21st May 2013
I have been busy uploading quite a few coach pictures to their various pages.
You can also see more on the above conversion on my workbench pages. For those who are not all that interested in coaches there are new pictures on the class 45 page too!
Class 45/1
My model of 45115 has been on my workbench for years – quite literally! Starting life as a mainline example, it had its nose improved first – then switched to an early Bachmann chassis. When the current Bachmann model appeared I swapped the body and later, upon realising just how squashed the original bogie sideframes were I swapped them too to the newer bachmann ones!
So it’s nearly a standard Bachmann model – except with the main chassis block being the earlier Bachmann effort and the battery boxes being the only parts left from the original Mainline model!
The headlight is from replica and the lifting brackets are Shawplan. The original bombshell was one of the Modelzone 45/0’s and as such the boiler end was wrong for a ETH fitted peak.
The picture above shows new roof panels and I also filled in the bodyside steps. The models rather tatty (for me anyway) is as per an image of the real 45115 taken during 1987.
Further thoughts on mk2s
I have always thought that the back of a train is just as important as the front. It’s usually the last memory you have as it trundles off to where-ever its going. With regard to improving the Airfix Mk2’s this is a bit of a problem as the gangways are kind of odd, Too long and lacking the windows.
Cutting a couple of mil’ off the length makes all the difference while adding the windows and the dividing bar are simple ways to improve the look of the gangway. You can also see from the above image the filing mentioned in the previous post to improve the look of the tumble home. I don’t know if the picture below conveys the difference all that well but its quite noticeable in real life.
Above, a simple before and after comparison. With a bit of work there’s no reason at all to abandon the good old Airfix Mk2s!
Mk2e’s
Ok, I know that Bachmann have announced mk2e’s and f’s and I have every reason to believe they will probably be really nice models and sell by the bucket load. However given the amount of coaches I will need and that I have been stockpiling airfix/dapol Mk2d’s for a good few years now there’s no reason to abandon those just yet.
The above came to me ready started and I have just added some etched bits, window frames from Shawplan and bogie/end steps from my own etches. Im thinking I will probably just cut a hole for the repositioned toilet window when I do my own from the start. The air conditioners were cut off and remounted 2mm lower. This will be one of the earlier Mk2e’s with the deeper door windows as per the Mk2d’s. One of the modifications Brian at Shawplan recommends is to file the bottom of the tumblehome to make it rounder. When the coach is finished i’ll take a before and after picture to compare.
Steven Mcnaught wrote a great article on modelling Mk2 coaches in the November issue of Rail Express.
Mk3 RFM done (well nearly)
The RFM has been through the paint shop and glazing added from a brown plastic folder (from an office supplier). I’ll add another picture to the coaches section when it’s received some light weathering. Up next will be either a mk1 or a m project, I havent decided yet!
8th May 2013
Last weekend saw the third and final test session for Phil Eames Calcutta Sidings 2 before its public debut at Expo EM North in September. The above pic is © Tim Horn and you can see more of Tims pictures from the weekend here.
On the subject of exhibitions, those in the Midlands will be able to see Birmingham Moor Street at the Bloxwich show the weekend after next.
More Mk3 variety
Ok I admit, doing the Mk3 TRSB earlier was just a bit addictive. I do need to do another 2 but I have been looking at the loco hauled options too, namely these…
Mk3 RFM (restaurant first modular). 2 were converted in 1984 from spare HST TRUKs with more following on later (and after the period the layout is set) converted from more TRUK’s or loco hauled FO’s. This means the fleet is a bit of a hotch potch of detail differences. The most noticeable being that later vehicles have 7 full size windows on the corridor side rather than 4. The underframes are a myriad of differences as are the roofs with different vents and positions for the air con access hatch at the restaurant end. Even the first 2 ride on different bogies from each other, 10200 having the Girling wheel slip gear and 10201 being fitted with BR equipment.
The model
As with the earlier TRUK the body was filled or holes cut in it as required and fitted with new window frames from Extreme Etches. The underframe had the incorrect modules cut out and some where moved arround while others made from scratch. The pic below shows which bits were cut out
Buffers are from MJT. The old roof vents were filed away (the real coach has scars shere the old vents were so that saves having to try to preserve the ribs) and the bogies modified as per my earlier posting. Below is the structurally complete coach ready for the paint shop. Theres a pic of 10201 in the HST Silver Jubilee book (page 55) showing it in the original Intercity livery, I guess 10200 was outshopped in the same colours but i believe the rest of the RFM’s entered service in swallow livery.
28th April 2013
I few new things to look at this time. I have made a start on the wagons section and added more pictures to the coaches section.
I have also been working on a pair of blue and grey HST power cars, you can see more pictures of one of them in the Locomotives section.
Hornby OAA – done!
With a spot of weathering the Hornby OAA is done. I have made a start on the wagons section of the site too with a couple of small galleries to be getting on with. Click here to go to them.
Improving the Hornby OAA
A little project that has been in the back of my mind for a while is a couple of OAA’s. I picked up a cheap pair from Ebay (strangely lettered as OBA’s) and set to work.
The body is OK but the chassis is horrible plus it rides way too high (Hornby repositioned the buffers to compensate). The chassis went in the bin and new solebars added (spares from the Cambrian SPA kit), The wagon uses Bill Bedford sprung W irons and the linkages and handbrake levers are from Colin Craig.
Some more thoughts on puddles.
Thanks to everyone who commented on the last entry about the weather. I have been looking at puddles (ok that sounds REALLY weird I grant you) and have done some more experimentation on a scrap bit of card (sprayed to look like tarmac).
There’s 3 rows here, on the left just Klear and in the center and on the right I sprayed a very light coat of black first (the Klear was applied with my airbrush in all cases)
The pre darkened areas look much more like the real thing I think.
Do the Brits really talk about the weather?
Yes we do! But do we model it? Not so much.
A lot of model railways are set in the summer or on dry days. There are a few set in the snow but what about the rain or just wet? According to the met office the average rainfall for the west midlands is 116 days a year or about 1 in 3 days. 1987 stood out for the great storm in October of that year (the one where the weatherman said there wasnt going to be one the night before, remember?) so it’s probably worth considering rain a little more seriously. 
Ok in post processing its a doddle. A bit more contrast than usual, no harsh shadows and falling rain from Photoshop’s diffuse setting with a bit of motion blur. However its safe to say falling rain on a model is not going to be doable.
So we are left with the rain has just stopped or the rain stopped a while ago. Just stopped means everything is still wet and to be honest I have spent quite a while looking at different levels of sheen on things. Blasting everything with gloss varnish is not something i really want to do but nearly dry is different. A few puddles here and there perhaps? Time for an experiment!
The beauty of this is by using good old Klear floor polish I can have a go and see what it looks like. If its naff I can simply spray it with matt varnish and its gone. Ok the puddle shapes are a but a bit iffy but as an overall feel I have got to say, im quite tempted.
He’s not still on about timetables and lights is he?
Afraid so! The good news is my waffling on about timetables is now complete as the walls at the wolves/derby end are now done.
There are 8 of these boards, each with 16 timetables.
If I do say so myself its starting to get the feel of the place now. ie. grim!
The bad news is I am now thinking about the lights that go under the roof. As these are on all of the time they are going to have to work! Not knowing the best way to do this I built a quick mock up of a section of the ceiling.
the light on the left is just a LED shining through a hole in the foamboard. The one on the right has its ‘section’ lined with foil. The difference is quite marked.
More modules nearly done
I suppose modules is the right word, it’s certainly how I am approaching the various structures that nestle on the platforms.
these are 2 of the lift modules that appear on the ‘A’ platforms (that’s Derby/London or Eastern end of the station. The large flick through timetables are still there. The area where the wall is recessed had benches in the 1980’s. These will be replicated by using cut down DMU seats from DC Kits.
Dont forget the little guys
Although a fair way off yet I can see the light at the end of the tunnel regarding the platform. What this means though is that some serious thought needs to be given to the subject of people. It goes without saying I’m going to need a lot and that’s going to get expensive. However the more there are the more they merge from an individual person to a crowd and the more confused they get. It also means the more corners can be cut. An example of this can be seen below.
The more observant will notice that some of the passengers on this bus are black. Observation of people inside things like buses and trains leads to the realisation that sometimes you really do see little more than a shadow or a dark shape. There’s no need to paint some 4mm scale chaps tie if he is sitting inside a model. The fact that he is there is often enough.
Other than the sheer cost of lots of little people the other thing to consider is the repeats. No point buying 20 packs of the same figures. The 2 chaps on the left are from Bachmann the 2 on the right cheap Chinese figures from ebay. The difference is obvious but the Chinese figures still have their uses. Before I come to that some thoughts on paint. A lot of modellers follow the way the military guys paint larger scale figures but is that the right approach? Most large scale figures are the point of the model but not only that they are highly stylised, kind of like a style in a painting but do they actually look real? More importantly do the same methods scale down to to a figure that’s only 24 mm high?
Its my opinion that they don’t and that we can easily fall into the trap of modelling what we think we know and not what we actually see. For a real person to look about an inch tall they need to be a good few hundred feet away and you cant see detail from that far away. Figures 2 and 4 in the picture above have had a light wash of black applied to bring out the shadows a tad but that’s it. The other thing I quite like about the mixing of figures is that they are not all the same height.
All this talk of distance and what we actually see doesn’t mean that the 2 chaps on the right are OK, Far from it they are crudely moulded and crudely painted but all is not lost.
By mixing the figures and putting the better ones at the front a crowd is born and for a lot less money than using all higher quality figures. If you could try to imagine how I think the platforms will look they will be reasonably dark, what light there is will be a horrible colour and the ceilings are low with a lot of stuff in the way of a lot of the views. The people need to do what all the other details on the layout do and that is kind of disappear into the scene, They shouldn’t scream out at the viewer but just simply ‘be there’
Let there be lights
One of the things I get asked quite often is where I got my platform lights from. When I tell people I made them I’m often asked if I can make more. Well its nice to be asked but I really don’t want to get distracted from what I should be doing and besides which they are dead easy to make anyway.
Before I get into how, some thoughts on the subject of lights on layouts. People easily get sucked in by the gimmikyness (is that even a word) of working lights. Of course that’s fine if that’s what you want and you run your layout in the dark but if you don’t it does leave 2 questions:
Why compromise the look of the light to make it work?
Why are the lights on in the day anyway?
OK you don’t have to compromise the look of the light (I built a ‘dayburner’ street lamp to prove to myself I could) but on in the daytime? Its just not how things work. Thus my lights don’t work because they don’t need to.
So anyway, in true blue peter style here’s how I make my platform lamps.
You will need:
- 1mm dia brass rod
- 20 x 80 thou strip
- 20 x 100 thou strip
- 80 x 80 thou strip
- 2mm OD, 1mm ID plastic tube
Preperation
If you have a strip cutter (I use one of these these – if you haven’t got one then you should, its one of the handiest tools I have!) set it to 22mm and cut 1 each of the 20×80 and 80×80 strips for each lamp you need, you no doubt will need more than one). Cut the one 20×100 strip to 23.5mm and the tube to 24.5mm. One end of the tube need shaping to a taper and I mount it into a mini drill and run it against sandpaper to get the shape I want. Use a dabbing action so that the tube doesn’t get too hot and starts melting.
The 80 x 80 piece needs a 1mm hole drilling through its center and the ends shaping with a file and the brass rod need to be cut to length, I use about 80mm as I want it mounted through the platform and into the baseboard. You should now have a kit of bits ready to assemble.
Assembly
Glue the shaped 80 x 80 strip to the 20 x 100 so that its centered (make sure the hole is the right way, obviously) and the 20 x 80 on top – again make sure its centered.
Glue the plastic tube onto the brass rod so that its base is 60mm from the top. When these have set glue the pole to the head ensuring everything is square and that’s it (told you it was simple)
Further detailing
There are 2 types of these lamps ones that fold and ones that don’t. The folding ones are generally used on platforms where the running lines have overhead so that maintenance people don’t have to use ladders. The bases on the 2 types are where the differences are. On the rigid ones they have a lozenge shaped access panel on the base which can be simply made by cutting a lozenge shape from paper or a sticky label. The folding ones are more distinctive and I etched an overlay for these. Few of New Streets lamps are actually the same, some having loudspeakers, platform telephones or HST stop signs added to them (or any combination thereof) although none had station nameboards which are common on many platforms. New Street had the name printed on the lamp head itself, these were printed on DIY waterslide transfer paper (available from here)
still counting!
The thing I have found building something large and repetative is to celebrate the little milestones rather than just focus purely on the final destination. I also find its good to look back now and then too, so with that in mind…
Back in July last year I was here with my platforms. 
Today I am here. The milestone is that all the pillars on the nearest board are done. In fact there is only the large walls halfway along the ramps that display the timetables, some iron work on the platforms and people (more thought on those in a future update) to do and the platfroms on this board can be considered finished. 
Next stage is to finish the pillars and final structures on the next board and once the ironwork and people are done thoughts can turn to the ceilings.
I must admit I wanted to be here earlier than now but got distracted. Once the ceilings are in and the lighting is working I feel the model will really start to feel like the real place.
17th March 2013
Just a small update this time. Aside from the picture above there are new images on the class 81 and Mk3 coaches pages. Click on stock to view them.
1, 2, 3, 4,… …38, 39, 40!
Thanks to some helpful feedback on a forum I have redone the pillars so that the bumpers are higher up (thanks again to Tim for re-lasering me some) and continued with building more. I dunno how I missed the bumper height as I had set them at the right height on the walls.
The title of this post refers to me building a batch of 40 TV monitors for the platforms. A simple enough task with a bit of Evergreen square tube, some strip sections and a spot of glue and a file but the numbers mean it took a whole afternoon! The reason why the middle one doesn’t have any brackets is the monitors are on the none viewing side of the pillar. That’s true for the one on the left too but being on the first platform I thought you might see the brackets from some angles.
Below is how they look in situe
From pillars to posters
Thanks to the help of my long term friend and his laser cutter I have made a start on the pillars that litter the platforms at New Street (and also give i its characteristic look of a public loo!).
The tiles are laser cut onto paper which is then wrapped around a wooden inner. Half round microstrip is used for the bumpers around the base. The laser cut is very very subtle and it looks like a print but you can feel the cuts and more importantly in certain light you can see them even though you cant make out the black lines from the same angle. The wooden formers are used because these pillars (there’s an awful lot of them) will have to take the weight of the shopping center above. For that reason holes are cut through the platforms and the pillars are glued to the baseboard. The area where the tiles stop mark the height of the ceilings.
Another mind numbingly repetitive but ‘needs to be done’ tasks is to add posters to the walls. For a long time I have been collecting 1987 posters as and when I find them and some are shown here. The frames are simply 30thou microstrip.
For some more (and Ive got to be honest way more interesting) examples of Tim’s work with his laser cutter click here
17th February 2013
This update sees some new pictures of DMU’s for you to look at, there’s a new image in the class 108 gallery and for those who have been following my workbench page there’s a new gallery for my class 100/105 hybrid.
To see the multiple unit galleries click here
Oxford Diecast’s VW transporter
Recently released is the Oxford Diecast model of the VW Transporter (or type 2 (t3) or type 25). As these were introduced in 1979 and continued in production during the ’80s and into the 90’s in Europe its an ideal candidate for a brummy trader to be pottering around in on the layout.
The model features the end capped bumpers and round headlights that date it between 1980 and 1985 which means it could be either the earlier air cooled or the later water cooled variety. I don’t know if anything externally differentiates the two. (Hey i’m no expert I’m just reading this from Wiki!) My immediate first impression was that it looked too wide but checking the dimensions it seems to be spot on. For some reason the van version is left hand drive (the bus version isn’t) but features the seat configuration for right hand drive.
A quick hack
The steering wheel was removed (the model is screwed together by the way), the console above it cut off and both parts were relocated to the right hand side. While I had it in bits I added a driver. The inside of the window frames were painted black (the rubbers are printed on but the insides are white which looks a bit weird) and the bodyshell given a quick coat of matt varnish. I use this one by the way!
Once reassembled the model was given a wash of grime (dark grey for the sides and front, light brown for the roof and back) and the tyres sanded a smidge to give the van some weight (having glued them up solid first). I just need to sort out the rear view mirrors now.
Oddball DMU, Final part
Hi All
Just to draw a line under my oddball DMU project, heres the pair complete bar the weathering. As the weathering will essentially be a repeat of the entry for the class 108 DMU theres no real reason to repeat it here but I will add pictures to the DMU galleries when they are done. The windows on the class 100 are a combination of Hornby’s 110 and the Replica flush glazing for their Mk1 coaches. The plain windows being cut from acetate sheet and everything being secured in place with Klear.
The tail lamp is a bachmann one with a new handle from 0.35mm wire.
Gangways for DMU’s
Hi All
I’ll get back to the oddball DMU in the next entry but this time (and still related) I have been looking at gangways. The ones Bachmann supply with their first gen’ DMU’s are quite nice and correctly feature the double scissors that most DMU’s carry. However it doesnt really matter how nice they are if there is still a gap between them.
The easiest way to fix this is to use something like these (or make your own) and while not super accurate, lets face it no one is going to notice anyway! However I have for a long time been a fan of the Masokits gangway (see here for Masokits) which while perhaps a bit OTT and a bit tricky to build are well worth having a go at.
Basically it still works the same way, essentially folded paper but surrounded by etched ends and that all important scissors framework. The etchy bits when assembled look like this.
There are some extra brackets in the kit (which i left off) and it also caters for different types (GWR or LMS). You can even lock them together as per the prototype if you want too! I pretty much followed the instructions with one deviation. The instructions suggest soldering the backs of the pins with a oiled Rizzla (other makes are avialable) paper acting as a barrier. I chose to solder the pin to the outer arm and crimp it when assembled to old it all together. In reality the paper pushes the arms outwards keeping everything in place anyway.
One painted (carefully!) the paper is folded up and popped into place and a small peice of crepe paper (supplied in the kit) is glued over the top to represent the tarpauling. (you could easily add this to the ones mentioned earlier to improve them if you wanted too.)
The finished result on a class 108 DMU. I only fit one as the exhausts tend to interfere with them working. A light dusting of weathering is all thats needed. As I said at the start, no one is going to notice anyway but thats not the point!