Atlantic's works: Portable layout - Scenic details next

[Tom F]

A2/2 (not decided on a number but i'd be looking at BR express passenger blue if it was a livery carried by them)
60800

Apple Green up to 1950 and 1951 in some cases, then BR Green (Brunswick).

[60800]

Thanks Tom

[Saint Johnstoun]

Blue! Answer is no! The A2s with 6'2" driving wheels were not considered to be in the express passenger class!

[Atlantic 3279]

I was quite pleased that the rain held off today, allowing me to do some outdoor fixing jobs and to get the primer-revealed defects in Wolf filled, then put some aerosol black paint on:

[will5210]

Lovely stuff!

[earlswood nob]

Good morning all
You were lucky with the weather, here it rained nearly all yesterday, including thunder and lightning during the afternoon
(why does one put thunder first, when lightning comes first in fact), just as I was about to sneek down the pub.

Whilst I admire the detail modelling, I think it would look better with an extra pair of driving wheels and a sloping nose.

Ah well, must get some work done, soldering Bittern's tender for its first owner. I must remember the double lamp brackets.

Earlswood nob

[Atlantic 3279]

The following post is sprinkled with innuendo especially to appeal to those with a history of sitting in the nose cones of Canberra jets.....

Having firstly checked that I wasn't wastefully duplicating Mercator's resin casting work or treading on his toes I decided that the need for a suitable item to go behind John's "Wolf" created a good reason to try to create a nice tender body within a rubber cladding (smirk), although all pictures and notes I've seen show no evidence of any Stirling DD (phwooarr) in use. The latter may come as a disappointment, but it has been suggested to me that a new avatar for the gentleman in question should prove cheering to him, and everybody else:
http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?client=f ... x=73&ty=67

Back to model railways. After a bit of weighing-up of the pro's and cons I decided that the most appropriate tender top in my possession on which I could base an adapted resin item for Wolf was in fact a 1928 non-corridor version with beading. I felt safe experimenting with this as it was a spare picked up via eBay, with some fittings (that would have to come off anyway) already missing, it wasn't immediately needed for any other purpose, some easy alterations would turn a resin copy into what I needed for Wolf, and it appeared fairly free of features that would cause problems for an attempt at one-piece moulding.

[Atlantic 3279]

I had to do one or two small alterations to prepare the tender for mould production. The few surviving handrails and knobs were removed, along with the separate fittings on the front and within the bunker space. I put those fittings safely aside on a piece of masking tape for re-use, although it will be easy enough to reproduce something similar to each fitting using little more than bent wire and thin tube if necessary.

I also closed off the shovelling hole in the front bulkhead using a slightly recessed rectangle of plastic, in order to avoid having the whole thing trapped within the rubber when I make the mould. I also had some reservations about leaving the shovelling plate as it is since it will require special care to get resin to re-create that plate, bubble-free, when poured into the mould. I later realised that I could have done something quite easy to simplify that challenge, but the mould rubber was already poured by then, so more of that later:

[Atlantic 3279]

You'll notice that I left the lining and the emblem on the sides of the tender. These will undoubtedly produce a shallow witness on any cast duplicate, but that's not so bad. Application of BR livery will benefit from ready guide-lines. A simple rub down using a block will clear the surface for blemish-free application of other liveries. I've mentioned my plan to modify the copy to suit Wolf, but an un-modified duplicate of this body will also of course be useful behind and A3, Cock o'the North or Earl Marischal.

Within the buker space there was also a deep undercut leading to the shovelling hole. As I did not consider it critical to preserve facuility for running the tender completely empty, I boxed off that undercut to further eliminate snags in pulling the model free of a mould.

[Atlantic 3279]

The long thin sides of the tank had bowed inwards and clearly preferred to stay bowed-in when I tried to persuade them to straighten up. In order to avoid duplicating the distortion, or (learning from Mercator's experience) running the risk of having my resin sides go "wavy" I beefed-up the thickness of the sides by an extra 1mm by adding plastikard layers, and then used a couple of 0.9mm wire struts to wedge the sides apart "to gauge". These struts wil stay in place when the rubber is poured but will be pulled free when the core-piece is eventually extracted. The struts will then be pulled out of the core piece and the little holes left in it plugged with a little more rubber.

[Atlantic 3279]

In order to promote neat production of dimples for the necessary handrail (and other) holes in the resin copy, I put a meniscus of PVA into all of the the empty, full-thickness holes in the original. The rear steps were already missing from the body, and rather than create more features that might be awkward to cast, I did not fit any replacements. I now think that perhaps I should have done, as the step-treads would be quite easy to make from a piece of flat sheet secured to the underside of two stubs of wire sticking out of the body (also acting as the turned-up edges of the tread). A good wedge-shaped fillet under the tread, hardly visible from most angles, would ease the ingress of resin and egress of air bubbles, plus strengthen the cast step, the whole thing eventually being destined for casting upside down. The same approach would have assisted with that shovelling plate at the front......
I did keep the rear lamp irons as they were intact, nicely moulded and almost flush with the falt surface which makes them a bit easier to duplicate. The slight space behind the upper part of each iron has also been partly filled with a meniscus of PVA to aid filling with resin and separation of the unbroken item from the mould.

If I make another tender body mould I'll bear those ideas in mind.

The prepared body now sits lightly glued to the base of a moulding box, right way up, covered completely in curing rubber, and I await the arrival of the postman with some more rubber ready for when I turn the thing over and cast the core piece. I've also had some belated revised ideas about the best way to cast the raised filler and hatch, as the hatch edge overhangs the sides of the raised filler quite markedly. More of that anon.

[Atlantic 3279]

All of this diversion of attention to the tender has been making the loco very jealous. In fact parts of it are turning green with envy.

[mick b]

Wolf looks good.

Clueless re moulding designs.

If you reinforce the inside of the Tender as per your photos, will you be able to fit the resulting Tender body moulding onto the Hornby chassis ? As I am sure you know the tender body is a tight fit on the chassis and the Tender body sides are actually designed to be push outwards as you fit by raised "stops" on the chassis.

Good luck on the moulding results.

[45609]

It is actually the ballast weight that is a close (not tight) fit on the inside faces of the tender side. Clearance at the back edge is fine.

The weight can be removed by undoing 2 screws and either modifying the width of the weight or making something new like a plasticard tray with lead sheet glued on top.

[auldreekie]

No doubt this has been said dozens of times before. Still, I've just climbed back into your thread after a long session of narrow-gauge modelling. And I MUST say that I envy the way your locomotives sit down firmly and look like real machinery which does a job of work....

It IS an ugly beast, but it looks also massive as well as effective enough to shift some weight.


auldreekie