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

[James Harrison]

The current loco project....

... it's a B3 'Lord Faringdon'. Lord Faringdon itself, in fact.

It started out as an ebay purchase- somebody else's attempt at a hackbash (using a Triang Princess). I've merely tweaked the front end and replaced the bits I knew to be wrong.

[James Harrison]

The 11B/ D9 is finished. I bought some transfers from Quainton Road Models and I'm very happy with how they turned out:





Meanwhile 'Lord Faringdon' has started the long road into LNER green, with a couple of coats of Revell 'Leaf Green' to start it off.

[lnernut]

Hi James,

Love your locos. Do you have drawings of the Lord Faringdon? I am looking at my old Triang Coronation and wondering......... Not yet.
Love the 11B. Is the lining done with a brush?

[Woodcock29]

Hi Martin

There are drawings of B3, both Valour and a Caprotti version with early cab, in Railway Modeller of October 72.

You can use drawing of most of Valour and then the cab off the Caprotti version if you want to make Lord Faringdon itself.

If you don't have this mag I can scan and email to you.

Woodcock29

[James Harrison]

Hi James,

Love your locos. Do you have drawings of the Lord Faringdon? I am looking at my old Triang Coronation and wondering......... Not yet.
Love the 11B. Is the lining done with a brush?

Thanks! I'm lucky enough to have a copy of the SLS book, "J G Robinson, The Harmonious Blacksmith" which has drawings by Charles Reddy of most of Robinson's GCR locos. By drawings I mean you get a side view and, if you're lucky, a front view. Better than nothing (I find it very useful), but by no means a complete drawing to build an accurate model from.

The lining on the 11B is done using paint pens, and a very steady hand. I use the thinnest pen I can find and put the wider white bands down first, going over with the black line a day or two later. It looks quite good if you view your models from about 2' away.

[lnernut]

Hi Martin

There are drawings of B3, both Valour and a Caprotti version with early cab, in Railway Modeller of October 72.

You can use drawing of most of Valour and then the cab off the Caprotti version if you want to make Lord Faringdon itself.

If you don't have this mag I can scan and email to you.

Woodcock29

That would be great, thanks. I have a few old RM mags, but considering I was six months old when that one was released. I'll put this on the to do list after completion of the Y9 and D30.

And James, is not the lining on the GCR locos white/black/white similar to the LNER lining? I have a bow pen here but at this stage have not had the courage to try it out. If I can get away with lining transfers that is my preference. The 2' rule works well for me too. I know my locos are not going to be perfect, but if they look OK i'll be happy with them

I asked the question about drawings because the only area on your B3 was the front below the smokebox. I was just curious about whether this was modellers license? I just pulled out my Triang Princess to look, and my goodness that has undergone some serious surgery.

[manna]

G'Day Gents

You can always buy old railway mags on E-Bay.

manna

[James Harrison]

The GCR lining is white-black-white on boiler bands, like on the LNER. On the cab and the tender panels there is an edging of black with a red line inside of that, then a white-black-white lining on the panel itself.

The loco frames were lined out in red.

Confusingly the 11Bs were originally finished with straw-black-straw lining and never had the black-red edging to their cabs, instead having a black-white edging that can be described as analagous to the LNER cabside lining.

There is an excellent book on the subject which has been published recently, "Robinson loco liveries of the Great Central Railway" I believe it is called. It is an absolute goldmine of information and was very useful when I finishing my 11B. (following link is the first example I found on that well-known auction site- other copies are available elsewhere). http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Robinsons-Loc ... 3f29564063

The B3: The area around the smokebox is why I describe the model as a 'lookslikea' rather than a proper scale model. I have done a little surgery on it (to make them look more like a B3) but I decided not to do too much work, primarily because there is so much wrong dimensionally in this area that to put one bit right just makes the rest stand out more. For instance: the 'up and over' of the running plate over the cylinders is too low, the cylinders are too far back and I think a little too small, the slide valves are too long (they shouldn't exist at all but I'm content to keep them on the basis that to put it right would be a lot of work on a chassis that still wouldn't be right in other areas).

[James Harrison]

Lord Faringdon is finished! (For a given value of finished...)





Onto the next little project- converting a Hornby brake clerestory into a GCR composite brake, with bits of the Hornby composite clerestory.

[James Harrison]

I've been quite busy through late April and early May...

I've completed a rake of GCR suburban stock, converted from Hornby clerestories. The last carriage in the rake to be completed was a composite brake, which was a heck of a lot more work than the other four (a composite, two all-thirds and a brake third) because it needed two clerestories to be cut up and grafted into each other.



I then came up with a homebrew semi-permanent coupling to replace the pretty awful tension lock couplings. This is just a piece of wire and some holes drilled through the flat 'plate' at the front of the bogies.



This allows me to close couple the rake, which makes it look more realistic. I've kept the tension locks at each end of the rake however as it is my intention to retain the tension locks on my locos.

And so onto the next loco. What could it be but an A5 to haul my new suburban rake? It arrived in LNER green and I'm giving it a repaint into early LNER black with GCR pattern lining.

[James Harrison]

I said the A5 would be a quick job (just a repaint) and it has been. Three nights' work spread over a week, and I have another loco for my roster.

When I came to do the lining I encountered some.... interesting.... difficulties.

My first port of call was John Quick's excellent book on GCR liveries, which told me that GCR pattern lining for blak locomotives was red panel edging and white-black-white boilerbands and panel lining.

I then pulled out the relevant green bible. The only photo in it of an A5 in GCR style lining is #5165. I couldn't model this loco as it was fitted for oil firing, however it did bring up something interesting. At some point between 1923 and 1926, the white-black-white lining became red-black-white.

I next pulled out E M Johnson's books on GCR locomotives. Volume two had a nice photo of an LNER built A5 wearing the same red-black-white lining, but unfortunately it had the original cutout cab fitted, so I again I couldn't model this loco. Volume one meanwhile brought up two good photos of A5s in the early-mid 1920s in GCR lining. Again we find a variance though. Here the panel lining is as-per the GCR... white-black-white. The boiler bands however are red.

I think this just goes to show the value of doing a little research before blithely applying paint.

So, in the end I plumped for LNER #7, built February 1923 and renumbered as 5007 in 1924, as photographed in volume one of "Locomotives of the Great Central Railway". I think she wears the livery very well.





As is my wont, the lining was drawn up in paint pens and the lettering and numbering using HMRS pressfix transfers.

[James Harrison]

After a short break, my latest project is underway. I'm having a go at a Kirk kit- specifically the 7 1/2 compartment coupe composite. I'm very pleased with how easily the model is fitting together. I've used some Bachmann bogies under it (typically, with another pair of Kirk kits to build, I see that at the moment these bogies are rare as hens teeth on Ebay and via internet box shifters)....

There's plainly a lot of work still to do, but much of the construction work has now been finished.

[James Harrison]

I'm quite pleased with how this model has turned out:





I found that I had some small difficulty with the floor and the sides having warped slightly, however the majority of this eased back out once I had started building (I think there is a crack along the joint between the body and the solebars which is a result of this, but that's not exactly visible unless you go looking for it).

The whole model was pretty much built as-per the instructions; I swapped out the kit bogies for Bachmann Thompson ones and added a false floor to build the interior of off, but that was about as far as I took any alteration to the kit. I would have liked (in an ideal world) to add toplight windows and a wire truss frame (making this one of the Great Northern-built examples) but this appeared to me at the time to be too intricate (if I get another, who knows?).

The teak effect took a bit of work to get right but was definitely worth it. My eventual solution was to use matt brown undercoats, a thin gloss brown topcoat, gloss varnish and then satin varnish. I've now gone out and bought a couple of tins of satin and gloss brown paints of varying hues and tones to hopefully make this an easier job in the future.

Lining out was done with a lining pen and gloss yellow, and transfers as usual are from the HMRS range. Now to get on with the rest of the five-car rake it will eventually be a part of...

[jwealleans]

It's not terribly easy to tell from your photo, but i think you may have a little too much lining on that coach. Have a look at a prototype photo and you should see where there shouldn't be lines.

[2512silverfox]

I think you might have used the wrong 'LNER' as well. The elongated one is for Tourist stock.