47206 - The Fully Sprung, Hybrid Class 47

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James Wells
Posts: 123
Joined: Sun Oct 24, 2010 4:03 pm

Re: Merry Christmas!

Postby James Wells » Sun Dec 25, 2016 8:33 pm

iak wrote:Hae a guid James and I trust the clan is well; junior engineman and all.


Thanks Iain!

I do find Christmas a very stressful time for year but so far so good!

A couple of nice bits of 'train porn' will certainly help! :D

Albert Hall
Posts: 379
Joined: Mon Nov 23, 2009 9:22 pm

Re: Merry Christmas!

Postby Albert Hall » Mon Dec 26, 2016 8:12 am

James Wells wrote: ...looks like C&L did quite well out of Christmas by virtue of the track supplies I now have ready for my layout!


Indeed, sales have been very robust in most scales and gauges in the lead up to Christmas which hopefully bodes well for the future of the hobby. In fact I spent Xmas day making up an order for Exactoscale based 'narrow gauge' track ready to be sent out in a few days.

On behalf of the team, (Jenny, Luke, Jim, Mike and Ed the dog) we wish you all a very Merry Christmas (what's left of it) and every success with your modelling projects in the coming year. :thumb

Roy

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James Wells
Posts: 123
Joined: Sun Oct 24, 2010 4:03 pm

Re: Merry Christmas!

Postby James Wells » Fri Jan 20, 2017 5:57 pm

I've read in magazines and on the net that people have Christmas projects and get lots done over the festive period - I presume they must have quite boring Christmases as with two small children there is just no time for, well, anything really. So despite being off between Christmas and New Year for the first time in the entirety of my working life so far I managed virtually no modelling whatsoever!

IMGP1686 - Small.JPG


Since little people have returned to school, life has settled down a little and I have managed to steal a bit of modelling time!

My next project is 37048, a regular in North Lincolnshire at one time -

https://www.flickr.com/photos/blue-diesels/17863254116/

This is one of the original 37/0 releases which has a few issues - the nose, to my eyes is lacking in depth. Available drawings seem to back this up but the available drawings aren't always particularly good elsewhere but combined with photos and other sources I think this has been the right way to go. The headcodes boxes aren't deep enough either (and sit slightly too high I think but I've not addressed this on this occasion) and have had a 10 thou plate to extend them ever so slightly with an etched blanking plate over them. The bodysides have had various bits filled and removed to up date the body to 1990s condition.

The fan on these models was a hideous thing which clearly was simply to satisfy those who wanted a see through grille. The hole which is left is overscale so I have added a ring 20thou Plastikard to reduce its size but also produces a rather nice, and prototypical, cowling for the replacement fan. Not my idea but stolen from Paul Marshall-Potter!

The views shows the work associated with blending in the Shawplan windscreens and backing plates rather well.

IMGP1694 - Small.JPG


There's a bit of a way to go as you can see!
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Craig Warton
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Re: More Class 37s

Postby Craig Warton » Fri Jan 20, 2017 9:32 pm

Looking really good James.

I had three weeks off and did " a bit". The trouble was that the weather here was hot - over 40 degrees most days and wallowing in the pool was far easier to accomplish than modelling!

Craig W

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James Wells
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Joined: Sun Oct 24, 2010 4:03 pm

Re: More Class 37s

Postby James Wells » Sat Jan 21, 2017 9:47 pm

Craig Warton wrote:Looking really good James.


Thank you!

Craig Warton wrote:I had three weeks off and did " a bit".


I reckon I could have managed some with three and a half weeks off! I normally only get Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

Craig Warton wrote:The trouble was that the weather here was hot - over 40 degrees most days and wallowing in the pool was far easier to accomplish than modelling!


You can go off people you know! ;)

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James Wells
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Re: More Class 37s

Postby James Wells » Sat Feb 18, 2017 3:25 pm

IMG_20170217_152714.jpg
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James Wells
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Re: More Class 37s

Postby James Wells » Tue Mar 19, 2019 9:32 am

I've not posted on here for a long time, this is my latest project to be finished - this is what I posted on my blog but it might be of interest to some of you in The Society...

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Despite the various newer versions on the class 47, I still really like the Lima model. The work Gareth Bayer did with them was an inspiration, and continues to be so. Of course I have used the Heljan model too (see Model Railway Journal no. 258 and here) and the Danish model runs beautifully, but it does have its problems as we well know - but what if we combined the two? And maybe refined it all with Penbits bogies and lots of Shawplan parts? Well, 47206 is the result of this collection of parts.

Recently I've seen people online saying there's no point in rebuilding older examples of ready to run models - well I think these people are wrong. With the right starting point, by carefully choosing one which is good and dimensionally accurate, you can achieve something which is better than the newer RTR items. It needs practice of course, but no one is born with a soldering iron in their hand, are they?

It might be a big claim that we can make older models into models which surpass the newer crop of models, but what I can confidently say is that we can make them to a higher spec - and the beauty of this approach is you can make them to the exact specification to suit your own needs. Want fully sprung running gear in P4? No problem. Want to build the underframe to fit your preferred speakers for sound? Easy. There's a lot to be said for making your own things. Even if suggesting others do so brings an odd form of aggression... This project is all about making the best of all we have available to us and, hopefully, really capturing the feel of the real thing. This particular model combines the beautiful tooling of the Lima body with a smooth and heavy chassis - the ideal combination I think.

This model is 47206 as it was in 1992, before it gained its The Morris Dancer name. This is nondescript RfD loco, nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary. Exactly the sort of thing which we remember from watching trains back in the nineties.

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The front of the loco, freshly painted and the glazing fitted.

The Heljan chassis runs very well, even if it is a bit heavy of current. In its unaltered form, the A1A-A1A wheel arrangement suits EM and P4 standards very well with that little bit of flexibility where some all wheel drive diesel models can struggle, even in 00 from what I've read. So you could easily retain its mechanical arrangement as is but there's one huge problem.

It's too wide to fit the Lima body!

This is where our friend Mick Nicholson came in. Mick is well known as both a historian and railway modeller, as well as another signalman, though no retired. I guarantee that you will have seen a layout at a show featuring his signals. The Gresley Beat immediately comes to mind. He has machine tools too!

He kindly agreed to modify the chassis block for me - this entailed taking off 0,5mm/20 thou off each side.

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The chassis which Mick very milled down for me - notice the holes he has drilled in the casting to allow it to easily be mounted on the table of the milling machine.

I finished off the chassis by filing the ends to fit the cabs/ends of the body - you could probably achieve the whole thing by using files, but milling it is undoubtedly quicker and neater. Mick made a superb job of it too - the body pitted beautifully as a result. And then the fun really began!

Unlike the first Lima rebuild, 47294 the body required the buffer beams and associated valances to be removed as the chassis would retain these - all the time it needed checking against the chassis to ensure a good fit which looked 'right' at the same time. Very little work beyond removing the centre lugs inside the body was required to make the body fit the chassis, the outer lugs, below the body side windows actually engage in gaps in the Heljan chassis!

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The body being test fitted to the chassis - you can see the new parts around the cabs quite clearly.

The body is actually a toy fair purchase - one of a pair I bought on a whim. Though once work started, it was actually a little rough beneath the ridiculously thick BR blue paintwork so the surfaces required more prep work before painting than I would have liked but the body was one of a pair bought for three pounds. Three quid!

Although I've covered the work on Lima bodies before, I think it's worth explaining it again. The Lima cab window frames are terribly heavy and spoilt things so they need to be removed. Completely. The cab side windows are too tall, but this is easily sorted - the corners require squaring off a two strips of Plastikard reduce the height of the opening. 20 thou at the top and 10 thou at the bottom.

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The new cab details can clearly be seen - the window frames, handrails, light surrounds and new headlight.

The nose requires 'flattening' slightly, a Jim Smith-Wright suggestion - this helps improve the face of the loco significantly. It needs only doing slightly - use photos as a guide to gauge how much you need to do.

The Lima model does have another issue in this area. The horn cowling leans back, rather than leaning forward. Cut as close as you dare behind the moulded louvres with a piercing saw. The isolated piece is then angled forward, gently, a little at a time and pieces of Plastikard wedged in behind it. Once in about the right position, the packing pieces need to be solvent welded in place – after they’ve set, they can be cut back and everything sanded smooth with a bit of filler to tidy it all up. It makes a huge difference.

Shawplan's window surrounds are etched in very thin stainless steel so need to be handled very carefully but they do make a huge impact to the overall look - thin superglue holds them in place without risking clogging the detail. The most critical thing is to make sure the windscreen surrounds are added symmetrically, otherwise the model will forever look like it's winking at you! Take care to make sure the various windows sit at the right angles and in the right plane, it all helps capture that elusive character. I'm actually building a 7mm scle/O gauge class 47 from a PRMRP kit for the Railway Museum at the moment and when you're presented with flat etchings for the various parts, this is when you realise how complex diesels are in terms of the various angle, complex and compound curves which help define their look.

Handrails were added next, in the same way as the previous class 47s - even on newer RTR models, replacement handrails can make quite a difference, but here, replacing the moulded items is a must. I really like using 0.3 mm nickel silver wire from Eileen's Emporium. The headlights came from Replica, these are absolutely superb mouldings. I was dissatisfied with the plain lights on my original Lima conversion at the number one end so I reamed the lights out to take a suitable sized tube of Evergreen tube which itself was reamed out to leave a thin wall of it to represent the rubber surrounds that hold the glass lenses in place - at the number two end the marker light surrounds came from a Shawplan etch. It's little details like this which really do help us capture the feel of the real thing, all the little variations and quirks that real locos have.

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It would have been quite easy to keep the chassis pretty much as it came or use the simple upgrades I described in MRJ 258, however this wasn't going to be one of these projects. Oh no! I like to complicate things!

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The underframe jig - this made things much quicker and easier.

Instead of adapting the existing underframe mouldings I decided to scratch build my own underframe. Why? I'm not sure now but it seemed to be the best way to proceed and having heavily modified the Lima underframes previously, this isn't such a leap - Gareth's method can be adapted for this sort of project. So instead using parts of a moulded underframe this requires the framing to be built around its own false floor. It also needed the water tanks to be built from scratch.

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The basic underframe assembly - these are the water tanks awaiting the Lima battery boxes.

The jog was used to make the various parts required for the tanks - Gareth's original from UpDate gives a good overview of what's needed. The basic dimensions can be checked from drawings but photos and educated guesses helped get things to the right shape and angles. It's not high fidelity stuff! But it works, well I hope it does!

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Test fitting one of the battery boxes.

I used Lima battery boxes as they're very good, better than anything I could make in any reasonable amount of time anyway. It's really just an exercise in simple scratchbuilding, an extension of Gareth's original method.

Image The unpainted underframe.

The pictures speak for themselves really - you can see how the whole thing goes together. Though, to be honest, I'm not overly satisfied with it. Seeing what Jon Hughes has done with Bachmann mouldings got me thinking. Given how helpful Bachmann's spares department is, it shouldn't be difficult to get spare mouldings for the full tank versions. Given how good Jon's looks, though he is a very talented modeller, then this may be a better way to go for future models? That's for the next one, but click here and be blown away by Jon's model! He's ridiculously talented!

Once in primer the underframe doesn't look too bad - it was airbrushed rather than from an aerosol to avoid clogging any of the smaller parts - unfortunately it was only after it had been painted and then weathered that I realised I'd forgotten the gauges on the side of the tanks. Perhaps a reflection of how I wasn't truly convinced by my chosen method? Too late for 47206 though.

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The completed underframe in primer.

One area of the project I was very pleased with running gear.

My liking of Penbits parts should be quite obvious from other projects. Ian Penberth's kits are absolutely excellent, they go together beautifully. In the case of this loco, the new brake gear makes a huge difference - the Heljan bogie sideframes have rather poor and basic brake details. One way to deal with it is to remove much of it, its absence actually improves things. However the Penbits' brake gear is absolutely superb. I did reinforce the brake gear at the outer ends to help it withstand handling and the occasional knock as well as my natural clumsiness! Apart from this I built it exactly as the instructions told me to do so. If only other kits were as user friendly as this!

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Penbits Sprung Bogies -the complete unit on the left and, to the right, the three main subassemblies.

Inside of painting it I blackened the whole thing with Birchwood Casey Gun Blue, it gives a lovely, very dark grey finish which has a slightly warm feel to it which is a perfect base weathering. Plus it doesn't clog any of our nice fine details!

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Speaking of details, the bogie pipework makes a nice addition, even though it's a real faff at times - worth the effort I think. Little things like this make a real difference - even more so when all the little touches start coming together. But you can't rush them. So a good hour or so bending 5amp fuse wire to shape and carefully attaching it to the sideframes - tiny bits of 5thou Evergreen styrene sheet represent the brackets very well. Thoughts of bolt detail sensibly went out of the window, though inside the loco this sense didn't prevail! But the final parts to be added to the bogies were the foot steps. I had considered using the PH Design steps but I worried how well they'd stand up to handling, so the Heljan steps went back on. A little bit of work with files improves and sharpens up their appearance rather nicely.

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In Primer.

Where sense didn't prevail was in the cabs.

I decided to improve the depth of the cab interiors, the false floor is very obvious through the replacement windows. It used most of the Heljan cab interiors, desks, rear walls and seats. When I sent a friend the photo of them first sorted, he jokingly asked where the power and brake handles were. The next day he got a photo of them in place! It was a joke but the result is very pleasing. The Modelu figure's hand lines up with the controls very nicely too and it can be seen easily on the finished model too.

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Cab Interior - note the loco controls!

There's nothing really unusual about the finishing of the loco - nothing I've not described before. I worked from photos of the loco as it was in the summer of 1992. Flickr is an excellent source! I just wanted to create something of the everyday, nothing special just a typical RfD machine, albeit with oddly spaced numbers!

Given how I've seen so many people dismiss older models as not worth the effort - people often seem to focus on the new rather than the best starting point - I do hope that this project is so. It's got a spec and refinements in excess of most RTR models and it's tailored to my own preferences.

But most importantly, does it capture the feel of the real thing?

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The completed loco - a very everyday, nondescript RfD loco. Nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary, but what would we give to see these running like this every day now?!

Jeremy Good
Posts: 278
Joined: Fri Feb 19, 2010 10:36 pm

Re: 47206 - The Fully Sprung, Hybrid Class 47

Postby Jeremy Good » Tue Mar 19, 2019 11:13 am

James

Thanks for posting this - the work on the underframe tanks makes a huge difference to the finished project and the whole thing goes to show what can be done with a little extra effort, even on some of the older RTR mouldings.

Unfortunately for me, it has just highlighted the growing dissatisfaction I was having with the underframe mouldings on a Heljan one I'd started springing at the weekend - I don't think I'll be able to leave the underframe tanks alone now!

Thanks for showing the way and raising the bar, again.

Jeremy


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