Kiwionrails' Work Bench

L&MR Rocket (Continued)

No additional progress, however a list of the paints used on Rocket:

• Main Body - Railmatch Warning Yellow
• White Chimney - RAL 9002 Grey white (Phoenix Precision 'Roof White' is identical)
• Black - Revell acrylic black
• Copper - Vallejo No.797 'Liquid Copper'
• Brass - Vallejo VJ70801 Acrylic Metallic Brass
• 'Bright steelwork' - Tamiya acrylic X-11 'Chrome Silver'

Regards,

Cameron.

GWR Outside Frame Siphon G No.1359
I also managed to pick up an Airfix Diagram O11 Outside-framed Siphon G when at Ally Pally in March, so decided to perform a similar superdetailing exercise as I did last year with the inside-framed Lima example. STEAM museum has a nice clear image of No.1359 on their images store, which I thought would be a good subject.

The model I bought was painted in the much later BR maroon livery, however I didn't see that as an issue as it would be being repainted anyway.


As I did with the Siphon H, I've elected to retain the supplied Airfix bogies for now, simply re-wheeling to Gibson to replace the plastic-tyred ones, as although not perfect, they're ok for a 'layout' model. (Is also fairly easy to revisit in future if I change my mind). The one improvement was to hack-off the coupling mount, which I think greatly improves the look.


For some reason the model seems to have its main mould gate front-and-centre in the middle of the roof, which leaves a rather ugly mark in a very obvious place....! This was given a light sanding before a light dose of filler (Mr Hobby 1000)...



I also wasn't 100% happy with the roof-mounted gas lamp tops- their base appears to 'blend' into the surrounding roof a tad more than looks right to me....


The top was therefore snipped-off with some side-cutters, drilled-out and roughly pared-down with a scalpel.... This would then be sanded-down smooth and replaced with some whitemetal castings from Dart Castings.


Attention then turned to the ends of the body - the grab rails projecting down from the roof are a very distinctive feature of these Siphons, so I decided that the moulded-on ones had to go.... These were again carefully pared-away using a fresh scalpel blade before a light sanding to blend-in. The planks (where the rail used to be) were re-scribed using an old blade to ensure all traces of the moulded one were removed.



The grabrails themselves were formed using lengths of 0.3mm NS wire - although less bad than on the MICAs, they are still a right PITA to form neatly.... Although you can see from the below photo that they're not perfect, but I do still think they present a massive improvement from the moulded ones.


One of the other distinctive features of the OF Siphon Gs was the Churchward lamp irons at each end. - Dart Castings/Frogmore once again come to my rescue with a nice etch, however I did have some reservations. As these would be mounted on the ends of the body they would be quite vulnerable to handling damage, particuarly if only glued on, therefore I decided to drill-out one of the rivets, and solder-in a small length of NS wire, followed by bending to shape.



I have run-out of attachments on this post, thus more to follow later....

Regards,

Cameron.

GWR Outside Frame Siphon G No.1359 (Continued)
A 0.4mm hole was then drilled into each of the four corners of the body to enable the fitment of the lamp irons, which alongside the grab rails really improve the look.


Attention then turns to the bodysides, with the moulded door handles, grab rails and bodyside rails all carved-off. The door handles are etched 'Tee' items from Roxey Mouldings, the door grab rails are 8mm etchings from Frogmore, and the diagonal piece on the final panel is fashioned from some 0.3mm NS wire.


Whilst I was pretty confident it wouldn't be an issue, I also took the opportunity at this stage to burnish-off the printed lettering with a fibreglass pencil to ensure it wouldn't show through the subsequent paintwork.


Following some scrubbing, the bodywork then received a blast of Halfords etch grey primer to tie everything together...



...followed by a coat of GWR coach brown. - On this initial coat I later realised that I had missed the area under the bottom roof rail, which on this livery should also be brown....


It was at this point that I remembered this coach was fitted with gas lighting.....therefore needed the pipework added to the roof... why I didn't think of this when I added the lamp tops I don't know.....

The pipework itself was made using some 0.4mm soft copper wire, which was straightened by grabbing one end in a bench vice, the other in a pair of pliers, then stretching. The 'pass through' where the pipes would drop-down through the roof was achieved using some scrap plastic sprue which I turned-down to 2.2mm using a drill, rounded-off the top & glued in place.


I've always had...challenges.... with coverage density of white paint, and in this case decided that using some white primer as a base would help to ensure everything came together evenly. This also helps to ensure proper adhesion to the pipework....


...and following removal of the masking, the main bulk of the body painting is now done...!


Next-up will either be the commencing with the lettering or painting of the ironwork depending on what I feel like! For the latter, from what I can tell the end steps, grab rail & lamp irons should all be black, and everything else should be 'body' colour.

Regards,

Cameron.

GWR MINK F No.79599 (Continued)
Whilst I wait on the POWSides transfers to arrive, I thought I'd get a head-start on the remainder of the lettering. All currently applied was derived from the Fox GWR Freight vehicle sheet, with 16" 'GW' lettering. The additions are a small 'vacuum release' star on the solebar obtained from the HMRS sheet, and NCU lettering from Railtec.




Once the first side is nice and dry it'll be time to do the same on the second...!

I also need to print some solebar number plates to fit to it...

Regards,

Cameron.

GWR MINK F No.79599 (Continued)
Had some time today to finish-off the main components of the lettering on the Mink F. The main difference on the second side is the omission of the vac release star on the solebar, as I understand this is normally only on the cylinder-side.


Now to await the POWSides sheet to allow lettering completion.

I'm aware the roof hasn't been touched yet - my normal 'rolling pipe' has gone walkies, so I haven't yet adjusted the curve to get it to match the ends profile... Will get around to it eventually...

Regards,

Cameron.

GWR Outside Frame Siphon G No.1359 (Continued)
The lettering on the first side of the OF Siphon G is also now done - HMRS Methfix used in this case.


...now to do it all again on the 2nd side...

Regards,

Cameron.

GWR Diag.P23 Ballast Wagons (Continued)
The two P23s are also progressing, albeit slowly as they are quite 'fiddly' in their lettering.

I will preface that I am fully aware that the lettering I'm applying isn't correct for a P23, which weren't constructed until the late 4" lettering was in use, however I don't like the livery thus rule 1 applies...

As with the colouring, I decided to do slightly different lettering styles for these two. The first one utilises 16" 'GW' lettering (HMRS) and 'PT WAY' lettering (CCT) aligned 'hard' on the centre door strapping.


The other one uses the earlier and larger 25" lettering (Fox) which just fits on the panels (although the 'W' required some coaxing with decal settling solution). The PT Way on this one is centred on each panel.


The next task was the Load/Tare lettering - The Modelmaster general lettering sheet was used for this as it has sliightly smaller letters than the HMRS or Fox sheets. This was pretty fiddly as I had to to remove all the spacing between the different words to get them all to fit on the blasted panel!


'Unfortunately' the end panels also require lettering which has commenced with the same PT WAY, although this needed splitting into three parts to get it around the vac pipe...!


One of the other bits which I've always struggled-with neatly doing the 'centre of mass' marker on the solebar. Although this is just a simple vertical white stripe, it is a right fiddle to do freehand with paint! A solution I've found for this is to butcher the "R" from the early "G.W.R" lettering supplied on the Fox transfers sheet, as I have found this is the perfect height to fit on the solebar.


You can see this is positioned slightly offset from centre - this is reflective of pictures I've seen, and is presumably due to the need to balance the offset load from the vac cylinder itself. Also provided is a vac release 'star' from the HMRS sheet. This isn't as well rendered as ideal, but is currently my only source for these...


And how things are sitting now....



Still left to do:

• Allocation/return to information
• Volume capacity - from what I can see of earlier wagons, this should be 13Cu Yrds, which I need to obtain suitable lettering for...
• Running number - I still haven't decided what to assign for each of these....!

Regards,

Cameron.

LNER J70 - 'Toby'
Of the old Thomas The Tank Engine characters, my favourite was always Toby, proven below by my rather well-played with childhood 'Toby'!


Whilst of course I could just buy the Hornby or Bachmann RTR Toby model, I'm aware that the former in particular is hugely over-scale, and would look very 'wrong' next to the other models. I was fortunately able to pick up an NUCast J70 kit to build...! There is of course also the Model Rail Mag/Rapido RTR model, however that would be much more expensive than I wanted to dedicate to this project.


Compared to the ABS kit, there was definitely more clean-up on the castings, however that said, it was all nice & crisply moulded.


Whilst I'm aware I should get around to experimenting with whitemetal soldering some day, I elected to continue with flexible superglue on this one. The biggest challenge here was that whilst everything slots together neatly, there is a distinct lack of locating 'jiiging'/similar points, which means that the ends in particular require three hands to hold everything square...!


The cow catcher followed next, which was again glued in-place after some careful filing & sanding to ensure good fitment.


One component which took some deciding on was what the 'motive power' would be under the body. A J70 should be an 0-6-0, however I was able to pick up a Tenshodo motor bogie for a decent price, and (at the time I was buying bits) there wasn't any RTR coupled chassis available (at least at a decent price). Under the skirts you would only notice this if you were actively looking for it.


The roof detail needed a fair degree of clean-up to remove the mould lines, however once fitted certainly look the part.


One of the big improvements for me was drilling-out the chimney, as it is supplied as a solid whitemetal lump, which I'm not keen on. This is also now technically bolted-on using a very short M2 bolt from the underside to ensure a very stiff joint (rather than just relying on glue).


The cab handrails were next. If I were sensible I would have drilled these in before the model was assembled, however.....I forgot....

To ensure the 'inside' and 'outside' handrails were in alignment, I decided to drill the 'outside' ones all-way through first, then shuffle the drill bit out of the chuck to allow me to 'drill across' the doorway to get the one on the other side. These were then fitted with 0.45mm brass for the handrails themselves.


Regards,

Cameron.

LNER J70 - 'Toby' (Continued)
To ensure good paint adhesion, following a thorough cleaning, the model was given a blast of some Halfords etch primer.



The body sides were then followed with a coat of Humbrol #62 Matt leather. I'm aware that this is a tad 'bright', but the intention is this will be toned-down with some light weathering in due course...


And the next couple of images are a result of me working from photos of J70s rather than 'Toby'....

The body sides were then masked off to allow a coat of black to be applied to the skirts...



Similarly the buffer beam received a coat of red...



It was at this point when I dug-out my old 'Toby' diecast model included in the first post, and was reminded that the skirts should be grey, not black.....

I didn't have any greys of quite the right tone, so ended-up hand-mixing a reasonable match using a combination of grey primer, black and a touch of a light grey.


Although not pictured above, I had also originally painted the roof using Railmatch 'roof dirt', but likewise changed this to off-white match the diecast model. The chimney, steam pipe(?) and bell were also then picked-out.


And how things sit now adjacent to 'Toby'...!



Regards,

Cameron.

Retaining Wall Photo Backdrop
One thing I've been thinking of for a while is how to improve the background which sits behind my 'photography plank' above my work bench. Currently it is a plain white wall and a few boxes, however this could be improved by creating some depth and visual interest to this...


Whilst I was at Alexandra Palace back in March, I picked up a couple of LCut laser cut plain retaining wall kits, along with one which had a passageway.

The first pack of each went together very nicely using a combination of PVA and superglue for assembly...


...aand following a few more arches assembled we have a complete wall...


This was followed by a sealing coat of primer. The main part of the wall used some Vallejo primer through the air brush, with the parapet using some standard Halfords rattle-can grey. - Honestly would do the latter if approaching this again in the future, as (at least with my airbrush), it took an incredibly long time to do...!


This was then followed by an overall coat of Phoenix P953 Dark Red Brick.


Phoenix P955 slate grey was used to pick out the tops of the arches...


...aaand then the long tedious bit starts... reducing the uniformity of the brickwork by picking out random individual bricks in Phoenix P952 light brick and Humbrol No.100 Red-Brown.


The retaining wall & parapet would both be topped with concrete, and this effect was achieved with a combination of Halfords grey primer as a base, with some black lightly misted over from a distance away to create a 'speckled' effect.


....aaand the current state of play... (the parapet is currently entirely removable to make painting easier).


The next task is to tackle the mortar lines. - I've seen a couple of different methods from Intentio and BRM, so need to do some experimenting...

Regards,

Cameron.