Rust

Tidying up my study over the weekend I opened a box containing a locomotive build I started almost two years ago in December 2020, and which for some reason never made it to the blog. Given December 2020 was just a few months before our second son was born, my free time disappeared and I didn't get very far and the part built chassis get stored away in a box. Unfortunately time hasn't been particularly kind to the model, although it would appear that's my fault for not reading the instructions properly.

As you can probably tell from the photo this is the chassis for a 16mm scale locomotive, and it's constructed from laser cut steel pieces. Specifically this is one of I P Engineerings deluxe heavy duty dual gauge chassis. The kit this is part of has separate instruction sheets for the chassis and body and as I like to have the chassis running first I started by assembling the chassis.

The instructions were easy to follow and include numerous photos showing the chassis being built up with the raw steel pieces, and given that it will be completely hidden on the final model, I did just that and gave no thought to painting it. In retrospect I know steel rusts but this was the first time I'd used steel in a model build so didn't think anything of leaving it as it was. Clearly that was a mistake.

To be fair the first instruction on the sheet for building the body reads...

Start by preparing and painting the chassis components as the steel will eventually go rusty if it is not protected

which, as I now know, is completely accurate. But that brings us to something else I've never had to do before: remove rust from steel parts. There were some spare buffer plates in the kit which I don't need but which had also rusted so that gave me something to experiment on.

After a hunt around the Internet the most promising option, given what I had in the house, was just to spray on some WD-40 and then rub it down with a pan scrubber. As you can see this seems to work nicely. There is still some slight discoloration of the metal surface, but it looks pretty good to me. So next step for this kit will be to strip the chassis down completely, before removing all the rust, painting the parts and then re-assembly.

I Stand in Awe of...

As some of you may remember, back in 2018/2019 I designed a new Narrow Planet kit so that I could have a model of one of Alan Keef Ltd.'s K12 diesel locomotives; specifically AK6 of 1981. Having finished my model and produced the kit I then wrote two articles for Narrow Gauge and Industrial Railway Modelling REVIEW; one detailng the model and one the K12 class of locomotives. For that second article I was lucky in that I managed to persuade Alan Keef to write it with me. As the K12 was the first new locomotive design Alan Keef Ltd. produced the K12 class covered works numbers 2 to 7. Not long after that article was publshed (see issue 119 f the REVIEW) Alan told me he was going to continue documenting the locomotives the company had built. Originally he was intending to cover the first 100 locomotives, but a global pandamic got in the way, and instead he was able to cover the first 50 years of the company instead which amounts to 119 locomotives.

Having waited three years to see the book appear it was great to finally get hold of a copy on Saturday. Entitled "Half A Century of Locomotives from Alan Keef Ltd 1972-2022" and published by Lightmoor Press it's a nice hardback running to 160 pages, and was well worth the wait.

Looking at the cover it's nice to see a photo of AK6 (middle left) given that was the start of the journey for me building the model and then writing the article with Alan. Alongside the main content of the book are three pages towards the end which look at models people have built of the companies locomotives, and not only does that include my model of AK6 but the following lovely caption:

I stand in awe of Mark Greenwood for this model of a "K12", specifically AK 6, with a peat wagon in tow. Even this picture may show it as bigger than the actual model, as can be seen from the shot below of the locomotive alongside a 20p piece!

As you can probably imagine reading that for the first time made my day. I model first and foremost for myself, but it's nice when someone else appreciates my modelling or when I can make some of the things available as kits for others to enjoy.

Minor Surgery

Having finished painting the 10HP I thought it really needed a driver figure adding to help give a sense of scale. After a thorough search through the Dart Castings website I settled on using model MSV71 which is described as Industrial or Narrow Gauge Locomotive Driver. Interestingly Phil Parker bought and painted the exact same figure for one of his models recently; I think he probably made a better job of the painting, but I'm happy with how mine turned out.

I made some slight adjustments to the figure to make him a better fit. The least painfull change was to tweak his left arm so that it was resting on the brake wheel. The more painful surgery involved removing the toes on his left foot otherwise he fouled the worm gear which protrudes into the cab! Close up photos such as this are very cruel and in real life I'm more than happy with how he looks, and more importantly he really does help convay just how tiny the locomotive really is.

10HP Baguley: Dunkelgrün

Whilst I've started on preparing the body of Ivor for painting I thought I should refresh my memory as regards using the airbrush: I've only ever used it properly once. The obvious victim was the tiny 10HP Baguley that last appeared on this blog back in August of 2020. At some point I'd filed back the filler and added some primer so it was just a case of applying the main body colour with the airbrush. The suggestion is that originally they were pained olive green but looking through the Vallejo Model Air paints I quite liked 71.011 Armour Green; especially as I like the German label which reads Dunkelgrün. Once the main body colour had dried I then used my normal approach for wood to do the "cab" floor, and then a little light weathering to get to this:

The weathering is a little more obvious in real life even if the model is a lot smaller (it's tiny) and I'm really happy with how it turned out; especially as I had no issues with the airbrush

Unfortunately it's never going to be the best of runners so I think what I'm going to do is build a little diorama for it to sit in. I've not done any scenery work since I built the model of Blacketty Water back in 2015 so that should be a nice change.

Tidy Wiring

So the very last task to finish off the chassis was to tidy up the wiring. Because of the way the motor slides into the body I had to be careful to keep the wires running close to the gearbox and motor side, which was achieved with a bit of masking tape, and then it was just a simple case of shortening the wires and soldering them to the motor to give this...

Of course with the wiring done and the chassis finished the obvious thing to do was to check that it still fitted into the body, and that the body didn't cause a short or rub anywhere that would cause an issue.

And to that the only thing I need to say is "sheer tea cufff, sheer tea cuff" (goodness knows how best to spell that but feel free to leave suggestions in the comments).

(Hopefully) Smoother Motion

As I mentioned in the previous post I think the poor running in one direction was down to the gearbox being able to rock on the axle when travelling one way but not the other. In an attempt to fix that I've bent the retaining clip slightly and added a small bit of masking tape as a shim to try and reduce the rocking as far as I can.

It's still not perfect but I think that's quite a bit better than before. The eagle eyes amongst you may spot that I've also painted the wheel centres and coupling rod retaining nuts red to match the drawings in my book. Just the wiring left to tidy up now.

Coupling Rods: Now with Nuts

In my previous post, having quartered the wheels I tested the chassis with the coupling rods just slipped over the pins. The next step was to add the retaining nuts that will keep the rods from falling off to then cut the pins to length.

Before fixing the rods in place I double checked both rods, removing some slight burrs from the washers that keep them from rubbing the face of the wheels, and opened out the holes in the rods slightly. With the nuts just resting in place this seemed to work nicely so I took the plunge and carefully applied some Loctite 243 to fix the nuts in place. The excess crank pin was then carefully cut away with a jewellers saw.

After a little panic where it wouldn't move at all (one of the wires had come loose from the motor; they aren't soldered on yet) I was more than relieved to see it still working nicely. You may notice it moves smoother left to right than it does right to left. After watching it closely this seems to be becuase the gearbox can rock slightly on the axle when moving right to left as the retaining bracket I fitted doesn't hold it as tight as the chassis does when going the other way. I think that should be easy enough to tweak though.

So next steps are to fix the gearbox retaining bracket, clean up and paint the coupling rod retaining nuts, and then tidy up the wiring. After all that the chassis will be finished!