Three Doors On My Wagon

So, after success casting single DZ door units I have now moved on to trying to reproduce whole wagon sides.

And here is a mould full of resin...

...and here is one of the castings removed and given a quick clean up.

I've cast 8 of them now and I think I'm reasonably satisfied with the way these have come out.

It's quite tricky to get the rear surface - the bit that is on the top as you pour the liquid resin into the mould - as smooth and flat as I'd like it to be.

I have tried the trick of passing the edge or a sheet of clear plastic along the top, but perhaps I've not yet got the knack fully.

There are a few pinprick air bubble holes here and there, but mostly they'll be easily sorted with filler or something like that.

The other issue has been with the wee dangly bits below the frame. Not all of them cast perfectly every time - which is not surprising given how small and thin they are - but as the WHR wagons are more than a little battered and have quite a few of them missing hopefully we'll be able to get around it.

It may be possible to graft on some of the good ones which have to be sliced off in place of a couple of the ropey ones. The question is whether the bond will be robust enough for life on the exhibition circuit??

MOTW - NGG16 ???

This is the loco which kicked off our adventure in modelling the Welsh Highland around 15 years ago.

It is an unusual Model Of The Week in that the model in question is not of any particular prototype engine.. Allow me to explain.

Himself was tempted to buy and build this Backwoods Miniatures kit when it hit the market, I suspect because he couldn't resist the challenge.

At the time we hadn't set out to model the WHR, it was just another exciting new locomotive to make, and so we didn't set out to represent one of the repatriated Garratts (138 & 143) which at that time were confined to shuttling between Caernarfon and Dinas looking for all the world like the steam-powered equivalent of a great beast in a small zoo enclosure.

For that reason the kit was built as Pete McParlin intended.  Although the coal in the bunker has come back to meet us  - when we made it the NGG16 fleet was on an exlcusive diet of oil - there are other features such as the sunshades over the cab windows and, most notably, the huge single headlamps which mean that this model wouldn't stand up to scrutiny if we tried to pass it off as one of the WHR's current quartet.

And if you hadn't spotted those subtle bits and pieces the ACR (Alfred County Railway) stickers on the bunker will certainly cure you of any misapprehensions you may have about what it is you're looking at.

Despite all that, because it is finished off in SAR unlined black livery, and because 143 spent many years running about on the WHR in this livery, it still blends in on Bron Hebog.

I've been badgering Himself for many years (as children tend to do) urging him to dunk it in paint stripper, attack the errornous details with a soldering iron and rebuild it as a more accurate representation of one of the WHR Garratts but so far he has either been too busy or is just hoping that if he ignores me for long enough I will forget about it. (As parents tend to do.)

Whatever the debate about the bits and bobs it does or does not have on it, there's no question that it is another fine example of Himself's ability to assemble these brass kits so as they not only look superb but run like sewing machines to boot.

It's Superbarn!

Here's a look at our latest completed model: Superbarn 103.

These hurriedly taken home snaps don't really do the carriage justice, and you'll just have to take my word for it that when formed up with a rake of our latest FR stock it looks great.

The real Boston Lodge has turned out the second Superbarn 121 in recent weeks and is cracking on with a third, 108.

I'm busy playing catch-up. My 121 us waiting for a brass roof and 108 is just a collection of styrene strips for now.

3 In 1

My adventure with resin casting continues.

As you may recall, at the end of the last post on this I had produced one DZ door panel casting, but of course these wagons have three drop down doors on each side.

So I went into mass production and using my rubber mould cast another 5 pieces.

The instructions and advice with the moulding compound suggest it is good for about 20 castings before it gives up too much silicone and the resin begins to stick.

With each DZ requiring 6 castings I figured I'd soon end up having to make another mould. At which point an alternative thought crossed my mind.

I had been intending to make up each wagon side from 3 castings connected with styrene channel representing the uprights between the doors.

It occurred to me it would be a lot more efficient to make up just one of these complete wagon sides and use it as a master to make another mould.

You can see in the picture above that the cast pieces have had extra styrene details - such as the door hinges - added on.

Why did I not include them on the first single panel master?

Because it turns out when you look at the DZ's closely that the hinges are handed - ie. the bottom bit can be on the left or the right hand side - and none of the three doors on the wagon are identical.

Isn't that just typical!

Here is the master, then, in its styrene coffin ready to be entombed in rubber.

So I'm off now to make up the RTV (Room Temperature Vulcanisation) silicone mix and we'll see how it turns out in 24 hours time.

Midnight Oil Burner

A truly sumptuous pun to introduce a few snaps of our new Linda.

A pun? Well..

1) The 'first lady' of the FR has been finished in her short-lived Midnight Blue livery

2) Himself truly did burn the midnight oil to get this finished in time for Chris Nevard's photo shoot with Dduallt last week for Model Rail magazine.

and

3) Linda is, of course, an oil burner (Much to the distress of the present day accountants at the FR, it must be said.)

Here we see the Backwoods beauty with the lining all complete, sporting her name and works plates and with a model crew.

In fact the crew is probably the most unauthentic bit of this model. Most of the occasions when I've seen Linda running her cab and tender footplates have been packed out.

I know the livery choice is a little controversial, but do you like it?

MOTW - The Water Crane

There is no rule which says the Model Of The Week has to run on rails, although to be fair, our subject does still move.

The water crane at the North end of the platform at Beddgelert is one of the most prominent features of the station.

Our representation of it was scratch built by Himself and brought to life with the assistance of the legendary Stefco.

The component parts are brass tube and rod plus a few brass washers all soldered together.

The main upright is tube with a slightly smaller but much longer solid rod inside which extends below the baseboard, which is how it swivels.

The top horizontal pipe is solid rod as it was easier to bend the end to shape, with a bit of tube added on the end for the counter weight. Washers were slipped on to show the flanged joints and soldiered into place.

The bottom flange is just small pieces of brass fashioned and soldiered in place.

The drip stand was similarly made from brass.

Motorising it was an afterthought. Steve Coulson came up with a mechanism made up of components sourced from his man cave full of various dismantled electronic consumer products.

At the heart of it is a low geared 3v motor – probably liberated from an old video recorder or something similar – which is wired to a three position switch hidden beneath the baseboard and gets its juice (currently) from a battery.

The drive from the motor is connected to the aforementioned inner brass rod and the crane thus swivels – delightfully sedately – hither and thither.

Alas, at the moment, there is no auto-stop feature. So if the operators become distracted, and forget to turn the switch to the central ‘off’ position when it has turned 90 degrees, you sometimes look down the platform and notice the water crane turning round, and round, and round like a malfunctioning clock!

Going Mouldy

So how did my first go at resin casting turn out? Read on, all will be revealed.

The first task was to glue the master face up in a homemade moulding box, which is nothing more fancy than four bits of styrene glued onto a thick base.

(I don't have photographs of this bit - sorry - Mrs Bron Hebog had taken the camera to work with her.)

Then it was time to mix the rubber moulding compound. It's probably the trickiest bit because the recipe calls for you to add 5% of the catalyst - by weight - to the rubber goo.

With such a relatively small part to cover with rubber this meant I needed just 1g of the catalyst, which necessitated the purchase of the most economical set of electronic scales I could find in the Argos catalogue.

Well, they did the job. I'm proud to be a cheapskate!

What followed was a bit of mixing and pouring - that's really not very technical, honest - and you have something very boring like this which you leave for 24 hours to cure.

Being the first time I've ever done this I have to confess I couldn't resist the urge to give it the tiniest wee prod every couple of hours to see how it was setting, but finally 24hrs were up and it was time for the big reveal...

To my untrained eye the negative image in the mould looked a little rough around the edges, and a little messy, to be frank, but the acid test - or perhaps I should say the epoxy test - would be to fill it with resin and see what happened.

The resin is a little easier to make up - the instructions say an approximate 50/50 mix will do - but the flip side is it sets really fast.

You're given 30 seconds to introduce the two liquids and blend them, and then just another 90 to pour it carefully into the mould, which when you've done it looks like this..

This is a lot easier if you're an impatient type of person, because just 20 minutes or so later the resin has set hard and you can release it from the mould, which peels away easily as soon as you flex it.

And here we have my first cast DZ wagon panel.

I don't think that's bad at all, for a first effort, you know. Not bad at all.