Welshpool Coaches Finished

2 years later and the Welshpool coaches are finally finished. It's been a journey of discovering new skills since I had never built a brass coach before, never made my own 3D printed parts, never commissioned decals and so the list goes on.

I'm really pleased with the results. There are aspects I will do differently next time but for now I am happy to consider them done and to move onto another model, again with plenty of aspects of "I've never done that before".

To all those who have offered encouragement, thank you. To Matt and Simon who continue to provide support and ideas, thank you and we'll be down down the pub soon - my round!

I made up a quick video today because I could. This is done with the basic Windows 10 Video Editor and works well except for the lack of transitions but, again, not bad for a first attempt.

Almost there

When I started the Welshpool coaches I had a reasonable idea of what I wanted to do and knew I would have help in those areas where I had next to no experience. Transfers were always going to be a challenge. My good friend, Matt Kean, has already built some of these coaches and knows exactly how to letter them but it does involve taking individual letters from different transfer sheets and then getting them all lined up. I admire his tenacity on this approach but getting to know Andrew from Custom Model Decals gave me hope that there would be an easier way. Andrew is a fellow member of the 009 Society and is also their webmaster. As I am taking over the position of editor for the 009 News magazine we have plenty to discuss. The process of getting transfers done was surprisingly easy. I had to say what I want and Andrew drew them up. I had to learn how to clearly specify what I wanted but after only 3 iterations Andrew was able to produce some excellent transfers and the standard A6 sheet contains more than enough for 12 coaches.

The pictures below hopefully capture the crispness of the transfers and they were extremely easy to apply. 

Glazing has since been applied to the coaches using acetate sheets stuck in with Kristal Klear. I like using this product to glue in glazing as it can be cleaned up very easily with a cocktail stick and acetates are very resilient to scratching which allows a relatively easy clear up process for any excess glue.

The last stage is seating and people and then I will declare the coaches finished!

Roofs Part 2

The last post showed the roofs with the right shape, soldered up and with the holes for the fixings all drilled. The next stage is to fit the rain strip. I used 0.4mm dia brass wire but I wish I had used 0.3mm. I'd done a test run before so I knew better than to try and solder along the whole length. This time I tacked it in the middle and then curved it down with the occasional tacks - no more than 5 to 7 along the length. Once all the tacks were there I could pick a tack and heat it up more to get a better fit since I knew there would be two tacks either side to hold it roughly in place. Repeat on the other side and then repeat for another two roofs and the job was done.

The fittings consisted of 5 oil lamps on each roof, 6 or 8 torpedo vents (posher people got more ventilation) and two stove chimneys on the composites. One of the stove chimneys is over the guard's compartment. The other is in the middle of the seating area so it's not clear what it was used for.

All the fittings I designed for myself based on rough drawings and picture and printed on my Anycubic Photon S printer. 

Painting opened up a new area of debate. From the few photos published, it is clear they were painted white originally but I'm modelling several years in so they would have been sooty grey. Nearly all the photos of the coaches are low down so you can't get a sense of the colour of the fittings. Eventually one high up shot showed the torpedo vents much darker than the roof. There are no photographs with the oil lamps in place so I have assumed they were painted the same colour as the roof and would have weathered equally badly.

Having decided that white was definitely not sensible I eventually sprayed them with primer and then put on a Humbrol Dark Grey wash which was dabbed with a kitchen towel to give a more mottled appearance. The vents were the painted with a mix of Humbrol Gunmetal and Coal Black. The mix means it is neither black nor grey but since one is a metallic and the other a satin, it gives a sheen that contrasts with the roof itself. A quick spray with Halfords Matt Lacquer this morning and the end results are below and are ready to be attached to the bodies.

Finally a taster of what is to come - the roofs resting on the bodies of the coaches. The coaches have received their transfers but still need glazing and seating. I'll save that for next week.

 

Roofs Part 1

I did promise a post on roofs. I'm out of sync but here it is. The roofs for the Welshpool coaches are interesting for their end shape where they curve down to an almost horizontal line. Andy Cundick, a talented, and prolific, modeller from the Wilts 009 Group, has built several of these coaches and his approach is to use some sheet metal, around 5 thou thick, snip diagonal cut outs from the end, fold it into shape and solder it up, filling the gaps with solder. It works well for Andy but I was not happy about being able to get a decent shape to the roof end.

My technique evolved over a couple of attempts. Initially I cut a piece of 5 thou brass and had it rolled by Simon since I didn't own any rolling bars. This was then taped to a piece of clean waste pipe with wide masking tape. The radius of the roof is around 26mm and the pipe is 40mm diameter which is close enough. Once it is held down securely I marked out all the holes for fittings as well as some triangular cut outs at each end. the distance in from the end is determined by the length of the balcony on the coach.

Once it is all marked out the ends are cut out with a razor saw and holes for the fittings are drilled with the bench drill. After this a similar trick approach was taken to create the inserts to go into the ends. These are a different shape to the ones cut out but again a piece of brass was taped to the pipe and marked out with a longer centre line to better fit the curve.

The inserts had to be fettled to shape and ended up needing some brass scrap to support the joint but proved the technique. What became obvious quickly was that 5 thou is too thin. It flexes just too much to hold its shape. Also with time and activity the roof uncurled and would have benefitted from being rerolled. 

In order to do a better job I decided to redo them using 10 thou brass. I also bought my own rollers so I could roll and adjust the curvature to suit whenever I needed to. The same technique was used and roofs were rolled, taped to the pipe, marked out and cut.

With 3 roofs to do and 3 more kits in the stash I wanted the soldering of the ends to be more predictable. The answer was to make a jig. Recycling a piece of Severn Models hardboard and some coffee stirrers from Caffe Nero I glued down the stirrers to hold the shape of the roof and also provided some supports for the end pieces.

It's simple and effective because it allowed me to produce these.

In the follow up post I'll cover the fittings and painting.