2020 Review - Part 3

July 

 

As we moved into the second half of the year Livingston Thompson had been painted, lined and weathered and taken for its first test runs on Bron Hebog with the formation recreating the train when it was first towed from Minffordd to Blaenau Ffestiniog to try and kick start the restoration.

 

After a false start that ended up with the locomotive on display at the NRM in York where it remains.

 

The Double Fairlie story continued with Himself trying to keep pace with Boston Lodge on progress with James Spooner.

 

 

 

We're doing out best to adapt a Backwoods brass kit - although there will have to be the inevitable compromise on scale. 

On my workbench I was getting to grips with a new project in resin....

 

August 

Those Hula Hoop shapes were turned into the body of Maenofferen water tank wagon which sits on an extended 3 ton slate waggon chassis.

 

 

Almost immediate I was inundated with requests to produce a kit version....

 

And Himself used the first lockdown to reach the finishing line on another long term project, finally completing the painting and lining of our Backwoods Lyn.

 

 

 

The latest of our WHR saloons rolled off the production line, too.

 

 

September

 

Trying our best, once again, to stay synchronised with real world developments, Himself began painting our 130, starting with the bunkers and tanks which received their lovely crimson/plum colour and straw lining. 

 

 

After completing work on the tank waggon I was engaged on a request to produce a kit for the FR's small ex-MOD bogie wagons.

 

The first task was to find a way to produce the bogies.

 

The solution I hit on was to cast a piece which could slip over the very free-running Hudson bogie sold by Dundas.    

 

 

 

In fact, Dundas was doing very good business out of us with Himself deciding it was time to replace a lot of our slate waggon fleet as the 30 year old bodies became brittle.

 

This time instead of a uniform grey he decided to make them a little more colourful.

 

Dinas In A Box

An update for you on progress with the newest stock box, which is now finished and home to most of our Welsh Highland rolling stock.

As I explained in the previous post, this box is a little wider, so each row can fit four saloon carriages.

So the top four rows are filled with the two main corridor service sets.

I'm sure there will be any number of people ready to write in and explain that they're not in the correct order, and I'm also very aware that the original set of Winson carriages have undergone radical changes from how we depict them here in the condition they first ran.

Long ago now we reached the conclusion that the best way to retain sanity while attempting to model the contemporary FR / WHR is to finish a model in the condition it first appeared, or the condition it is at the point you complete the model - and just live with it.

That's why our NGG16 87 will remain in grey. (And also because I like it like that.)

The new box is so commodious we've also got our WHHR set in there as well as my original pair of ballast wagons, scratch built long before the idea of making a resin kit for them ever occurred to me.

The Pullman car Bodysgallen is a bit of an outlier given that it's now stored out of service, but it's too nice a model not to run on the layout so we'll have to think about the best way of sneaking it into a set.

Twenty Forty Eight

 There's another new carriage in the fleet.

Himself has completed the varnishing of WHR saloon 2048 and added the handrails beside the doors at each end, which is perhaps his least favourite job of all.

Each of these monster WHR carriages are scratch built in styrene.

There's now four of them to this design and had I known they would end up mostly (note the careful use of the word) identical, then I might have made a master to cast resin copies like I do with the FR Superbarns.

Inside Job

I recently completed an order for 9 (!) sets of resin seats and tables for the WHR saloon carriages, which made for an epic week-long casting session, but it was also the perfect opportunity to run off a 10th set to make the interior for 2048, which is my current work bench project.

These didn't go in without a fight.

The joy and curse of scratch building is that each model can turn out fractionally different from the last one.

So it has proved with 2048.

For whatever reason the tables sat ever-so-slightly proud of the waistline on the bodyside.

This could be because the castings were ever so slightly thicker at the base, the body panel of the carriage is ever-so-slightly less tall than on 2047, or that the chassis / floor sits a fraction of a mm higher.

Whatever, the effect was that each seat had to be attacked with a file and sandpaper at its base and also on the top surface of the tables to get them to the correct height.

This modelling lark would be so much easier if I didn't care about such things!

Hannibal Moment

I love it when a carriage comes together!

That moment when all the pieces are ready to be joined together into one bodyshell, which is the stage 2048 is at now.

On the latest FR and WHR carriages that moment takes a lot longer to reach because of the recessed doors which mean you have to complete 8 sub-assemblies before they can be glued together.

Scratch building in styrene takes a lot longer but when you get to this moment it is a lot easier to bond plastic parts together and get them in just the right position compared to the resin pieces I use for the FR Superbarns.

Its also worth showing you one of the key steps I take before forming into a shell, gluing little blocks on the back which will set the height of the floor / chassis.

These are exactly 3mm above the bottom of the bodyside and I use a small piece of styrene to as a guide to make sure they're all set in exactly the right position.

It's so much harder to do this when its glued together.

Once that happens it's important to cut the floor as soon as I can to help keep the bodysides straight and prevent them bending inwards like inverted bananas, which is what the styrene naturally wants to do.

Vestibules

The component parts of WHR carriage 2048 are coming together now.

I've detailed the door units with the second layer of beading added now, and the spacers to set them back from the main bodyside.

(That's after they'd all be deconstructed and cut down in height by 1mm - see a previous post for details of this foul-up)

The bases for the end pieces have also been made.

These are quite complex to made because the top piece with the overhang has to be cut and fitted on top of the pillars and its vital to make sure it's placed centrally.

Next up is one of my least-favourite jobs - making up the corridor connections.

This involves cutting, fixing and filing 24 pieces of styrene strip to create the folding flaps either side of the end doors, and takes about an hour to make up all six.

Double Doors

I was reminded of the perils of building a model when you're tired, or in a rush, or both, when I went to do a little more work on 2048 the other day and found myself having to spend the session deconstructing and rebuilding what I'd done before I could make any forward progress.

The issue appeared when I began to add the beading details to the doors, which are sub-assemblies on these WHR saloons,.

I discovered that I had set the height incorrectly, and from the window opening upwards they were around 1.5mm taller than the bodyside.

The simplest thing would have been to make a new set of base layers to the right dimension, but being the stubborn type that I am I elected to try and alter them.

This involved very carefully slicing between the pillars and the lower body panel and then trimming a very precise - and identical - amount off the bottom of each post and grafting it back together.

Being mindful not to fall into the trap of cutting too much off I found that it took at least three attempts to lower it to the correct size, and then some even finer trimming to ensure it was all square again.

Fortunately the pieces won't lose any strength from this butchery because there are full length strips to add on top which will secure the joint again.

It was all very irritating for being so unnecessary, though.

Blacked Out

The title is not a reference to current affairs - some attempt a click bait - merely a reference that the cursed carriage Gwyrfai has fooled us again!

Himself was fitting the handrails at the door end when it suddenly occurred to him he has yet to black out the end windows in the cubby hole behind the saloon.

This will be done by painting a section of the glazing.

Fortunately he’s noticed now rather than when he had declared it ‘finished’.

Speaking for myself I’m glad it’s not just me who’s been caught out.

This fourth Pullman observation car has been a swine at times - please, no more!

Halfway House

Himself is reaching the end of the arduous job of lining out a Pullman observation car.

I’ve seen quite a few models of Gwyrfai crop up on my social media - including brass body kits and 3D prints - but I wonder how many will be finished off to this exacting standard?

The transfers have been quite a challenge this time.

Our favoured Fox products appear to have been updated, so whereas before some were a little too big, but just about fitted, now they definitely don’t.

So we’ve had to mix and match and with the help of an FR friend have obtain a sheet of the secret 3mm scale decals exclusively produced for members of the 3mm society.

These are what we’ve ended up using for the crests and also the name.

This was a bit of a saga.

The Fox sheets of old used to give you blank borders and alphabet sheets to make up the name of your choice - nowadays you can only buy sheets with a selection of ready-made names.

Himself tried more than once to slice these up to create a blank box and individual letters but - unusually for Fox products - the transfers broke up as he tried to apply them.

Perhaps just a bad batch?

So he’s ended up using the 3mm versions, which turned out to be a tiny bit bigger!

As the kids say - whatever!!

It’s going to look fabulous, isn’t it!

In The Nick Of Time

We’ve just had our worst case yet of ‘Boston Lodge Syndrome’, which is what happens when a modeller gets caught out by the craftsmen in Wales not following the script.

Himself has been progressing well with the painstaking job of lining out the new WHR observation car Gwyrfai when he sent me an alarming late night message saying “Er, shouldn’t there be a window above the door at the back?”

A quick google search confirmed the worst.

Bugger!

But how did that happen??

I dug out the drawings and it became apparent it had happened again....

Between us we quickly concluded that the only possible remedy was to drill holes in the styrene panel and file to shape.

It was a high risk strategy that could ruin the whole model of it went wrong.

Fortunately, Himself has pulled it off (at least on one side) with only minor damage to some lining which can be repaired.

What puzzles me most is that no one involved in building the real carriage - who I know read this blog - warned me.

Modern Image

For perhaps the first time since we began modelling the FR back in the late 1980s we’re within touching distance of being up to date with the output of the carriage works.

I’ve begun building Welsh Highland saloon 2048.

The real carriage is far more advanced than this, being in the final stages when the Covid shutdown happened.

I’m making it using my long established “ladder technique” with styrene strip.

The basic idea is not to attempt to cut out windows but to fabricate the body side through a series of upright sticks topped by a long horizontal bar.

Neither do you need to bother about pre-cutting the pillars to length - get them all in place then mark the height, lay a ruler along the top and chop them to length.

You’ll also notice I build it on a sheet of glass with a scale drawing beneath to get the positions right.

I’m the case of 2048 it also has toplight windows which are added in after the cant rail has been fixed on.

This does require some hyper-accurate cutting to get the pieces to be a snug fit inside the gap but you can slice incredibly fine slivers with a sharp scalpel blade.

This is only stage one. Next I’ll be adding the beading detail on top as we built the laminate structure.

First Class Job

It’s the turn of Gwyrfai for the paint shop, starting with the interior.

Something to note is the way Himself has tried to replicate the panelling on the ceiling and the lush carpeting and exposed framing of the armchairs.

The exterior has also had initial coats of plum, and cream on the doors, and soon it will be time for the painstaking task of applying the Pullman lining transfers.

Optimism

I’ve done my bit on Gwyrfai and it’s been delivered to Himself disguised amid bags of shopping from the supermarket.

The reference to optimism is regarding the number of chairs in the front saloon.

I’ve fitted 8 as per the design, however the carriage entered service with only 6.

Will it ever receive the missing pair as originally intended?

Will this be the carriage equivalent of the New Moelwyn Tunnel portals?

Am I going to look a right idiot?

Only time will tell......

Finishing Line In Sight

Finally I can see the end of the Gwyrfai project - it at least my bit of it.

Last night I finished the outstanding jobs on the interior, fitting the bulkheads, lowered the tables in the front saloon and fashioned something to represent the shelf at the front that actually hides a demister unit on the real carriage.

The remaining construction tasks now are to fit some steps, the electrical connections at the corridor end and fit some channels under the ceiling to help hold the glazing in.

After that I will deliver it to Himself - without breaching social distancing (!) - and he can have the dubious pleasure of painting and lining it.

Won’t that be fun!

* I should probably point out that I am a key worker & Himself lives on my route to work.

They’re In

So last night I decided to stop faffing about and get the interior fixed into Gwyrfai

The tricky bit is always making sure the seat backs are lined up with the window pillars precisely, but the slow setting super glue helps with this.

I have still to make up the bulkheads and I also need to cut down the height of the small tables in the front saloon where the windows come down lower.

It feels like a big step forward has been taken, though.

Sitting Upright

I’ve got the last of the chairs for Gwyrfai cast, and while the ladies of the house watched a movie I was informed I would find very boring I snuck into the workroom to glue them together.



The bucket seats have a four legged base to be fixed on the bottom and most of the armchairs get put back to back, and all need a front support added as well.

The slightly fiddly job now is to fix two short piece of styrene horizontally to represent the arm rests, and then that’s them done.

The Thin End Of The Ob

I’m on a roll with Gwyrfai with two sessions in a week!

The second layer of detail has been added on the end piece including the corridor connections which are made up from strips and shaped to look like folded rubber.

The big test now is to make the curved front end piece.

At Last The End

The festive season has been a bit of a washout for modelling, but on the last day of the year I found half an hour to have a go at making the basic outline of the corridor end of Gwyrfai

It’s a fabricated piece and the first job is to assemble the pieces I will need, including the solid lower piece and the top piece shaped to the roof profile.

A really good tip is to use a sheet of glass as your surface and use a metal ruler as a guide to make sure your joints are square and straight.

Also make sure you place only the tiniest drop of solvent on the joint - capillary action will do the rest for you.

As well as the ruler I like to use a couple of very precisely measured off cuts as guides to make sure the windows either side a precisely the same width.

Finally, chop the pillars to the exact height you require and glue the top piece in place.

Sandwiched

It's been weeks since I did any work on Gwyrfai but I managed to get a couple of hours in yesterday thanks to the need to use up annual leave before the end of the year.

For such a comparatively small part of the body shell the doors on the WHR carriages take a surprisingly long time to make.

My technique with making carriages out of styrene is to build everything up in layers.

I start with the middle of the sandwich, which in the case of this carriage is a simple oblong piece with a hole where the window in the door goes.

Rather than cutting a hole I create it, adding vertical styrene strips to a square piece, measuring and cutting them to length, and then placing a another piece along the top.

The edge where it joins the carriage is extended by 1mm to give an overlap with the main body side.

Then more strips of styrene, of various lengths and thicknesses, are added in position on top to give the depth which creates the doorway.

On these WHR carriages there is also quite a thick piece glued on its side to create the distinctive inset - this is the bit where it will connect with the back of the body side.

Finally, a third layer is added on the back which creates the window droplight and also the kick plate beneath the door.

The important thing is to keep checking at all stages that they are of identical dimensions, and to ensure they are a mirror image of each other.

Flat End Society

Himself’s occasional trips to Wales to volunteer on the FR have the added bonus of allowing a chance for a little spying in order to find out what’s coming down the tracks towards us.

On this most recent trip he got a glimpse of the second WHR observation car under construction in the carriage works.

It’s clear there are going to be many differences to ‘Glaslyn’, most obviously at the end where it is of a much flatter profile, and the windows are vertical rather than being raked back, as on the original carriage.

I’m fact, the side view shows that is something of a hybrid, borrowing many styling cues from the latest FR observation cars 150 and 152, but retaining the deep cantrail of the WHR carriages and the very shallow domed end on the roof.

Should be a challenge to make.