Chas's workbench

[Chas Levin]

Some of the Loctite-type glues are metal-catalysed, that is, they need the presence of (a particular?) metal to react and set. Presumably that’s what this is?

That's very interesting Simon: I knew some cyano glues were anaerobic but didn't realise some reacted to particular metals - ahhhhh, as I write this, I realised that I did know about some Loctite products doing this, not the suprerglue types, but the threadlocker and nutlock ones that are used for things like locking gear wheels on shafts: are those the types you mean? I've only built one gearbox to date and I used the blue Loctite 243 threadlocker on that - compeltely forgot, but it did say it needed steel to go off properly.

 

[michael080]

What are the Fleischmann kits like to build? I've not yet come across one and only learned recently that they were made, after seeing a photo of one online, having always assumed the Fleischmann only made RTR.
I remember noticing in the photos of the one I saw that it had assembled wheels.
I'm guessing they didn't find the kit market as profitable as the RTR one...?

uuuhm it's quite some time since I build them. About half a century, so I don't rememer the details. The kits were just ordinary RTR-wagons unassembled. These old wagons had metal cast undercarriages and plastic walls and roof, so it was a matter of 10 minutes to assemble them. I recall that the buffers were threaded and could be removed, so I guess you had to screw them into position. I believe that they had no numbers printed on them.
I don't think that these kits were commercially interesting, neither for Fleischmann not for the user, but there was a much bigger interest to build something rather than buy it RTR.

Michael

 

[Chas Levin]

Just back from a weekend in Bristol and it seemed a pity not to pop in and see the GWR Museum at Swindon, never having been there before. Here are some views of - and under - Caerphilly Castle, plus an attempt to imagine what it would have looked like from inside a waiting room as King George V drew alongside the platform, finishing with a photo of me operating some signals. There's an interactive signal box exhibit which takes you through the procedure for moving a local train off the main line and onto a safety siding to allow a Royal train through, moving the local train back onto the line afterwards - great fun!

 

[Dave Sutton]

No cloth on the lever ...tut tut...the signalmen at Sandy wouldn't let us touch anything without a cloth in our hand.

 

[Chas Levin]

No cloth on the lever ...tut tut...the signalmen at Sandy wouldn't let us touch anything without a cloth in our hand.

Funnily enough Dave that went through my mind, but none was provided: the exhibit isn't manned (personned?!), it's an interactive video installation, where you start it running by following the first instruction to move the leftmost yellow lever towards you and back again and from there, the video screen above the levers issues each instruction once the system's sensors pick up the completion of the previous lever movement.
The figure you see in the background, leaning out of the window, is a dummy.

This is a nice opportunity though for me to ask someone who'll know: what is the reason for the use of cloths on signal levers? I've often wondered whether it's to limit corrosion of the parts of the levers you touch, which might be caused by the accumulation of dirt and perspiration. If that's the case, is it a fear of a signalman's grip slipping, of dirty or corroded lever surfaces being less safely grasped?

I've always thought it must be something like that, rather than purely cosmetic considerations: when I was a lad, my dad was an absolute stickler for never touching any metal or glass with my 'sticky paws', as he called them. He also collected various paper things - stamps, concert programs and so forth - and these could never be touched with bare hands either, so whenever I see a signalman usign a cloth, I think of him...

 

[Dave Sutton]

I remember that everything in the box was polished to within an inch of its life, the cloth was to stop finger marks, right up to the day of closure they were still using a cloth.
Some of the levers ended up at the NRM (A&B) they were the longest wire operated points on the network (IIRC)

 

[Chas Levin]

No cloth on the lever ...tut tut...the signalmen at Sandy wouldn't let us touch anything without a cloth in our hand.

I just happened to catch an episode of a Michael Palin train program the other night and he visited a Scottish signal box, where a rather attractive female signal operator explained how things worked and did the 'let the celeb have a go but stand close by for when they mess it up' routine... and there was no cloth in sight!!

 

[Chas Levin]

The KWStE wagon bodies have gone together quite nicely, very clean, crisp castings with almost no fettling required, almost no flash to remove and they hadn't bent in all these years (though to be fair, they've been in a pretty stout box):









I'm currently investigating wheel options; I sometimes think people are being a bit OTT in referring to older wheels with larger than finescale flanges as 'pizza-cutters' but in this case, I can see the resemblance:



I've found suitable looking 11m diameter wheels from Roco (actually, much better looking as they're metal centred, with fully split spokes) and as the wagon chassis sits a tad low on the supplied 10.5mm wheels, an extra 0.25mm height will be quite handy. It'll need a little material taking out under the floor though, because the kit wheels sit extremely close to the underside...

 

[Chas Levin]

Investigating the available Halfords options for this wagon, I remembered reading recently about how strongly affected red paint is by the underlying colour of any primer or undercoat, much more so than many other colours (which I assume is to do with the behaviour of light at the red end of the spectrum).
Now I can't explain why I thought Halfords Vauxhall Flame Red was right for this wagon (taking the box art and the included, though thoroughly dried out, paint pot as a guide, both pictured earlier in this thread) and I can only blame it on the dodgy lighting in Halfords, but finding myself at home with a can of this shade and knowing I wouldn't be using it for anything else in the near future, I thought I'd try spraying the red over three different primer colours - from left to right, this is Vauxhall Flame Red on top of Halfords grey, white and red primer:



And yes, I did double-check and the right-hand one's over the red primer, the left-hand one's over the grey!

 

[Rob Pulham]

and I can only blame it on the dodgy lighting in Halfords

Ahh dodgy lighting in shops.

We were caught out by a similar experience. We were having our bathroom and ensuite renovated when we moved up to North Yorkshire and we went to a Tile shop in Northallerton. We picked out some nice what looked in the shop to be beige marble tiles and thought nothing about them. The company who were doing the bathroom collected the tiles and it was only when half the bathroom was tiled that we looked in and realised that rather than being beige as we expected the tiles were in fact grey not beige.

I got in the car and drove to the shop to check the display and it was only then that I realised that all the lighting in the shop was orange sodium lighting. This subtly changed the colour of every tile in the place. I wonder how may other people were caught out by the misleading lighting.

The job was being done in between lockdowns and it had taken long enough to get someone on site to do the job so we elected to let them carry on without actually mentioning it to the plumber that the tiles were not the colour we expected. After all it wasn't the plumber's fault as we had chosen the tiles...

 

[Chas Levin]

Well Rob, the key question would be (hoping it's not a sore point), how do you find using the facilities these days - are you happy with the finsihed tiling? If so, then that's all fine - if not, how about installing some orange lighting in the bathroom?

 

[Rob Pulham]

Well Rob, the key question would be (hoping it's not a sore point), how do you find using the facilities these days - are you happy with the finsihed tiling? If so, then that's all fine - if not, how about installing some orange lighting in the bathroom?

Hi Chaz,

The design of the tiles is what we chose and now we have got used to it we never notice that they are not quite the colour we were originally expecting.

 

[Chas Levin]

Hi Chaz,

The design of the tiles is what we chose and now we have got used to it we never notice that they are not quite the colour we were originally expecting.

Very pleased to hear it Rob! There are quite a few things in our house that we weren't entirely happy with at first but which we no longer notice either.
It's a very helpful aspect of the human mind, the ability to forget, to stop being bothered by things…

 

[Chas Levin]

Still seeking the right KWStE wagon colour and looking through the paints I have in stock, I suddenly realised that one of the Phoenix Precision teak variations might do and found that their Weathered Teak (P996) is a very close match to the RAI-MO box art, certainly close enough given that I've no way of knowing how accurate that box art is and also bearing in mind how much prototype paint colours change through age and weathering in real life.
In the course of my search, I compared PP's Weathered Teak with their Golden Teak (P997), something I've not done before; I've simply used one or the other, sometimes both at different stages of painting a coach and I'd never noticed how very different they are and the dots of paint on the lids are nothing like this different in appearance to my eye. Here's a piece of primer-sprayed cardboard with the two colours side by side - hopefully the initials labelling them are self-explanatory:

 

[Chas Levin]

A very enjoyable visit today to Railex 2023 at Aylesbury, where amongst other things I saw some very imaginative use of mirrors:







I hope everyone else had a good day too

 

[Chas Levin]

More work done on the pair of KWStE wagons...

The kit wheels definitely had to go, mainly because of their appearance but also because I'm not keen on plastic bearing surfaces:






Fortunately there's enough 'meat' in the axleboxes to allow drilling out for waisted brass bearings, including a wider outer ring so they sit near flush to the inside surfaces:












The eagle-eyed will have spotted in the last picture that one of the mountings for the supplied couplings has been removed - in fact I've done that on both, because I'm fitting Fleischmann type couplings to one side of each wagon, so they can both serve as coupling adaptors. I use Fleischmanns on almost all my Continental stock but a few stubborn vehicles are either awaiting conversion, or I haven't yet figured out how to convert them, so by running this pair of wagons with the supplied couplings facing each other, they'll form a pair with Fleischmanns each end, but by running them with both Fleischmanns coupled to each other... you get the idea.

I soldered a piece of 0.45mm wire into the top slot of a 10BA bolt so that it can be glued into a groove on the top side of the chassis and provide a fixing for a NEM pocket for one end of each wagon:








Couplings were then put aside and the solebars glued in place, with the wheels masked in advance for painting (Halfords matt black aerosol, in due course). The wheels are Roco 40190, much better looking than the part-plastic ones supplied, but I forgot to take pictures before masking them up, so you'll have to wait for the post-painting unmasking to see them, complete with not very effective checmical blackening:



The tool-maker's clamp on the right was made by my dad in his school metalwork class!

The wagon bodies were then primed - here they are, sat on the basic chassis just to see how they look:






And here they are in what's going to be their final colour, first coat only though:





After much fruitless testing of various Halfords shades and online investigation of varieties of red in an effort to match the box art work, I realised that Phoenix Precision 'Weathered Teak' was a near perfect match!

 

[Chas Levin]

A quick question please for anyone familiar with early-to-mid 19th century Württemberg rolling stock livery (you know who you are... I hope?). What colour should the interior ironwork be?
I assumed that the inside planking would be unpainted wood (because it is on the majority of wagons I've seen) so I put on a first coat of what will become reasonably used wooden planks after various other colours have been suitably applied, but then realised that while the ironwork on the outside of the wagons would very probably have been painted the same colour as its surrounding planking, the planking on the inside would surely have been unpainted and therefore, the ironwork must have been painted... but what colour?






I realise of course that I may be wrong in assuming that the inner planking was unpainted - if anyone has any info on German practice at this time, please let me know. The box artwork shows the whole exterior and the whole interior all in the same colour, but I find it difficult to believe that's right and I think that may be a 1980s innaccuracy:



Failing any more detailed info, if I stick with natural wood for the inside, I think it would be reasonable to assume that the interior ironwork might have been black, as the exterior metal parts almost certainly were but again, if anyone knows better please don't hesitate to correct me!

I also looked up Emil Kessler, whose picture you can see on the box top, learning about his career as an engineer and his importance to the KWStE. I'm not sure if his inclusion in the box design is intended to denote that the wagons were designed by him, or whether it was just local colour - more research to follow...

 

[michael080]

Chas,

in an earlier life, I had an interest in the KWStB. No surprise lving close to Stuttgart.
The colouring schemes of the early "Länderbahn" companies are a big mystery and if there is some resource, it covers maily locomotives, but no freight wagens.

To my knowledge, there are three main sources of information.
Hermann Pleuer was an impressionist painter with a special interest in railways. Many of his pictures show locomotives and trains of the KWStB. Being an impressionist, colour was a very subjective thing for him, so his colours can only be an approximation.
See Hermann Pleuer - Wikipedia for more details.
There is a paint manufacturer in Stuttgart that has been around for more than a century. They have been supplying the KWStB. and some time ago, a sample card of KWStB paints was found in their archive. Unfortuntely, this seems to cover only the loco colours and I can't find a link to this card.
The third source is the Diener, a book dedicated to paiting freight wagons. It is currently on sale, so I took the opportunity and ordered a copy. Give me some days and I can take a look if I find some information.

Michael

 

[michael080]

oh, I forgot the most promising source of information:
Armin Berberich has been built many KWStB models, I guess he is the most knowledgeable person in this field of expertise. His website is

Startseite

ahbvai_AT_armin-berberich_DOT_de

Michael

 

[Chas Levin]

Chas,

in an earlier life, I had an interest in the KWStB. No surprise lving close to Stuttgart.
The colouring schemes of the early "Länderbahn" companies are a big mystery and if there is some resource, it covers maily locomotives, but no freight wagens.

To my knowledge, there are three main sources of information.
Hermann Pleuer was an impressionist painter with a special interest in railways. Many of his pictures show locomotives and trains of the KWStB. Being an impressionist, colour was a very subjective thing for him, so his colours can only be an approximation.
See Hermann Pleuer - Wikipedia for more details.
There is a paint manufacturer in Stuttgart that has been around for more than a century. They have been supplying the KWStB. and some time ago, a sample card of KWStB paints was found in their archive. Unfortuntely, this seems to cover only the loco colours and I can't find a link to this card.
The third source is the Diener, a book dedicated to paiting freight wagons. It is currently on sale, so I took the opportunity and ordered a copy. Give me some days and I can take a look if I find some information.

Michael

oh, I forgot the most promising source of information:
Armin Berberich has been built many KWStB models, I guess he is the most knowledgeable person in this field of expertise. His website is

Startseite

ahbvai_AT_armin-berberich_DOT_de

Michael

Morning Michael, thank you very much, that's a lot more information than I was expecting, as it's not the most mainstream of subjects. I'll investigate those links later today; right now however, Sunday Lunch, like a roast chicken flavoured express, is thundering towards me and 19th century wagon livery questions must temporarily take a back seat...