4mm From an unpromising start - shop around

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    • Neil

    Neil

    Western Thunderer
    For some time I've had an itch waiting to be scratched. With Northern Town waiting for the temperature in the garage to get warmer and a number of bits and bobs on the workbench decreasing I thought it was time I got on with it. For the last couple of weeks I've been assembling some of the raw materials and today I made a start on things. Here we have a few of the bits which give a flavour of the quality of the components I have to work with.

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    From the back there are a couple of Tomy Thomas carriages, a pair of Hornby Pug bodies, a Triang cattle wagon and the loco that got me back into model railways in my twenties, a Hornby pug. Note that it's the budget option without the handrails on the tank. It was all I could afford as a young man with a mortgage and my daughter on the way.

    What it's going to be and why I've chosen to do it this way will have to wait till my next stint at the keyboard.
     
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    David B

    Western Thunderer
    Exciting! This sounds like the kind of modelling I love - taking some sows’ ears and turning them into silky modelling purses. All agog for your next stint at the keyboard Neil……
     
    Pencarrow

    Pencarrow

    Western Thunderer
    I dread to think what's going to become of the assembled collection. Is a large nasty saw involved? Will it be something Christmas related? Puzzled by there being 3 pug bodies...
     
    Neil

    Neil

    Western Thunderer
    Back again; lets clear up some of the questions first.

    Shark submarine: There will be water, but the wrong coast and era for the sub I'm afraid.
    Steampunk: There will be steam and while I like punk I won't be combining the two.
    Large nasty saw: Oh yes.
    Christmas: No/which one/bah humbug.
    Faces: No, nein, nyet, non, .....
     
    Neil

    Neil

    Western Thunderer
    The where and the why.

    'Back when I were a lad' a lot of model railways both in the magazines and at exhibitions were a bit, well, crap. The crap-ness could be in parts or pretty much in total. I was as guilty as the next man of building some horrors; Mod-Roc was cheap then, as was lurid green scatter material. I often burned through a layout a month, flinging things together after seeing something I wanted to copy in the latest Railway Modeller. At the time I think I saw the model railway as a thing in itself rather than a representation of real life in miniature. Sometimes something a cut above would appear, a layout or scene where the railway sat in an environment which looked right, where geography and urban development looked credible; successful because the builder had in their mind a sense of place that their creation inhabited. My two favourite writers from that time had mastered this.

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    Other less celebrated examples didn't have the exquisite quality of Denis Allenden's output or the individualistic charm of Philip Hancock's world of Craigshire but nevertheless still impressed. Even using relatively humble components there would be something about how they were assembled into a whole that would convince. It's the idea that mundane starting points can spawn an attractive composition that set me off shopping for the sorts of stuff that turns up alongside Happy Meal toys at car boot sales.
     
    NHY 581

    NHY 581

    Western Thunderer
    Liking this.

    I keep thinking I must dig out my Triang Dock Authority shunter and build a little something around that.........

    Oh dear.......
     
    Neil

    Neil

    Western Thunderer
    Apologies, yesterday I only got as far as the why, so here's the where.

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    In 1973, at the York Model Railway show was one of those less celebrated layouts that I mentioned earlier. It was narrow gauge, 009 and a model of a Cumbrian harbour scene. I and a couple of school friends had a layout at that show, not a very good one, and while not operating I spent an awful lot of time looking over the barrier at the Cumbrian layout. Though not based on any one place it had that air of believability, not commonplace today, rarer then. When I went through that late teens, early twenties spell that some of us will have spent away from the hobby I did a bit of climbing and a lot of rambling in the Lake District. It's an area that I've returned to time and again when designing layouts but I've never built something set there. Time I think to remedy that.

    The (very) slim volume about Ravenglass and its railways has been in my library for a while. This sketch of the village from the sea started off the 'what if' while this phrase about Whitehaven Iron Mines Ltd, "This planned several railways in the district - narrow gauge above Ennerdale, but standard gauge from Ravenglass with a link under the main line to a pier ...' sealed the deal.

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    Tomy carriage build
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    • Neil

    Neil

    Western Thunderer
    Enough of the theory for the moment, let the build commence. As a bit of a warm up exercise I thought I'd tackle the Tomy twosome.

    The first job was to unscrew the chassis followed by peeling off the Thomas branding stickers. Those on the side came away easily but the faces on the ends had to be soaked off and the remaining sticky patch rubbed away with the sponge scourer and lots of Fairy liquid. Now for the fun bit. The locating pegs were trimmed away so the body could sit flat on the bench for marking out.

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    The bodies need to be put on a diet so I marked out the slice I'd have to take out of the middle with masking tape ....

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    .... before rough cutting to size with a diamond disk in the motor tool/pendant drill.

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    No need for any great precision here as long as the body halves are not too wide when pushed together. I trimmed some bits back with a sanding drum in the drill. Spacers were cut for the ends to bring the body to a width of 32mm over the outer faces. It's important to trim all the flash from the inner faces before the next step, that on the outside can wait.

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    I solvent welded the spacers in to one half of the shell and making sure that the bottom edges were flat to the glass plate stuck the other half to the spacers. Note: The spacers act as splice plates, no need to fuss about edge to edge joints.

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    Further narrow spacers went into the ends above the window line and I cut a splice plate strip from a section of heat curved plasticard that matched (just about) the curve of the underside of the roof. This was glued in place too.

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    David B

    Western Thunderer
    Happy days! This is ticking so many boxes for me - you are spot on about Dennis Allenden and PD Hancock. I loved all those articles from Craigshire and Clochemerle en Beaujolais. Watching with great interest.
     
    Neil

    Neil

    Western Thunderer
    Since my last post I've made progress with the reconstructive surgery. The bodies show a couple of distinct stages in putting things right. That to the rear has had the broadest bits of the crevice between the two halves filled with bits of plasticard, the nearer example has had filler applied and then been sanded smooth with some coarse emery laid flat on the glass plate and the body rubbed up and down along it. Before attention there is a slight peak along the centre line because part of the roof arc has been removed, but vigorous sanding flattens the ridge into an arc again.

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    While the body is undergoing rebuilding more destruction has happened to the chassis. The Tomy chassis is junk but it just so happens that a toad underframe is almost the right length and with thicker, wooden pattern buffer beams, spot on. I had a spare pair of toads so they have both donated their chassis. The cutting disk made short work of the veranda steps and buffers.

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    Earlier in the build I mocked up the pair of carriages just to see what the ride height would be, looks OK to me.

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