Atlantic's works: Portable layout update

[mick b]

I must offer my apologies to those who are waiting for resin items from me. Real work, home maintenance, attempts to finish off the new moulds and castings that I started over the Christmas period, plus the mysteriously rapid passage of time (even when I'm only trying to have a rest) have combined to cause me to make far less progress than I had confidently expected!

I have however managed a few useful things, including some fittings for those previously shown tenders and the deck/solebars/headstocks casting for Mr Weallans' conflats.
STA79857.JPGSTA79858.JPGSTA79859.JPG

Graeme

Did the Containers and Conflat parts ever become available for sale please ?

well done on the index !!

[Atlantic 3279]

Yes. Will send details by e-mail in due course.

[mick b]

ok thanks

[Woodcock29]

Graeme

Thanks for putting the photos back in and the index. I certainly need to look back at some of your work now and again.

Happy New Year.

Andrew

[Atlantic 3279]

Much appreciated, thank you.

[Horsetan]

The index makes things a lot easier. Many thanks. The photos showing the actual creation of the moulds are the most fascinating of all

[Atlantic 3279]

I thought they might help....although every ne of them requires separate thought and (I find) a certain amount of trial and error.

[davidwest]

Thanks for putting in all the effort to add the images. It's great modeling.

[Atlantic 3279]

With Christmas paraphernalia still occupying the space that I usually steal when doing my model making, but with the desire to get on with something earlier this week, I made the mistake of thinking that I was going to do a quick job with minimal tools to turn a basically tidy passenger brake van model with unsuitable bogies into an additional useful vehicle with compatibility with several types of couplings.

In addition to all of those goods vehicles that were given to me by a very kind friend and which I made fit for service in readiness for the Little Bytham 1930s weekends last Summer, I also received another Ian Kirk non-gangwayed full brake sitting on Margate BR Mk1 bogies, so it seemed obvious that I should swap to a set of home-cast resin Fox bogies. So I did:

I hit trouble as soon as I tried to meddle with the original builder's chosen bogie mounting screws. These were 8BA brass machine screws, driven through the van floor with the heads on the inside, glue-locked nuts under the bogies, and the van roof very solidly glued on. The nuts released easily enough, but a quick trial showed that the screws wouldn't be long enough to suit the thicker bolsters of the new bogies unless I counter-bored the latter to accommodate the nuts. As the guard's windows were not glazed, I thought I would simply wind the screws out, initially by turning them with pliers and then by slotting their ends and continuing with a screwdriver, before tipping them out through the window apertures. I could then put longer screws in from below. Of course, the first screw I tackled broke off instead of turning, leaving me to try to centre-pop the remains and drill same out accurately without chewing out a large, off-centre hole in the plastic. After suitable swearing and two or three attempts both to plug the enlarged hole in the plastic and then to re-drill it in the right place to a viable tapping size, the novelty of this simple upgrade had thoroughly worn off. I had also detected several hidden part-height partitions built in to the bodyshell that made it very difficult to shake any debris towards the open guard's windows....
It seemed like a good idea to leave the second bogie screw alone and accommodate the nut in the thickness of the new bolster!
I also decided to cut out some of the floor to give me better ability to extract and debris from within and to insert some glazing into the main windows.
You'll notice that the underframe fittings are of the minimalist school. I won't be doing anything about those just yet.

I've built some NEM plug-in type coupling pockets onto the bogies and added scale drawhooks too.
The roof could do with some decent ventilators.
In looking at the suitability or otherwise of the builder's original choice of number, in the lists in the Harris LNER carriages book (the one with a partly blue cover) I started to think that I'll soon have nearly as many of these vehicles as the LNER did (okay, slight exaggeration), especially if the style of the model is correct only for dia. 129 (25 vans built at York 1928-1937) and its dia.284 successor (5 built at York 1939), but I noticed that there was an earlier van of the same size, dia.67, another nine of which were apparently built at Dukinfield in 1926-7. A later look at Diagrams in Harris's "Gresley Standard etc." volume suggested the same panelling on the d.67s save for their lack of a ducket, which my latest model also lacks, so it may well end up as a d.67. I now notice that one of my two existing examples with a d.129 No also lacks the ducket it should have. O bother!!
There's also a bit of a colour problem comparing the new example to the general trend of my other teak coaches....

A coat or two of brown-tinted varnish beckons....

[iainkirk]

Smashing idea the index, lots to inwardly muse on
Your endeavors are humbly appreciated sir...

[Atlantic 3279]

Kind of you to say so.

My imperfect memory of some previous attempts to create the kind of teak colour that I try to achieve suggested to me that the somewhat reddish-orange overall tone of the bogie van, although nicely grained, might not turn into what I wanted if I simply applied brown-tinted varnish coats over it as it stood. I felt I would have to find a way to kill off some of the redness first. After consulting my own notes on p. 212 (from the "quick teaking" of the Holden-style conversions that I did on some Margate Gresley models) and considering the different starting points, I mixed some Railmatch 623 LNER coach teak and some 408 satin varnish to get a translucent paint and brushed this over the sides of the van, following the grain and taking in the sides of the gutter previously painted grey. Before that coat went of I picked up tiny amounts of Humbrol 69 yellow and /or Humbrol 119 light earth and dragged the brush over selected panels and part-panels. So far I have what is seen below. We'll see how the teak colour turns out after the brown varnish in a day or two.

I tried to lift off the previously applied HMRS transfers before beginning the refinishing, but they resisted the action of spirit, my attempts at gentle scraping and a cautious attack with a glass fibre pencil. I suspected that more aggression would bring off the paint in the same areas too, so I'm applying my new coats over the transfers and hoping that they will be hidden! Naturally, despite their steadfast total resistance of my removal attempts, the edges of a couple of the figures lifted slightly when I simply tried to paint over them......

[Atlantic 3279]

The B has, as with all quick refurb jobs, ended up having more done to it than was originally planned and it is still far short of being perfect, but time has again been at a premium over the last eight or nine days and I would not have wanted to devote more time to this project at this stage even if I had the time available. But....it could have turned out worse.
One coat of brown-tinted varnish over the previous intermediate coat has had to suffice for now. I used a mixture of Railmatch Satin Varnish and Phoenix Precision LNER Coach Teak, again brushed on along the desired grain directions. Both layers of the re-finish were applied by the way with a cheap-ish 3/16 inch flat brush with unknown bristle material, from the "ProArte acrylix" range, and I have no complaints about the way the paints went on, as compared to using dearer "best" sable brushes. Maybe I'm a Philistine?
The colour achieved already isn't bad. It might become richer with another coat another time if I can be bothered, but it makes the vehicle presentable as a stand-by extra coupling converter vehicle and as spare for similar ones we regularly run on Grantham. Numbered 6693 as a diagram 67 vehicle it is the middle one in the picture below, certainly compatible with the colours of its two stablemates.

As well as glazing the windows in the guard's doors, which was still a little tricky for a man in a hurry, notwithstanding the access hole I cut in the floor, I had also decided two or three days ago that I would have to re-spray the roof in a grimier colour both to suit the purported age of the vehicle and to hide the streaky yellow-green hue that had developed over the basic light grey in an old layer of matt varnish. There seemed to be no point in doing that unless I firstly replaced the wandering line of very rudimentary "ventilators" which were actually no more than brass pin-heads. I'd failed to pay much attention to those when I started this job. So a round of filling, smoothing, marking out, re-drilling and searching through my (thankfully sufficient) small stock of whitemetal ventilators had to be added to the job list. Despite cold damp weather today I seem to have got away with the quick spraying exercise anyway.
My last grudging piece of work on this vehicle for the time being was the construction and attachment of a little black plasticard ballast box, full of fine lead shot, to sit between the battery boxes (which may or may not be the correct number in the right places). I felt the vehicle was likely to be unreliably light without the ballast, no other form of added weight having been built-in by the original owner.
Here are both sides, as currently finished.

In addition to its usual number of XP-rated fitted goods / fish vans with mixed couplings, I can now supply Grantham with this spare brake along with both a Hornby Gresley BCK and FK with mixed couplings. I may also see if I can change the latter for a TK, which is a more plausible set strengthener.

Providing that the trains in question do not have to change locos on the public side of the layout, or execute prescribed moves in limited spaces, we shall now have plenty of vehicles that can be added to trains if we need to remove annoying restrictions on the use of certain locos. So who says THAT loco cannot run on THAT service because it has the wrong couplings?

[Atlantic 3279]

Wouldn't it be so much better if those who run certain other websites would confine their "upgrades" to the necessary fixing of faults and serious deficiencies, or the discreet addition of new functions, rather than completely changing the appearance, losing various useful functions, losing existing useful/important user-settings, signing everybody out and generally creating unwanted work and nuisance for settled users of the site?

Our webmaster seems to manage light-touch management and minimal interruption to service, rather well.

[mick b]

[Dave S]

signing everybody out and generally creating unwanted work and nuisance for settled users of the site?

It was such hard work re-signing in to a more secure site, I've no idea how you coped....

With 30,000+ members and approaching 2 million uploaded images and files the old site had reached the end of its life, Quite a few seem to have already forgotten the recent hacking and downtime as some code had become corrupted. I also can't imagine that Warners would have spent the multiple thousands the upgrade has cost without thinking it necessary.
No offence to Richard but there is a huge difference between the 2 sites and if this one had the volume of traffic that RMWeb does he would have to think very differently about how to operate it.