Auchentogle Workbench

[37Oban]

2 hours ago, SC55015 said:

I was a very active traveller on the West Highland Line at the time, but I can't ever remember travelling on it, sadly. I do remember being on some of the Queen Street bound trains with it attached to the rear heading back to Eastfield for servicing though.

I didn't travel on it either, as I was working at the time and my days off always seemed to coincide with it's servicing forays to Eastfield, and odd occasion they didn't match I was heading to Mull or meeting friends!

 

Having said that, the first time I saw it I was walking to Taynuilt and couldn't believe my ears when I heard it approaching!

 

Roja  

[Glencoe Model Railway]

I was lucky to have traveled on it many times, mainly from Oban to Taynuilt and back to visit my Granny. I usually went out on the morning one and back on the afternoon. Was a great boost to the line and if I remember correctly, it connected with the GQS to FTW services. 
 

Looking forward to seeing this progress

[SC55015]

Underframes
These required some chopping away of the plastic at the cab end where it fits inside the new cab. I added the two vertical strips to the headstock, the horizontal one should not be there, it's a stopper for fitting the body. In hindsight I could have cut out the centre section between the new vertical section and it would still serve its purpose. A hole has been drilled for a hook / three link coupling. There are replacement buffers in the 3D files but they were the original style, the Mexican Bean a later Oleo type and although these 110 ones are still wrong these were a closer match.

After I done all the fettling to fit work on the DMBS underframe  I remembered I had a bunch of spare centre car underframes obtained at a model railway show for peanuts many moons ago. There are replacement underframe components in the 3D files, but require the big hollow chunk of 110 underframe to be removed, then build up a base for the new parts. I wasn't going to bother, but the centre car underframes make this much easier, just chop odd a few components and the base is already there. So the DMSL having this work done.

Once flattened off the 3D parts were glued on. Maybe should have been a bit closer to the edge, but they look ok. The underframes, solebars, wheels and bogies were painted matt black to get rid of the plastic /  bare metal look. The outer face of the tyres on the wheels were painted white, as were the axlebox covers as an undercoat for yellow.

 

Windows
The cab windows have to be made from scratch, and the first step was to cut them roughly to size. These are from a CD case. The numbers, as well as identify them for the correct window and which way round, makes them more visible when they are dropped on the carpet.

 

The bodyside windows need the frames painting to match the body colours.

 

Body Shells
These have now had the cabs and roofs painted:

[NickL2008]

Nice, the 104 is looking good. I also got the STL files from thingverse but havnt got my own printer or had anyone who has been able to help. probably best asking Iron mink, or anyone on here who is able to print the files

 

NL

[SC55015]

16 hours ago, NickL2008 said:

Nice, the 104 is looking good. I also got the STL files from thingverse but havnt got my own printer or had anyone who has been able to help. probably best asking Iron mink, or anyone on here who is able to print the files

 

Thanks. You can also buy prints of these parts from ebay - just search for 104 cab!

[John Tomlinson]

Very interesting to read through this thread.

 

I've had two 104 sets as work in progress for years, both from Hornby 110's. The four car NER one is painted and lined, interiors modified and painted as well, all complete in fact except for the bl....dy windows! I've tried various sharpie pens for the green on the frames, but it hasn't really worked. Your projects indicate that I just need to man up to painting them, then using the cocktail stick with thinner to clean the edges. So hopefully I'll sit down and just do it!

 

Looking forward to seeing more of your work.

 

John.

[SC55015]

11 hours ago, John Tomlinson said:

I've had two 104 sets as work in progress for years, both from Hornby 110's. The four car NER one is painted and lined, interiors modified and painted as well, all complete in fact except for the bl....dy windows! I've tried various sharpie pens for the green on the frames, but it hasn't really worked. Your projects indicate that I just need to man up to painting them, then using the cocktail stick with thinner to clean the edges. So hopefully I'll sit down and just do it!

Thanks John.

The joy of acrylic paint is that you don't even need thinners, which could melt/stain the plastic - water is good enough.
For the maroon on this one, it was still acrylic but came from a rattle can, so water wasn't good enough. However - the plastic is really shiny, and once the paint has set a cocktail stick that has been softened (i.e. the end has been in water) - was able to take the extra paint off as it didn't stick to the shine too well!

[SC55015]

With the painting done it was transfer time.

 

The two cabs, just before varnishing. I'd used matt paint so far, not what is recommended for transfers but my options here are limited, and thankfully I had no issues with the them. I use satin varnish, and that added some shine to compensate for the matt finish.

 

The DMBS has had the side windows put back in and no smoking transfers added. Note one major problem I had - there is a black line between the maroon and white, and I didn't have transfers for that so I used a sharpie. Sadly, in some places the varnish caused the ink to run and streak - see above the ScotRail.  Thankfully it didn't run down into the white. The gutter face was also done with a sharpie. If I were to do again, I'd make sure I had black lining transfers. Or use the sharpie to add the lines after varnishing.

 

 

[MJI]

13 hours ago, SC55015 said:

Thanks John.

The joy of acrylic paint is that you don't even need thinners, which could melt/stain the plastic - water is good enough.
For the maroon on this one, it was still acrylic but came from a rattle can, so water wasn't good enough. However - the plastic is really shiny, and once the paint has set a cocktail stick that has been softened (i.e. the end has been in water) - was able to take the extra paint off as it didn't stick to the shine too well!

Bow pen

[SC55015]

First to be reassembled was the DMBS.

Since the last update, the work has involved: adding the cab windows; creating the destination blind and that thing in the middle window (listing the stations in each direction) that it often carried in 1985; cutting windows into the bulkhead at the rear of the cab; and adding the buffer beam detail.

In an earlier post I mentioned the horizontal bar on the headstock putting it back together it looked awful and I realised that that had to go.

 

Here is a hint at future DMU projects. It still has some way to go (the roof in particular needs the dome sorting), but I printed it with the 104 cabs to see how it was looking so far.
I'm having to learn to to use 3D drawing packages, so progress will be slow. But once the basic shape is done, this can be used for Class 120s, 126s and the 79xxx series Inter-City sets - they all shared the same form just with different arrangements of headcodes and marker lamps.