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

[James Harrison]

Thanks! I'm sure I can make a good job of it.

It arrived this morning

Actually, the chassis doesn't look at all that bad... not right but certainly not so wrong as to be obvious. I think it is actually fitted with a Black 5 chassis, as the wheel spacings are (slightly) asymmetrical. There are certain things wrong with it (for instance the cylinders are set too far back) but to be quite honest I'm not sure if I were to have 'a go' at it that the result would be much of an improvement. The huge 'things' maskerading as motion brackets will be replaced of course, and the Black 5 leading bogie has already been replaced with a spare B12 bogie I had lying around (the much smaller bogie immediately made the engine look more like a Robinson design).

The tender is an oddity. It's a Jaycraft resin thing, which has had surgery to remove the huge lump of material in the front and replaced with a plastic-sheet frontplate. I've not yet made my mind up what to do with it. It needs longer coal rails, and I may just make some and then leave it at that. On the other hand, I may go in for adding new axleboxes...

The loco body is quite a nice piece of work, let down by the finish. About the only things I can find wrong with it are that there aren't enough handrail knobs or boiler bands, and that the bufferbeam has round B12-style buffers rather than Robinson oval pattern. Oh, and the cab roof has an extension which was fitted to the side-window cabs but not thoe with the typical Robinson cut-out.

Not quite as much work as I thought would be involved

[James Harrison]

Lord Faringdon has had its wheels replaced. I've swapped out the old Black 5 wheels with a set of A1 drivers, which has much improved the appearance.

[James Harrison]

My latest project can break cover now.... it's an F1 or F2 which I bought on ebay a few months ago and have rewheeled....





The wheels were woefully undersized, but a set from a Hornby M7 rectified that. The connecting rods were also replaced, from a Hornby 08. Aside from that (and a good deal of swearing, and some blood), all the model has had is a new coat of paint and some HMRS pressfix transfers. There are one or two things I'd still like to do to it but I'm quite happy with it, for a few nights' work.

Oh, and here's Lord Faringdon after being rewheeled....



I've got a couple of other projects I'd like to attend to before starting this one proper, but I must admit I'm getting itchy figers.....

[James Harrison]

Next project (already?!?)

I've got a rake of Hornby short clerestories I'm going to try to convert into GCR examples. I'm working off the two drawings in George Dow's 'Great Central Railway' (Volume 3) which I reckon will be good for the composite clerestories I've got (what I'll do when it comes to the brake thirds remains to be seen).

The first model I'm attempting is a lavatory composite, as the more involved of the two (the other is an all-third which really only nneds a repaint and detail of the basic Hornby shell).

I've left the four outer compartments untouched, and then the third and fifith compartments left the outer windows untouched (these will eventually become the lavatory windows). The other windows (two in compartment 3, all of compartment 4 and two in compartment 5) I've filled in with milliput, and then sanded the beading flush with the body side here. Because the beading has to be changed to match the new compartment arrangement I've decided it will be easier to remove the beading from the middle of the carriage and then reinstate it with microstrip later.



Looking at the roof I've removed the majority of the detail as being obviously GWR in origin, leaving only the rainstrips behind. Once I can find a decent photo of the roof details in one of my books I can start to put it all back....



The lights in the clerestory still need filling in...

[James Harrison]

Hmm, this has proved a worthwhile experiment. It turns out that once the windows are filled in and new windows drilled out, several of the new pillars consist entirely of white putty. Whilst sanding and filing the new windows square and true, these pillars collapsed....

What we can learn from this of course is that it would be a better method to remove all windows and pillars from the area of the carriage being altered, and replace the pillars with plastic sheet and microstrip. This should prove faster, neater and more structurally integral. Considering that this is the way I intend to fabricate my GCR mainline open all third, it's beyond me why I didn't do it that way this time around

[kimballthurlow]

Hi James,
Thanks for posting your work.
I find the subject, and detail of the projects, interesting, having done a bit of GC scratch modelling over 40 years ago.

regards
Kimball

[James Harrison]

Thanks! Although Bachmann do a fair range of GC prototypes I find there is plenty enough for me to be getting on with. Glad you're enjoying the thread, I have many projects waiting to see the light of day over the next few years.

[James Harrison]

Quite a bit of progress!





After the putty fiasco I rebuilt the middle compartments in plastic sheet, and to produce the beading I'm using 1mm plastic rod. It's circular in section but I' hopeful that a combination of solvent and delicate sanding will get rid of this.

It's certainly getting there are any rate...

[James Harrison]

What a difference some paint makes....





I must say that I actually think this is my best carriage to date. I still have to finish the roof, and add the insignia, but it's coming together quite nicely.

[Blink Bonny]

Ay up, James!

I reckon your chassis under "Lord Faringdon" is most likely from a Tri-ang Hall. Sorry to bring such foul language to this Forum but.....

Certainly that's what the cylinders make me think.

[James Harrison]

I honestly think it's an amalgam of bits from various locos. The driving wheel spacings are slightly different from those on a B12 or Hall, whilst the original bogie came from a Black 5 and the cylinders clearly don't.

And now I've come along an further complicated the picture by fitting wheels from an A1 and a bogie from a B12....

[James Harrison]

Well, the first of my clerestories is finished....



I'm very pleased how this one came out. Next will come the pair of all-thirds....

[James Harrison]

Meanwhile work commences on the next loco project; a B4 or 'Immingham' class.

This will use bodies from a Hornby B12 and Patriot, and a chassis from the Hornby B12.

The chassis is actually the easiest part to do; in hindsight I should perhaps have done this model first, rather than leaving it this late- both my Jersey Lily and B5 use the same chassis but with major modification that were great headaches at the time. With the B4 all that is necessary is to cut down the gap between the bogie and the driving wheels a little, and add a set of Bachmann 'O4' motion.



This done I moved onto the bodies. Breaking out my Charles Reddy drawing of the Imminghams and matching it up to the loco bodies, and remembering how I did my Jersey Lily, the B12 body was swiftly reduced to the parts I can use. Basically I cut away the frames below the running plate, including the bufferbeam, and then made a vertical in the boiler just behind the second to last boiler band. When I reached the splashers I stopped, put a vertical cut through the running plate just behind the middle splasher, and then made a small diagonal cut to bring the two together. At a later date I need to cut away the lowered front end of the running plate and bring it up level with the splashers.



The Patriot body is similarly cut, though in this instance straight through immediately in front of the firebox. The firebox is noticeably too long but luckily there is a boiler band on it at just the right point. So we use this as a guide and cut the front of the firebox away (it is the front end of it that we shall be using). After this operation you should have the cab end of the Patriot with about 4mm of firebox still moulded on to it; cut this away and you end up with the basis of the cab.



Next time I'll be carefully sanding and filing these three components to get a nice joint between them all, and taking a chunk out of the boiler barrel so that I can move the smokebox back by 3mm or so...

[James Harrison]

The next step of course is to stop hacking up bits of plastic and start reassembling them.... I've managed to marry the boiler barrel and firebox, and shorten the barrel itself, and encouragingly it all fits neatly onto the chassis.



There is however clearly a long way to go until this is ready to run though.

[James Harrison]

Suddenly the model starts to look like a locomotive again, rather than a pile of scrap....



What I have added here, if you can't see from the photo (damn plastic sheet being white and the photo being backlit!), are the splashers. Interesting fact is that the radius of a £2 coin is pretty much bang-on for a 4mm scale version of the splashers- so just draw around one and then measure 6.5mm down from the edge and cut a straight line, bingo!

I cut the splasher faces from 0.5mm plastic sheet, and backed these onto a laminate of 2.5mm plastic bars, to bulk them out enough not to look wrong when matched up with the cab. They were then simply glued straight to the splashers on the donor model, and given a coat of model putty to blend them in.

The splashers over the rear drivers of course are more involved as they fair into the cabsides. Here I again lucked out, because I found an old Edwardian propelling pencil with a radius that matches that of the curve from the splasher to the cabsides, and also the radius of the curve of the cabside down to the running plate. Again these were cut out from 0.5 sheet and glued to the donor model.

It's certainly gaining that graceful Robinson appearance now.