James Harrison wrote:And I'm back! Building old battleships is fun but rather time-consuming...
First railway-related project then is going to be a Manning Wardle L-class contractor's engine built off of the running gear of a Bachmann Junior loco. I am hoping (very much building this as an ad-hoc 'as I go along' sort of project of the if it looks right it is right variety) that when finished it should look like the preserved 'Sir Berkeley'. Thus far I have bulkheads forming the smokebox and saddletank set up on the running plate; I think that the plan for this evening will be to finish the smokebox, build the basic form of the saddletank and 'maybe' start thinking about the firebox.
Looking forward to seeing the outcome of this fella! Good luck!
I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had built a second clerestory using the silhouette cutter and I have, finally, gotten around to photographing it (only a few months since I built it...)
I have a planned rake of five to build, to four different designs. Best get drawing I guess!
Now the Manning Wardle tank I have mentioned I am building.
I can only repeat what I have said previously about this being a project in the 'it looks right, therefore it is right' vein. With that understood, I have built the smokebox and made a start on the saddle tank. Working back from the saddle tank, my idea at present is to raise the cab floor over the DCC chip (which I would have removed, had I not found it was wired directly to the pickups). Raising the cab floor means I can also raise the firebox, which was a particular feature of the Manning Wardle tanks. The bulkheads and spacers have been built up from laminations of plastic cheet whilst the smokebox wrapper is paper. The joint between the running plate and the smokebox wrapper will eventually be covered by what I assume from prototype photographs to be sandboxes.
So I built the saddletank and the firebox in the same fashion as I had the smokebox. I then fitted side sheets (which are built up of 0.5mm plastic sheet). By painting everything black at this stage I can get a better idea of what the finished model will eventually look like.
Somebody on RMWeb happened to mention RT Models sell parts of their Manning Wardle kit as spares; so this morning the postman delivered a chimney, saddletank filler, safety valves, smokebox door, springs and spectacle surrounds from that source.
Now the next step will be to fit the boiler fittings and start drawing up a spectacle plate.
Well things have progressed with the Manning Wardle-esque tank, pretty much to the point where all the big jobs are finished and it's now the smaller detailing jobs left to do.
I fitted a much simpler spectacle plate as trying to form the very ornate, almost-ogee-arched example fitted to Sir Berkeley drove me up the wall. This is, after all, only a 'lookslikea' model.
Quick list of the works left to do:
-sandboxes
-springs
-dumb buffers
-reversing lever
-plumbing
-backhead detail
-crew
-finishing off of the spectacle plate
-coal bunkers
Of course, there are always small jobs needing attention, and the 'snag list' for this one runs to three-link couplings, varnish, nameplates and lining. This last point I can't make my mind up on colour or extent of it; just the tank, or the 'cab' too? Should it be red, or primrose? I can't decide at the moment.
These Ex Mainline coaches seem to be giving you an endless supply of good bases for GCR stuff fella! Looking forward to seeing the progress on this latest one! Do you have to do it on an approximation of being as close as possible to the actual one, or is it a like for like??
I always think of my GC coaching stock as being lookalikes, rather than exact models.
There are of course limitations to what can be done when it comes to bashing one type of carriage into another, for instance the LMS carriages I use are 57' types whilst the GC largely went for 60' (with a few 56'-ers on cross country routes). So there's that compromise before you even start. The trick I employ is to choose donor models that are already close to the prototype on a few key areas, which is why I have tended to stick with the Mainline ones. However, had I known about the old Graham Farish carriages before buying the Mainline type, I would have gone with those alone- as the window arrangement on the corridor side neatly matches that of GC carriages.
When it comes to carriage types that involve more complex surgery (eg the Restaurant Car and the Open Third I built a few years ago), what I have taken to doing is to scale everything down to suit the shorter length of the model (which because I only have to lose 12mm or so, each individual window is only marginally shorter than scale).
Next stage; fitting the final few mullions and the ventilators above the windows and doors.
This is the corridor side.
And the kitchen side. The kitchen windows are something of an educated best guess; the drawing only shows the plan of the carriage and the corridor side. It was a reasonable assumption to make that the windows to the two passenger saloons are mirrored on each side; for the kitchen I was able to find photographs of other GCR restaurant cars to serve as pointers.
And then I put a coat of paint on it.
Incidentally, the free storage allowance on my Photobucket account is running short, so I would advise that if there are any photographs of my models that people particularly want to keep, that they download them over the next week- I shall be deleting many of the older images next weekend.
The bodywork is nearly there; the interior and underframes still to even start....
Now, to better illustrate what I was talking about a few days ago when I was saying about my carriages being more in the nature of lookalikes rather than proper true to scale replicas. This is a pair of photographs from George Dow's 'Great Central Album' of GCR mainline stock of the period around 1910-23.
And this is some of my hackbashed stock roughly arranged in a rake.
Which I think highlights my general approach; the details might not be quite right (in fact I know they aren't) but if the overall picture is convincing enough, if it 'looks right to me' I am happy.
