petesworkshop

Resplendant in Halfords’ "Acid 8" etch primer, this Highland Railway Pasenger Brake Van is from a Lochgorm "etches only" kit, or maybe it’s sold as an "aid to scratchbuilding"; whatever it’s called, the main thing is that it’s accurate and fits together nicely; the result is a basic model that needs detailing. I thickened the window openings and added an inner skin as well so that the glazing slides into the gap betwen the inner and outer skin; I think this treatment gives an old wooden vehicle a real solid feel. I fabricated patterns for the vacuum pipe, the horsehooks and the lamp-tops on the roof, from which I made silicone rubber moulds so I could cast as many as I needed, both for this model and with future projects in mind.   

I made this Caley Horsebox some time ago and I decide it was high time that I painted it; in fact it’s high time I addressed a backlog of unpainted models, shunted into "Forlorn Sidings", gathering dust. When I was in Halfords a few days ago I bought a tin of their "Acid 8" spray etch-primer which I’d heard about and wanted to try for myself. I cleaned the model thoroughly outside the workshop in the garden using cellulose thinners, then dried it and sprayed on a couple of coats of "Acid 8". There was no mention of a critical curing temperature on the side of the tin; neverthess I put the model in my lightbox (just a cardboard box with a light bulb inside), and let the etch primer cure at about 30 degrees C for the rest of the afternoon before I took it upstairs to the studio. After 24 hours the primer was hard and, I’m pleased to relate, resisted my thumbnail when I tried to scratch it off the underside of the model. I’ll certainly use "Acid 8" on future modelling projects, it was a good buy; well worth just over a tenner.    

The corners of the tank flares were made using a formula I found on Nick Baines’ website…  Using this I produced a shape which slotted, with a bit of fiddling, into the gap I’d left at the corners, much preferable I thought to the brass fingers with solder infill method There’s a good deal of tidying up to do still, and a lot of detail to add but I feel I’ve managed to "tame" the tender now; so, as the loco’s still fighting back I’m moving on to work on that now.  

As I mentioned in an earlier Post, the tender top flare was half etched into the tender side, in a feeble attempt to create an impression of the way the flare attaches to the tender top. As I’m trying to make a scale model of a Wee Ben rather than a sort of "look alike", I cut the flare off, then added a strip of metal to the top of the sides and to the top of the tender back. Then, after bending the flare to shape, I soldered it back onto the strip I’d added to the tender top; you can see this arrangement here. The strip I added needs filing to conform to the slope of the flare inside the tender; I’ll have to fill up any gaps with Milliput later. The front plate of the tender needed a good deal of modifying too, and it looks a bit of a dogs dinner at the moment ,though I’ve no doubt that Milliput will sort this out eventually too. I spent a long time poring over old photos of Wee Bens and weighing up the Tatlow drawing of the engine and I think I’ve eventually sorted out just what’s happening at the front of the tender; I hope you agree.  

This is Lochgorm’s Highland Railway Fish Truck kit with some additional details added by myself. It’s part sprayed and part hand painted with a good deal of dry-brush work and a final light weathering added with the airbrush. The wagon body was sprayed with Phoenix’s HR Dark Green P727; transfers are waterslide from the HRSoc. I had great difficulty in hiding the edge of the transfer backing varnish, which still shows a bit of an edge at certain angles. I’m not at all sure that the wording "Fish Traffic" is in the right place, I’d no information at all to go on, so as it didn’t seem to fit anywhere else I put it where you see it. The wagon interior is painted as bare wood and so is the floor which I represented by covering the brass floor provided with the kit with plastic planking then scribing it to give it a wooden texture that would dry-brush nicely. I could do with some fish barrels to give some interest to the interior of the vehicle now. I’ve heard that these were covered with turf, but covered in what way I wonder, was it all over the lot of them or was it only a circle of turf on top of each barrel? I just don’t know at the moment, and I need to know before I can model the barrels at all.

The brakeshaft and the brackets rivetted under the frames, which serve as its mountings, are clearly seen in this view of the tender underside; this assembly along with the brake cylinder is the key to making a good job of the various brake linkages under the tender. There’s a good deal that I don’t understand about the linkages between cylinder and brakeshaft and the brake rods themselves; I’m trying to clarify this at the moment.

While poring over photos of the Wee Ben and the Tatlow drawing, I realised that the horizontal brake shaft under the front of the tender was supported by brackets rivetted to the bottom front edge of the tender frames. This meant that I had to extend the model’s frames forward to the level of the outside steps and include this supporting bracket somehow. So I cut a shape from metal the same guage as the frames which included the downward protruding bracket and soldered it onto the front of the frames;  a tricky business, as the front steps were in the way. If I’d realised about this bracket at the begining of construction I could have made a better job of it; you can see the join quite clearly but it’ll tidy up and is masked by the steps to some extent. The rivets on the outside of the bracket are part of an overlay which gives added thickness to this bracket, which seems to be rivetted onto the outside of the frames. The brake shaft was then made from tube with rod soldered into the ends so I could spring the brakeshaft into place between the brackets; this arrangement is because it has to remove from its locating holes when the chassis and superstructure are taken apart. The brakeshaft is supported by two long central brackets to which it will be soldered, these are slotted at the base to allow the drawbar retention spring to move. This assembly was built on a separate base then dropped in position to be attached to the chassis later. The brake cylinder and its supports, for ease of construction, were similarly built on their own separate base. I think these details will help when I come to fit the various brake linkages and will give a satisfying completeness to the tender underside. Progress is slow at the moment as I’ve either used up or discarded all the bits on the etches I have, so it’s a scratchbuilding job from now on.           

The floor and cab splashers from the kit were useless so I scratch built new ones, taking the dimensions from Peter Tatlow’s drawing; when these were soldered in place it made a strong construction. The top of the insulated drawbar pivot, an 8BA screw head, protrudes above the chassis and fits neatly under the cab floor, from where a wire leads to a motor terminal. I screwed the chimney on with a long 8BA screw that goes through a plate soldered inside the chimney and locates in a threaded hole in the footplate; later I’ll solder the chimney onto the smokebox. The brass spigot inside the dome was ground away and the hollow filled with Milliput, which was shaped to the boiler by putting a sheet of abrasive paper over this, then pushing the dome back and forth along it until it was a good match. I drilled and tapped an 8BA hole in the Milliput and screwed the dome onto the boiler from inside: I can’t solder it on with all that Milliput inside, so eventually it will be simply glued in place.        

 The footplate, boiler, smokebox, splashers and cab are in place, so the basic structure of the engine is complete. The dimensions are correct, the horizontals and verticals are just that and the chimney and dome are in place. There’s a lot of detail to add of course and it needs to be added accurately; a good underlying structure will help with this next stage of construction.