Cream Coloured Ponies

Since I began modelling the FR I've always been drawn to the quirky items of rolling stock, and they don't come quirkier than the Parry People Mover.

This complete technological flop - sorry, but it was in Welsh Highland terms - never made it beyond Dinas before it left the railway.

(In fact it barely made it to Dinas at all without frequent stops to spin up the flywheel.)

So running it on Bron Hebog is a classic case of Rule Number 1.

However, I justify it on the basis that if it stayed on the railway long enough - and if it somehow managed to limp to Pitt's Head - it would certainly be able to freewheel quite happily all the way down to the sea again.

It runs on a Kato 4 wheel chassis with a body I made out of styrene.

I think it has something of the spirit of the BR / Leyland prototype railbus, which morphed into the Pacers, about it.

As a kid in the 80s I remember thinking that machine was pretty cool.

Alas, the PPM looks unlikely to lead to a railcar revolution on the WHR.

MOTW - Parry People Mover

We have an example of one of my little modelling indulgences on Model of the Week this time.

(And if you can't indulge yourself on your birthday then when can you?)

I have a very soft spot for the Parry People Mover.

This is another of the models on Bron Hebog that, as far as I know, is the only one of its kind.

My PPM was scratch built in styrene and runs on a Kato tram chassis. There are lots of previous posts documenting the build if you have a look back through the archive.

The model's appearances at Beddgelert on Bron Hebog are, of course, complete fantasy.

The real machine left the WHR in a state of mechanical disgrace around 15 years ago when the line only ran to Dinas, and even when the vehicle ran it did not excatly cover itself in glory.

So feeble was its performance that it is highly unlikely that it would ever have managed to surmount the summit at Rhyd Ddu to roll down the hill to Beddgelert, although its flywheel would no doubt have reached V max by the time it did.

I think the PPM's appeal to me lies in that sense of the 'white elephant' and also its stark modernity and the utilitarian bus-style interior which remind me of the FR of my childhood - the angular Earl of Merioneth and the 'tin carrs'.

Pane-staking Work

The Parry People Mover has gained some glazing.

Himself has spent a number of hours on the very tricky task of fitting the flush glazing in the front windows of the railcar, and then trying very hard not to ruin them while applying tiny amounts of super glue and / or pva to fix them in place.

Our home made transfers for the big, red , bi-lingual stickers have also been stuck on, the bling headlamps inserted into the appropriate slots and windscreen wipers fitted.

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I am delighted to have got it completed in time for another spin on Bron Hebog at Railex this weekend - the last confirmed appearance for the layout at the moment

Do say hello if you're coming along to the exhibition, it's always nice to put a face to a blog hit count.

Thin Blue Lines

The Parry People Mover has been formally handed over to Himself to apply the finishing touches.

I am pleased to report that it survived its 400 mile journey at the hands of the Royal Mail intact.

The last job I did before packaging it up was sticking on the blue lining which straddles the raised waist panel.

For this I used 0.75 lining from the Fox Transfers range which was a pleasure to use as always.

So what's left to do?

The bodyshell requires a coat of satin varnish.

There are headlight jewels obtained from the USA to be inserted in the holes in each corner at the front.

I have pre-cut some glazing sections for Himself to fit, followed by etched brass windscreen wipers.

The very last thing will be a big bilingual transfer along each side saying Welsh Highland Railway / Rheilffordd Eryri .

Steve (of Narrow Planet fame) has kindly knocked up some artworks for us and we'll see whether a DIY transfer will do the job, otherwise it will be another commission for Precision Decals.

I'm looking forward to seeing it on Bron Hebog again at Railex next week.

The Black & White Railcar Show

I've been cracking on with painting the Parry People Mover.

The combination of black and white couldn't be worse for doing the job by hand.

A particularly tricky bit its the bumper (for want of a better description) around the bottom of the body. It is a challenge to get a nice clean division between the two colours and requires a very steady hand and a top of the range brush: one false move, particularly when applying the black, and you have a big splodge on those big virgin white panels.

The camera is very cruel halfway through a paint job like this but I'm confident it'll look quite respectable by the end of the process.

The pillar box red underframe, the thick blue lining around the middle, the giant red sticker and the bling headlamps will distract the eye quite effectively on the finished model.

It's All White

So, I've begun the process of painting the Parry People Mover.

I've made a radical departure from my usual custom and practise and am using a white primer.

Normally I give everything a coat of grey, but the predominant colour on the PPM is white, and the last time I painted a model which was mostly white (the cherry picker wagon) I lost count of the number of coats of white paint I had to apply to get a deep and even coverage. (It was at least half a dozen.)

So hence my move to invest a vast amount of money (£8) in a can of white primer.

The idea, at least, is that I will only need to give it one top coat of white enamel.

We shall see....

Bustitution

The Sparsholt show last weekend saw the public debut of my Parry People Mover.
It attracted a lot of attention and quite a few compliments too, which was pleasing.



I remained dissatisfied with the seats inside it, though. Or to be more accurate, my representation of the chrome handrails on top of the bus-type seats.

I had made them out of very thin strips of styrene, but I couldn't get them to sit nice and straight along the top. Over the weekend I decided it was time to substitute the styrene for another material. Or perhaps that should be, bustitute?

To stop them bending upwards I decided a strip of brass the same size as the styrene would give me the nice straight top I was seeking.

While I was staying at home for the Sparsholt weekend I took the opportunity to raid Himself's stocks of brass. (I could have ordered it online, of course, but it didn't seem worth paying postage for just one item.)

At any rate, it was a fair exchange. In return for a strip of brass (and the dregs of a bottle of Lagavulin) I found the solution to fix Himself's Sky TV settings issue and changed his Facebook profile picture for him.

An hour's work later and the brass handrails have been put on in place of the styrene ones. Much better, don't you think?


Now I just have to cut the glazing pieces and then I can start the process of painting it.

PPM To The Paintshop

The Parry People Mover is just about complete, except for the fact it's still bright, styrene white.



If I pull off the body you can see what I've done with the interior.



I've built what I can around the motor cover, which as I wrote in a previous post, is a little too intrusive for my liking, but I hope I'll be able to disguise it a little through the painting, and the chrome rails on the top of the bus seats - which were made out of thin styrene strip - should be the first thing that will catch the eye.

I'm also quite please with the driving control desks at either end which were made and shaped out of six pieces of styrene each.

The finishing touches, once its painted, will be small headlight jewels and some etched brass windscreen wipers.

Stuffing it with some passengers should also hide that motor cover, especially if it's standing room only in front of the doors.

I'm really looking forward to giving it a proper test run on the layout on Saturday at the Sparsholt show.

Weighty Matters

I've decided that the Parry People Mover needs a little more mass, so I've been pouring liquid lead into every available space in the chassis.



The irony is not lost on me that the reason I first began scratch building carriages in styrene was to make them as light as possible, whereas the PPM, being a self-propelled railcar, needs to be treated more like a locomotive, where every gram helps.

In this case it's not for traction but to improve current collection on the four- wheel chassis - and the extra weight might also help to tame the somewhat wild acceleration of the Kato chassis.

Inside, I've had to address the issue of how to disguise the motor's presence in the passenger saloon.

To get the running height correct the motor unit has had to be mounted above the floor, which means there is much more to cover up. Also the cover has to be removable so that we can access the bolts which secure the Kato chassis to the floor for maintenance.

The problem is that the design of the PPM, with the bus-style folding doors, mean the the glazing runs the full height of the bodyshell at the doors, and whatever you do with the motor unit, whether you try to hide it or not, it will always been seen.

The solution I've chosen is this.



I'm hoping that the sloping sections, which are positioned in front of the doors, is the most unobtrusive way of covering up the motor.

I have also fabricated and fixed in place the interior dividers beside the doors. The driving positions are located in front of the wider panels.



Next I'll be attempting to bodge up some bits of styrene to represent the seat backs as best as I can.

PPM Progress

I've been getting on well with the Parry People Mover to the point where most of the outside of the railcar is complete now.



This vehicle has two very distinctive bands around - at the bottom and at the waist - which have been built up with styrene strip.

In the case of the centre band this was made from a strip (about 4mm wide and 30 thou thick) which had to be chamfered and sanded to a rounded profile before pieces were cut from it and stuck in place on the bodyshell.

Once glued on they had to be smoothed over with emery paper once more, particularly at the 45 degree joints at each end of the railcar.

After this was done holes were drilled for the headlights which I did by starting off with a small drill bit to make sure the hole was centered in the strip and then expanded them with a larger bit.

The hexagon panels - which are also curved - were cut from styrene sheet and, when glued in place, had model filler applied to the gaps behind them.



The skirt beneath the body - which has a double angle - is attached to the chassis which fits up into the bodyshell using the same technique I have with my styrene carriages.



I have also completed the raised section on the roof - which I suppose is there for ventilation equipment? - and so the next stage will be to begin work on the interior.

Power To The People Mover

The railcar project continues with the installation of the power source. In this case it's a Kato tram chassis rather than an engine from a Ford Fiesta and a flywheel.

I'm building this vehicle in the same way I would usually tackle a carriage, so the bottom will be removable and the roof fixed in place.

The first job was to cut out a floor to fit inside the bodyshell and then hack out a hole to mount the tram chassis in, which is easier said than done when dealing with 80 thou styrene, and a number of scalpel blades were lost in the process, but fortunately no fingers.



As you can see in this view from below, a lot of the existing detail on the chassis as been hacked off and ground away with the aid of a mini-drill and disc cutter. The skirt on the People Mover is so low that none of it can be seen, and it meant the hole in the floor could be smaller.



So, here's how the project stands at the moment. I've also made a basic roof which you can see in this shot below. (Please excuse the rather ethereal yellow glow..)



It has been tested and I can confirm it does indeed move, so I hope we'll be giving it a wee test run on Bron Hebog at the Sparsholt show next month.

Moving On

I'm keeping my New Year Resolution to make a model of the Parry People Mover - a flywheel powered rail car which had a pathetically brief career on the WHR in 1999.

You can read more about it in this post.

For this I'm using an outline drawing of the machine which I discovered on the Parry website, which has been scaled to 4mm by cross-referencing with measurements I took of the railcar in the shed at Dinas twelve years ago.



The tricky bit on this model is getting the angles at the front correct. I used a cut out of one end of the floorplan as a guide when assembling the bodyshell.

Here it is with all eight panels bonded together...



And now with the bus-style folding double doors added on behind...



It feels good to have made a start on this project after so long on the wish list.