A new start in Finescale OO: NSR Stone junction station

[flying scotsman123]

Whoops, rescued from page 3! But work has been going on. Baseboards are now complete and some tentative tracklaying started. difficult to get any worthwhile pictures of this I'm afraid. Getting everything to fit is proving difficult - small adjustments here and there make all the difference between acceptable curvature and minimising compression of the model.

Also I've been working on bogie coaches since Christmas. The bogies themselves are ratio LNWR, everything is is totally scratchbuilt from plain plasticard.



It's not perfect, but for a first attempt I'm pretty pleased. There is a bit of warping but I'm hoping this will be solved with the next ones off the line as the sides to the first one were only stored in a book with a weight on top. I've got two more coaches that have almost finished being panted that are currently sat in a flower press, which I'm hoping should sort those issues out.

Here's the "cruel" close-up shot:



I'm pleased my camera manages to focus so well, but equally I wish it wouldn't make stuff up! The windows really look fine, honest! I am pleased it's managed to show up the thin gold lining in places, you can see it best on the lower beading edge of the waistline. This was done by first applying a gold undercoat then scraping back the top coat, aided by he fact that when cutting plastic you get the raised edges.

Finally a shot just to show the lights:



...Which my camera managed less successfully. But shows the general effect. The NSR was an early pioneer of electrical lighting, skipping gas going straight from oil to electric. However as it was an early system it was quite primitive and temperamental, which is why I wasn't too bothered about the odd bit of matt black paint getting on the lightbulb as I was touching in areas of light seepage, which gave the light a bit o variation from compartment to compartment. I think my family thought I had gone mad - modelling in pitch black save a small string of fairy lights in a coach! The lights are a short section of 12V rice lights, with one per compartment and a small notch cut at the top of each compartment wall. They are powered by two 3V coin cells on the floor of the compartments. The body and roof are glued together but the underframe is removable, to allow battery changing

The underframe I've just had to have an educated guess at. The drawings I have don't really cover underframes at all, so I found some instructions to making up brass underframes from someone's series of kits and based it on that, with the components I already had.


Things still to do on it:

• Add buffers (I have the correct design in a draw somewhere...)
• End detail - one side should have steps which I need to experiment on, and the other the com cord equipment, which should be fairly easily represented by some brass wire, leading down to...
• vacuum and other pipes - I have these, but need to work out couplings and then fit pipes around them so as not to obstruct coupling
• A very small on/off switch for the lights, mounted on the underframe. The wiring runs along the underframe so should just need a cut.
• Grab handles - the NSR pattern are reasonably unique so no etches available, need to try with brass wire and a jig our former of some sort.
• Transfers - these will wait a while as I need to get a bit further on other things to make best use of transfer paper.

Things I'm not happy with:

• Some warping is present, but as mentioned, hopefully use of a flowerpress will solve this
• The inner doorframe has raised edges from cutting visable - solved on subsequent by using the reverse side for the inner frame and swapping the sides over
• Louvres above doors need more thought
• With the limited testing done so far, 2nd radius curves are manageable but a bit tight. I'd like to try and loosen them up a bit by filing the inside of the solebar at critical points

If anyone else has any other thoughts, now's the time to shout out, as I've only made a start on the next couple so far.

Hopefully updates will be a bit more frequent and thus smaller and easier to digest, but I suspect I won't get much "proper" time until Easter now as I've a lot on. Hopefully will be able to keep some things ticking over, currently engaged in my first major cut 'n' shut loco, turning a jinty into an NSR equivalent. Pictures soon if it works. I've gone on the basis that if I can do this, I can probably do any other loco as each time I measure bits, less and less of the loco body stays original!

[Ex-Pat]

Also I've been working on bogie coaches since Christmas. The bogies themselves are ratio LNWR, everything is is totally scratchbuilt from plain plasticard.

It's not perfect, but for a first attempt I'm pretty pleased.

So would I be! Highly commendable - look forward to more.

[railwayjim]

Totally agree with Ex-Pat, you should be well pleased with your results, superb work!

Jim.

[carnehan]

Are you kidding FS123? All of that coach is scratch built? It's brilliant and for a first attempt it's even better. You have every right to be proud of it. I have studied and re-studied those pictures over and over again. I'm very impressed. Well done you.

Paul

[flying scotsman123]

Thanks for the kind comments everyone, when you spend so long looking at something all you notice are the things you're not happy with! Got a couple more with fully painted sides but unassembled and two more than have just been cut on the silhouette portrait that haven't even been fully cut out yet, so wll take some progress shots next time.

[PinkNosedPenguin]

You built that entirely out of plain plasticard (except bogies) ???
Wow
And, yes please, some photos in-progress would be very interesting to see . . .

[Dad-1]

Impressive work and with built in lighting !!
Can't think of much more to say ... others have already said.

Geoff T.

[Bufferstop]

Wow...................

[flying scotsman123]

Cheers, will try and pop some photos up on Sunday of some of the bits and pieces.

[mattmay05]

Some nice work so far here, sadly that is the downside of plasticard... its warps... bends and distorts over time, I remember when I attempted a similar thing with the LNWR obo car, luckily other things came up and I left it, 2 years later I came back and mine had bent the opposite way to yours. Sometimes can be helped with using certain glues that doesn't heat up the surface to cause a reaction to melt them together.

But it's all a learning exercises and experimentation to get the best results.

[flying scotsman123]

Hi Matt,

I'm fairly convinced the warping I did experience was totally due to factors when constructing the coach, and I hope I have adjusted accordingly. Overall bending in the plane of the side of the coach is not a problem for me, as I have lots of inner compartment walls - between 6 and eight depending on layout, which prevents this from being a problem - especially as I've found the sides almost always bend inwards rather than outwards. Of course you wouldn't have had the luxury of increased structural rigidity with a saloon, and I certainly would not be as confident constructing coaches like this if they were of an open design, because, as you say, I would be afraid that structural integrity would be lost with just a floor, roof and two ends and maybe one partition holding it together.

The other warping I experienced I have solved by keeping layers clamped together in a flower press whilst the layers have been glued together. So far this has been successful.

[flying scotsman123]

I said I'd do a little more detail as to how I construct my coaches. Seeing as it's the Easter holidays I can be fairly certain of making good progress so hopefully I'll do it in a few successive posts rather than one long one as I usually do.

I won't go into the computer and machinery work unless anyone wants me too, as it tends to be quite user specific depending on what software you use etc. So this is almost what comes out of the silhouette portrait cutter:



I say almost because most of the plastic bar the beading is too thick for it to cut through, so it scores and I follow with a knife. the top layer is the inner most and is 30 thou, middle is 20 thou and beading is 10 thou. cutting through the 20 thou isn't too bad but all those windows through 30 thou can get a bit tiresome, so I tend to do in small spurts, interspersing with homework!

Immediately once I've done this the beading and 20 thou layer are glued together using solvent. I'd recommend not going wild with it at this stage, as the beading can begin to dissolve! Whenever I'm not working on the sides I store them in a flower press to minimise warping. Once that's done this layer gets a coat of gold spray paint, follow by a coat of crimson, finally finishing off with my NSR madder lake brush painted on. The Crimson spray paint is to provide a better colour base for the madder top coat, as it's quite thin and I have limited supplies.

The 30 thou layer is painted a browny tan colour around the window frames on one side and entirely on the other side. Glazing is put over the windows on the inner side, but not the droplights. Then the two layers are glued together again using solvent, and stored in the flowerpress until everything has cured.



Here I've also painted the toilet windows white (on the inside) and put the hinges and door handles on. These come on brass frets, and are rather small and fiddly. They are cut free with a heavy knife, and then with a finer knife a hole is stabbed into the carriage side where it goes, and the hinge or handle then pressed in using a combination of tweezers and fingernails. To save frustration, it's best to accept that you will lose some!

Then comes the difficult part - putting the bits together to make the main body. All edges are chamferred to about 45 degrees then each side is glue to and end, using some 90 degree plastic angle to help. the turnunder is bent and then solvent aplied to hold it in place. Once the outer sides are all glued together the long sides will probably bend inwards quite a lot. So compartment walls are glued in of the same profile as the ends but about 1mm narrower either side to account for the thickness of the sides. the body is clamped and compartment walls glue in:



This can be frustrating as this is also how I form the turnunder, the bottom half of the sides being stuck to the profile of the internal walls. I recommend liberal use of solvent, and allow things to cure completely before moving on to the next one or it'll probably ping out again. I'm currently about half way through this task, so will post more later when things have moved on a bit.

[flying scotsman123]

Continuing on with coach building, Once all the inner walls are in, the solebar is fitted:



The main solebar is thick strip plastic about 1mm winder than you want
First the end solebars are fitted, as they have rounded ends that stick out. A small notch is cut at either end to allow a small amount of overlap between the body and the solebar for gluing. Then the sides are done, cutting to fit. The inner compartment walls are fitted such that they don't quite line up with the floor and so provide a guide to fitting the solebar here. Once that's on two bits of plastic microstrip are glued right along the length, one butting up to the bottom of the coach body and the other in line with the bottom of the solebar. Finally holes were drilled for buffers and then fitted.

Next is to sort out the underframe. The plastic base was cut out of thick plastic, but still flexible, as it doesn't really matter. I don't really have any drawings of what it's supposed to look like underneath so I've just sort of made it up:



It's a few whitemetal components, some brass ware and some plasticard cut for the hangers. This will all get sprayed black (easier to spray than brush for this) once I've fitted the bogie baseplates. The bogies are ratio LNWR ones which you can buy separately from their coaches. They go together quite well but some bits are a bit fiddly, so that's what I'm off to do now.

Still a way to go but it's looking more like a coach and less like a kit of parts and flat bits of plastic now!

[Dad-1]

Good Going FS123,

I wouldn't have the courage to start a project like this.
Too many places for it to go wrong, yet if you don't try
you can never succeed.

Geoff T.

[flying scotsman123]

Cheers Geoff. Most of the time I've just sort of made it up as I've gone along, hoping for the best, and more often than not it's turned out alright.