On Heather's Workbench - Premier Line Backwaters

[Heather Kay]

Today, I finally managed to make some progress on the trailing coach underframe. By some point tomorrow, all the pipework will be complete, the couplings in and both underframes should be set for a coat or two of paint.

I need to brake the trailer bogies, and then I shall have to figure out how to fit the roofs. I've got cartridge paper on the driving trailer roof moulding, but there are some fit issues with matching roof profiles to etch profiles I can't quite work out at the moment.

As for the interiors, I've decided there's little point in printing out and fitting the door and window areas. You can't really see far enough inside the coach to tell anything's there, so I shall simply paint in a suitable colour. The partitions and seats, however, will be visible. I've got a nice selection of cast seated figures to populate the coaches, too.

I'm glad to see the idea of printing seat covers is catching on. Those 121 seats look suitably loud! There might well be mileage in trying to get good, clean photos of most of the various kinds of seat cover patterns from all the various railways so more accurate representations can be made.

 

[Heather Kay]

Here's the state of play, after a week of ins and outs and roundabouts, mostly a long way from my workbench. I hate it when real life gets in the way.

(Sorry, no piccies. Been too busy actually modelling to take any, and my other excuse is there's not much to actually see!)

Both coaches now have a full set of vacuum, control and steam heating pipework, as well as the full set of clips for parking said pipework when not in use.

I realised a while back the footboards were a bit anaemic, and that suitable lengths of brass had been included in the kit to beef things up by laminating together. I suspect this ought to have been done prior to fitting the boards to the floor… Anyway, the RSU let me fairly quickly add the second layer of the sandwich, which means things look a little more "LNWR built to last out the century" than they did before.

Refitting the floors to bodies, I managed to dislodge some buffers , and for some reason the driving trailer body won't snuggle down square at the cab end . Having spent some of the day repairing things that had fallen off in one way or another, I decided to call it quits at that point. I shall pick up the challenge once more tomorrow - with added pictorial goodness to keep the pixel elves happy.

 

[Heather Kay]

I keep forgetting to take photos. My excuse is not much is materially happening at this stage of the build. A lot of fettling, fiddling and fitting is going on, and I've finally plucked up the courage to add the brake shoes to the second coach's bogies, but otherwise nothing particularly photosnaptic.

The past two days (yes, I work Sundays) have been quite productive. As I type, both bodies are primed, both underframes and floors are primed, and both pairs of bogies are about ready for the paintshop. I'm almost tempted to say the end is in sight!



Here's another attempt at fitting the driving trailer roof. Something doesn't sit square at the cab end, and I think I've figured out what it is. Once I get the primed shell back downstairs I shall deal with it.



Here you can see how the footboard has been beefed up with its lamination.



Something that has niggled me for ages is the way the body shell sides flap about. There's nothing to hold them together, and during trial assemblies it's been plain this should be dealt with before paint was applied. The solution is a single bit of scrap etch across the bottom of the sides, placed centrally and at floor level. This required about half a millimetre trimming from the styrene sheet floors to let me slide them into the shells again.

While fitting the brace, though, I managed to crinkle the half-etched side. On a steel coach I could possibly get away with in-service damage, but on a timber-bodied coach this would be a no-no.



My solution was to clean things up and fill the area with low-melt solder, and then scrape and sand carefully back.



That kind of worked okay.

Tomorrow, I hope to get the underframes and bogies painted properly. The bodies need the roofs fitting better before I paint them. The bodies do need to be painted before the interiors are fitted, though. One step at a time.

I've got some figures I can paint when things get too frazzled.

 

[Heather Kay]

A little while ago, Mr Dog Star Beare was on a visit to the NRM in York. Being the thoughtful bod he is, he remembered some discussion hereabouts concerning LNWR liveries, and made a point of taking photos of the various painted bits of Royal Train the museum has on display. Not only that, he allowed for the vagaries of the lighting in the museum and had the foresight to hold a sheet of A4 plain copier paper in the field of view so a colour balance might be achieved later.

Graham's kindly agreed to let me reproduce the images here, with the proviso that I outline how I went about balancing the colour.

The coaches in question are a WCJS saloon, staff coach and the King's Saloon. In most cases the uncorrected image is on the left of the picture.



The King's Saloon. Not the complex gold lining. Not your average LNWR livery.



Another view of the King's Saloon. The "plum", "carmine" or "lake" is noticeably very dark.



Here's the staff coach. Note the much simpler livery with apparently no complex lining.



Staff coach again, this time showing the "brownish red" Jack Nelson says was painted on side light frames or bolection mouldings.



Finally, the West Coast Joint Stock coach. This is, as far as I can tell, the full LNWR livery, with the "spilt milk" panels, yellow ochre and white lining, and the "plum" raised section. You'll also note the complex lettering style.

In a while I'll outline how I balanced the colours, but first let's summarise the findings.

• Top link vehicles were given the full complex lined livery.
• Royal Train livery uses gold and a simplified lining scheme.
• Second line vehicles in the Royal Train were not lined out as far as I can see.
• The "spilt milk" is really a shade of duck egg blue, much closer to what I would expect to see under an RAF fighter in 1940. This is the real eye-opener for me.

For the third class motor train I'm working on in this build, the client has asked for the livery as painted around the time just after the first world war, post 1918. Originally, I thought it highly unlikely that the craftsmen in the Paint Shop at Wolverton would expend the time and energy in painting and lining out every third class coach destined to potter up and down branch lines behind a tatty Watford or Coal Tank. On reviewing Graham's photos, though, I think such vehicles would have received the equivalent of the full WCJS style livery, so that's the one I shall aim for (allowing for the vagaries of trying to line out complex panel work in 7mm scale).

Now, how did I do the colour matching?

Most competent image editing software allows colour correction. I fell back on my main photo editing and management software, which is the Mac only Aperture (equivalent to Adobe's Lightroom). While I could have used Photoshop, I felt more comfortable with Aperture, as that's where all my photos are edited these days. I should note my screen is calibrated, though not to the level some people do, mainly because I can't afford the hardware to do that right now!

I first increased the exposure level a little in each image. A digital camera will tend to try and expose the scene it "sees" to an average grey. For example, a snowy scene will be appear under exposed, while a dark scene will appear over exposed. I brightened things a bit to make the paper look less dirty, and more like sat in front of me in average daylight.

Essentially, the idea is to find a neutral grey in the image, against which the chosen software can compare its own look-up tables, to correct for the colour cast. Graham's white paper was excellent for this, although selecting a neutral grey from the crinkles was a bit of a lottery. For the technically minded, the grey I'm after is known as "18% grey", which is a standard set by Kodak back in the days of film photography and still used by manufacturers as their average exposure (see the previous paragraph). Anyway, realising I was tending to select different areas in each image, I decided to click the magic "auto" button in the colour balance panel, and the results you see in the images above.

It seems, therefore, that the Precision Paints LNWR "spilt milk" is pretty close to the shade of paint used on most of the surviving vehicles carrying LNWR (or forms of) livery. It's not a shade of cream, but actually closer to a pale duck egg blue. You live and learn.

 

[Heather Kay]

Thanks John. If I could borrow a coach for comparison, that would be brilliant.

 

[SteveO]

Aperture is a great piece of software, and much more tuned to 'old skool' photographer's methods than Photoshop is, although Photoshop is a very powerful image editing package.

Have you also tried 'dropping' the light and dark points to define the tonal range? Often helps in the absence of a natural or obvious grey.

 

[Heather Kay]

Have you also tried 'dropping' the light and dark points to define the tonal range? Often helps in the absence of a natural or obvious grey.

I haven't. I may revisit the images and try that to see if it helps in this case.

Like most of these types of software, it's very easy to set up a workflow and not experiment once you've set it. When I've been out with the camera, I tend not to want to spend any more time post-processing than I can get away with - if I spend more than a couple of minutes on an image, I've done something wrong when taking it in the first place! I have basic settings applied on import, and anything else is to correct exposure or contrast if needed.

Photoshop (or in my case Pixelmator) is only used when I need to do some serious pixel pushing, such as removing backgrounds from model shots, or when I want to make a composite for some special purpose.

Perhaps we should kick off a separate thread on this subject!

 

[SteveO]

I like your thinking. Our bills go through the roof when we have to spend time on image editing on less-than-perfect photography, and clients wonder why!

I'm not saying you've done it wrong, the corrected shots look very natural, and Graham has been very smart by providing a reference. Clever bloke, that.

Anyway, back to the models!

 

[Osgood]

What a really neat idea - holding a piece of paper in the frame. I might just unashamedly borrow that technique!

 

[Dog Star]

...Graham has been very smart by providing a reference. Clever bloke, that.

What a really neat idea - holding a piece of paper in the frame.

Well, not quite that smart, if I had thought about the matter then I would have asked Heather to supply a primed and finished wood panel in a colour suitable for use as a reference point.

Thanks Heather for the comparisons and explanation.

regards, Graham

 

[richard carr]

Including a piece of white paper like Graham did unfortunately isn't that useful as its hard to decide which part of the paper is the neutral gray. You really need a grey card, which I still have somewhere, as that is a known neutral grey and it won't crease like the paper. Amazon has lots of different ones for sale from about £7.

There are also a few other more expensive items out there to help you get the colour right in a photograph, I have one called the cube by colorite it came as part of my screen and printer calibration kit, they are about £45 to buy.

Richard

 

[Heather Kay]

Including a piece of white paper like Graham did unfortunately isn't that useful as its hard to decide which part of the paper is the neutral gray. You really need a grey card, which I still have somewhere, as that is a known neutral grey and it won't crease like the paper. Amazon has lots of different ones for sale from about £7.

This is very true, but a bit of white paper is good enough in most circumstances. I'm accustomed to working with a white balance in my past life, so I'm happy the colours I've got are not far off. Incidentally, Aperture's auto white balance works out a neutral grey from the image - which can lead to some whacky colours if there isn't anything remotely white or grey in the shot!

Which reminds me I ought to get a decent grey card. I've been meaning to for ages.

 

[richard carr]

Heather

A genuine Kodak one at Calumet is £35 !


Richard

 

[Dog Star]

Which reminds me I ought to get a decent grey card.

Just so, now all you need is a willing volunteer to escort your grey panel to the NRM.

 

[john lewsey]

just in case your interested Heather this is how I've done my LNWR coaches ( sorry to poke my nose in)

 

[Heather Kay]

No need to apologise, John. I'm battling against part-built bodies in this case. I don't think the original kits were thought out that well, to be honest.

Anyway, today, I reassembled both models, fitted the couplings to the trailer coach, and played with them on the test track for a bit to check running quality. I'm quite pleased with the way they run, so the next step is to get some proper paint on them.

 

[john lewsey]

I suppose it's the thought of showing what I'm doing and hoping that it's good enough to be here

 

[Heather Kay]

it's good enough to be here

I don't think there's any doubt there.

 

[Dog Star]

I don't think there's any doubt there.

+1

 

[Heather Kay]

Much progress made today. Having finally reached a point where the bodies and underframes are ready for painting, I decided to knuckle down and try to make sense of the roofs.

Here's the state of play as of last night.



The driving trailer in primer with what passed for the roof in place.



The trailer coach, with a bare wood roof section for show. These shots were taken on my ad hoc S7 test track, which is full of bad track and tight curves, sort of, where I'd been testing the models for running qualities. I must remind the client not to try pushing them through sub-7ft radius curves, because buffer locking and much merriment ensues.

Anyway, roofs… The roofs had been vexing me for some time. I couldn't figure out how to make them look right. Essentially what we have is a wooden section, cut to length and slotted between the ends of each coach. According to the instructions, a layer of cartridge paper should be glued to the section, trimmed to leave an overhang at each end. Sounds simple, but as ever not in practice.



The driving trailer roof section has a natty rebate, and as you can see here is deeper than the trailer coach section. I've tried fixing cartridge paper to the top one, but if I wrapped it round the rebate it prevented the roof from properly sitting on the coach.

Leaving aside the thinner nature of the trailer coach roof section for the time being, I set to trying to make something sensible of the other.



If my researches are to be believed, the coaches were wooden from the floor up. The roof was presumably made of lengthwise planking, and then sealed with a canvas covering. I played about with some masking tape in order to give an impression of the canvas. The idea had merit, so I stripped back the first attempt and tried again.

My mistake was to forget to build in the end overhang. Still, tape is cheap.

The second attempt included adding a second layer of cartridge paper, with a folded and glued overhang. I used double-sided tape to fix the paper together, and to the wood section. This was mainly for speed, as I do so hate waiting for glue to dry when I've got the wind in my sails.



You can make out the glued fold here, and the tape ready to fix the second layer in place. Once fixed, it was trimmed back to the rebate, which of course meant it tended to lift from the edge of the roof. No matter, as the next stage would fix it.



The masking tape was Homebase cheapo stuff, nearly two inches wide. I carefully marked the centreline of the roof, and fixed two strips either side of it, butted up to each other. Carefully rubbing the tape down to avoid crinkles, I pushed it into the rebate and over on to the underside of the roof. Trimming back the ends, I used the blunt end of a scalpel handle to push it into the overhang, trimming the excess off with the other end.

A second layer of tape was laid along the centre of the roof, finished with a thinner strip along that layer's centre. Each end was folded over and fixed into the overhang.

It might not be exactly like the prototype, but I'm happy.



That looks about right to me.

Next up was to mark out and drill for the ventilators. Studying photos, it seems the vents tend to wander. The only thing I could confirm was two vents per compartment, aligned across the roof. Photos seem to show the vents offset to one side of the compartment, sometimes in line with the edge of the door. The LNWR coaches book I'm working from has drawings made by David Jenkinson, and these always showed the vents in line with the centre of the compartment door. This disagrees with the photographic evidence, but not having anything better to hand, I made the decision to go with the drawings.

Some educated guesswork about the vents on the driving cab end followed. Assuming the coach was converted from a conventional brake third, I had two vents over the cab, and two vents over the luggage section.



Here's the result, before I fitted rainstrips. I've used UHU to glue the cast metal vents into the wood and paper roof. It seems to be working well enough.



Here's the same coach from the other end after rainstrips. I was pleased to find the Evergreen styrene strips could be glued to the tape with MEK. The second coach's roof went just as quickly, although I had to glue a couple layers of mounting card to the undersides to lift it and give me a rebate.

So, both coaches now have completed roofs - apart from the step end grab rails. I have some suitable ones in my bits box, happily. A coat of grey primer will show any flaws in my creations.

I suppose it won't be long before I have to get some paint on these models.