I think its finished....

Its one of those skill that one really needs to develop. The one that says "sod off, little voices at the back of my head, the damn thing is finished!" Indeed its the law of diminishing returns where the effort required to continue adding details is offset by the fact that you are now really getting into the realms of nit picking (My departed friend Jack Watsons reply was "well, when you build your model of this I guess it will be perfect won't it"). Tonight I attached the dummy couplers (unlike the real thing, mine won't break down between stations). The kit has a large gap for the couplers to swivel, Which in real life was not there. I filled the hole from behine with a piece of plastic, and cut the coupler head of and just glued in onto the front with araldite. I also added the Mu cables to the front, and in a fit of pseudo finescaleness, made the tap handles at the top from 5 amp fuse wire soldered on the ends. I must have been sober at the time, and I won't let that happen again at the modeling bench. I also added a pipe under the car that shows clearly in photographs (though it took a while to find a decent one of what I wanted to see). Finally, the headlights were drilled out so it at least looked like something might shine out of it, even if I'm not going to fit headlights (they are just one more thing to go wrong I find)
so thats it, I think its done. Its taken 5 weeks and its only been so short I think because I've had a fair idea about how i was going to solve any wee problems that might come up.


So, now I guess its review/comments time. Its been a mostly trouble free build compared to some things I've seen over the years. the 'Instructions' are an interesting assistant rather than a blueprint. I think the best thing is that it does look good while you are building it, which I find is one of the big hurdles to kit completion. No matter how good the actual kit is, if it looks like a dog while its going together then it tends to stay in the box longer, rather than sit out on the workbench, daring you to just do one little bit more. Its not a simple kit to put together, and I would definitely not recommend it to a beginner, but for those of you with a reasonable/moderate amount of skill, or if you are a member of a club and can get assistance from others, it is achievable, and it builds into a pleasing replica of the prototype. I've also seen rumors that the new owners of the Trackside range are thinking about doing another batch of kits. I'll ask The owners to post some details to me. I think I promised to help upgrade the instructions as well. I suppose I'll live to regret that.

I guess the biggest complement is that I'd buy another one, if I didn't have so many projects that were 1/2 finished, and I didn't need 2.
I'm now interested to have a go at some of the other kits in the range.

Quick update

Just a quick shot of the railcar tonight. I'm changing operating systems to try to wring another year or 2 out of my 8 year old computer tonight, and hopefully its all going to go well. Otherwise I'll be offline for a wee while.


hanges since last time are that the windows are in (I've solved my araldite problem), and I've also painted the back with my transparent black colour to make them a bit darker. This has worked after about 4 coats of paint, and might need one or 2 more.
I do need to do something about those wires hanging lose inside. However its not even obvious at normal viewing angles.

Disaster!

Bit of an accident last night here at Chateau Dandruff. I decided to paint a layer of gloss varnish over the decals before subjecting everything to the final weathering wash. I come back 30 minutes later to find....

The varnish had attacked the ink used to make the decals in the first place. It was worse on the corners, but there were also some patches in the middle of the stripes as well. As an added bonus the black diving lines had leached out in places. After a bit of a think, and a few beers last night, I accepted the fact that I could only fix the most obvious ones, and that my chances of sweeping the trophy's at the convention next year had gone from being marginally more than nil (by a few decimal points), to less than my being elected the next pope. Fortunately The colour I was using for the roof (Humbrol metalic 56 Aluminium) was a very close match to the silver on the stripes. To get the black interior lines back in, I first painted the worst areas flat black.

I then painted the stripes back in to get back to this, which is good enough from 2 feet I think.

I'll just comment here that I do all my painting (lines etc) freehand, but thats only because I've had 30 odd years of practice and I can paint reasonably straight lines. I'd love to know what other options were available for things like this as eventually my eyesite is going to give out and I'll have to start modeling in G scale or something with all the other oldies.

Stripes are slimming

They are also a pain in the butt to put on. I've often thought while toiling at the workbench that whoever designed and built the prototype really had no consideration for people 50 years later who were actually going to make a model of it.

Tonight I have put the stripes on the railcar while stone cold sober (what does one have of an evening if not a refreshing beer after a hard day sitting on ones butt in the office?). This may have been a mistake. After consulting the instruction sheet, which BTW has no mention of decals anywhere (so at least was quick), I consulted a stack of pictures, and tried to sort out in my head how to do this.


The decals come on a sheet that has a layer of carrier film the whole way across. This means that the decals must be cut out carefully and as close to the edge as you can manage. I also discovered that the nose stripes are about 1/2mm thinner than the side stripes. I found this the hard way after cutting the first set to length. The solution is to have them meet at a corner of a door frame (on the outside edge as shown). You can cut the excess back later when its dry.


The main problem is getting everything on and parallel to the edges. I made some small pencil marks 6mm from the bottom edge which I judged from photo's to be about right. I also made sure that the stripes at least lined up between the cars.

The kit comes with 3 numbers. Rm109 (Christchurch based), 125 (Auckland based) and 131 (Auckland based). I have gone with 125 as its at least possible that it would have passed through the Kapiti region

Another thing I've just noticed is that the red in the photo's is actually a hell of a lot lighter than it is in real life, which is probably why the rest of you think I've taken leave of my senses in picking this colour.It will get a bit darker after the next weathering step. I also have to paint over some edges of the decal film to tidy it up a bit.

Painting pt 2, the undergubbins

While I amass the dutch courage required to put the decals on the bodies, attention turns to the bits which are not going to be red. The underframe of any piece of NZR rolling stock is dark, dirty and dusty, and the 88 seaters were no exception.

To get the right sort of colour build up we are going to work in layers moving from the darkest colour to the lightest. This means starting with black, and moving through the shades of brown. For todays first tip, PAINT ALL THE SUB ASSEMBLIES BLACK BEFORE GLUING THEM TO THE UNDERFRAME. Sorry about the yelling, but this is not in the instructions, and I've discovered that theres some areas that are extremely hard to get to with a paintbrush. Make sure that the black gets into all the nooks and crannys and that you have complete coverage of all the bits.

Now we get into one of the most useful painting tricks that a modeler can have. Its called dry brushing, and most of you will have at least heard of it. For those of you who haven't, Here is a (very) short description. You will need a sizable brush that has lost its point and is quite soft, something that you would normally use to paint large areas I I seem to have a stack of brushes that have lost their points)


Dip it into the paint of a lighter shade to that of your base coat. and then wipe on a paper towel until almost all of the paint is removed. Then move to the area that you want to highlight. Move the brush from side top side with it just brushing across the surface. you should see a slow buildup of lighter paint on the high points of the area you are painting. Try not to overdo this as it can wind up looking a bit cartoonish. I also use this technique to give rolling stock a dusty weather beaten appearance, but I'll cover that at some point in the not too distant future.
For a first pass we will make it a bit easier, as we want a reasonably heavy coat of dark brown on the more exposed areas. I have used vallejo 147 leather brown, but humbrol 98 chocolate is also a good choice. Dip the brush nto the paint and then give it a quick wipe on the paper towel so that most of the panit is removed. Then brush on fairly heavily as we want a good coverage. In the photo we can see the difference between the treated left side and the plain right side.


Then I have used a light drybrush with Vallejo 124 Iraqi sand. The brush needs to have nearly all the colour taken out of it. Again the drybrushed side is on the left.


As you can see the drybrushing brings out the raised detail tricking the eye into seeing what it expects to see.

At gunpoint...

Well, I'm at home sick today, and since we have a flat inspection coming up next week, that means 'der room' must be tidied. Bugger.


so here we have what we should all aspire to. A spotless well organized bench from where our ideas can become real and take flight. Yeah right.


Also today, I've got the second layer of paint on the railcar. In retrospect it doesn't seem to have changed the shade as much as I thought it would, and looks just a wee bit bright. Never fear my friends, that will change with step 3, or maybe step 4.

How to do colour pt 1

Well, we have certainly had a lot about correct colours in the last week. theres also been a huge discussion on the nz_railchat yahoo group. And so tonight you all get to suffer my opinion, and then a bit of practical application.

I think I approach painting colours on models differently to possibly everyone else, mainly because I spent a good 10 years painting a variety of wargaming figures, both historical and fantasy. This requires a completely different set of techniques and an appreciation of light and shadow. Shades are built up with several coats (as it was in real life). We also have to take into account that there is a scale effect that at its simplest states that to appear correct on a scale model a colour should be a bit lighter than the correct shade to appear correct to the mk 1 eyeball. This is a good time to be discussing this as I have just undercoated the Railcar top tonight with a spray on etching primer. Now its going to be whatever red was the right one (midland, carnation etc), which means looking at old photo's to see just what is the correct looking shade. The good news is that there does not appear to be an exact correct shade. I've been looking at colour photo's of 1960's expresses and due to aging and the fact the steam engines are dirty beasts, no two are exactly the same, and the cleanest red appears to be (to my eye) very close to Humbrol gloss 19 signal red ( Its ok, I've just put on the tin helmet and am hunkering down behind a large rock to await the incoming fire from the finescale police). Then we get to the cunning bit.

If we have a look at 1431 and 1410, they are both painted in signal red as the base colour. I have then used a wash to bring out the recessed detail. This consists on a Tamiya acrylic colour X19 smoke, which is a transparent colour. as its a bit strong I dilute it 1:1 with water, and a small drop of detergent. when painted on this flows into the cracks and low spots and creates shadows where the eye expects them to be. To get a more workworn look just use 3-4 coats, and concentrate around the vents and exhausts. This is a very basic description of how it works, and I'll hopefully be able to describe it more fully as I paint the railcar. As a final shot tonight, heres the 2 ends in their primer waiting for the first coat of red.

Quick update

Just a couple of pictures of the railcar tonight to show you how brutal a camera close up is (the black lines are gap filler and not huge gaps)


While I'm not sure if the pictures show it particularly well, I'm not convinced that there's enough curve in the top or sides, and there not much metal left in the roof after the filing I've already done. While I do like the result, I'm just aware that with a bit more planning by the designer, it could have been much better.

It is alive!

Major milestone today, probably the most important one for the whole project. The chassis is together and it moves under its own power.


the lethal spaghetti was a bit of a challenge; mostly finding bits of wire that were flexible enough to pass between the 2 cars. I'm also going to have to do a bit of insulating on the connections to the bogies at some point. Judging from the wiring I think that the detailed interior might be out.


The motor bogie mount has come out pretty much as I had intended it. Its about as simple as one can get and even looks quite tidy. It needs some weight in the gap at the front of the bogie, but still manages to pull the whole model back and forward on the test track. It even makes it round a 15" radius curve in one direction. This will all change when the top goes on though.

Off the high horse.

Its been suggested that I regard low melt solder as an invention of the devil (though how he discovered it in a hot environment like hell is anyones guess. Maybe theres a special spot in hell where modelers are forced to try to assemble white metal kits). It requires some special kit ( ie a controllable temp soldering iron) that my 'make models with sod all tools' approach finds somewhat alien. I've therefor made the attempt to put together the railcar using a variety of glues; superglue for tacking things together, and 5 minute alraldite for strengthening the bonds. this has worked fine up untill this morning, where my 2 part mixing skills seem to have completely deserted me. the glue is brand new (special for this project) and its the Sellys stuff and not some cheap Chinese '5 tubes for a buck' product. Its all rather vexing, as is the problem of cleaning unset glue out of the recesses to have a second (and third) unsuccessful crack at gluing bits together.

However, its not all doom and gloom here at Chateau Dandruff. I have managed to get the 2 unpowered bogies more permanently attached to the underframe. A piece of 6mm wide brass had the holes drilled and then the bolts (care of Dick Smith electronics) were soldered into place. the holes in the underframe were enlarged and then everything was assembled. The center bogie required 2 bolts the correct distance apart, and required a bit of filing to get to fit in the gap in the GP-30 bogie.


Now that the bogies are on, I think it was the right decision to use the Gp30 bogies instead of those supplied in the kit. I have power pickup on all wheels, and they roll 'spurbly'.


The powered bogie is still unattached at this point, but I have a basic plan to achieve this. I'll build a brass frame on the chassis, and also one on the bogie, then just screw the 2 together and use some washers to get the height correct. there might have to be a bit of metal removal to get the whole thing round corners. I suppose I'll have to work out what the minimum radius is going to be.

All together

I gave into impulse and have placed the bits together to get the first 'complete' shot.


The next big jobs are to get the shape of the bodies 'right' (well, looking like the pictures) and have a rolling chassis with the power pickups.

I'm still to resolve if my inner finescaler requires a detailed interior, or just a sound thrashing.

"The Time has come,"

...The walrus said," to talk of may things: of shoes and ships and sealing wax, and just how the hell do all these bits go together underneath?"
(I'd apologize to Lewis Carroll, but hes dead at the moment so it would be a bit pointless.)

I think I've cracked how to mount the 2 unpowered bogies, but you'll have to wait to see that when I get the bits to actually do it. The first bit to do was file the bolster pads off the bottom of the frame, and remove the connection casting between the 2 cars.


With that problem solved (until reality turns up and kicks its butt), I moved on to something I really feared, the undergubbins. Scouring the Railfan articles and several other books yielded exactly zero good pictures of the collection of shapes under the skirt. A plan 'B' was then conceived. It basically started by the assembly of all the bits i could identify onto the underframe. Thus, on went the engine, the fuel tanks, the radiators, the exhaust pipes and some wee cylinder bits that I have no idea about but which fit in the holes, and a part that looks like a tank of some sort mysteriously labeled 'AR'.




This then left a collection of other bits that Pats back to front plan and assembly figures make no sense of. I finally managed to sort out just exactly where the hell everything went (or a reasonable approximation). The photos will mean more than me trying to describe it.

Subassembly 'D'. The tab from the wee generator type thingy fits into the slot at the bottom.

Subassembly 'O'. Same here, only up the other way.

It then became quite obvious where they fitted. 'O' fits on the non-detailed side of the engine, and 'D' sits next to it. In retrospect its not actually that hard, but the bad exploded view and instructions don't help, and it takes a fool to leap in where angles fear to tread..


(as an aside guys, there were 2 of the wee generator bits from figure D and O missing, but there's also some spare bits I don't need.).

I've now just got to sort out what the 2 pewter strips are for as they are not mentioned anywhere that I can see. Theres also some muttering about brass strips round the generators, but I've no idea how it should look.
The researching of underframes has also revealed that there was some pipework running across the non radiator side of indeterminent purpose. Will have to see if I can sort out where it runs from/to, and then find some brass wire to make it.

Plodding along

Tonight I've got the ends on the the 2 bodies. Its not as easy as it looks. The instructions on how to put the detail parts on the ends, which you have to do before putting the rest together, are at the back of the instructions and the lower marker lights have to be left out until after the unit is painted and the decals applied. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, but we shall see.also note that I've not managed to re line up the holes for the MU cables leading to the one on the left being in the wrong spot. I was trying to follow the instructions on how to relocate the pre-marked hole, but it all went horribly wrong, and I had to drill the hole out to 1.5mm to try to get enough space to push the casting over far enough to not look too out of place.

'Bugger'

Unfortunately its failed, so probably the only other option is to cut the locating stub off the back and line it up correctly freehand.

At some point in the next couple of days I'll post some more thoughts on how to motorize the little blighter, as the next step is trying to sort out the underframe and how its all going to work with my bastardized bogies (which have excellent pickups, but might not be as easy in the whole scheme of things).

Short update

Just did a bit of work on detailing the bogies tonight. I was sure that there was 6 in the packet, but 30 minutes later, and I am one short. Have now spent at least 1/2 and hour looking for the last brake cylinder under everything on the work bench, and around the floor underneath.

In other news, the power bogie moved under its own steam (so to speak) tonight. Now I have to sort out just how the whole chassis will go together so that its the right height, and runs well too (in fact, good running is the number one priority, everything else is secondary).

Update; Found errant brake cylinder by cunningly starting to look for something else, and there it was on a piece of floor that I'd examined minutely 5-6 times. I've also added the brake rigging, and a second cylinder that is on the drawings at the opposite end to the brake cylinder. this is from the bits of pewter that were the pins on the inside of the bogies to locate them in the normal build.

Now I will be forced to look at the underframe, and see where all those bits fit in.

Wheel them out

This mornings post carry's over work from last night.


The bogie sideframes are all on, and its not overly obvious that the wheelbase is too short under there. I've cut the gear towers off where they are not needed. I'll have to have a good hard look at how I'm going to mount them to get the body at the right height (ug, mechanisms, my least favorite thing, but probably the next big job). I will also have to try to find a decent picture of just where the brake cylinders sit on the sideframes, although it looks like they are very similar to the EE bogies from the same time period.

As a continuing question, is there anything that the readers would like to see written about? More of? how about the guys in the peanut galley who read, but manage to avoid the comments section?

Friday night pt 2; my workbench

So hows my railcar coming along?

I've got the car bodies together, but here's my first real complaint. the No 1 end ( with the baggage and engine) at the top goes together fine. The No 2 end at the bottom is a different story.
While its the right width at the end, the floor doesn't fit particularly well (to the point of almost dropping through). However the measurements are all the same for the bits for each car, so I'm buggered if I know whats going on. My suggestion at this point (and for the new owners) might be to provide the internal partitions as this would assist greatly in the initial assembly. At the moment the first step is to solder the sides to the one end, then use the roof to line everything up. this is just a wee bit hinky when its on the bench, and the extra bracing would make it much more user friendly.

Tonights job will be to fillet all the joints with 5 minute araldite to give it some more strength.

(So, ECMT, hows your build coming then. Is it out of the box yet?)

The wizzy bits

One of the problems with the railcar kit is the vagueness of the motorizing instructions. I'm sure a GP-XX or farish mech can be used, I'm just not overly sure how the blighter would fit in. Not having a spare mech lying around, I came up with the following compromise.


The motor is an open frame Tenshedo jobby sold by Robin Knight as a spare for an OO or 12mm SPUD unit ( in retrospect I think that there might be an N scale version). The Atlas worm gear is mounted onto the motor shaft.. the whole motor is jacked up to the correct height so that the worm and drive gear just mesh nicely without being too tight. the motor case is 18mm long which will just fit into the baggage compartment with minimal intrusion into the passenger cabin (in retrospect I'm not sure why I bothered worrying about it). If this is still too large, then look here for a smaller motor which should fit much better.

I'd test run it, but I don't seem to have any fine wire around top connect the pickups. For a motor mount I'm going to glue a brass frame over the top, and then build a motor mount on the internal frame somewhere. the main concern is that the powered bogie will only have minimal side-to-side travel and the minimum radius might be limited. I had hoped to get it round 18" radius curves, but it might have to move out to 24". It will make the Ka's easier to build too.

Finally, on a different note, why is it when you only have one drill bit you never lose it (that 1.4mm drill has served me well for nearly 25 years now) but when you buy a set, suddenly you can never find the one you want!

The last but one?

Spotted on Trademe today.

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Toys-models/Models/Railway/Rolling-stock/auction-209628895.htm

Buy your own kit, and join me in building the damn thing. Ability to swear not necessary but could be useful. Access to sizable quantities of alcohol may be an advantage.
I was awake at 3AM this morning trying to think how I was going to do the drive train and fit the bogies underneath.

First quandary

Theres always something that comes up straight away. The bogie side frames looked a bit long to the inner finescaler, so I compared them to the plan.


Hmmm, way too long. Maybe the plan isn't that crash hot as the wheel base is 8' rather than 7'6'. a hunt and 3 different plans later and its correct. The length of the bogie side frames is between 31 and 33mm depending on which plan you use. The actual length? 36mm. Cunningly, I have got my inner fine scaler drunk tonight (he can't handle his Belgian triple) and when he sobers up tomorrow I will have removed 1/2 the material between the outer spring hanger and the end of the side frame, which looks about right to me.

Update: with the bogie sideframe issue dealt to for the time being, I turned to the cab ends, and again immediately ran into another problem. Do I want lights or not? If I decide to have lights (and the Da's don't, which would be a horrible thing to contemplate putting them in) then I'll have to buy some clear plastic rod to fit in the holes that i still have to drill. theres also problems with the skirts at the bottom (not square) and the pilot holes for the MU cables are too far over to the right (which is covered in the instructions by 'start drilling leaning slightly to the left, then slowly straighten up,). I Know Pat was always saying, 'if you are going to do it, do it right' but I'm starting to see a stack of wee problems that could have been easily solved at the masters stage before it went into production.

As an aside, and part of a real conversation I had with Kiwibonds today (as opposed to a fake one that involves typing), how many people have actually brought a trackside railcar (or other kit) and how many have built one? if unbuilt, whats holding you back? Or was it just brought as part of a wider investment portfolio?

No time like the present

Tonights job has involved making a start on the powered bogie. The kit is unpowered and requires a 'donor' to move it. Mine is care of the GP30 bogies I brought a while ago for my Ew project (which died before it even made it to the workbench in its first incarnation). I was just going to thin the plastic frames down and then glue the pewter frames on the outside. However this would have made the bogies about 2mm too wide (note to self; I wonder if theres any way to exorcise the finescale modeler who seems to be lurking in the back of my head!). the answer lies in how Mr Atlas put the bogies together. The pickups collect from the pinpoints on the outside of the wheels, and as long as the central plastic pillar is intact, the metal wipers will hold the wheels in place.

"excuse me but your pickups are showing"

Then its just a case of removing enough metal from the rear of the pweter sideframe and gluing it on.

"only another 5 to go"