Making progress...

Well, after a lot of scraping of solder, and cutting and hacking, the Calf Van was reduced to a minimum. Every time I thought that I had reached a point of satisfaction, I found another element that I wanted to remove to improve it.

You may have seen the partly rebuilt van over on MikeH's Scalefour Forum thread about starter wagon kits, where it made a brief appearance.

Now it's finished apart from adding weight and a roof. I assume that the roof was originally etched brass, and included with the kit. However like many casting details, this wasn't with it when I acquired the part-built kit.

So tonight I've been out with ruler and set-square, piercing saw and files, and started cutting out the roof from a piece of sheet brass.

I've started squaring it off, and if I have time tomorrow I'll measure the arc of the roof and mark it out to size. I've already pulled the trusty GW Models rolling bars out of storage, and I expect that the actual rolling of it to shape will be the quickest and simplest thing to do...

Cheers
Flymo

Off again...

Well, the lead sheet went in, and was left for half a day for the Araldite to go properly off. Yes, I have vans where there is a distinct "clunk" from the weight inside moving around as you pick them up... Then it was on with the roof and this is the result:

 

As before, the camera exposes something that the naked eye did not. There was a sliver of flash between the roof and the top of the side at the far end that is highlighted by the camera. Fortunately ninety seconds with my finest scalpel blade and it was no more! How I missed it first time around when assembling the sides I have no idea.

So on to the next thing. I have a succession of projects tucked away in those small Really Useful Boxes that I have a real addiction for. The one that has been tempting me for a little while has been a part-built etched van that I picked up from somewhere or other. It was basically the completed body, plus underframe built rigidly and in all honesty not very well. None of the fittings like axleboxes or coupling hooks were with it.

The Kit was originally Jidenco, and the core body is really nicely proportioned and nicely etched. The rest? . The prototype is described in the extraordinarily brief and confusing (how would you build this if you didn't have a good knowledge of how the prototype went together?) instructions as an LMS Calf Van. It actually looks to be the Midland Railway Calf Van, which is nicely illustrated on page 5 of Volume 2 of "An Illustrated History of Midland Wagons".

I neglected to take any pictures of the "before" version, but what I found when comparing it to the reference photo was that the builder had added extra strapping fitted in LMS days, the buffers were all wrong, and what was below the solebars was pretty horrendous and totally unsuitable for P4.

So over the last couple of evenings I've been busy with a slitting disc in a Dremel and a pair of stout snips, removing most of the underpinnings in preparation of replacement. And this morning I cranked the soldering iron up to full to remove the extra strapping, and also the buffers to replace them with correct Midland pattern ones. The soldering braid also came out as well, as all of this was fixed with an excess of the shiny stuff.

This is how the stripped down model looks:

 

 

 

The next steps will be to clean up the remains of the solder with a fibreglass brush, and solder up any dodgy joints and fill in the gaps.

I've started collecting the replacement components to rebuild it in the aforementioned RUB. As usual, it will be sprung suspension, although whether it's Bill Bedford or my own home-brewed etched version remains to be seen.

More as it happens...

Cheers
Flymo

Doing something...

It's been rather busy on a number of fronts recently. Modelling has only had the occasional ten minutes when I can pick something up and do it quickly. To make the most of that, I've been ploughing through a few things that were part-built and had stalled for some reason.

One of those was a Slaters kit for a Midland ventilated van - I can't remember the exact terminology. It had stalled because I wanted to build the fitted version that ran on coach-size wheels, as I quite fancied the look of the bigger size of spoked wheel as something out of the ordinary. Progress had halted because I didn't have in stock any W-irons suitable for the larger size of wheel.

So rather than wait any longer, I checked the reference books and changed the plan to the diagram that had the same body style but ran on conventional wagon underpinnings and was through-piped. So in the last week, it has progressed from a bare plastic body to this:

The plastic undergear of the kit is replaced by some Bill Bedford sprung w-irons, a Bill Bedford brake lever, a v-hanger nicked from another fret, some old whitemetal brakegear that is still finer than the plastic version, and some safety loops made up from scrap fret waste.

I'm rather pleased with it at the moment. It needs some lead sheet placed inside to bring it up to my preferred 50g weight for four-wheeled wagons, and then it can take it's place in quite a lengthy queue for the paint shop.

Like James Wells said only a couple of days ago in another place, it's good to be modelling again!

Cheers
Flymo

Sticky business...

Sometimes things just don't work out... 

As usual, I have three or four different things on the go at the same time.  This mostly explains the slightly random order of progress displayed on here.  I pick one thing up, do a bit, put it down, rinse and repeat...

Over the Easter weekend I had the opportunity to take out some of the "big toys" that I don't usually have the time or the space for in the evenings after work.  I had a good session of mouldmaking on the Centricast machine, and took out the spray booth to make some progress on the Buckjumper.

The next stage in the chassis construction is to paint it black (now try and get that tune out of your head...) ready for the mounting of the wheels.  To spray the wheels themselves, I masked off the tyres and the axle holes with Humbrol Maskol.  My bottle of this must be over a decade old, yet by keeping it tightly capped, it's still gloopy and can be easily applied with a cocktail stick.

For the chassis itself, I thought that I would spray it with the hornblocks still in place as they were held securely by the CSB wires and I didn't want the faff of taking them out.  On the other hand, if I used Maskol, I'd spend an age picking bits of rubber out of them.  So I reached for the paint box and a roll of masking tape in it.

A quick waft of the spray can - no need to fire up the airbrush for something this simple - and it was done.  I used Games Workshop Chaos Black as the colour, having heard good things about the coverage, finish, and its ability to adhere without using a separate etch primer.  After it had dried overnight, I went to remove the tape and this is where I found a minor disaster...

The glue/fixative/tack/adhesive (what is the right name for the stuff that makes Sellotape stick?) had gone all gooey and was now leaving a sticky residue wherever it had touched the model.  There was no alternative but to remove each hornblock and clean it and the corresponding guide up carefully with a fibreglass brush.  I didn't want to use solvents, as that could have lifted the paint finish and I'd be back to square one.  It took some time, but all has now been restored to a good state of order.

I bought the masking tape a couple of years ago.  I have a recollection that it is either Tamiya, or from Precision Paints.  I can't be more precise than that as I wasn't really paying attention to the possible consequences.  Suffice to say that I won't be using it again, and I'm very glad that this happened on a plain chassis, and not whilst I was painting or lining a locomotive body!

Cheers
Flymo

Maths...

Clearly not my strong point...

Having carefully measured the thickness of all six of the driving wheels of my Buckjumper, and produced an average from them.  Then taken various readings of the thickness of my standard back-to-back gauge (and this time scribed the number on the outside face of it to avoid doing it next time) to determine what that needed to be. 

I added them up and started happily cutting down my split axles to length.

I was just cutting into the third and complex one for it has two splits to isolate the gearbox when the penny dropped.  Locomotives have a wheel on each side...

So the axle length should not be 2.46 + 17.78 = 20.24mm

It should be 2.46 + 17.78 + 2.46 = 22.70mm

Oh well, it's a good job that I made up a batch of spares whilst the glue was out!

Cheers
Flymo

Missenden Spring 2015 is go!

Last night saw the clans gathering for a virtually full capacity Railway Modelling Weekend at Missenden Abbey.  The maximum capacity of the Abbey is 70 places, and we have 69 attendees signed up.  It's a tribute to how popular these courses have become.  Note to self - book for the Autumn course as soon as it is available...

After an excellent fish and chip dinner, the main room was filled for the ritual Health and Safety briefing.

David Brandreth has just explained to Tim Shackleton how to avoid paper cuts...

Some of the assembled masses.  This room is used for the 4mm modelling cohort, so there are 19 of us happily filing little bits of brass.

My own workstation.  

I'm aiming to use the weekend to (nearly) finish a Connoisseur Models GER J65 Buckjumper that I started at Missenden last autumn, and basically haven't touched since.  It's being built with CSB suspension, which I'm comfortable with.  However it's also going to be my first attempt at split-frame chassis, so watch out for the fun and games!

Until later...
Flymo

Happiness...

...is opening an old locomotive kit box to see whether you fancy taking it to Missenden for the weekend, and finding an unused Portescap in there.

That's going to be going on Ebay after I've checked that it runs properly, so mentally is offset against the course cost :-)

Cheers
Flymo