Kingsbridge - paint shop

[popeye]

Very good, that makes a big difference.  

[Noel]

On 24/12/2017 at 6:21 PM, popeye said:

Very good, that makes a big difference.  

Thanks. The weathering needs some more work but I'm relatively content with the results so far. The pristine grey colour is spot on with the prototype fresh out of the paint shop (see attached pic below).  That is an advantage of getting these superb models in pristine condition rather than factory weathered, folks have the choice to run and weather to their own taste and skill. On the next batch I'm going to try maskol to preserve some of the white numbering better, and some sort of texture material on the tops of the bubbles to represent thick layers of cement while also trying to avoid a hairy stubble effect. I hand painted the wheel sides with frame dirt. The out of the box models look so nice I may keep and run a few of the ivory and orange ones pristine as samples of the originals. Does anybody have side on photos of the prototype orange bubbles in traffic?

Edited January 2, 2018 by Noel
typo

[Warbonnet]

3 minutes ago, Noel said:

 The out of the box models look so nice I may keep and run a few of the ivory and orange ones pristine as samples of the originals. Does anybody have side on photos of the prototype orange bubbles in traffic?

You could always buy some more and have a pristine and weathered rake to run, we wouldn’t object! (in all seriousness we’ve had customers specify that they are doing that.)

Joking aside, lovely job Noel. We are loving the sight of people personalising the models!

[Noel]

1 hour ago, Warbonnet said:

You could always buy some more and have a pristine and weathered rake to run, we wouldn’t object! (in all seriousness we’ve had customers specify that they are doing that.)

Joking aside, lovely job Noel. We are loving the sight of people personalising the models!

Cheers Fran.  Shhh - don't let the cat out of the bag, there is a version of that plan afoot!  But I'll have to save some budget for IRM A(001) and MM 121. Cement bubbles occasionally ran in mixed rake formations which may be a way to achieve running a few bubbles with other fitted stock. 

The ongoing experimenting and learning how to weather stock has been fun and really enjoyable, yet scary as heck at times. The next big step is opening up one of these beauties to fit working tail lamps - scares the daylights out of me that I may not be able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again afterwards!!!   

Edited January 2, 2018 by Noel
typo

[Blaine]

1 hour ago, Noel said:

  But I'll have to save some budget for IRM A(001) . 

I seem to have missed this announcement??

[Noel]

A scary tale of weathering IRM cement wagons. I have enjoyed learning and trying different ways of weathering IRM's lovely cement wagons.  Scary I can tell you especially yesterday (Batch 3 and 5) which I painted Mr Surfacer 500 on the tops of the bubbles to create a sort of caked cement texture.  This is the journey so far starting with batch one the night after the SDMRC show.

Batch 1 - Ivory - Light weathering

 

Batch 2 - Ivory - Moderate weathering

 

Batch 3 - Ivory - Moderate weathering plus caked texture on tops of bubbles

 

Batch 4 - Orange - Moderate weathering

 

Batch 5 - Orange - Moderate weathering plus caked texture on tops of bubbles

 

Yesterdays stages:

1. Start pristine

 

2. Apply Mr Surfacer 500 grunge on tops of bubbles stippled using short bristle brush.

 

3. What have I done to these lovely wagons? 

 

4. Phew - scary but worth the risk

 

5. Some tidying up left to do but I am relieved and happy with Batches 3 and 5 

 

I can tell you my heart was in my mouth after I applied the grey texture material to the tops of these and thought I had destroyed them.  

[Irishrailwayman]

Great stuff Noel. Would you consider adding grafitti to the heavily weathered bubbles?

[scahalane]

Brave move but worth the risk Noel. I think maybe some whiteish weathering powders to add a variety of texture and they'll look great.

[Noel]

14 minutes ago, scahalane said:

Brave move but worth the risk Noel. I think maybe some whiteish weathering powders to add a variety of texture and they'll look great.

Agree, I used white weathering powder on the first batch of ivories and may add some to the later batches, especially the black chassis.

[Noel]

4 hours ago, Irishrailwayman said:

Great stuff Noel. Would you consider adding grafitti to the heavily weathered bubbles?

Hi Gerry, Thanks, but no graffiti on my model choo-choos would not be my sort of thing at all at all.  Impressed with yours though. Have they been to Limerick? Noel 

[Irishrailwayman]

1 hour ago, Noel said:

Hi Gerry, Thanks, but no graffiti on my model choo-choos would not be my sort of thing at all at all.  Impressed with yours though. Have they been to Limerick? Noel 

They must have been hanging around too long in some sidings unsupervised alright. These are a set of rub-on transfers I got a few years ago.

[Noel]

Was apprehensive when I got to this stage and wondered had I destroyed the wagons. Luckily the next steps went ok.

[PaulC]

Noel, they look fabulous. What's this Mr Surfacer 500 you are talking about!

Paul

[Broithe]

18 minutes ago, PaulC said:

Noel, they look fabulous. What's this Mr Surfacer 500 you are talking about!

Paul

'Tis a sort of fine filler.

http://www.swannysmodels.com/Surfacer.html

[Noel]

2 hours ago, PaulC said:

Noel, they look fabulous. What's this Mr Surfacer 500 you are talking about!

Paul

Hi Paul.

Thanks. It was @Georgeconna who told me about it. I have some of his fab weathered MIR bubbles on which he had used it to create texture on the top sides. I decided to make some sort of attempt to replicate his superb bubble weathering which seems one of the 'go to' standards.  There are other ways of achieving this but I decided to try it George's way.  There are multiple versions of Mr Surfacer, it is basically a sand-able model filler in different thicknesses 500 being the thickest and 1200 being the thinest almost enough for air-brush use.  Plastic modellers use it to fill imperfections not unlike modelling the putty I used on the recent GSV plastic cut'n'shut. I can see a raft of other uses for it to great areas of debris on station platforms, base of buildings, road side texture, etc. It eats into plastic so use sparingly or in multiple coats on delicate or thin plastic surfaces.

Noel

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SF-285-Mr-Hobby-Mr-Surfacer-500-40ml/263197021597?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

PS: I used AddressPal to get it posted to Ireland

Edited February 8, 2018 by Noel

[Georgeconna]

Came out nice Noel, Bit work Weathering lower down to blend it in but I imagine your working on that!!

 

[PaulC]

Thanks for the info. I must look at adding it to supplies. 

Paul

[Noel]

1 hour ago, Georgeconna said:

Came out nice Noel, Bit work Weathering lower down to blend it in but I imagine your working on that!!

Thanks George. Yes hope to finish that up tomorrow. Thanks for your advice BTW.

[johnminnitt]

Yes, nicely done. I have come to this forum via an interest in the 3ft gauge which did sometimes tend to the grubby end of the spectrum (take a bow C&L), and where weathering seems normal on models. On wider tracks though I have however seen here a few pictures of these bubbles looking spotless in trains (along with pristine light grey opens etc) and yours look vastly more convincing.

[Noel]

MM Mk2 - Multi part mission.

1. Convert a black roofed MM mk2d EGV to an orange roofed EGV (orange ones are rare as hens teeth)
2. Weather a rake of orange roofed MM mk2d coaches - primary reason is to dull down the yellow shade of orange they come with out of the box
3. Put some passengers inside the coaches
4. Change the couplings to Kadee
5. Optional - put lighting inside coaches

Well lets see how far I get.  

I had been unable to acquire an orange roofed EGV so originally I bought a supertrain livery EGV with the intention of adding the tippex white stripes to convert it, but decided it would be easier to convert a black roofed EGV because it would be a quick simple respray of the removable roof, with no masking, whereas adding the tippex without reverse masking to a high standard would have been quite difficult, and wavey stripes are something that drive me nuts - OCD I know perhaps.  

 

First job was to figure out how to get the roof off without resorting to use of a vice grips or a block hammer, but @Glenderg came to the rescue with advice and the roof popped off easily with little force required (see clips below).

Roof off ready for priming

Because of the contrast between the black and orange on the roof I decided to prime it with Halfords plastic grey primer.  With hindsight a white primer would have been better as I would have required less coats of the orange latter to fully hide the dark grey.

I mixed Vallejo model air 71.002 (yellow) and 71.102 (red) by eye until I got the shade of tan/orange I was looking for.  The ratio was 35:1 Yellow/Red because the red pigment was incredibly strong.  Only 2 drops of red for every 70 drops of yellow to get this shade.  I know it is more orange than the existing coaches but to my eye right or wrong the shade of orange looks more like I remember than the yellow dominant shade on MM Mk2d's.  Hopefully the weathering will help it blend in on the EGV as I won't have to respray the orange roofed mk2's I have, just weather them, and the EGV roof will get a lot more weathering than the coaches. Well thats my theory anyway - the proof will be in the eating I guess when its all finished.

The roof in the middle is the respayed EGV with the deeper shade of orange, the roof below is the original MM colour with the yellow tint. By way of comparison I put an MM 085 body shell beside the resprayed roof.  They look somewhat closer to my eyes. Anyway photos are very subjective with indoor lighting with white balance issues on cameras so will rarely look like the prototypes outdoors.  

That's it for now.  Next step is add passengers, perhaps lighting and then gently weather the rake one coach at a time.

[popeye]

Thats a good mix, how does it look with the sides?

[Noel]

41 minutes ago, popeye said:

Thats a good mix, how does it look with the sides?

Cheers. I'll let it cure overnight, pop it back on the EGV tomorrow and take a pic for comparison.  It will be a little bit different, but once weathered hopefully it will all blend in together.  I'm not changing anything on the standard mk2 coaches just weathering.

So far I have always used a Tamiya mix for CIE tan/orange colours, this is the first time I've mixed Vallejo primary colours from their basic set of 8 'model air' colours for tan/orange.   

[Noel]

Ready for weathering. EGV black roof repainted orange. The shade is not an exact match but close enough for my eyes prior to roof weathering.

Edited March 21, 2018 by Noel
typo

[PJR]

Look great Noel

[popeye]

It does look a little dark and weathering might make it darker. 

[Glenderg]

You could take the roof off, and put a drop of your paint on the your colour match area with a small brush, blast it with a hairdryer, see how it looks. rinse and repeat until it's right. You an always remove it with a cocktail stick before it plasticizes. A squirt of yellow and white should tone it closer to the side colour. It'll never be "right" as is, I'm afraid. 

[Noel]

12 hours ago, popeye said:

It does look a little dark and weathering might make it darker. 

Agree. 

10 hours ago, Glenderg said:

You could take the roof off, and put a drop of your paint on the your colour match area with a small brush, blast it with a hairdryer, see how it looks. rinse and repeat until it's right. You an always remove it with a cocktail stick before it plasticizes. A squirt of yellow and white should tone it closer to the side colour. It'll never be "right" as is, I'm afraid. 

Yes it's too dark, will redo it later. 

[Noel]

Take two. Closer if not a perfect match, but this seems about as close as I'm going to get. The lower roof is 120:1 ratio Vallejo yellow to red, the upper roof if MM out of the box.  At least the EGV roof will be closer to the colour of the sides.

Side by side

Edited March 22, 2018 by Noel

[Noel]

Train Tech CL2 'warm white' coach light strips and some passengers being installed.  Some are seated figure, others are less expensive standing figures with their legs removed as they won't be visible from outside the coach.

[popeye]

Looks perfect. 

[Glenderg]

Looks the bidness! 

[Noel]

5 hours ago, popeye said:

Looks perfect. 

 

4 hours ago, Glenderg said:

Looks the bidness! 

Thanks chaps. It bothered me overnight and had to be redone. I will sleep better tonight. 

[Noel]

After fix - Goldilocks says this roof feels just right

 

Before fix - Goldilocks says this roof is too dark

Thanks to the two maestro's @popeye and @Glenderg for their 'gentle' and much appreciated colour co-ordination advice  

[Noel]

Ok back to the mk2 air cons for a while.  Successfully changed the tension lock couplings to kadee's tonight using advice from other threads on couplings and @BosKonay's suggestion of gluing the kadee's to the underside of the NEM362 pocket rather than plugging them in so that they would be the correct height as per the kadee coupling gauge (see below).  I fitted a kadee no 20 at one end of each coach and no 19 at the other end, and then couple coaches so that the no 20 end of one couples to the no 19 of the adjacent coach.  Running trails so far have proven successful in forward and reverse around bends and over point work.

I wanted to get any manhandling work done before weathering.  I failed initially to remove the tension lock couplings so to avoid damaging to the coach I dismantled it in an effort to remove the bogies so I could remove the coupling plates and use force to push out the old couplings, but I could not get the blasted bogies off. So change of plan, I used a scalpel to trim off the nibbles at the end of the tension lock couplings and hey presto they easily slide out of the NEM pockets.  So for the rest of the mk2 coaches I didn't bother disassembly, instead just a few seconds with the scalpel and the tension locks popped out and are reusable in future.  

Now that all the other steps are complete its time to lightly weather a rake of these orange roofed mk2 air cons.  

Edited March 29, 2018 by Noel

[Noel]

Multi shades of orange. Kadee installed on the orange roof mk2's with closer coupling compared to the black roof mk2 TLC gaps behind.  Ran extensive mk2 kadee trials on all track sections on the upper level today in forward and reverse. So far so good.

Hopefully this is the last time I will have to look at these stark orange roofs. Next up weathering powders.