West End Workbench

[jwealleans]

A rainy afternoon (I had my fill of getting wet this morning) provided the opportunity to bring out the HMRS sheets and letter up the vans. This is not a task I relish as anyone who has used the pre-TOPS BR freight lettering sheet will understand. Here are the results from a lengthy session punctuated with much tea and other necessary sustenance.



One of the LNE vans is finished in the LNER version of bauxite (the right one above) to give some variety to the finished train.



The Cambrian instructions say yellow lettering, but I'm sure that should only be for maroon vans. I've gone with my instinct here (apologies to Barry if his research proves me wrong). The different appearance of the left hand panel is the gloss varnish applied before the transfers.



These were actually completed during the week and just had another coat of varnish today.



I used Modelmaster NE lettering on the toad. I have a love/hate relationship with Modelmaster transfers and the halo effect and the part-lifted covering film above shows you why. Once it's thoroughly dry I shall try to remove that film as recommended and if that doesn't work I'm told you can dissolve it with White Spirit. This is the rough side all round - apart from that chip on the stepboard the roof's lifted slightly at the left hand end. I'm very pleased with it overall and everyone I showed it to at Hartlepool was impressed.



That done I got the soldering iron out again for a couple of hours before calling it a night. Mostly cutting out and preparing components, but the whole thing has visibly advanced a little.

Now, the more perceptive may have noticed that the 0-4-0 above was an 0-6-0 when I showed it with the lid off. I found that the W & T wheels I'm using had a back to back which was slightly narrow. Graeme used the same make (possibly exactly the same wheel) on his P1 and didn't have a problem so it may just be the batch or the odd wheel in the set I've got. Anyway it seemed to be a problem when I tested the chassis in some of the pointwork on the Ormesby layouts, so I turned my mind to what to do about it. I didn't want to try bending/moving the plastic wheel centres so what I've come up with involves shimming the axle. The difference is slight, so I found a hole punch which produces a disk of the same diameter as the Romford axles. I've punched a paper disk (bog-standard paper is about 7 thou, I believe), impregnated it with cyano and placed on the back of the wheel. I'm hoping that the resultant disc will be hard enough to withstand me making the required square hole in it and then add just enough to the back to back, possibly even allowing for a midges to be shaved off if necessary. All that will be revealed in due course, I expect.



And now someone will tell me that you can get suitable washers from somewhere.

[Atlantic 3279]

Post deleted, I meant to send a PM

[manna]

G'Day Gents


'Hey Grandad'..........'Look at the scrapped loco'

manna

[2512silverfox]

A final word on the 10' fish vans. Peter Tatlow has confirmed that there were only two versions as per the drawing in the original LNER Wagons. The 10' wb van was dia 83 and I have correctly given the running numbers. The 9' vans were the GC based outside frame versions which were built earlier and have been produced by Danny Pinnock and now ABS I think - same patterns.

Plat 91 which perports to be a 9' van was a painter's mistake - prototype for everything!

Nick

[jwealleans]

Thanks for following that up for us, Nick.

[Atlantic 3279]

Thanks from me also. Do I assume correctly then that the 1936 & '37 number series mentioned earlier were for the later 12 w/b diagram?

[cthompson]

And also from me Nick!

I believe the 12' WB vans were introduced in 1938 and carried numbers in the 222xxx, 229xxx and 230xxx series.

Just got back from a trip to Norfolk to visit relatives. There's a blue 4-6-0 trundling up and down the Mid Norfolk Railway but it's more Collett than Holden I'm afraid...

[2512silverfox]

More on fish vans. Would it be helpful if I post a resume of the different types/dias with their number series and building dates?

[jwealleans]

I think everyone would find that useful, Nick, with the possibility we could develop it into a thread on how to model each type.

[jwealleans]

The running session on Monday evening was reasonably successful; the loco coped well with the extended train and so I've felt able to add some weight to some of the wagons just to help roadholding. I'm going to start a separate thread on fish vans and talk about the train in detail on there.

I've been back to the loco this evening. For those who haven't guessed or found Rob's previous build, this is an Arthur Kimber J73. Arthur sells these, among other engines as North Eastern Kits.

There is a lot of tab and slot on these kits as Rob commented. They can to a large extent be clipped together as here. The cab and side tanks (all one fold up component) are just slotted into the running plate.



This was more or less my starting point this evening. By the end of the night all that had been attached along with some of the cab interior detail and the cab rear and bunker are made up and ready to be soldered into place.



The homemade spacing washer on the wheel seems to have worked so the other axles will be getting the same treatment. Here is the new build being moved round the works by something the postman dropped off today.

[52D]

How are you finding the Y1, the J73 looks to be progressing well.

[jwealleans]

I wondered who'd be the first to spot that... it hasn't been run in yet (next Monday evening, I expect) but out of the box and oiled runs both smoothly and quietly. I've already pulled it to bits to remove the coupling pockets and put 3 link hooks on but it will need the rather visible DCC chip gubbins covering up.

I'm in two minds about the decoration... it looks to me as if the numbers are not straight. I've had a pair of calipers on them and if they are cockeyed it's microscopic but they look 'out' and that's what counts. I had wondered about repaintiing it anyway just to be different from all the others but there's no guarantee I'll get them any straighter than Dapol. There's also a small hole in the buffer beam where a vac pipe is obviously intended to slot in - tiny, but a bit of a lack of attention to detail.

[Atlantic 3279]

I see what you mean about the numbers. I suspect that there is frequently conflict between what is measurably straight and what looks straight even with plain signwriting, and maybe more so with countershaded characters, because there's more "weight" to certain characters at either the top or the bottom, and when placed truly in line side by side they don't look right! I believe that signwriters did ( and in some cases still do, even with machine-generated signs) deliberately make some characters larger than others to try to make things look right, and I think that trait appears on some of the HMRS sheets, leaving mere mortals such as me (and Dapol I guess) struggling to work out how to position the characters for the right effect .

[jwealleans]

I'll put a photograph up in due course. In the meantime another session with soldering iron and rollers has got this looking much more like it should:

[jwealleans]

Firstly, the promised photograph of the Dapol Sentinel, with Crownline version to the left and NuCast (with plastic superstructure) to the right.



I've been messing about with it on the test track and it does run very nicely; once it's had the prescribed amount of running in we'll do some haulage trials.

In the meantime, I suddenly found myself at the end of the instructions last night.







The castings are only sitting in place as yet and I will need to get the low temp soldering iron out, but the back of it seems to have been broken now. That's more or less a week of evenings to complete. I did have to make some little tweaks here and there and there's some more work to do on the chassis once the drive unit arrives (1424 and High Level RR+) but it looks like what it's supposed to be which I suppose is the aim.

Please tell me now if you can see anything wrong with it.