James' workbench- ex-GC locos and stock in OO

[James Harrison]

It was on ebay about a week ago. If you say you'd bid on it and I won it literally at the last minute I guess the only honourable way out would be hari kari

[60800]

Nah I rarely bid on anything

[James Harrison]

Onwards with the B5!

I've recently bought a cheap airbrush (tired of having brush hairs stuck on my models and streaky finishes), so I gave it a go. This is my first attempt using it.... this is the result....





A much better result! Yes, I have rebuilt the tender. The original tender tank I built was seated a good 2 or 3mm too high, so I removed it, took off the lip around the tender chassis, fitted new side overlays and re-used the flare and coal rails. Much more convincing now I think.

[James Harrison]

I'm pleased to say that for a given value of 'finished' the model is complete. There are of course always little finishing jobs to get around to, same as with any project, but I've reached the point where I could turn around and say 'enough'.





Lining out was done using a mixture of HMRS pressfix transfers, an 'easi-liner' pen and a fine brush. All that really needs doing now is a bit of weathering...

[James Harrison]

The last few days I've been pondering how I can improve my Robinson stock. Specifically the upper bodywork and the patchy removal of the panelling irked me. I set about with one of my rake and experimented a little, and I think came up with a remedy that works quite well.

Basically I gave the upper bodyworks the same treatment as I gave the lower body panels. I cut lengths of paper to suit the cantrail strip and the verticals between the windows and doors, and glued each one into place individually by soaking in watered-down PVA. This has a good hold whilst avoiding the long lines of glue that tend to wreck my models when I use UHU.

I then gave the new panelling the same paint and weathering treatment as I did the original model- two coats of a mid-brown paint followed by one coat of dark brown drybrushed over, and then worked over with brown chalk pastels.

The effect is that I get a far better slab-sided and smooth finish.

[James Harrison]

I wanted a bit of a change from scratchbuilding and hackbashing, so my current project is a Radley Models resin kit of a Metropolitan Railway Bo-Bo. Not LNER per-se of course, but they did run primarily on the GC/ Met joint line. Progress so far has been to glue the bogie frames to the motor bogie and dummy motor bogie, spray the loco frames ferrari red, and paint the bogies and body interior matt black. I'm planning to scratchbuild a representation of the interior too, to remove the ability to see right through the model from one end to the other....

[kimballthurlow]

Hi James,
Nice to see ex GC stuff from a creative modeller.
I appreciate the work involved.

regards
Kimball

[James Harrison]

Thanks!

There's certainly a fair few projects in the pipeline... at the moment I'm going through a spate of seeing old photos or drawings and thinking 'I'd like one of those'. Plenty more GC locos and rolling stock on the drawing board, or in boxes, awaiting their turn on the bench.

[James Harrison]

My latest project, a Metropolitan Bo-Bo electric.



It's a Radleys Models resin kit which I've finished in circa 1925/26 condition.

Current project is to complete my rake of GCR mainline stock. I've recently bought a copy of Steve Banks' book on LNER express train formations and it turns out although when I've finished it the rake will have the pair of brake thirds and the composite, it will be lacking the open third and restaurant first. I've a drawing for an open third and am looking for more old Mainline LMS stock for further conversions so hopefully I will soon have an ex-GCR express in the correct formation....

[manna]

G'Day Gents

The electric loco, looks top notch, what chassis dose it use!!

manna

[S.A.C. Martin]

Top notch work indeed! I'm very much admiring the ingenuity of the B5 conversion. Lovely effort, and the electric engine is too. What made you pick Michael Faraday?

[James Harrison]

Cheers guys!

Now then; the chassis actually came with the kit. The resin version at least comes as a set of four resin pieces: the body, chassis and pair of bogies, and also includes powered and dummy black beetles.

Why Michael Faraday?

I chose five names that I'd be happy to name the engine (the others being Lord Byron, Benjamin Disraeli, William Ewert Gladstone and Sherlock Holmes) and then held a bit of a vote amongst some friends of mine. Surprisingly considering my friends, Sherlock Holmes came nowhere, whilst Lord Byron and Gladstone got 2 votes apiece and Disraeli got 3, whilst Faraday ran off with about 7!

The B5 I'm actually working on at the moment. I'd like to add a pair of couplings and the other vacuum pipe (it's missing one off the tender). The lining irks me a little as looking very amateurish, so I've painted it out and will be going, for the present, with plain black and loco number on the tender. I know it won't be accurate but it looks a lot neater, and of course I'l be able to reintroduce the lining at some future point when I've found a way that works for me (waterslide would be ideal...)

Current project is building/ rebuilding my rake of GCR stock, to be followed by an 'Immingham'.

[James Harrison]

Well I've finished re-working my three GCR carriages, and whilst I've started on a fourth and bought a donor vehicle for a fifth, I've deided that the finish on my B5 just plain isn't good enough. Specifically, the grainy appearance of the 3D printed material just looks off. So I've stripped it back to a basic shell, given that a liberal coating of model filler, sanded it all down nice and smooth and given it a coat of matt black enamel. Once that dries I'll go back over it with files and sandpaper, looking for any persistant rough spots, and then work it back up to a completed model. This will I hope give a much finer finish.

This is how I always work- finish a model, admire it, build a better model and then rework the first model to bring it up to my new standard...

[James Harrison]

I've just finished (for a given value of 'finished') my B5. "What's that" you say, "we thought you already had one?"

Well I did... but I wasn't happy with it. So I rebuilt it.

After stripping it all down and refilling and resanding it, I sprayed it back into black and then refitted the boiler fittings, replacing the safety valves with a scratchbuilt set more appropriate for the 1920s period I model. I built some Ramsbottom vlaves from plastic sheet and plastic rod.

I fitted vacuum pipes (note the plural!) from a resin D10 I've just bought.... it had a set of whitemetal spares and a duplicate set of vacuum pipes so I thought I'd put them to use....

The handrails I replaced entirely. I had enough bits and bobs left over from my Met electric kit to be able to do this in one hit, and it really looks the part.

The biggest change is probably the lining. I painted a sheet of paper bright red, then cut it into 1mm wide strips. I used tweezers, brushes and PVA glue to nudge these into position and then, after the PVA had set, I ran the lining over with an ink pen to reduce the width of the red lines to about 0.5mm. Not quite scale but a lot closer than the 1mm thickness they had when first applied. The great thing is it looks very convincing now.

Anyway, as they say a photo says a thousand words so....

[auldreekie]

I like it. I'd never have thought of doing the lining in that way.....

As a matter of interest: who makes the resin D10 (the last/nearest thing I can remember was a resin D11 produced briefly a good 25 years ago...)?


auldreekie