Hogwarts Express, Scratchbuild, 1/48 Scale

[bigbadbadge]

Your daughter has done an amazing job there and you have too. This does look like a beautiful model.  Congratulations to you both.

Chris

[Murdo]

All that masking work has really paid off!

 

Well done BB!

[Brandy]

Beautiful job. Nothing more to add!

 

Ian

[Bandsaw Steve]

Cork and Coal and the best Christmas ever!

 

Prior to Christmas my wife and I discussed what we were going to get our two delightful daughters for gifts.  I advocated a block of coal for each of them - something to keep them warm come winter - but Mrs Bandsaw thought that that would be a little bit mean since winter is still five months away and they deserved something they could use right now. ‘They’ve had a good year at school, both of them. Let's give them a treat' she said.  'How about some some corks?’ I suggested, 'they can tie them onto their hats to keep the flies off, and what about some little square blocks of wood, they can practice counting them!'  And so off to the two dollar shop Mrs Bandsaw and I did go, with four dollars to spend! This would be the best Christmas ever! 

 

Naturally the girls were thrilled with their presents and danced and sang with joy upon receiving them. Baby Bandsaw was especially pleased with the corks 'Oh' she cried' @Gorby says you can make coal from corks!'  Oh how we all laughed when I told them that they nearly got coal for Christmas and now it turned out that they were going to make their presents into coal after all! 

 

Here are the corks from the two dollar shop.

 

We roughly cut up a few into big lumps to fill in that big recess in the tender that we made. We made it so the tender  would be more 'accurate'. But at this point I just sat back and slapped my head because I realized that making that big hole was a complete waste of time since now we are just going to fill it up. 

 

We slapped some PVA and Australia's version of E6000 glue all over the big cork blocks.  I say 'Australia's E6000' because according to @hendie E6000  is a very different type of glue in the Northern Hemisphere.

 

Now give BB a pair of long-nosed pliers to use to rip the cork into little bits.  Block your ears when she starts swearing because there is no return spring on these particular pliers and they are therefore slow and uncomfortable to use.

 

Give her a pair of very sharp sprue cutters to use. Block your ears again because the tips of these ones have broken off and the cutting edge is not very long.

 

Try a scalpel.  Quite effective - but too slow for an excited teenager determined to enjoy her Christmas present. 

 

Ah.... This is more like it.  Just put the corks in a blender!

I kid you not - Mrs Bandsaw gave this a go!  Never thought I would see the day! 

Strange to relate though, the corks just sort of bobbled around inside it and actually withstood the blending really well. 🙄

 

Oh well - nothing for it. We sat down in front of TV and watched an episode of 'Breaking Bad' (The famous 'battery' episode to be precise) and just picked the corks apart with our fingers until...

 

we had a nice collection of fine gritty looking cork chips.

 

Following this we went back to the tender and found that the massive blobs of glue that we had smothered the base-load cork in had hardly even started drying. So we dug all of the cork out and cracked open the second Christmas present.  Little wooden blocks from the two dollar shop. I was actually fairly excited when I found these for sale because I reckon they will be very helpful when setting up right angles when building box-like structures, but that's not we used them for today.

 

Today, we would use them for filling a hole!  I have to say they worked very well.  Furthermore, the girls enjoyed counting them over and over again... '1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9' they sang merrily.  I was so proud!  

 

Anywaaaaaay....(as Gorby would say)  Next went on another layer of PVA and the first layer of broken-cork coal.

 

Then, after letting that dry,  another layer of PVA / cork went on and then a layer of this really useful clear resin stuff. This really firmed the whole bed of cork into place and prevents any little bits from working loose. 

 

Here's what the whole thing looked like at that point.  It's a shame we had to paint the coal really, because I think these colors just sort of 'work' together.  But this is coal we are making not sandstone, so painting was the only option.

 

We chose some jet-black glossy 'MIG' acrylic paint.  I've never used this paint before; it's good stuff though! Thinner consistency than I'm used to, almost like ink, but nice to brush with.

 

Looks convincing too,  I quite like how there is still just a trace of brown showing though the glaze-like finish of the paint. 

 

Here's the result!

 

Not too bad eh!

 

And so it really was the best Christmas ever in the Bandsaw household, albeit about a month late;

 

• The girls got corks, blocks of wood and coal for Christmas. I hope we don't spoil them.
• Mrs Bandsaw had a Christmas treat (OK - a belated treat) when she got to try out her blender on some corks.  She'd never tried that before.
• And I - well... I just got to follow of some Gorby's advice and plagiarize his writing style.

What could be better?

 

Next up - bells and whistles!

 

Bandsaw Steve

 

 

 

[hendie]

brilliant!  

 

why aren't all your updates as good as that one then? 

[Bandsaw Steve]

Cause it’s not always Christmas- obviously! 😤

[bigbadbadge]

3 hours ago, Bandsaw Steve said:

Mrs Bandsaw had a Christmas treat (OK - a belated treat) when she got to try out her blender

You'll be in trouble if she reads that!!!

Coal looks great. 

Chris

[Bandsaw Steve]

6 hours ago, bigbadbadge said:

You'll be in trouble if she reads that!!!

 

I think I’m safe. She’s heard of Britmodeller but I don’t think she’d open it in a pink fit.

 

 

I hope! 😱

[ArnoldAmbrose]

Gidday Steve, yeah the coal looks good but I'm concerned about a couple of things. Telling everyone on a forum like Britmodeller that you spent such an exorbitant sum ($2 each child) at Christmas was very irresponsible. Every parent will now be expected to spend that much, regardless whether they can afford it or not. And secondly, why you didn't just cut a rectangle of MDF or cardboard to sit on the upper inside level of the tender and fill underneath with sand, or Cornflakes or something, instead of selfishly using the girl's counting blocks is beyond me. You will no doubt suffer for years, hearing the little cherubs merrily counting "1,2,3,4,5,6,7,  -  ,31,32,33, whaaat?😭"    Instead of "1,2,3,4,5,6,7,  -  ,40,41,42, yeah, let's count 'em again!🤗" Still, I guess you'll finally be free when you can marry them off.

 

17 hours ago, Bandsaw Steve said:

I reckon they will be very helpful when setting up right angles when building box-like structures,

Actually, I've made a few jigs from wood for the very same purpose, and yes they ARE useful. But will the girls will ever let you near the blocks again?

     It was good to see Baby Bandsaw trying different tools to mulch the cork, even if some ideas didn't work. Even with failures there are lessons to be learned. But don't let her join the navy. I'd hate it if the sailors picked up her bad language. 🤬

     Seriously, the coal DOES look good. Regards, Jeff.

[Bandsaw Steve]

Framed Up

 

Sorry about the quiet spell on this thread folks.  Progress is being made, but - as you will see - perhaps not in the expected direction.

 

About a year ago Baby Bandsaw decided that she didn't want the Hogwart's express to just be a display model. She wanted it to be embedded in a diorama capturing some of the excitement and adventure of the films.  I said to her that it was fine to make a diorama just as long as the locomotive actually got finished prior to WASMEx; that had to come first.  We are now are very confident that the loco will be completed on time, so it's time to start the diorama.  I know that there is a diorama section on Britmodeller - and very good it is too - but I hope it's OK to just carry on posting here, just to keep the project all in one spot. 

 

I don't consider myself an expert on dioramas but I do generally make a base for my models and I often start with a visit to one of the local second hand charity shops. At these shops there is always a wide variety of picture frames that can be purchased for little expense.  BB and I went for a visit to the Good Samaritan's shop one Saturday afternoon and she picked out this picture frame; nice and old fashioned without being too ornate and with a slightly raised rim on the inside for us to build up against.  the price was reduced from $35 to $25 which isn't bad considering its large size and very good condition. 

 

The locomotive looks good against it. I think the frame complements the subject nicely.  At the frame's  current size though, we definitively won't have anywhere to store it once completed.  We need to make it smaller. 

 

Firstly we removed the glass and knocked all the backing board leaving just the frame.  

 

I then broke out one of the longer edges (the top edge of the frame) leaving a sort of U shaped frame to continue working on.

 

Then we measured out the revised dimensions of the frames and Baby Bandsaw carefully made two cuts at 45 degrees...

 

and tidied up any rough work with the disc sander.

 

She then glued the shortened 'U' shape onto a block of MDF carefully cut to the correct dimensions...

 

and put the spare length of frame back into position.  

 

This process reduced the 'depth' (distance front to back)  of the diorama while maintaining its original length.  

 

As you can see from the photo above however the tracks still needed to be shortened in order to fit into the frame.  Here BB is using the Dremel with a grinding head to cut the metal rails.

 

Here she's cutting the embankment to a length that will allow it to fit into the picture frame.

 

This is a good indication of  where the tracks will fit on the finished product.  As you can see there's been a bit of filler slopped on the picture frame so...

 

after a good round of sanding and cleaning up, she hit the entire thing with a good layer of 'filler primer'.

 

Leaving this.

 

Ta Da!  👍 

Obviously not a finished product yet, but a good start.  The model is all framed up now.

 

Will try to get the next update out quicker next time.  

 

Bandsaw Steve.

 

 

[Brandy]

Great idea, that should really make it special.

 

I see BB is back to no shoes, lesson soon forgotten!

 

Ian

[Bandsaw Steve]

10 hours ago, Brandy said:

 

I see BB is back to no shoes, lesson soon forgotten!

 

Yes, she makes it a point of pride to forget anything I teach her. Might be time for another visit from Mr mole-cricket. 😀

[ArnoldAmbrose]

1 hour ago, Bandsaw Steve said:

Might be time for another visit from Mr mole-cricket.

Or maybe leave a couple of set mouse traps lying around in there. You never know, you might even catch a mouse. 

 

Gidday, I've been tuning in every day to see if BBS met her deadline. Considering the interrupted start to the school year (a good or bad thing for modeling?) I think she can have a slight extension. Looking forward to the next update. Regards, Jeff.

[Bandsaw Steve]

Ravenscar Moor...

 

 

As the Hogwart's express approaches Hogsmeade township it must pass through many long miles of damp, dire, swampy, territory.  One of the darkest and most inhospitable stretches is 'Ravenscar Moor' the scene of a fierce medieval battle between Rowena Ravenscar and a band of dark wizards intent on capturing her students and taking them for ransom...

 

True story.

 

Here's where we started... the railway line crossing on a gently diagonal angle across the site of the ancient moor.

 

Here Baby Bandsaw is scouring the MDF base with a Stanley knife.   

"Ere'! Stitch that up you MDF you!  😡" 

 

I taught her to say as she slashed away.  Educational this isn't it...

 

Now she slaps some aquadhere on...

 

Breaks off a corner of expanded polystyrene and sticks it in the corner.

 

Then she did the same for all the other corners.  Note - and this is important - how the polystyrene at present sticks up a couple of mm above the inner edge of the picture frame. That's a problem because it could get damaged later on. Besides, I think it will look better set into the picture frame rather than sticking up above it.

 

Now she smashes up a few more bits of polystyrene and sticks them down to build up the landscape of Ravenscar Moor.  Looking good, but each of the largest pieces are too flat and sit too high. We want rolling swampy marshy looking ground, not a quidditch pitch.

 

So that night - after dark and when Mrs Bandsaw was sound asleep, we crept outside where the toxic fumes would not be breathed too easily and 'let rip' with the household's creme-burlee burner.

 

 

BB loves doing this stuff. She seems attracted to flames which is a worry given the propensity for Western Australian bushland to burn like blue blazes.  Luckily we live in the 'burbs so there's no chance of an actual bushfire.  Anyway the idea is that the heat will force the polystyrene to shrink back from the flame in an irregular sort of 'pockmarked' fashion and - importantly - to sink below the edge of the picture frame.  The trick is to heat the polystyrene long enough for it to shrink but not so long that the frame is damaged, or worse, catches fire!

 

This is the result on the edges.  Complete success! 👍

 

And now we have the basic shape of the land of 'Ravenscar Moor' complete with a small valley where a river / stream / swamp will pass.  The railway is now glued down and soon we will make a culvert so the 'water' can pass from one side to another;  probably should have done that before we glued the embankment down... 🤔 

 

Here's how it all looks at the moment.  it looks a bit like the Hogwart's Express is crossing an ice-field that would be more suited to Carpathia's display.

 

Never mind, in the next thrilling edition 'Ravenscar Moor’ will get a bit ‘moor’ muddy. 🤪

 

Best Regards,

Bandsaw Steve

[Bandsaw Steve]

More Ravenscar Moor

 

As promised above, lets carry on with this diorama. It needs to look much less like a polar ice-field and more like a moor.  Let's add some plaster, well polyfilla actually. I don't know much about this making dioramas caper so don't take any of this advice seriously because I'm just making all this up as I go, but I suspect that polyfilla is likely to be more robust than plaster of paris so, although polyfilla is more expensive, I've chosen to go with it.

 

One thing I have sometimes noticed with dioramas is that either due to missed paint coverage or surficial damage, bits of white plaster can show up in the middle of the landscape. When that happens the effect looks dreadful. My plan is to add some colour to the plaster itself so that even if 'raw' plaster ever shows up it will hopefully not look so very out of place. It might even pass unnoticed.  Firstly we added some black powder paint to tone the white plaster down to a medium grey...

 

and then we added some brown liquid acrylic paint to change the hue to something more like a mud shade.  Sorry about the dreadful photo folks.

 

Now with suitably 'muddy' plaster, Baby Bandsaw just started slapping it all over the prepared polystyrene landscape.  

 

The process went quite well although I noted that as the polyfilla dried it reverted to a lighter shade than I had hoped for.

 

Now we painted the river-bed black.  The water will be made from about 3mm of clear acrylic medium, so a dark shade will hopefully create the illusion of a bit more depth than is actually present.

 

If you look at the land in the bottom right of this photo you can see that it's a bit smoother than the rest. That's because I started sanding it into nice rolling landscape - polyfilla sands beautifully - but BB came along and said she wanted the landscape all rough and uneven and that sanding was just ruining that.  So anyway - sanding the landscape - it works really well but some people have other ideas... 🙄

 

Now we painted the rest of the land, a nice muddy shade just as befits a spooky moor. 

 

My theory goes like this.  The ground / soil / substrate itself is very rarely green. Landscapes only appear green because of the coverage of vegetation on the earth-shaded substrate. Therefore, in my view, the land should be painted an earth shade, in this case mud, and any foliage colour added with a layer of material on top of the substrate.  The land itself should not be painted green.  I was explaining this to BB and scattering some tussock coloured grass about when she declared 'to hell with that' and did this instead... 

 

Green paint! Everywhere! 

 

And then more green paint including some in - yet another - 'dark mark' configuration.  Honestly... the kids going off the rails!   I'm the parent and I don't know what to do. 

 

Anyway, ten minutes later we had this.  Could be worse I guess...    The main problem now is that 'Ravenscar Moor' looks quite lush and moist while the railway embankment looks absolutely parched - like its from Death Valley - the colors in the embankment are far too arid-looking and don't match the surrounding landscape at all.  the big blobs of exposed polyfilla and grey primer paint don't help either.

 

So I sprinkled some more of that dark powder paint about and blended it into the embankment as best I could...

 

Slapped some more 'powertex' on...

 

and added a fresh - slightly darker - layer of sand.

 

Here's how it looks now. 

 

Not too bad, but it needs lots of vegetation now. That should be the next post.

 

I think that this actually going to turn out more like a farmer's paddock than a swampy, spooky moor - but that's OK.  We have a bunch of other spooky stuff to throw into this diorama. 

 

Don't have nightmares folks.

 

Bandsaw Steve and Baby Bandsaw. 

 

[brianthemodeller]

That looks superb but do you not need at least one carriage to add to the realism... and I am sure no train would travel across such a spooky and desolate mood without lights?

[Bandsaw Steve]

Ha!
There is a light!

This time there is a light! 👍

It’s just not switched on in the photo above. 
 

As for why there are no carriages - and never will be - I’m in the process of concocting an explanation. It might be something along the lines of...

 

‘After the return of ‘He who must not be named’ the Hogwarts Express became a prime target for dark wizards intent on...blah blah blah....

Consequently, the Ministry of Magic decided that it was no longer safe for Hogwarts pupils to travel using the train and...blah blah blah...

Which (somehow or other) led to the need for the locomotive to travel without carriages from Hogsmeade to London. It was during this journey that the now infamous incident on Ravenscar Moor occurred.’

 

As you can see, I don’t have all the details yet but there will be a back story of some description. It will probably be  published when this finally gets to RFI status.

[bar side]

No coaches?  You know you can get o gauge kits that are not too expensive...

 

https://www.iankirkmodels.co.uk/products1/lms

 

I am sure back in the day there were card kit carriages too.  Just saying

[Bandsaw Steve]

Hmmmmm..... 🤔

 

Hadn’t thunked of either of those options. 
 

At one point I suggested to Baby Bandsaw that we have the train emerging from a tunnel. We could then make the first quarter or so of the first carriage that would only be seen if someone peered into the tunnel.

I thought that was a brilliant solution but for reasons unknown  she vetoed the idea. I think  probably because the train never goes through a tunnel in the films.

[brianthemodeller]

5 hours ago, Bandsaw Steve said:

Hmmmmm..... 🤔

 

Hadn’t thunked of either of those options. 
 

At one point I suggested to Baby Bandsaw that we have the train emerging from a tunnel. We could then make the first quarter or so of the first carriage that would only be seen if someone peered into the tunnel.

I thought that was a brilliant solution but for reasons unknown  she vetoed the idea. I think  probably because the train never goes through a tunnel in the films.

If I may point out to BBS, there is no reference in the films to the loco travelling on its own, either! I think the tunnel idea is superb; would the plume of smoke as the loco exits the tunnel actually fill the gap so a carriage would be unnecessary? Bit of cotton wool and some creative airbrushing?

[bar side]

Another cheap option is the old Triang Big Train set & carriages.  They are Mk2 carriages but could pass for what you want with a coat of maroon paint.  Plastic & sell on eBay for about £10 or so.  If you want to modify one you at least get the bogies & under frame.

[Bandsaw Steve]

Good idea but we are running out of time, this one has to be finished in time for WASMEx- which is 1st and second of May.

[bar side]

What is this idea of finishing things?  I get to calling them about done but I doubt they ever really get finished.  Always something else that could be done

[ArnoldAmbrose]

19 hours ago, Bandsaw Steve said:

Honestly... the kids going off the rails!   I'm the parent and I don't know what to do. 

Gidday BS, quite an apt metaphor. And as a parent you're not supposed to know what to do! That would be quite improper.

But seriously, it's coming along nicely, lush green paddock and all. In my ignorance I always thought moors were damp places, hence water, hence greenery albeit dark green. Are you or BBS planning on having some undiscernible vaguely menacing amphibian type creature in the water, eyes just protruding above it? Cute yellow ducks would probably spoil the effect. But it IS looking very good.

     Regards, Jeff.

[Bandsaw Steve]

54 minutes ago, ArnoldAmbrose said:

 Are you or BBS planning on having some undiscernible vaguely menacing amphibian type creature in the water, eyes just protruding above it?

Mate. Just you wait till you see what’s coming! 
Hope you don’t scare easily! ☠️