On my workbench - it's a Sam Fay

[45609]

Hi Rob, Hi Mick,

Apologies for not coming to answer your questions sooner. I'll try to answer with just words first but may resort to pictures if I confuse myself totally.

Firstly the easy one. I picked up my bow pen set (including compasses) from Ebay a little while ago for not a lot of money. The other place to look is antique and bric-a-brac shops.

The heart of getting the bow pen to work well lies in the shape and tip form of the two blades. Any bow pen "as bought" will probably not work correctly. The blade tips have to be honed with progressively finer grades of wet and dry paper to polish them to sharp, uniformly matched edges. Careful observation, with a magnifying glass, of progress with the honing is needed so that both tips are even and suit the way you handle to pen when lining. Personally I try to use the pen as close to perpendicular to the model surface as I can. The aim is to a achieve a uniform contact of the blade tips on the surface of the model. The paint will only flow evenly if you maintain this uniform contact as you draw it across the surface. The sharper you can hone the edge of the tips then the finer the line you will be able to draw consistently. You do have to be a bit careful with this as too sharp and there is a risk that you will score the painted surface. However if the paint is flowing nicely then only very light pressure is needed with the pen.

Having written all this I think I will prepare a few pictures for you as well. It may make things easier to understand and show you the process of drawing a few lines on a flat surface.

Cheers....Morgan

[mick b]

Yes please

Mick

[Robpulham]

Hi Morgan,

I did manage to pick up a set, but as you say even without trying them I can tell that it will need some honing to get it working smoothly so I will second Mick's "yes please"

[TonyM]

I second that also. My experiments with bow pens have been far from successful and I have ended up with paint in all the wrong places and it is the devils own job to get back to square one. I have had problems getting the paint thin enough for a neat line bit not too thin and watery that it all rushes out in one big flood. Of course in Ngauge tolerances are so much tighter and space is at a premium.
TonyM

[mick b]

Hi
I am restoring my Green/Cream Sentinel railcar at ther moment and I see on the loco thread you have built one. Any tips on how you motorised it would be great, also in the picture does it have brass handrails ?

thanks
Mick

[45609]

Hi Mick,

I have posted a few photos of the Nu-cast railcar that I built a couple of years ago. The power unit is a Black Beetle motor bogie. It is really powerful and runs well in both direction. I also added pickups to the wheels of the other bogie. You might be able to see the wires running along the underside of the floor pan. I sliced off the cast whitemetal representations of the handrails and replaced them with 0.4mm nickel silver wire. I also made up new steps from brass wire and strip so that they were closer to scale and more robust. IIRC there were various other details added. From memory these were. MJT vac pipes, Martin Finney lamp brackets, scale screw couplings and a detailed interior with a handful of passengers. The buffers were also drilled out and sprung.

Cheers.....Morgan

[mick b]

Hi
Thanks for the photos, nice model.
I am awaiting a Tenshodo Bogie and Beetle wheels at the moment. I hope its upto the job!!
I have started to make up some brass steps today by coincidence. I presume one side of the bogie is live as I can only see one wire?
I take it the handrails on the real railcar were chrome as you have used Nickel silver for them? The photos I have seen are all fairly poor.
Can you remeber which buffer heads you used as one of mine is broken.

Mick

[jwealleans]

I have a Sentinel to start. Has anyone thought of using the centre motored chassis you can get from Hollywood Foundry? I forget what they call it.

[45609]

Hi JW,

These are the BullAnt motor bogies. I just had a look at the website http://www.hollywoodfoundry.com/ , there is some interesting stuff.

Hi Mick,

IIRC the motor bogie has wiper pickups to all wheels. I don't like to make any of my models with a live chassis. The wheels in the non powered bogie are insulated on both sides. For the pickup on this I ran 2 wires (1 black, 1 red) along the floor of the railcar to a piece of gapped PCB glued close to the non powered bogie. I then soldered some very fine gauge enamelled wire, coiled slightly to allow some slack for bogie rotation, from this PCB to a similar piece of PCB stuck to the bogie stretcher. Finally some wiper pickups were made from 33SWG phosphor bronze wire and set to touch the flange edges of the wheels.

I don't honestly know if the real handrails were chrome. I just used N/S wire because that is what I had at the time. It could just have easily been brass.

For the buffer heads I reclaimed the Nu-cast oval whitemetal heads and flattened the back of them with a file. After removing the blackening from some MJT sprung wagon buffer heads I tinned the faces of them with 145 degree solder. I then carefully soldered each whitmetal head to the new steel buffer. The original buffer bodies were then drilled out to suit the new shank and spring. To stop the oval heads rotating I made some retainers from a piece of square section brass with a small pilot holes drilled through. These were then slid over the buffer shank tails that were sticking through the back of the headstock and secured with a drop of superglue.

Cheers....Morgan

[mick b]

Thanks Morgan

I missed the Black wire in the photo ,

I have decided to take my one back to bits via paint stripper. When built I used a incorrect name and the paint finish is too heavy .
As its so heavy I will look to see if I can replace some of the centre section of floor with plastikard .

Mick

[45609]

Hi,

Another long delay in updates on the Sam Fay. The following photos show the current state of play and I'm pleased to say I'm over the worst now. Most of the loco body details have been added and it will only take another 2 or 3 evenings to get to the painting stage.

cheers...Morgan

[mick b]

Very impressive

Mick

[rob]

Morgan-simply exquisite!This really does these handsome locos justice,I'm awestruck once again!
Rob

[45609]

Hi,

Final detailing was finished on the Sam Fay a few days ago and so far the loco body has been primed ready for the top coat of paint. Today I paid a visit to the Kidderminster show and took her along in her underclothes to see a certain Mr J Wealleans. He very kindly allowed me a few minutes of running powers on the Great Eastern layout Thurston to let her stretch her legs. Thanks again JW! Apart from being wired the wrong way round.... ....she pulled a rake of 4 GE coaches and a CCT round the layout faultlessly. Needless to say I was very pleased with that...

Here are a couple of pictures.

Backed onto the train and ready to go

Running in to Thurston. A bit out of place but it was nearly show closing time!

Cheers....Morgan

[45609]

Good evening,

Here are a couple of photos, taken earlier this evening, just before I gave the whole lot a coat of gloss varnish. The main green and claret colours (Phoenix Precision) were been sprayed in that order with appropraite areas masked off. The cab roof and smokebox were also sprayed with Humbrol 85 Satin Black because it was fairly easy to mask off the surrounding areas. All the other bits of black were cut in with a good quality sable brush. I'll now leave it for a few days for the varnish to fully cure before tackling the lining.

Boiler sub assembly

Running plate sub assembly