Spot the Difference

No, it's not the head code, nor the missing coach. It is the chassis, not that you can see the detail in these poor photos.

The top photo is Battle of Britain 'Biggin Hill' comprising an Airfix kit body on a Kemilway nickel silver etched chassis kit. Both dating from about 1976.

The Kemilway chassis (no longer marketed) makes up into a highly detailed chassis with compensation that requires some skill to assembly. Provision is made for the wheels & axles, gear and motor that had to be purchased separately. 

I think Dapol missed a trick here in not obtaining the rights to the Kemilway kit as it would complement the Airfix kit, which is now marketed by them under the Kitmaster badge. It would make for a cost effective operating model for those not wanting to spend hundreds on a ready to run version.

I am sure my model once ran satisfactorily but after nearly 50 years the chassis is showing its age with parts becoming detached and prone to short circuits. It became a poor runner causing much frustration.

I intended to break and bin it but looking at it again the bodywork is decent so, why not keep it as a static model? The second photo shows the result. Not with a Kemilway chassis but with the original Airfix chassis, the parts for which I had kept in storage for the past 50 years! Except, half the front bogie was missing so I recovered and fitted the Kemilway bogie, only to later find the missing Airfix part in another place.

Why bother replacing the chassis you may well ask. Well, my reasoning is this:

1. The Kemilway has not aged well and every time I look at it I may be tempted to repair it to run again. I fear it would need a complete strip down, clean up and reassemble to give it justice which, I am not in the mind to do.

2. There in storage is all the parts to make the Airfix chassis. Whilst not as detailed as the Kemilway it should be easier to build. How wrong could I be.

The Airfix chassis was more weird and complicated than I thought. For some obscure reason the centre driving wheels do not have flanges, rather like early Tri-ang locomotives. I could not stand that so designed 3D FDM 'rings' that were glued in place - much better. Now, the instructions assume you will assemble it so that the wheels rotate and cranks operate. This I failed to achieve due to glue leaching to where it should not be. It truly is a static model now!

The ideal place to display the model is at the signal on my Battledown flyover embankment. The flyover is more of a diorama than a working layout. Whilst trains can be run across it, the track terminates at both ends.

Now I'll strip down the Kemilway chassis to recover usable parts.

BTW, I have another example of this locomotive class that is a working model so, this conversion is no great loss to my fleet.

Disaster at Battledown #4

To recap, the disaster came about when I was trying to rework the wonky bridge handrails but ended up breaking the bridge (see Part 1). 

The replacement bridge is now in place. It has integrated handrails and whilst these are fixed to every bridge upright and diagonal support to keep it straight there is still a bit of handrail droop between some fixing points.

Whist the Nova3D Mecha water washable resin makes for a more robust model than the Anycubic water washable resin it is just as vulnerable to warping. Hence droopy handrail.

I decided to fit the track to the bridge deck and ballast it before installing the bridge. I thought I had it lined up to the embankment track but at one end the rails were offset by only1mm, enough to derail trains.

I removed the ballast from the joining track and freed it from the track bed ready to reposition and in so doing managed to break the track chairs along one rail.

The sleeper and integrated chairs were resin printed using the brittle Anycubic resin so, I should not be surprised of the failure.

I don't have much Nova3D resin nor Anycubic resin left. Will I have enough to reprint the sleepers?

Featuring BR1 Sleeper Chairs

Next Day

I needed 9 sleeper pairs and found 5 left over from a previous project  so, I had sufficient resin left to print the remaining 4 pairs. 

Existing Anycubic resin prints are shown on the left and Nova3D resin prints on the right. No difference in print quality (photo right). 

The Nova3D printed without deformation and being considerably more pliable than Anycubic the rail chair clips are less likely to fail.

The new section of track duly painted and ballasted (photo left). The rail breaks in the foreground are at baseboard joins to enable baseboards separation, if required in the future.

END

To Part 1.

A Quick Project

We have some toy boxes filled with cars and trucks that belonged to our sons when they were young. They are now used by our grandchildren when they visit us. Rooting through one of these I came across a Lima 00 gauge railway wagon.

It looked decent with finely detailed bodywork and pinpoint axles. Even the inside (which is never normally seen) had detailed floor planking. However, some aspects of its design clearly showed that it was meant for play by young children rather than an accurate model of the prototype for a model railway.

The giveaways are the McCain logo (never used on real wagons), blocky buffers, roof clips that are meant to be ventilators but do not have the slope of the prototype, one piece body and chassis moulding, missing faux coupling hook, no vacuum pipes nor vacuum cylinder, no tie-bar between axle boxes, brake blocks that don't line up with the wheels and it is feather light (not weighted).

Despite these shortcomings the body detail and pinpoint axles encouraged me to turn it into a more prototypical wagon for my layout. I decided to have a look at prototype wagons to see how closely it matched. On Paul Bartlett's website I came across identical bodywork for vans designed to Diagram 1/208!

I then researched to find out more about this 'toy' and came across Lima model 305687W. But whilst having identical body style and logo it has a black chassis sporting prototypical buffer stops, and naïve, faux coupling hooks. Clearly not the same model. I found other examples of 'my' model on Ebay but nowhere could I find its history. I am guessing it came from a 'play' train set. I would like to know how it was marketed by Lima so, if you know please leave a comment.

In this photo are examples of the new components to be added to the wagon. Coupling and vacuum pipe are from my spares box. The grey components are designed and resin 3D printed by myself. 

The rectangular piece is the sloping ventilator that will be glued to the flat ventilator/roof clip. Once the roof is fitted and sloping ventilator glued in place then it will (sadly) not be possible to remove the roof from the wagon.

The yellow wagon in this photo has had the logo scratched away, the blocky buffers cut off, the 'D' coupling removed, missing tie bars installed (plasticard) and a steel weight fixed inside.

I intended to buy bauxite coloured paint for the body but not finding the Humbrol satin acrylic I wanted locally I decided to mix my own colour from dark brown, light brown and red acrylic paints that I had to hand. The match came out satisfactorily using another wagon as a paint guide.

Recommended bauxite paints:

Humbrol 133 (satin acrylic)

Tamiya XF-68 (matte acrylic)
Railmatch 2235 (matte enamel)

Revell 85 (matte acrylic)

Handling of the finished wagon has started to rub away the paint in places to reveal the grey primer beneath. I might touch it up and and apply a matte varnish to seal the paint.

The decals are designed in photoshop with a 300 pixels per inch setting and printed on copier paper. The high p/in minimises bleed of the brown background into the white text during printing. 

The wagon number is DB755181, as per a wagon from Bartlett's gallery. The 'D' possibly indicates this general purpose wagon was later allocated to departmental stock.

End.