bearings into the bogie sideframes, then the bogie stretchers to one sideframe only, pending attaching the other sideframe and sandwiching the axles at the same time. The SPUDs had spoked wheels fitted already so I'm leaving them as is; LT tended to mix types of wheels quite indiscriminately on earlier stocks, but I'm not too sure about on the A Stock. With the solid bogie design, this won't really show much in any case!





Note the old 'credit card' style Hornby Club card I'm now using as a mixing palette for the Araldite two-part epoxy. I can only mix small batches at a time to work through the fiddly assembly bits.

 

I have now made a proper start on the 4-car A60 Stock train. Initially, I had sprayed the body shells in a metallic silver, but I really didn't find the effect convincing. The A Stock in original form had actually quite a dull finish, so I have experimented with shades of greys, settling on Humbrol colours #129 for the main body, #126 for the corner castings, driver's doors and communication doors, and #67 for the roofs. I have included some before and after photos of the bodies to show the effects of the different colour schemes. Grey #126 is not perfect; I feel I need a slightly bluer shade, but I really don't want to mix it as that makes touching up later much more difficult. As the photos show, there are a few touch ups still needed to the lighter two greys.

 

[font="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"]I have been fiddling with a few projects while on school holidays, but am running out of time before having to go back to work again.
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[font="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"]I recently re-chassised a Bachmann London Transport Pannier Tank, L91, which used to have a split chassis but now has a DCC-ready chassis donated by a BR black example I bought at a reasonable price off eBay. Because of its origins, I have had to repaint the wheels and coupling rods; they are still a bit shiny but some judicious weathering should fix that.
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[font="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"]Also recently completed is a Cambrian Kits LSWR open wagon, which has joined a pre-grouping train of kit-built wagons, including my previously built LSWR open and two LSWR vans. I have chosen an alternative brake arrangement on the second open wagon.

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[font="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"]Also pre-grouping is the Bachmann LBSC E4 0-6-2T, which now has a crew fitted. I have been buying pre-painted loco crews as well as painting a few more myself, and had a minor blitz on putting them into some locomotives, including a Merchant Navy, a Standard 4MT 4-6-0, a Beatty well tank, two E4 0-6-2Ts (the other one being a BR lined black example), a C class 0-6-0, a 700 class 0-6-0, and an N class 2-6-0. There are still more to do, although tank locos tend to be more difficult to do, particularly if the cab roofs are glued on too well.

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[font="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"]Finally for now, I have found a colour I am happy with for my London Transport A60 Stock train - a 'flat aluminium' colour. This four-car unit is under construction, but is presently held up awaiting wheels with a suitable axle length (ordered but not yet here). I fitted the side frames to the motor bogies (two Tenshodo SPUD motors, as described earlier), followed by wiring two TCS M4 DCC decoders to the motor bogies. The M4s will allow for future lighting to be fitted and controlled. The body shells in the photo are still in the process of being painted, so have some rough edges apparent.
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Gary, the main body shells and the seat units are resin, but all the rest is white metal; that includes bogies, underframes and all underframe fittings, plus the cab partition and fittings. The kits also include a rather nice white metal driver too.

Incidentally, there is an error in the window shape where the small windows meet the sliding windows; they are moulded with radiused corners at the thin divider strip, where they should have square corners. I have filed them down to correct them.

 

I recently stumbled onto a long-stored Ratio GWR Iron Mink wagon I built back in the 1970s. It was reasonably robust but had lost a portion of its brake lever and one coupling had snapped off. I decided to refurbish it and paint it into GW livery to join the pre-grouping train wagons.

Refurbishment consisted of fitting top-hat bearings and metal wheelsets (I used spoked wheels but disc wheels may have been a better choice - any useful comments, please?), cutting off the ratio plastic couplings and cutting away part of the mounts to allow the Parkside NEM adapters to be glued in place, using part of a spare Parkside brake lever from another underframe kit (leftover from the SECR 6-wheel brake van conversion), and replacing a missing buffer. For the latter, I didn't have an exact match in the spares box, but the one I chose is a pretty close match but with a thicker spindle. The roof has had several coats of Humbrol acrylic matt white.

The lot was given a coat of SECR wagon grey (a colour described as being very close to GW wagon grey), and lettered with HMRS transfers. I haven't put the tare weights on yet as they are fiddly and my eyes were hurting from doing the rest.



Another project that is much closer to completion now is my hybrid class 25, using a Hornby body and a slightly adapted Bachmann chassis. The chassis came from a non-boiler fitted loco, and a good friend recently offered me the boiler water tank from one of his conversions, which saved me scratch-building replacement tanks.

 

Progress on the A Stock train.

There was a delay while I awaited the delivery of some new wheels with shorter axles (25mm) but those have now arrived from Steam Era Models.

In the meantime I managed to find a flat aluminium paint I was happy with, so painting has continued apace, with only a few external retouches needed, but complete internal painting is still to be done.

The bogies have been assembled and mounted on the underframes. Being all metal, with metal wheels and metal couplings, there were a few shorts until I isolated various components and made sure no wheel faces could touch the bogie frames. The bodies have been set loosely on the underframes to get an idea of how the whole train will look, and I am fairly pleased with the overall result.

It has moved a short distance under its own power, although the power bogies are not yet seated properly.

There are still many adjustments to make and extra parts to fit before it is anywhere near complete, but I feel encouraged to continue.

 

Hi Gary. Apart from shoe beams on the leading bogies, there is no extra detail to add. LT tended to have quite simple and robust designs, often with rubber suspension, hence the lack of spring details.

As for modelling time, I have had a fair bit while on school holidays, but now I'm back at work, I tend to just collapse into a chair after work. Even so, I get up and do a few bits at a time, and things slowly develop. The A Stock bogies are the result of a few evenings work and several small batches of Araldite. I do the same operations on each bogie in turn, working fairly quickly to get as many as possible done before the Araldite goes off. Blu-tack is my friend in this, as it means I can anchor the bits while the glue sets, and also use it to prop things at a useful height to eliminate gravity: the bogies, for example had a blob of Blu-tack under their cross frames to set them level and parallel with the workbench while the second side frame was glued with its top edge resting on the workbench surface (the bogies were assembled while upside down).

Likewise, the couplings were done as a batch with Blu-tack preventing them from sagging while the glue set.