Customer Service

The old adage goes that the customer is always right, even when they're wrong.

When I'm building models to order I always do my best to try to meet my clients requirements, even when it sometimes makes things a little more awkward.

Take the case of the couplings on the latest batch of wagons which are just about finished.

The customer has standardised on couplings designed by PECO for their ready to run range of rolling stock..

Standardising in this way makes things much easier  - but fixing plastic parts to brass? Not so much...

The etched bogie frames I use on my kits work best with the brass Greenwich couplings, which can be soldered direct onto the tongue which extends out from the middle.  Or failing that the Bemo ones with a long shaft which gives you plenty of surface area to glue them on.

These PECO couplings are designed to slot into NEM pockets, and have almost no shaft on them.

They're also made from the kind of plastic which doesn't work with Superglue.

So the solution I've had to adopt is, firstly, to solder on a brass extension piece onto the bogie, and then use epoxy resin to attach the coupling, which is less than ideal because it takes an age even for the rapid stuff to set hard.

It's done, however, so now all I have to do is fix on the resin detail parts on the side of the bogies (it seemed sensible to wait until I'd finished the soldering work) and then spray them.

Tiny Shiny Bits

More of the very involved detailing has been completed on the boiler unit of 143.

There are a lot of pipe runs and lost wax brass castings to be added around the firebox and along the frames which involves some careful soldering and a lot of precision bending of brass wire.

These are all time consuming tasks but there are a lot of external ancillaries on an NGG16 and the model wouldn't look right if it didn't have as many of them as possible on there.

One of the last things to be added will be the handrails but the holes have already been drilled, as you can clearly see in the picture.

Since the last time I posted the cab roof has also been bent to shape and is resting in place for now.

One Good Turn

I took the wagons over to Himself's place to take advantage of one of his nifty bits of kit - a spray booth turntable.

My presence was required anyway to shin up a latter to attach his Christmas lights to the guttering so it seemed a fair exchange.

It turned out it wasn't just the turntable I needed to borrow.

While enthusiastically agitating the new can of primer I'd bought just a couple of days before it slipped out of my hand and fell on the floor, breaking the aerosol spray head.

Whoops!

Fortunately Himself had half a can of his own left over on the shelf so I was able to make use of that.

Next I shall turn my attention to the bogies and the couplings.

Ready For Red Oxide

The wagon bodies I've been building for a customer are at the stage where they're ready to be given a coat of red oxide colour.

The thing I've found best for this is the spray cans of primer you'll find in your local car parts store, although it does chip easily so a further coat of varnish can be a good idea.

One of the final pieces of construction work on the ballast wagons was assembling the shafts with the cogs which operate the doors to release the stones onto the side of the track.

I've always been rather pleased with these.

It's the kind of tricky detail that might otherwise be missed off a kit but thanks to the very skillful design team at Narrow Planet I was able to get some tiny little cogs and brackets etched onto a fret.

They need to be threaded onto a length of brass wire, secured in the right spots to line up with the ends of the doors and then the whole thing is just glued into place.

And as I get more adventurous with the iron I have begun to solder these in position rather than gluing them onto the wire, which I'm quite chuffed with, too.

It's Getting There

You could be fooled into thinking the new Garratt is almost ready to run.

With the valve gear complete on both bogies now, and the pipework being added to the boiler unit which is complete with a dome and chimney now, 143 is really looking the business.

Examine it closely, though, and you'll see it's still missing pony trucks, and there aren't any pick ups fitted yet so it's not going anywhere just yet.

I do like the way the missing smokebox door gives it an authentic 'nearing the end of an overhaul' look.

B Is For Brave

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am not a great enthusiast for soldering.

This is not because I am in any doubt about its benefits as a method of construction, but more that I have never done much of it and when confronted by a situation where it might be an option I am likely to either pass it over to Himself to do, or find a way of gluing the parts together.

It's what I've always done with the brass parts on my resin wagons and what I advise in the kit instructions to keep construction straightforward.

On the latest build of some B Wagons for a customer I decided the time had come to be brave and try and solder the parts together as much as possible.

I'm rather pleased with the results, I must say.

It was less fiddly than I expected.

Soldering is very different to gluing pieces together.  Not only do you get an instant, and solid, joint but also because you can't hold it in place as well because:

a) you have to hold the soldering iron in one hand, and it's a bit more awkward than a tube of glue

and

b) the bits get bloody hot!

This, of course, was my major concern when soldering parts which were attached to, and in close proximity to, a resin body. One false move and the whole model is ruined.

Fortunately by using relatively low melt solder and some good flux I only had to apply the iron for a second or so for the joints to be made, and I can't help noticing they feel much more solid than ones I have glued previously.

Why did it take me so long to start doing it this way?

Wheels Of Fortune

One of the features I love best about the South African wagon kits I make are the bits I had no part in making - other than asking a much cleverer person to do it for me.

They are the distinctive wheels for the handbrakes and the ballast door mechanism on the B wagon and the NG-Y.

They were designed for me by Narrow Planet and come on a small fret along with the bogie frames, the brake gear and the cogs which go along the side of the ballast wagon.

It's a very neat piece of work and they set the kits of beautifully, especially when they're picked out in yellow when they're painted.

I always feel that they're starting to look the part when I get round to fitting them.