7mm On Heather's Workbench - North Eastern interlude

[Heather Kay]

I suppose you’d actually like to see the mess I’ve been making?



This is the BG. It’s still a bit ragged in places. It’s a slow process of refining until I’m satisfied I can refine (or muck up) no further.



The TK in close-up shows the problem with working around the moulded door bumps, and clearing the gaps between beading.



Further away, though, it becomes slightly less obvious. The difference in colour balance is the iPad camera app doing what it likes. The close-up is more accurate overall.

I'm going to leave things to dry again, before I attempt another round of refining.

 

[Heather Kay]

Lettering started. I think I need to lay off the caffeine as my fingers were very shaky doing this. Gently coaxing a numeral into place, then - WHAP! Off it wanders!

The diagram 113 BG was rated at a 10 ton load, but obviously Fox don’t print such transfers. I’ve taken the decision, confirmed with the regional traffic office, that the van be downgraded to 8 tons for safety reasons. If suitable tiny numerals had been available I could bodge 10 together from the 1 ton transfer - sadly, I can’t use a capital O as the numeral 0 in Gill Sans is oval and not almost circular. Ho hum.

 

[Heather Kay]

The underframes have been retouched to the grotty blacky-browny shade. It made sense to paint the floors, so the Humbrol acrylics came out. Hu29 dark earth for the corridor lino, Hu62 leather for the compartment carpets, and Hu32 dark grey for the van floors.

Now, about all those grab rails and door handles? Ask me later.

 

[Heather Kay]

The awkward handrails for the guard to grab.









For once, only one needed to be remade and that was because dopey-drawers here bent the return for the wrong hole.

The joints between horizontal and vertical look scary, but with a small piece of card to protect the coach side, a drop of flux and hot iron touched on the joint, and it’s all over in a split second. A quick clean up and I’ll get these blackened and painted black.

Then the long old job of the other door handles. I think I’ll save that for tomorrow.

 

[Heather Kay]

Ooh, hello! The BG is glazed, has a full complement of door handles, gangways, roof and bogies fitted. A little retouching here and there, plus a gangway cover to make up, and this one can be called done*.

I think the BTK next.



* Still hoping for the errant Kemilway 8-footer to turn up, to replace the cast efforts.

 

[Heather Kay]

I spent the day just plodding through assembling the BTK.





Happy with that. Not so happy with the roof securing bolts. One is in direct view through the guard's doors, the other splits a compartment divider. I’ve elected to use a light coat of something like Copydex to supplement the pretty good friction fit.

The toilet window is just plain copier paper glued inside the glazing. The toplight has a small black oval printed to represent the clear view port. Knowing what I know now, the TK windows will be sorted out sooner. You can see that coach's carcass sitting at the back of the bench, ready to move to the front tomorrow.

 

[Heather Kay]

Nearly there.

 

[Heather Kay]

Problem sort of solved.

It involved partial disassembly, removal of the gangways, and filing just over a millimetre from the moulded gangway floors. That fixed the initial problem, but raised a second. The final fix was making full width and height buffing plates for the gangways so they didn’t catch on each other on really tight curves.

So, the upshot is the coaches can be properly coupled in a realistically close fashion (don’t ask me about uncoupling again: it can get messy but is possible with the aid of a couple of breakdown cranes ) and will traverse tight curves with the gangways sliding over each other. In the real world, the gangways would be automatically locked together to avoid all this palaver.

Now I’ve lost the impetus I had first thing, the weather is turning nasty, and I reckon the cat has the right idea by curling up and dozing on the sofa!

 

[Heather Kay]

A photo to show the rather extreme curvature in the test plank. This is with all three coaches coupled together, allowing me to report that the gangways now slide nicely over each other at such extremes, nothing tends to derail, and the trio weigh a bloomin' ton!

One final modification was made to the gangway rubbing plates. A slot was cut at the base to allow a coupled coach to be lifted off its neighbour.

So, paint retouching, the possibility of adding OLE warning plates in the ends (would be correct for period), refitting the roofs, and before all that going to get my tracking chips, 5G and wifi boosted by the NHS Covid vaccination programme.

 

[Heather Kay]

Gangway top covers done, roofs given another coat of grey. I need to make a "proper" end cover for the detailed BG end, the OHLE stickers, and some final underframe retouching (and fake dynamo belts). I think I’ll call these done today. I’ll sort out gallery photos and arrange delivery.