Tales from the carriage shops

[jhb171achill]

Any new pics of silver locos or stock looks very spectacular new. But eyewitnesses said "one single journey" and they're already looking dull; two and they're filthy.

 

It would have been quite impossible to keep clean - photos bear that out.

[GSR 800]

Eh?

[jhb171achill]

Eh?

 

??

[GSR 800]

Are ye talking about the heating van John?

[jhb171achill]

Silver heating vans, coaches, and locomotives - all. The "silver" (in reality, unpainted) livery weathered spectacularly badly. Locomotives especially, just looked absolutely filthy and very uncared for. Even more utterly ghastly than many of the "trans-euro-connex-western-first great pennines train company" fairground garishness to be found threading the rails on our neighbouring island.....

 

Incidentally, as I think Mayner pointed out at one stage - numerals on silver coaching stock was RED, while on locos it was "eau-de-nil". Bogies, roofs, ends, chassis, gangways, all unpainted - plain silver-grey bare metal. (Arguably, with the absence of any paint, it wasn't a "livery" at all!). Coaching stock turned out thus never had any "snails" on them.

[Mayner]

Little bit of metal bashing.

 

 

Drawing glued to metal sheet with PVA, punch out rivets with GW rivet press or a centre punch.

 

 

Rivet pattern punched out on rear of sheet.

 

 

Traditionally the design was transferred to the metal by marking out and scribing, but its more accurate to glue the working drawing to the sheet of metal or plasticard. Shape roughly cut out with a tin snips to within 5 mm of line.

 

 

Final cuts close to the cut line with a fine tin snips and tidy up with round and rectangular needle file

 

[Mayner]

 

Semi finished parts.

 

 

Roll around piece of wood or metal of suitable diameter or a set of rolls. Paper is to prevent the rolls flattening the rivets!

 

 

The semi-finished article, the reverse curves at the bottom were formed by flattening out the ends of the sheet and bending around a needle file handle, brass is easier than plasticard to work with will hold its shape and can be re-worked.

 

[GSR 800]

Excellent.....

[Weshty]

Suit you sir!

[Mayner]

So far this years efforts are mainly devoted to finishing off existing projects. Finishing off a rake of CIE Bredins seemed to be a good place to start, each coach has to be fitted with interior, roof detail, before painting, glazing and fitting replacement wheels and couplings

 

Interiors seemed to be a good place to start, using Comet Interior "kits" basically strips of seating, plasticard & glazing for floors and partitions.

 

 

 

 

A mitre box with a stop is a useful tool for cutting out seating 32 pair for a standard 64 seater coach.

 

64 Seater Coach interior before

 

After

 

The plasticard floor appears to be the correct width for the Dapol shell so its basically a matter of cutting to length, I use a NWSL Duplicutter for cutting the floor, partitions and doors to the correct length/width.

 

Brake Standard Interior

 

64 seater Standard with roof vents

 

Close up torpedo roof vents (Comet)

Edited March 22, 2016 by Mayner

[GSR 800]

Fantastic stuff. If I had half your skill, I would be a happy man.

[DiveController]

Nice job, John, and very helpful!

[enniscorthyman]

Wonderful job.

[Georgeconna]

this stuff looks class, I will have to have a proper read of the thread as I must of missed some posts...

[Mayner]

One of the challenges with a garden railway is keeping up with maintenance & renewal work just like a full size railway

 

The Easter Weekend seemed to be a good time for some maintenance work, but first job was to clear the line after last weeks high winds and rain.

 

The T&D Inspection Car was the only thing running, one of the locos took a nose dive off a raised section of line loosing its funnel when it de-railed on a twig. The loco seems to have rolled over upon impact with the funnel buried in a bed of mulch and the loco upright.

 

 

This area is due to be re-sleepered during the next 6 months, the sleepers on the Accucraft track are bleached out and turning to dust. Luckily I have found an alternative source of sleeper/tie strip from Sunset Valley in the USA expensive but should be good for at least 10 years.

 

 

The worksite is the main line and siding tracks at the principal station/yard Jackson City. The ties were replaced in this area during the last 6 months, but ballast still needed to be completed on the siding tracks and tidied up on the main.

 

In the past I had used loose ballast without an adhesive, which needed to be topped up either washed away by heavy rain or blown away when you use a blower to blow away twigs, leaves and other debris from the track.

 

 

Ballast in this area is a combination of re-cycled and new fine pebbles screened through 8mm wire mesh to remove larger stones, bonded with dilute concrete bonding agent and a drop of sugar soap to break down surface tension. A certain amount of fines was used in the mix in this area to create the well trodden area of a yard.

 

 

Gluing down is similar to the pva & eye dropper technique in 4mm & N, though washing away the ballast is less of a problem.

[Broithe]

Glued ballast does exist in the real world, too.

 

 

 

And this at Dawlish.

 

[DiveController]

John, sorry to go back to the previous post but did you do up the scale plan of the interiors or does it come from Comet?

 

Glued ballast does exist in the real world, too

Ok, it's close but not quite April 1st:confused:

So this is to stop it falling into the sea?

[Mayner]

John, sorry to go back to the previous post but did you do up the scale plan of the interiors or does it come from Comet?

 

The plan's are my own drawn to scale for 4mm, I usually use a drawing as a template when I am making a part rather than scribing or marking out the part.

 

I dropped a clanger cutting out the seats for a scale width Irish coach rather than to fit the Dapol body shell.

 

Ok, it's close but not quite April 1st:confused:

So this is to stop it falling into the sea?

[Broithe]

John, sorry to go back to the previous post but did you do up the scale plan of the interiors or does it come from Comet?

 

 

Ok, it's close but not quite April 1st:confused:

So this is to stop it falling into the sea?

 

At Dawlish, it is to do with wave-washing - the first one is in London, also a flooding issue, I believe - it occurs all over the place.

 

They must use a fair-sized eye-dropper, I wounder is it's painted yellow?

[Mayner]

A sure sign of autumn a weta (Maori "god of ugly things") took up residence in the workshop. now safely re-located to the garden where there is a better chance of survival with plenty of leaf cover & something to eat.

 

 

 

[jhb171achill]

Methinks the insect is overscale!

[josefstadt]

Methinks the insect is overscale!

 

But at least it's the correct colour and it's the right way up!

[jhb171achill]

The lining isn't right and it's missing numerals.....

 

Question: is the insect actually a flying snail?

[minister_for_hardship]

The lining isn't right and it's missing numerals.....

 

Question: is the insect actually a flying snail?

 

A flying snail is not an insect, it's actually an avian variety of mollusc.

[Mayner]

 

Marine version?

[jhb171achill]

That's a "swimming snail", the logo of the Larne & Stranraer Railway.

[David Holman]

Guess it would make an interesting wagon load. Probably need one or more barrier wagons for those antennae too...

Am guessing ready to run, rather than kit or scratch built, though clearly the latter well within your talents John!

[Mayner]

Its quite a while since I posted on this thread as I had very little that was of direct relevance to the Irish scene. I have been mainly finishing off existing projects some started a long-long time ago. One was to finish off a batch of early CIE coaches, using modified Dapol LMS Stanier coaches with brass overlay sides.

 

Work was mainly tidying up and fitting new roof and end detail, using brass wire and MJT & Comet castings, interiors and replacing the plastic Dapol wheels with 14mm Hornby metal wheels.

 

Finishing had dragged on as it was basically impossible to paint during the cold damp winter months.

 

I completed most of the painting last week, today was warm enough to fit the decals outside on the deck.

 

 

Two done on one side another three to go.

 

Brake Second 1904

 

The green is a laquer colour matched from on of my older coaches, the eau-de-nil was mixed from a concoction of Humbrol & Tayima enamel. The body was originally spayed in eau-de-nil turning out not unlike the short lived UTA scheme of the 60s before masking the line, which turned out a wee bit fuzzy.

 

Interior is built using a Comet Interior "kit" with some additional plasticard for the luggage & guards compartment and pure guesswork. The whole lot is screwed to the underframe with a pair of 10BA nuts and bolts.

There was no room to fit the weight above the floor, I added additional weight and bolted the whole lot to the underframe

 

The Unimat came in useful for shaping and drilling the weights

 

Corridor 2nd one of the original coaches

This was one of the original guinea pig coaches, I ended up replacing the Dapol body shell and re-using the sides as I prefer to glue the roof to the shell before cutting a slot for the windows and removing most of the floor.

 

BSSGV

The BSSGVs were converted from corridor seconds/standards most if not all early CIE coaches ran in the black and tan scheme for most of their operating lives, the light green with snail and single line was a late 50s scheme

[Irishrailwayman]

Nice work!

[Mike 84C]

Excellent work! hope mine look as good.

[DiveController]

A lot of hard work there, John but worth it. Lovely stuff!

[Mayner]

Applying the final touches complete decals, clear coat aerosol to body Tayima semi-gloss clear to sides, Testors dullcoat to ends roof and underframe, glazing and a few passengers.

 

SSM produced a sheet of green and white decals for these early CIE coaches.

 

The bodies are secured to the underframe with 2-10Ba screws at each end. BA or fine self tappers are capable of self tapping into the soft plastic used in the Dapol shells.

 

Corridor Standard.

 

Roof detail corridor standard. Plumbing is in .5mm straight brass wire secured in place with home made split pins.

 

1904-8 Brake Standard Open

 

Buffet car galley side.

 

BSSGV generator side

[StevieB]

A joy to behold - oh that such models were readily available RTR, they'd sell like hot cakes.

 

Stephen

[Noel]

Pure class - modelling at a different level. They ooze atmosphere from the golden era.

[Mayner]

Standard Open

 

 

A flotilla of Tin vans

 

Tin Van Sub Assemblies

 

Stevie B is partially right, one of the ironies of better quality rtr Irish models is that more people are prepared to wait for an eternity for a new rtr model than attempt to modify a rtr model, assemble a kit or let alone a scratchbuild.

 

While there is probably greater demand for a rtr model of one of these coaches than a kit or scratch aid, there is unlikely to be enough demand to justify commissioning a manufacture to produce a brass or plastic injection moulded model.

 

Part of the underlying problem is the sheer variety of Pre-1964 CIE coaching stock and relatively few liveries, collectors are likely to buy a maximum of 1-2 models of a particular type and few active modellers are able to relate to the pre Supertrain era.