Chas's workbench

[Chas Levin]

You could try this which is Precision P625 M&GNR gorse yellow . This is recommended my Ian R for LNWR lining although it may be too orangy for your needs .View attachment 245417View attachment 245418

Don't be too hard on my lining corners , its my first attempt at lining and from 2ft they look okay ish .

Thanks Paul, I've ordered some - I'd just put in a Phoenix Precision order so it was well-timed - and i'll try it out. It's always useful to have other colours in stock. I hadn't come across Ian R's recommendation, but that will be because for UK outline, I mainly model GNR and LNER so I don't tend to read up on other lines.
Nothing wrong with your lining corners. This is one of the side-effects of everyone having such high quality digital cameras and phone cameras and posting close-up pictures online: we look at hugely enlarged images of things that look fine at normal viewing distance and see faults we'd never have seen in the past...

 

[Chas Levin]

I finally started on the lining - I'm still fiddling around with wheel pickups for lighting but I wanted to get started on the lining too, beginning with the wide central yellow stripes, the first two on the Pullman sides. I enjoy lining very much, but it needs the right amount of time and a clear head. The actual painting isn't what takes me the time - that's over in 30 seconds - nor the prep, whcih can be done the day before. It's the work afterwards, nudging lines, correcting mistakes, seeing how the paint settles, touching in here and there, all things that have to be done before the paint starts to go off but which can't be hurried. That means I can't do this work unless I have a dence tstretch of time, a morning or afternoon, when I'm going to be in and able to pop back to the workbench from time to time until I'm happy with things.
Here are the centre stripes on the Pullman:





These were done with a Haff 228 because I wanted to keep the blade gap between cleaning sessions but in fact, I could have used a fixed blade pen. Because this line sits on top of a raised moulded beading, surface tension holds the sides in place, but it's a wide line, so doing it in one run means depositing a fairly large amount of paint which increases the risk of accidents. In the event, I did do most of it in one run, going over a couple of sections again by just doing one edge with the pen gap reduced considerably, where the paint hadn't formed a decent edge. the colour is the Ian Rathbone recipe of 50:50 of Humbrol 7 & 69 (Light Buff & Yellow) - I've deiced to go with that for these wide centre stripes and Phoenix Lining Gold ofr the rest, as there's plenty of prototype photographic evidence to support that scheme and having more than one colour enhances the look and the realism.
Leaving the sides attached to the sprues was definitely worthwhile in making handling easier. I used my lining stand (another Rathbone design) because once attached to it, the whole assembly can be positioned and moved about easily. These sides are ideally suited to it of cource, because of the recessed doorways, hence the diagonal mounting, but there's a round nub as part of the sprue centre's moulding for which I drilled a locating hole in the stand (which is meant to take holes for locating screws and clamps) and that worked very well"

 

[Chas Levin]

This morning's session went even better (I'm back in practice of course, after yesterday, and getting good even lines seems to be as much about confidence and smooth movements as about anything else) and these stripes were both done as in one go each, with only two or three tiny corrections:

 

[paulc]

This morning's session went even better (I'm back in practice of course, after yesterday, and getting good even lines seems to be as much about confidence and smooth movements as about anything else) and these stripes were both done as in one go each, with only two or three tiny corrections:

View attachment 246358


View attachment 246359

Very nice Chas . As a recent newbie to lining with a bow pen i find that if the paint is flowing then i keep going but if i make more than two or three mistakes then i pack it in .
Probably not helped by the fact that I'm modelling LNWR so lots of panel work .

 

[paulc]

Ahh , so thats what happens when you tap the 'full' logo twice .

 

[Chas Levin]

Thanks Paul, very nice work there too and yes, you have your work cut out with the LNWR! My main focus is actually the GNR and LNER and their coaches aren't too bad for lining (single yellow, ignoring flanking red lines which would be invisible at 4mm scale) but I did a GNR C2 and that was a challenge!
Re. your tapping the 'Full' logo twice, you should - as the author of it - be able to go in and edit the post to remove the duplicate picture if you want to, no need to on my account though: those panels are easily pretty enough to look at twice!

Yesterday I did the narrower gold lines above the windows on all four sides and today the end verticals on the Pullman:



Still some correcting to do and some re-touching of the blue where too much touching in of the Pullman's vertical lines has spread tiny pigment particles into the surrounding area. The gold looks superb on the dark blue but is much less striking on the white and therefore much more difficult to see and get right when applying it.

I entirely agree that if it isn't going well, best leave off and try again later. I find I have to be wide awake, not tired - let alone grumpy - and know that I have sufficient time to complete the job, so I don't feel rushed. I've learned not to try to do too much - hence the stages shown above - so I have time to do the corrections and touch-ins, still without feeling rushed and therefore making more mistakes. Better to do a small amount and be happy with it, etc.

Do you build locos as well?

 

[paulc]

Thanks Paul, very nice work there too and yes, you have your work cut out with the LNWR! My main focus is actually the GNR and LNER and their coaches aren't too bad for lining (single yellow, ignoring flanking red lines which would be invisible at 4mm scale) but I did a GNR C2 and that was a challenge!
Re. your tapping the 'Full' logo twice, you should - as the author of it - be able to go in and edit the post to remove the duplicate picture if you want to, no need to on my account though: those panels are easily pretty enough to look at twice!

Yesterday I did the narrower gold lines above the windows on all four sides and today the end verticals on the Pullman:

View attachment 246583

Still some correcting to do and some re-touching of the blue where too much touching in of the Pullman's vertical lines has spread tiny pigment particles into the surrounding area. The gold looks superb on the dark blue but is much less striking on the white and therefore much more difficult to see and get right when applying it.

I entirely agree that if it isn't going well, best leave off and try again later. I find I have to be wide awake, not tired - let alone grumpy - and know that I have sufficient time to complete the job, so I don't feel rushed. I've learned not to try to do too much - hence the stages shown above - so I have time to do the corrections and touch-ins, still without feeling rushed and therefore making more mistakes. Better to do a small amount and be happy with it, etc.

Do you build locos as well?

Yes , i do build locos but have been trying to finish all those half built jobs that we all accumulate including an LNWR 19" goods , a GWR Prarie , a gauge 1 LNWR coal tank and 5 more LNWR coaches to line plus the odd wagon or six .
Ref the lining , i find that the correction time is longer than the actual lining but that has a lot to do with the LNWR panels having curved corners which equates to lots of manipulation of the paint .
If you've done it then you know what i mean and paint is very patient while you poke and prod it into place .
It's fun they said , you should try it he said , oh they said .

 

[Chas Levin]

Yes, fully agree about correction time and about moving paint around. Is it fun? Well, sometimes with modelling tasks I think the actual task might not be much fun at all, but the end result - and the knowledge that you did it yourself - is enormous fun, so we persevere...!

 

[Chas Levin]

Because I can only do lining when there's a suitable stretch of uninterrupted time I've been doing other bits on these coaches when only shorter times are available. I'm fairly sure I'm going to install lighting so I've made pickups because it's the sensibel time to do them, even if I don't use them in the end. I used those little DDC Concepts ones because I have some left over from another project, though mounting them on these bogies was more work than I'd anticipated, including making angled plasticard mouting brackets for them:









The bogies are going to be mounted on captive nuts in a plasticard frame, using shouldered bolts:



On the lining front, I thought I'd found another advantage of having left the sides still attached to the sprues, by using the straight sprue lengths as a guide for my compass ruling pen:



But the sprue cross-members produce so many interruptions that it's easier sticking to my usual foam-backed steel ruler and the Haff 135:

 

[Chas Levin]

All the lining and painting of the four sides of the CIWL coach pair is now done so it's on to the transfers:



Some areas came out better than others - always the way. I started with a tin (Phoenix Precision Lining Gold) that was somewhat on the thick side, thinking it would be usable but failing to accept that it wasn't until I'd struggled with several lines: lesson learned there!
Another issue I had was with this metallic type of paint, where it's very difficult to achieve a decently mixed tinlet even for long enough to load the lining pen. I suspect that's because the pigment particles, being metal, are heavier than usual and sink much faster, and it meant that I was loading the pen with paint that was a little light on pigment particles.
The solution I adopted was a three-implement technique, whereby I held the main paint stirrer (the left over wooden end of a long cotton bud) and the pen in my left hand and a cocktail stick in my right. I then stirred the paint again, bringing up the end of the cotton bud stick with the already thicker paint from the bottom of the tin and I then used the cocktail stick to scoop a drop or so from the cotton bud stick and dropped it in between the lining pen's blades. A little fiddly, but with practice not too bad and it meant the pen was receiving a decent paint mix.

Next, I'll discover whether these kits' 40-odd year old transfers are still viable and if not, whether any of the transfer rejuvenating substances I have in stock with help...

 

[Chas Levin]

I spoke too soon in saying the painting of the CIWL carriage sides was finished - I'd forgotten about the window frames!



'Scuse the dust - I should have run a brush over these before taking the photos!

 

[Chas Levin]

Just bought a new gadget in the continuing quest to hold and manipulate things, £20 from Ebay seller historymillmodels (no connection, just a customer), here's one of their pictures:


And here it is in use, holding one of the CIWL coach chassis solebar uppermost to apply transfers:



The Ebay item title is "Model Railway Loco Servicing Cradle multi-angle train berth stand 00 H0 N H0m", it's terrific and it has two advantages over some of the competing ones: firstly, you can set it at an angle and secondly it has a fairly small footprint.
Previously when applying transfers to - or painting - a chassis solebar I've had to mess about with all sorts of props, jigs and weights - very pleased with this!

 

[Chas Levin]

That's all the solebar transfers done - 44 and all rather fiddly:



The good news is that these 40+ year old transfer seem to work fine. They're quite thick film, which is probably a good thing as age might have rendered thinner film too fragile, so liberal use of Humbrol Decalfix helped, and under some coats of Klear they should blend in ok.

I thought it worth trying out the solebar ones first, so that any disasters were less prominent than on the cariage sides. I think it's probably best to put together the sides, ends and roofs next though, before applying the their transfers, because while the transfers seem to be adhering well, even the slight bending and flexing of the sides that might occur during body assembly could conceivably upset the larger and longer lettering.

 

[Chas Levin]

Some pre-assembly detailing, door and grab handles, both of which are quite prominent on the prototype. Neither are provided for in the Revell kits, but neither are there any moulded versions to have to remove. Door handles are trimmed T-handles:

 

[Chas Levin]

The CIWL coach sides are now on:


I had to change my order of assembly somewhat, after discovering that you can't fit the glazing to the sides once they're in place and glued to the solebar and interior floor. There was a bit of a catch-22 at that point, because I didn't want to glaze or add transfers before varnishing... I compromised by adding another coat of Klear to just the middle strips of each side, where the glazing sits. The raised, yellow and gold painted beading lines form borders to make that possible. I'll then add transfers and Klear over them, above and below that central glazed area. The sides were a very good fit and I think these coaches should look quite good.

I want to find a way of adding some plates / cups / food etc to the tables though: it doesn't have to be very realistic looking, as the glazing's quite thick and I'm still not 100% sure I'm going to add lighting, but something that looks vaguely edible. I suspect paint drops might well do...

 

[paulc]

Just bought a new gadget in the continuing quest to hold and manipulate things, £20 from Ebay seller historymillmodels (no connection, just a customer), here's one of their pictures:
View attachment 249773

And here it is in use, holding one of the CIWL coach chassis solebar uppermost to apply transfers:

View attachment 249772

The Ebay item title is "Model Railway Loco Servicing Cradle multi-angle train berth stand 00 H0 N H0m", it's terrific and it has two advantages over some of the competing ones: firstly, you can set it at an angle and secondly it has a fairly small footprint.
Previously when applying transfers to - or painting - a chassis solebar I've had to mess about with all sorts of props, jigs and weights - very pleased with this!

Hi Chas , I've just caught up with your progress after getting back from a trip to the UK . Coaches are looking good .
The service cradle looks interesting but do you think it could handle O gauge ?

 

[John57sharp]

They are looking great

 

[Chas Levin]

Thanks Paul and John.

Hi Chas , I've just caught up with your progress after getting back from a trip to the UK . Coaches are looking good .
The service cradle looks interesting but do you think it could handle O gauge ?

Paul, I'd think so - I just measured the max width of the jaws and it's 80mm, but it might be a little tight because my 00 guage coaches are roughly 40mm which gives plenty of room to open the jaws, so assuming O guage are 80mm, you'd have to slide them into the jaws rather carefully. But, Historymillmodels do other ones, e.g. this one, which caters for O guage; and if that one doesn't suit, I'd suggest contacting them via that listing, because the one I have is 3D printed so they may be happy to print one on a larger scale...

 

[Chas Levin]

Getting quite close to completion of my CIWL coach pair! The transfers took some time, as those long words are delicate things to arrange. Helped by the 40 year old thick transfer film: if it had been more modern thin film I don't know that they'd still be usable after all this time. After varnishing, crests and destination boards have been added:

 

[Chas Levin]

Merry Christmas everyone - hope you all have a great day, whatever you're doing! ⛄️♥️