45609
Western Thunderer
Hello all,
I'm not really sure where to start but start I will. My good mate Mike G puts me to shame with the amount of content he posts and it's about time I posted something on here. I hope people will find it of interest. I have posted stuff on other places in the past but I got a little disillusioned with the way stuff disappeared after site crashes. I hope that does not happen here. Perhaps then I'll start with a couple of projects of LNER interest that are currently on my workbench. They are both coaches and one is very old. So old in fact that I cannot recall when I started it. Let's start with that.
Project 1 - A Gresley buffet car to D.167
This is a model of the D.167 as rebuilt by BR in, I think, 1958. The basis is Bill Bedford sides with the remaining parts of the body from MJT (floor pan, ends, roof etc...). I elected to scratch build the angle iron underframe from 1.2mm brass angle as it is very much closer to scale and far lighter than the MJT castings. The remainder of the underframe is a "bitsa" and I'm not sure how accurate it is for the D.167 rebuilds. Lots of studying photos has come up with the current arrangement and the advent of some excellent 3D printed parts from FK3D has allowed this project to finally reach the stage where I think it can be completed. I also was dissatisfied with the original bogies that I built for this coach. These were Bill Bedford sprung units. I didn't like that part of the functional bogie frame was visible above the cosmetic Gresley HD bogie side and I never seemed to get the ride height to something that was acceptable to me. I decided to scrap the bogies and start again with MJT torsion bar CCUs but with one notable difference. The press stud arrangement on MJT CCUs has, in my opinion, always been a weak point and maybe that is because of variability in the press studs rather than it being a bad idea. I've had problems with derailments on other bogie stock equipped with them and, also, after a few years I was finding that the solder joint on the single torsion bars were failing. The solution has been the excellent twin torsion bar conversion kits from Palatine Models. Having re-equipped the aforesaid bogie stock with them they have been thoroughly reliable. This has pushed me firmly back towards this type of bogie for my coaching stock, especially on stuff with Gresley bogies. Anyway, enough of the background here are a few photos. The latest work has been detailing the ends and building the Masokits corridor connectors. They work really well with Kaydee couplers but are quite fiddly to build.
Next job is to complete the headstock detail. I'm not going to worry about anything between the buffers as this coach will sit in the middle of a rake of my Bachmann Mk1 stock that currently lives at Robin Whittle's Barrow Road, but, I will make a representation of the extension collar hanging on the corners. I then need to finish off the roof detail and contrive a way of fixing the roof. The current plan is to use some lengths of clear rod (Lexan) to act as pillars between roof and floor with some sort of mechanical screw fixing. As an aside I recently acquired at auction some coaches built by Steve Banks. They are nice but all the roofs were loose because the glue had given up the ghost.
More soon....
Cheers...Morgan
I'm not really sure where to start but start I will. My good mate Mike G puts me to shame with the amount of content he posts and it's about time I posted something on here. I hope people will find it of interest. I have posted stuff on other places in the past but I got a little disillusioned with the way stuff disappeared after site crashes. I hope that does not happen here. Perhaps then I'll start with a couple of projects of LNER interest that are currently on my workbench. They are both coaches and one is very old. So old in fact that I cannot recall when I started it. Let's start with that.
Project 1 - A Gresley buffet car to D.167
This is a model of the D.167 as rebuilt by BR in, I think, 1958. The basis is Bill Bedford sides with the remaining parts of the body from MJT (floor pan, ends, roof etc...). I elected to scratch build the angle iron underframe from 1.2mm brass angle as it is very much closer to scale and far lighter than the MJT castings. The remainder of the underframe is a "bitsa" and I'm not sure how accurate it is for the D.167 rebuilds. Lots of studying photos has come up with the current arrangement and the advent of some excellent 3D printed parts from FK3D has allowed this project to finally reach the stage where I think it can be completed. I also was dissatisfied with the original bogies that I built for this coach. These were Bill Bedford sprung units. I didn't like that part of the functional bogie frame was visible above the cosmetic Gresley HD bogie side and I never seemed to get the ride height to something that was acceptable to me. I decided to scrap the bogies and start again with MJT torsion bar CCUs but with one notable difference. The press stud arrangement on MJT CCUs has, in my opinion, always been a weak point and maybe that is because of variability in the press studs rather than it being a bad idea. I've had problems with derailments on other bogie stock equipped with them and, also, after a few years I was finding that the solder joint on the single torsion bars were failing. The solution has been the excellent twin torsion bar conversion kits from Palatine Models. Having re-equipped the aforesaid bogie stock with them they have been thoroughly reliable. This has pushed me firmly back towards this type of bogie for my coaching stock, especially on stuff with Gresley bogies. Anyway, enough of the background here are a few photos. The latest work has been detailing the ends and building the Masokits corridor connectors. They work really well with Kaydee couplers but are quite fiddly to build.
Next job is to complete the headstock detail. I'm not going to worry about anything between the buffers as this coach will sit in the middle of a rake of my Bachmann Mk1 stock that currently lives at Robin Whittle's Barrow Road, but, I will make a representation of the extension collar hanging on the corners. I then need to finish off the roof detail and contrive a way of fixing the roof. The current plan is to use some lengths of clear rod (Lexan) to act as pillars between roof and floor with some sort of mechanical screw fixing. As an aside I recently acquired at auction some coaches built by Steve Banks. They are nice but all the roofs were loose because the glue had given up the ghost.
More soon....
Cheers...Morgan
