Re: Heljan Class 26 Superdetailing project
Posted: Fri Jun 24, 2016 9:20 pm
I’m having difficulty in believing that it’s been so long since I entered an update to this tread, but then again, progress has been stilted a little with trying to work through some of the challenges that it presented, and some of these are still to be fully addressed. But I’ll present a synopsis of where I’ve got to... if nothing else, it’s taken my mind off the referendum result.
One other admission is that whilst I thought I’d been downloading the images off my phone, it appears that I wasn’t as rigorous at this as intended and I’ve had to pull a couple back from facebook to fill-in where I deleted images off the phone to create more storage space whilst I was on holiday. So there’s a lesson learnt! And yes, I’ve paid more attention to making and saving back-ups now.
The majority of my focus has been on the bufferbeams, and making use of etched mini ploughs instead of the provided plastic (and rather clunky) units. Whilst putting these together was quite straightforward, there is little in the way of provision to actually attaching them to the bufferbeam.
The outer pieces are attached to a central plate that is intended to affix to the rear of the plastic bufferbeam for various Bachmann classes (20, 37 and 47) and Hornby 31, but not for the 26. Fortunately the ploughs are fairly standard (although those used on a 33 are smaller), so its just a case of adapting (cutting away bits that are in the way) the best fitting attachment (class 20) to suit the back of the bufferbeam. The outer ploughs were also only attached via a single bent etch frame. This does work, but it’s not overly stable, and I didn’t think it’d stand up to much handling. The real ploughs are attached at two points, so I set about devising a means to represent the inner frames in addition to the outer ones. I abandoned the idea of gluing a plastic piece cut to the right shape; it’d just not be robust enough. So, I resorted to carefully soldering on an angle piece of etch fret (cut to size and shape)... taking care not to melt too much of the originally soldered attachments, and this was then added to with a little detailing to better represent the frames. These were now much stronger and more representative of the real ploughs, so a bit of a win-win, and position-wise they seem fine.
The inner piece of the plough was a bit more of a challenge; the two thin strips supplied for attachment were of little use, so I removed these and after studying several photos, after which I opted to cut two notches in the upper face and strongly solder two pieces of wire behind the face of the plough and angle these to make brackets. The bufferbeam had two holes drilled in its face either side of the coupling hook mount, into which the bent-wire brackets were pushed (and their length trimmed to suit). The result was a fairly strong attachment, which whilst not as finescale as I’d like it, was probably a good compromise between strength and scale given the parts that I had to work with.
I actually constructed these in the reverse order (now that I’ve looked at my photos), and to aid the construction of the extra brackets for the outer ploughs involved making a holder – actually I just cut two single slots in a piece of soft wood to hold the brackets upright.
Having removed the provided cosmetic couplings, which I felt were a little weedy, I started to remove other bufferbeam components. The buffer heads were removed and put away (with their springs) and the multiple working jumper cable, which attaches to the body once assembled, was pondered upon as the plastic “loop” would be prone to stress on continued flexing.
I decided to cut the heads off the loop and hollow-out the ends to enable the loop to be fashioned from a length of shirring elastic which would be more pliable.
The new exactoscale working screwlink couplings were constructed, attempting to follow instructions found elsewhere on this forum and partly from memory. The last time I made one of these, instructions were available (from the website?) but they’re not hosted by C&L so it’s a bit more trial and error... but it did come together. The hook is filed to an oval profile and then I used a piece of bluetack to hold one of the small heads whilst I threaded it on the drawbar, and the whole process is quite fiddly, but worthwhile.
A couple of final pictures show the completion of the underframe tank mounts and attachments that I covered before, along with the battery box clips that were made using small pieces of etch fret soldered together (that was fiddly) and added to with bits of plastic rod section and evergreen strip. These were attached to the underside of the chassis to sit with the tanks once reattached.
One final point to cover on the body: I fitted the roof fan grill (2-piece extreme etchings parts) and then gave the overall body a coat of Halfords primer, that was carefully rubbed down and discrepancies tidied. I wanted to give the inner section of the radiator housings a coat of blue before attaching the very-fine radiator mesh/grill.
This was achieved, but I found that the mesh (once offered up) had suffered a few failures in the mesh. Brian had let me have these as a trial of the first batch, most of which were showing problems in the production and he was hoping to be able to resolve this in the future, so this was a first (pre-production?) batch, and whilst these two had looked reasonable at normal viewing distance, especially under the lights at scaleforum, but later, under a closer scrutiny of the magnifying glass, it was clearer that there were some gaps were noted.... but then again it was also possible to see the fidelity of the superb weave of the etched mesh which really wont show up on the photos... but it’s a work of art. Hopefully, the meshes will attain the usual high quality and we'll be back on track.
I need to get some primer on the bufferbeams and then I’ll be able to do some provisional reassembly checks before pressing on with the next stage of assembly and detailing of the bufferbeams.
Thanks for reading and for bearing with me whilst I continue to plod my way through this lengthy project.
One other admission is that whilst I thought I’d been downloading the images off my phone, it appears that I wasn’t as rigorous at this as intended and I’ve had to pull a couple back from facebook to fill-in where I deleted images off the phone to create more storage space whilst I was on holiday. So there’s a lesson learnt! And yes, I’ve paid more attention to making and saving back-ups now.
The majority of my focus has been on the bufferbeams, and making use of etched mini ploughs instead of the provided plastic (and rather clunky) units. Whilst putting these together was quite straightforward, there is little in the way of provision to actually attaching them to the bufferbeam.
The outer pieces are attached to a central plate that is intended to affix to the rear of the plastic bufferbeam for various Bachmann classes (20, 37 and 47) and Hornby 31, but not for the 26. Fortunately the ploughs are fairly standard (although those used on a 33 are smaller), so its just a case of adapting (cutting away bits that are in the way) the best fitting attachment (class 20) to suit the back of the bufferbeam. The outer ploughs were also only attached via a single bent etch frame. This does work, but it’s not overly stable, and I didn’t think it’d stand up to much handling. The real ploughs are attached at two points, so I set about devising a means to represent the inner frames in addition to the outer ones. I abandoned the idea of gluing a plastic piece cut to the right shape; it’d just not be robust enough. So, I resorted to carefully soldering on an angle piece of etch fret (cut to size and shape)... taking care not to melt too much of the originally soldered attachments, and this was then added to with a little detailing to better represent the frames. These were now much stronger and more representative of the real ploughs, so a bit of a win-win, and position-wise they seem fine.
The inner piece of the plough was a bit more of a challenge; the two thin strips supplied for attachment were of little use, so I removed these and after studying several photos, after which I opted to cut two notches in the upper face and strongly solder two pieces of wire behind the face of the plough and angle these to make brackets. The bufferbeam had two holes drilled in its face either side of the coupling hook mount, into which the bent-wire brackets were pushed (and their length trimmed to suit). The result was a fairly strong attachment, which whilst not as finescale as I’d like it, was probably a good compromise between strength and scale given the parts that I had to work with.
I actually constructed these in the reverse order (now that I’ve looked at my photos), and to aid the construction of the extra brackets for the outer ploughs involved making a holder – actually I just cut two single slots in a piece of soft wood to hold the brackets upright.
Having removed the provided cosmetic couplings, which I felt were a little weedy, I started to remove other bufferbeam components. The buffer heads were removed and put away (with their springs) and the multiple working jumper cable, which attaches to the body once assembled, was pondered upon as the plastic “loop” would be prone to stress on continued flexing.
I decided to cut the heads off the loop and hollow-out the ends to enable the loop to be fashioned from a length of shirring elastic which would be more pliable.
The new exactoscale working screwlink couplings were constructed, attempting to follow instructions found elsewhere on this forum and partly from memory. The last time I made one of these, instructions were available (from the website?) but they’re not hosted by C&L so it’s a bit more trial and error... but it did come together. The hook is filed to an oval profile and then I used a piece of bluetack to hold one of the small heads whilst I threaded it on the drawbar, and the whole process is quite fiddly, but worthwhile.
A couple of final pictures show the completion of the underframe tank mounts and attachments that I covered before, along with the battery box clips that were made using small pieces of etch fret soldered together (that was fiddly) and added to with bits of plastic rod section and evergreen strip. These were attached to the underside of the chassis to sit with the tanks once reattached.
One final point to cover on the body: I fitted the roof fan grill (2-piece extreme etchings parts) and then gave the overall body a coat of Halfords primer, that was carefully rubbed down and discrepancies tidied. I wanted to give the inner section of the radiator housings a coat of blue before attaching the very-fine radiator mesh/grill.
This was achieved, but I found that the mesh (once offered up) had suffered a few failures in the mesh. Brian had let me have these as a trial of the first batch, most of which were showing problems in the production and he was hoping to be able to resolve this in the future, so this was a first (pre-production?) batch, and whilst these two had looked reasonable at normal viewing distance, especially under the lights at scaleforum, but later, under a closer scrutiny of the magnifying glass, it was clearer that there were some gaps were noted.... but then again it was also possible to see the fidelity of the superb weave of the etched mesh which really wont show up on the photos... but it’s a work of art. Hopefully, the meshes will attain the usual high quality and we'll be back on track.
I need to get some primer on the bufferbeams and then I’ll be able to do some provisional reassembly checks before pressing on with the next stage of assembly and detailing of the bufferbeams.
Thanks for reading and for bearing with me whilst I continue to plod my way through this lengthy project.