Atlantic's works: Portable layout - Ground Signals Again

[Atlantic 3279]

Having kept the use of heat as brief as possible, I didn't get full straightening at the first attempt, so after letting things cool so I could again handle the clip in order to set things up again, I had another go. this time I left the heat on until the side felt a little softer, and eased the shape of the curve slightly beyond "straight" (to allow for a little springing back) before pulling the iron clear. This gave more thorough straightening, but also started to reveal a tendancy towards certain problems. Firstly, the sharp edge of the brass on the outer face of the cab was tending to bite into the heat softened plastic when I went beyond the true flat shape. I modified the "jaws" of the brass piece to allow the edge to stay clear of the outer face of the cab (left side of the jaws in this image):

A third attempt, with the iron power turned down more, gave even more complete straightening of the sheet, although some distortion was beginning to show, and the beading (which didn't matter in this case) was getting squashed. After nudging any dips from behind only with the heated brass I was able to get it all straight enough to be satisfied with the parts that I would not be cutting off.

I then dealt with the other side of the cab. By the time I had done that and was ready to move on to the tender body, I was starting to find the plastic wanting to stick to the heated brass. In hindsight suspect, I suspect I could have avoided this by using an even lower power setting for the iron to keep the temperature of the brass jaws to no more than that of boiling water. At the time however, I didn't have the sense to envisage that possible solution, so I used a paper shield between the plastic and the brass on the next job:

This was vastly better than continuing to try to use the bare, sticking brass, as it allowed me to get the iron away from the job quickly and cleanly when I wanted to instantly stop the heat supply, but the paper itself was sticking lighlty to the hot plastic in places, and I had whisps of paper fibre to scrape gently away once the plastic had re-hardened.

[Atlantic 3279]

Before I could tackle the curves on the tender, I had to do some preparation to free the bottom of each piece from other parts of the tender body. As it stood I could not get any part of my heated clamp behind the lower corners of the side sheets, and I didn't want to distort thing irrevocably by trying vainly to straighten plastic that had not been evenly heated.
To gain access I took of the separately moulded front platform piece:

and then cut some corner notches out of the remaining section of platform behind the curves, knowing that I could easily put some fillet pieces in later:

With the benefit of my little bit of experience gained with the cab, I got the tender sidesheets much more nearly flat externally in fewer attempts, although again the beading was squashed to some extent and the very edges of the sheet where getting squeezed down in thickness a little as the hot clamp was pulled off. I will certainly try lower power next time, and I suspect it may even be possible to do the straightening using only one heated layer of brass behind the curved sheet, simply pushing the curve out as the plastic softens. I cannot report on that of course until I have to have another go. But never mind, I had a result I could work with.......

Got that milk yet Manna? Are you brewing tea for us all then?

[S.A.C. Martin]

Absolutely amazing work Graeme. Ingenious even.

Reading and learning.

[Atlantic 3279]

I trimmed off the rear edges of the cab sidesheets to make them about 21mm front-to-back after filing to a neat, vertical edge, and did some ultra-careful rubbing down with wet, very-fine grit paper to remove any blemishes from the remaining outer face areas (without, as far as possible, completely removing the green paint). The main cut in fact ran just in front of the previous hand-rail holes. I blended in the curve into the cabside cut-out. On the lower, now sloping edge of the cut-out I created a slight notch or step to accept the cut end of new strip of beading, applied onto the rear edge of the cab. This beading was a thin strip of 15 thou plastic, with one end formed to a curve by force over a small drill. I glued the curved part on first of course, in the lower edge of the cut-out, and only when this was set did I stick the straight piece down. That way I avoided any tendancy for the curve piece to spring away before sticking fully.
On the leading edges of the tender all I had to do was file back to remove the deformed edge and squashed original beading, before renewing the beading there too.
With the new black beadings still needing a little filing and sanding to tidy them up fully (and to reduce the apparent edge-thickness of the sidesheets which the 1.5 mm wide beading strip currently exaggerates rather badly) I re-fitted the handrail "dry) in their holes, sellotaped the cab doors on temporarily, and took these pictures. I hope they serve to show that save for painting the beadings in reasonably matching green, touching-in the handrails, and possible putting a little green very thinly onto any tiny damaged areas of the sidesheets, I can get way without having to renew any lining or paint large areas. No worries at all about extensive "matching" in obvious areas on this loco!

The presence of the handrails does wonders to hide the slight imperfections in the straightened edges of the sheets. I wonder if Doncaster found the same thing when straightening the edges of the real tender?

[Atlantic 3279]

Next job started too. Carefully avoiding damge to the circular front covers on the cylinders, I've filed the lower bulge off the outer faces, and have sawn off the unwanted front valve crosshead guides - no Gresley levers on this loco! I've kept the guides, to go in the bits box of course, I'm bound to need some for another loco some time. Not shown here, I've now glued a square of plastic onto the filed-flat outer face of the cylinder to bring it out "proud" of the end cover again. When this is stuck hard in place I'll curve-in the top and bottom edges of the square with a file to blend with the moulded curvature of the original cylinder shape, and I should then have some nice A1/1 cylinder masters.

[Blink Bonny]

Ay up!

This is looking very good, Graeme. My 4470 is nervous....

[Tom F]

I know I don't comment often Graeme mainly because my ramberlings of 'great' 'stunning' etc would get rather tiresome. But I have to say this one is really becoming something very special!

Lovely work....steady aim is looking the bees knees, I should be receiving mine in February when Tim wires the layout. I believe 60524 has been at Warley today.

We all have alot to thankyou for Graeme!

[manna]

G'Day Gents

Nice bit of work there Graeme.............kettles on

manna

[Blink Bonny]

Oh, ta, Manna!

Milk and no sugar for me. Leave the teabag in, I like to float a battleship on my tea!

[Daddyman]

I wonder if you could get away with slicing off the curved portion and replacing it with a piece of plasticard of the correct shape, and then fabricating the beading? - given that (a) you are losing the beading anyway, and (b) you have have a proven track record in blending new plastic to rtr plastic.
I think it's doable: this is my K1 cab (very much a work in progress) which uses a similar process: you can see I've added depth to the B1 cab but also width: a thin strip running down each side of the cab, visible here where it runs past the white section. Surprising how different K1 and B1 cabs are, but I thought this conversion was preferable to those wrong wrong wrong DMR cabsides.
If anyone's interested, the cab is made of two B1 cabs: to get the sidesheets with the correct height above the windows I used one cab, filing Bachmann's roof overhang until it was flush to the cabsides, and then mounted the cabsides thus modified to the second cab which I'd reduced to the roof, front and backhead only. Haven't got much done since as the A2 cartazzi is taking all my time...

[Atlantic 3279]

slicing off the curved portion and replacing it with a piece of plasticard of the correct shape

Did consider that. Will say more later.....

[Blink Bonny]

Brief digging around on t'internet, including a Hornby Railways Collector Guide (modeltrains.net.au) suggested to me that the F10 fridge vans appeared in the catalogue in '84 to '87(only?), but probably had a bog-standard Hornby underfame with tie bars for '84/'85, gaining the luxurious NE style underframe for '86/'87. A "Wimpy Burger" red liveried version seems to have been available around that time too, but it may only be the "final fling" 1989 edition of this that had the better underframe.

Ay up!

Regarding the Wimpy van, I bought one at Warley yesterday. It is like no other Hornby wagon I've seen. The underframe not only incorporates the framing in openwork but has a rep of the buffer springs. Buffers are scale height and width. It has 4-shoe brakes represented on a pseudo LNER wooden solebar chassis but the axleboxes look more LMS. All the chassis, including the coupler loops, is moulded as one. Altogether, a nice model - pity the chassis wasn't used on all wagons of the period rather than the ex-Triang abomination!

The only downside is that the moulded in couplers are extra long, though not as bad as Lima....

[Atlantic 3279]

Aye, that's the almost genuine F10 fridge van, on almost proper underframe, on which I did the upgrades earlier this year. I wonder what happened to that underframe version? Does it still see occasional use under new Hornby wagons/vans, or has the idea now been tossed aside? A good look through Ramsay's 6th edition shows that it did in fact get used under quite a few other vehicles over the years, in some cases entirely inappropriately as the vehicles in question would certainly not have had continuous brakes, clasp shoes, and in some cases wouldn't even have had a timber underframe! The more toy-like u/f descended from the Triang item would have been more appropriate. Maybe it was just random allocation at the factory???

[45609]

Surprising how different K1 and B1 cabs are, but I thought this conversion was preferable to those wrong wrong wrong DMR cabsides.

That's an interesting comment. Having recently done a "build to print" DMR K1 I failed to notice or even check the cab sides for dimensional fidelity. What exactly is the problem with them?

[Atlantic 3279]

Returning to the question of why I chose to try to straighten the sidesheets as I did: Although the evidence from my previous work does indeed suggest that I could have cut off the curves, let in new straight pieces, blended the joints and then added new beading, the business of fully blending the joints by repeated filling and abrasion can be very time consuming, as can the sometimes fiddly masking + equipment set up + ultra careful spraying + clean up that is involved in applying primer and colour coat to get an invisible blend with the original paintwork. For the re-finishing of tiny areas it can seem like disproportionate effort. There is of course the ever present risk of catching the nearby lining or other areas of the paint fiinsh with tools or abrasives, and I suspect that once Hornby's unique style and colour of lining is damaged, your goose is well and truly cooked. Nothing on transfer sheets, and nothing I can do with a bow pen would match that. I have actually used that method in the past on a green Hornby tender, and got away with it, but that's another story.

I reckoned that if I could make the heat straightening work successfully I might save time and trouble overall. As it turns out I don't think I'll need to do any green spraying in the altered areas. I may have to do a little "blowing in" of green on the altered lower sides of the smokebox, but that shouldn't demand any elaborate masking. I'm not yet certain that I'll have to do even that much. I may try some discreet touching in with a brush as the first attempt......

An un-cut, heat-straightened sidesheet is I think likely to be stronger than a spliced one too, and certainly needs no "thicker than scale" backing sheet to reinforce a vulnerable joint.

More thoughts on the running plate later.