Keyser's (K's) GWR 32xx Earl Class in 1/76

[Terry1954]

19 minutes ago, Mjwomack said:

Must admit I thought a class 59 was a bit too modern for MTK! Just found one on eBay and it looks like it would qualify for an 'The instructions won't help GB"! In my mind MTK kits were fibreglass or possibly resin body shells, clearly things have moved on since I was last considered modern!

Its metal all right and a beast of a model!

 

 

Hope you don't mind me sharing the pic @OutcastJoel

 

Terry

[OutcastJoel]

@Terry1954 that looks like it could be classed as an offensive weapon, what a beast!

 

Thank you to everyone who suggested Fox Transfers for the number plates, I ordered them on Sunday night and they arrived by Tuesday!

 

I test ran it and found that the cracked wheels are indeed wonky and are catching on the bearings. Fortunately Alan Gibson make what I need and at some point I will get around to ordering the new wheels to sort this out.

 

In the mean time, I have been trying to sort the aesthetics of this, starting with the smokebox door handle.

It turns out trying to drill 0.4mm holes is really flipping tricky. My drill can't take such a small bit so I ended up using an Exacto handle as an adaptor...

 

20210526_203620_Film2 by OutcastJoel, on Flickr

 

20210526_210954_Film2 by OutcastJoel, on Flickr

[OutcastJoel]

Tonight I applied a lot of filler and whilst waiting for it to cure, I made a cab floor from balsa wood.

 

I think there is supposed to be one but I seem to have got three firebox sides instead...

It is sloped to clear the gears and wheels, I might allow the wheels through the floor and reduce the slope a little but we will see if I can do that without fouling the gears.

20210527_210439_Film2 by OutcastJoel, on Flickr

 

I am also fighting the urge to start a new kit having signed up to the Plastic Posse Podcast's 1/48 spitfire build over on facebook, but I will try to stay strong and shift at least one half built model before that...

 

One thing I utterly caved on was that I signed up to support the new Beacon Models 1/144 Battle of Britain set on Kickstarter... 

Because I apparently have absolutely no self control, I also ordered a Hasegawa Sea Harrier, Fujimi Royal Navy Phantom and Sweet Aviation 1/144 Hurricane.

Folks, I really think I might have a problem...

 

 

[Mjwomack]

On 5/24/2021 at 4:09 PM, Terry1954 said:

Its metal all right and a beast of a model!

Is it less than 25% built? Hint, hint- there's still 6 weeks or so left in this GB

 

On 5/26/2021 at 9:31 PM, OutcastJoel said:

Thank you to everyone who suggested Fox Transfers for the number plates, I ordered them on Sunday night and they arrived by Tuesday

Sounds right for them- come in on Monday clear the weekend backlog and you're in business on Tuesday! As I say, they deliver quicker than I build, my other problem is I find so many interesting things on their website that I loose track (bad pun alert)

 

10 hours ago, OutcastJoel said:

think there is supposed to be one but I seem to have got three firebox sides instead..

Bonus feature - had a few kits like that over thew years- gives you some ballast for aircraft noses!

[OutcastJoel]

Well I ended up going with the flat floor with cutouts.

20210528_212828_Film2 by OutcastJoel, on Flickr

 

I sanded the balsa down to <1mm and the raised bit in the middle just clears the worm gear. I will make some internal splashers to cover the wheels,

I haven't fully decided how much detail I want to add to the cab, I have found some reasonable photos but oddly, trains seem to be very hard to find nice walkaround photosets like you can find fairly easily for aircraft or armour.

 

I also knocked up a hinged fall plate to sit between the loco and tender from an old coffee can and some copper rod.

20210529_092011_Film2 by OutcastJoel, on Flickr

[Ray S]

This is going very well indeed, and some interesting challenges have been overcome.

 

All the best,

 

Ray

[Mjwomack]

Love a nice hinge plate- one of those finishing touches to my mind.

Out of interest, what did you settle upon for a motor? 

[OutcastJoel]

Thank you @Ray S & @Mjwomack. I (possibly stupidly) stuck with the K's mk1 motor which was in the kit.

I have tried to keep aftermarket down on this one and will upgrade the running gear later if I actually make a model railway layout. I have the space, a plan and all the kit I need so I really ought to.

 

In the mean time I have finally got it ready for primer, the only interesting bit was replacing the rivets after sanding out the seams.

Some idiot (me) thought it would be a good idea to do the rivets by punching 0.3mm diameter discs from pewter foil and gluing them in place...

It took about 2 hours to do 8 rivets.

20210601_194852_Film2 by OutcastJoel, on Flickr

[PeterB]

Hi

 

I seem to remember that the K's motors did work but were not very powerful and the loco is of course quite heavy. When I built mine I was using the Hornby "Zero One" computer control system - in truth it seemed a good idea at the time and did work quite well on some makes of loco but maybe it was a bit under-developed as later systems seem much better. The problem was that model railway loco motors ran on a stepped down DC current normally I believe, and Zero-One was I think AC at least as far as the computer chip you had to instal in the loco. The output was not entirely compatible with some types of motor (burned out the K's ones I seem to recall), and with others (Lima?) they tended to run a bit faster than normal. It proved expensive as I had to either replace the original motor in some locos or else substitue a tender drive unit (as on the K's P2 and O4 and Mainline Parallel Scot and Jubilee). I never did manage to get my K's Atlantic to run reliably even with an "improved" Hornby XO4 fitted and I never seemed to be able to get the electric pick-ups on the wheels of kit locos to work very well.

 

Coming along nicely - if you do get to build a model railway it will look good, though finding the right coaches for this loco could be fun.

 

Pete

[OutcastJoel]

I snapped a drill bit whilst opening out the handrail knob holes.

It was sticking out by ~1mm and was preventing me from putting the handrail knob on so I ended up excavating the whole flipping side out...

20210607_200439_Film2 by OutcastJoel, on Flickr

 

A day or two later I finally fixed it and I found that I had some really good line drawings in a book I own which allowed me to add a whole load of extra hand rails that weren't in the kit which has made me excessively happy.

 

20210608_203526_Film2 by OutcastJoel, on Flickr

[Mjwomack]

That is some mighty fine handrail curving right there.

[PeterB]

Looking really good. My previous comment about coaches was probably wrong as I was forgetting that this was a rebuild of 2 relatively old classes in the 1930's so relatively modern! No idea what sort of coaches they might be seen pulling - maybe they were ancient too but then again you might get away with something more recent - GWR coaches are not one of my stronger subjects and I have only ever bought Centenary main line stock and "B set" suburban with an autotrailer, but I am sure there are others available these days.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

[OutcastJoel]

@Mjwomack, thankyou! This was attempt 3 though, I picked up a pair of crafting pliers from aldi which have conical jaws, I have no idea how I would manage this without.

@PeterB it keeps throwing me too, I really need to make the Automatic Train Control (ATC) box but I constantly forget this was (relatively) modern.

I think the ex Cambrian lines ran with an almost random selection of older main line coaches and more modern suburban kit, I have an Airfix B-set for now but I am likely to scratch build a train for this before a layout is ready.

 

On the topic of ATC, the GWR introduced it in 1906 and the whole mainline network had been fitted out by 1908. following this they had an unprecedented safety record. I still think it was criminal that the other companies were never forced to implement the system and even after nationalisation it took several massive accidents and 20 odd years well into the 1960s for a (slightly better) system to be fitted.

 

*This thought popped into my head because I have been listening to this:

https://signalstodanger.com/

It is well worth a listen if you are interested in railways or safety.

[OutcastJoel]

I fitted lamp brackets (quantity many) and got the basecoat of green on.

*And there was much rejoicing*

20210610_205604_Film2 by OutcastJoel, on Flickr

[PeterB]

What period are you doing it - pre nationalisation GWR? In theory there were several versions of "GWR Green" depending on the date as I recall - I bought some "Post 1928" I think for my large prairie when I repainted it.

 

Pete

[Terry1954]

Superb 4mm scale locomotive  modelling going on here!

 

Terry

[OutcastJoel]

Thank you @Terry1954 I am really pleased with how this is coming along!

I slightly wish I had made my own cab sides to reduce the heft of the white metal ones but that would then make the narrow gauge even more visible in the cab...

 

@PeterB I am making it in 1937 (ish) form so the plan is to have it quite but not very clean. the base coat is actually a Lotus car colour which I think is a little too blue to my eye.

That said, the colours seem to have varied a fair bit even within Swindon at any given time so I will probably just play around with a few brunswick green enamels I have until I make a colour I am happy with.

[PeterB]

The colour photo of the preserved loco on Wiki is a bit odd. May be an illusion but it almost looks as if the boiler and fittings are painted in a lighter more olive colour than the cab and tender! I see they have used the simple GWR lettering though from what little I know there were various versions used depending on the period and the type of loco. My Prairie has " GREAT     WESTERN"  on the tank sides but main line locos sometimes seem to have had the coat of arms in between, and then there was the so called "shirt button" version or whatever. I look forward to seeing how you decide to finish yours. You probably know this already but if not, this may be of interest.

http://www.ianrathbonemodelpainting.co.uk/

 

Pete

Edited June 11, 2021 by PeterB

[OutcastJoel]

@PeterB That is fairly likely, the tender and loco could well have been painted at different times (although less likely in preservation that service).

Anecdotally, in service the green darkened with soot exacerbated by the practice of polishing with oily rags. So an older but well cared for loco would be quite a different colour from a new one even if they had started identical.

The colour at new also varied with quite a lot of comments in older books about "poor quality" paint with an olive tinge and "better quality" paint with a bluer hue.

The GWR liveries are fairly confusing, before 1922 there were all sorts of cool schemes including khaki green used during 1915-17 and a crimson lake based scheme which might never have actually been used locos. I know very little about those but if/when I do make a layout I intend to make some older locos to allow lots of colour variety. (it will also have Cambrian and possibly North Staffs stock on it to add yet more variation).

During the 19th century things were even more complex with locos built at Wolverhampton having deliberately different schemes from Swindon at times (new build at Wolvo stopped before 1900 IIRC).

 

From the early 1920s, the liveries were (roughly) sequentially:

 

"Great *crest surrounded by garter* Western"  on express engines with orange/black lining). Lesser engines had simply "Great Western".

 

The crest was reworked in 1928 to get rid of the garter (and some other changes I forget) everything else stayed pretty similar.

 

In 1934 the Shirt button monogram was introduced, lining dropped from all but the largest express engines.

 

During the second world war, some locos were painted black but it doesn't seem to have been consistent. 

In 1942 Express Locos started to receive G *crest* W (lining reappearing after the war) with lesser engines having G W R spaced along tender or tanks. 

 

Hopefully the above is of interest! I certainly enjoyed dredging up stuff from the recesses of my memory.

 

 

 

 

[PeterB]

Sounds as bad as the LMS with Crewe doing their own thing!

 

Pete

[Mjwomack]

On 6/9/2021 at 8:16 AM, OutcastJoel said:

, I picked up a pair of crafting pliers from aldi which have conical jaws,

OOh, I think it's time for some of Mrs W's jewellery making tools to be, well I like the phrase, seconded for career development. Great tip, thanks.

[OutcastJoel]

Public service announcement:

Anyone planning to make a steam engine, paint in subassemblies!

 

It is a real pain trying to mask the boiler to allow spraying the frames black. i knocked all bar one of the lamp irons so I ended up painting it with a brush... 

[PeterB]

I know the problem well! I always leave the details such as couplings, vac/steam pipes and lamp irons until last whenever possible, and sometimes the handrails as well so that I can get in to do the lining.

 

Pete

[OutcastJoel]

I have done quite a lot in the last 10 days but have been rubbish at updates.

 

Firstly I saw the postman:

20210620_202220_Film2 by OutcastJoel, on Flickr

 

Then I made some tools to allow me to punch out the wheel centres and pop in the new 3D printed (and hopefully not insanely wobbly) centres:

20210622_122743_Film2 by OutcastJoel, on Flickr

20210622_123638_Film2 by OutcastJoel, on Flickr

 

I finished most of the painting, added crew and the rather pathetic (but beautifully rendered) markings. the roundels are from HMRS and are their simply superb pressfix decals. These go on by pressing into place and removing the carrier film by soaking. In my experience they never silver and look pretty well painted on, I wish kit manufacturers used these...

20210625_225203_Film2 by OutcastJoel, on Flickr

 

I still need to:

- Pick which plates to use now that I have two sets and then apply numbers to the buffer beams which could probably still use another coat of red.

- Finish all of the driving wheels.

- Add clutter.

- Decide how much weathering.

-Add electrical pickups to the tender.

 

and actually do the weathering...

 

but the end is in sight which should allow me to focus on clearing some of my shelf of shame before cracking open some new kits

 

 

[PeterB]

Hi,

 

Looking good!

I have been using the PC Pressfix lining etc for I guess 40 years and it has always worked very well, though most of my stock is now very old and the glue has dried out. Fortunately HMRS took over the range a while back so I have managed to get replacements when needed though sometimes it takes quite a while for them to get a new batch if they are out of stock - one lot took 6 months! I also tried the "Methfix" range once or twice - they work a bit more like conventional decs, but that seems to have pretty well become defunct, though I have read that old Pressfix can perhaps be used like Methfix if the glue had dried out. Might have to try that on my Schools kits as my Maunsell SR ones are looking a bit "iffy".

 

Pete