3mm Scale - Class 26 Diesel

Since I last mentioned the Class 26 model, it's received some transfers, a coat of matt varnish and a little bit of weathering. After a Krystal-Klear glazing session, the loco is ready to appear on the layout.

In the flesh it looks pretty good to me. I've learnt a lot by building it and generally enjoyed myself. At least I can say that there won't be many others out there that are exactly the same !

Needless to say, there are things that I would do differently if there were a next time:

• Use "Rail White" rather than normal white as it's less stark. The wash of track colour seems to have calmed it down a bit but the correct colour would have been better.
• Try and make the bogies narrower so the brackets that should dangle from the chassis outside of them could be modelled.
• Lower the chassis by  a millimetre or two. The "design" would require significant modification for me to do this now. The nuts are under the footplate and don't allow enough headroom to lift the bogies up. Mind you, this isn't nearly so obvious from normal viewing angles.
• Put some handrails on ? I left them off because they are flush with the sides and without a milling machine making a neat slot for them would be nigh on impossible. Perhaps a line from the bow-pen in silver ?

For all its faults, this model locomotive has turned out OK and will hopefully become a stalwart of the Flockburgh operating fleet. And it's another box out of the pile !

Body paint

Painting of the Class 26 begins with an all-over coat of white. The grey base coat of primer takes the edge off the glaring colour a little which suits my purposes.

Everything still looks OK (the camera is bit cruel in this respect) under the new paint. I'm tempted to say that I'm copying the livery from Lion, but that would be a step too far even for my fantasist tendencies !



My plan was to mask off the bodyside line and windows, then spray with locomotive green. The grey roof will be hand painted as I can't be bothered to mask again and anyway, it's a colour that looks OK done this way. The waistline is cut from tape at 1mm tall. Probably too wide but as thin as I can manage by hand.



Back in the spraybooth, first I tired more white to seal the tape/body interface (how management consultant am I ?) and then on with some Precision loco green. Several light coats were sprayed and dried to get a depth of colour. Then I tentatively removed the tape, and it's not too bad. Perhaps I should have used Tamya tape as some of the edges are a touch more ragged than I'd like but generally, this looks OK. The wobbly bits by the front marker lights can be fixed by hand, they should be below the stripe but if they were, they'd be too low and the stripe has to be there to cross the side grilles at the right point.

Marker lights and disks

Time for a little nose detail on the Class 26 diesel. The marker lights had been drilled but I hadn't worked out exactly what I was going to do next to finish them off. At first I blanked the backs off with plasticard and though about using filler. Then I had a better idea. The holes were opened out to accept 2mm diameter rod. This was cut off square at the end and slid in place.

The end should finish so it is flush with the side of the hole - the body is curved at this point - so that the end is flat and recessed at one side. A wash of plastic glue inside and the job is done. A bit of micro-rod makes a suitable marker light in the housing.

The disks are 3.5mm diameter and cut from thin plasticard using a leather punch. Some are cut in half and all are fixed in place with superglue. Best of all the top ones sit over the join where I had to extend the nose door. I'd pretty much hidden this and then I realise I didn't need to do so as the disk does most of the work for me !

Whack on a coat of primer

After all the grille work, I had a fair bit of filling to do, especially on the sides of the Class 26 model. As I've mentioned before, the only way you can see what needs doing is to get the body into a single colour. Some might say I am a little premature with this as there is still work to do on the nose, but I'd argue that this is simply sticking disks on and if I needed to do any more filling and filing, it's easier without extraneous detail in the way.

A quick blast of Modelmates grey primer later, I had my answer. So I shoved some more green modelling putty in all the holes that had magically appeared and left the model to dry for a few hours.

After this a few minute attention with a big flat file (don't use a needle file for this) and emery board followed by another shot of primer and I think I'm as near there as I'll get. The loco still isn't perfect under the cruel eye of the camera but it's reasonable to the human eye. My locos are best described as "layout locos" after all since they are intended to be seen in the context of a bigger scene so while I'll do my best I try not to lose sleep over it. To my mind a reasonable model on the tracks is better than a perfect one that never gets completed.

How thick is your bodyshell ?

On the top of the Class 26 body there was a fair representation of the fan grille which could easily have been left alone, but after a bit of soul searching I decided it needed to go and be replaced with an etched replacement to keep the model consistent all over. Etched sides and a solid top would have seemed, odd. That and I found that a 4mm scale grille from a Class 17 would fit exactly on my 3mm scale loco...

First up I drilled a load of holes in the moulding. Then I tried to join them up by waggling a knife blade in these to join them up. This didn't seem to work so I dug out the piercing saw and used this.

One removed, the plug of waste turned out to be 4.5mm thick !

A quick clean up with a file and then the big tapered reamer sorted the inside. I pared away the top detail with a sharp knife. Finally the etched part was stuck in place. It looks a lit better and even comes with a little fan that I might paint up and fit at a later date.

Grille fitting

With the Class 26 grilles made, they had to be fitted into the locomotive sides. I'd already made the holes, filling them up with mash should be easy. Except it wasn't once I started measuring. There are a couple of "issues".

The first is that Class 33 grilles are larger than Class 26 ones. Not much buit a little narrower, enough to be visible if you know what you are looking for.

Second, the original body shell was less accurate than I expected. The grille, and therefore the hole I made, was a couple of mm longer on one side than the other. As you can see from the picture, the new grille would fall straight though !

The solution I decided on was to square up the hole properly and stick the front edge of the new grille in place. This seemed to be spot on for the position I required. Along the back edge a strip of 2mm plstic was fixed in place. I left this proud of the surface and once everything was dry, filed and sanded it back. Hopefully this will hide the repair although I won't know that until the primer is applied.

Grille making

The Class 26 diesel project has stalled slightly while I pondered the construction of the grille in the side of this 3mm scale model locomotive.

In 4mm, replacement of these is simple - cut old grilles out, removed etched replacements from packet, glue in place.

I don't have that opportunity. Lots of etched parts for the larger scale were examined and the only ones I found that looked like they might nearly do the job were still not close enough. That and at a fiver a side, they were more than I wished to pay for something that wasn't right.

So, I picked some cheap Class 73 grilles up with a view to using them for material. If I hadn't been so impetuous I might have waited until York and grabbed a pack of random grilles from the A1 models stand for less than the pair I bought, but then hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Anyway, option 1 was to make some frames up from thin plastic, and glue the etch to this. I gut the outside of the frames and then decided to abandon them since the metal part was stronger than the plastic that was supposed to be supporting it !

Starting again, the etches were cut with scissors to reduce them to size. Then a thin frame of microstrip stuck to the outside with superglue. On the reverse, more microstrip made a representation of the framing clearly seen on the real locomotive. Once dry, everything was filed to finish the job including a good sanding on the front to thin down the plastic as much as I dared.

Grille removal

More old style modelling. This time the removal of the grilles on the sides of this model locomotive body.

Those supplied look like they were glued on the side of the body when making the master. On the real loco they are flush with the body side. I wouldn't mind so much but they don't even look like they have been glued on perfectly square !

Anyway, removal is simple enough. Drill a lot of holes and then join them up by waggling a knife blade in each. Then file away the remaining plastic to leave a nice rectangular gap whilst simultaneously weakening the plastic molding. All I have to do then is fill it with some etched brass.

Now some of you are looking at this and thinking it's perfectly normal. Others are wondering what the hell I'm up to. It's been years since your Horbachmaeljan loco needed this sort of work carried out. This really is keeping the old skills alive !

Class 26 Nose job

Starting work on the Class 26 diesel, I get to make progress on the biggest difference between the Class 33 body and the loco I want to build - the nose.

As far as I can tell, the main change required is to add a set of doors in the middle of the face. These stick up into the windscreen, reducing the middle window by half it's height. For this I squared off the bottom of the window and made a plasticard door top. Above this is a bit of microstrip for the window frame. The construction was glued in place with superglue and left to set. Once dry, the area was filed away in an effort to loose the join.

Next, there was an odd line around the windows that extended back down the body. I suspect this dates from the era when plastic ridges were used to delineate the paint lines. You can see this on older models where there are odd ridges and lumps visible when the BR blue livery has been applied. You even see moulded square brackets to show the position of nameplates even when they aren't fitted. Back in the good old days, detailing articles were full of instruction to pare these lines off as a starting point to improving your model.

The other change to the nose is the back dating of the marker lights. The photo I'm working to show a couple of fixed lights and several discs. I've removed the moulded lumps and drilled the holes for the former. The later will appear a bit further down the detailing route. In the meantime the whole nose has been lightly sanded and the door sides marked with an Olfa Plasticard cutter.

Diesel dangly bits

Everyone focuses on a different thing when looking at a model (Oh err missus). For some, it't the chimney or roof detail, others the wheels and even some weirdos, the buffers.

For me, a diesel such as the Class 26 I'm working on at present, look empty without a collection of dangly bits on the buffer beam. For many years IMHO the best thing you could do to a RTR model was add brake pipes etc. You'll not be surprised to know that I don't really understand most of the bits or their purpose but it doesn't really matter, some of them need to be there.

In the 4mm world, you can pick up a nice detailing kit. In 3mm scale you have to do it yourself. Luckily the Plastruct rod I bought to do the springs is ideal. Being fat plastic with a wire core, it can be bent to shape but is fat enough to look right. The bends even wrinkle slightly which I think looks good. Pure wire would have been OK too but probably have require priming. I had to use it for the electrical (I think) loop under the buffer.

It's not a complete set of course but I haven't worked out how to do the screw coupling and will dig around for something suitable in the commercial world. It's going to be painted black anyway so adding it at a later date won't be a problem.

More underframe

A couple of hours with some packets from the Plastruct rack and bits of plasticard and I've manged to finish detailing the bogie sideframes on my 3mm scale Class 26 diesel. The results are still a bit wobbly but look good enough for me.

It's interesting to conside the different types of plastic. Cutting the brake cylinders was simply a matter of rolling the plastic rod along the cutting mat under the knife blade. Amazingly I managed to get the cuts square and pretty clean first time. OK, so I managed to ping off a few bits into the depths of the bench but since you have to buy packs of 5 lengths of rod and I needed about 20cm of it, I had enough spare to not be bothered looking.

Compared to the plasticard though, the material was quite brittle. This is brilliant for the job in hand but I wouldn't fancy working with a flat sheet of the stuff. From memory, Slaters put some rubber in the Plasticard^TM mix which makes it a lot easier to use.

Anyway, the sideframes look very nice on the model. I had to remove the fuel tanks and reposition them a bit as they were too close to one end once the bogies were finished. The important thing is that the area under the body is now full of plastic. I wonder if it's riding a bit high - maybe 4 thin washers under the bogie fixings would drop it down half a mm or so. Or maybe I'll leave well alone for the minute. I know the thing works on the layout as it is !

Class 26 steps

More fiddly work on the Class 26 diesel bogies. This time some cab steps. At least I was able to use some microstrip and not have to cut the stuff myself.

Truth be told, this probably is an area where bending a bit of brass strip to form everything except the middle step would have made more sense. However since I have very little of that (load of brass strip though) I ploughed on with the plastic and lots of solvent. The finished product are a little bit wobbly but when you look at the loco on the layout, as long as the step position is OK relative to the cab doors I think I'll get away with it.

On the plus side, those fake springs look nice don't they ? Even in close up the grooved rod looks pretty convincing.

Faking springs

For the Class 26 diesel sideframes, I can't be bothered to mess around with real springs. The things would be flying in all directions when I try to hold them and anyway, they cost money. I wanted something cheap and easy.

Since the sideframes are plastic, the obvious thing to do is to make the springs from the same material. At least it can be stuck with liquid glue. My cunning plan was to run an 8BA die up a plastic rod to give a nice grooved finish.

The biggest problem was to find the right rod. From the Plastruct display there are a couple of possibilities. The 2mm version worked well but it has a steel wire in the centre which made it impossible to cut, even with a piercing saw, to an accurate length.

Digging around in my materials pot I found a solid hard plastic rod. Not idea as I don't know exactly what the material is other than it seems to brittle for styrene. Getting the die up it was as tough as doing the same job on brass not helped by the difficulty holding the rod to stop it turning. I've no idea where this stuff came from, it might even have been salvaged from some rubbish, but I'll look out for some more in the future.

The results look nice to me. I'll stick them to the frames and let you know how I get on next week.

Class 26 sideframes - Part 1

I know the biggest challenge building the class 26 will be the bogie sideframes. I have wondered about buying something in but in the end stuck to my guns and will have a go at making them myself in plasticard.

The first job is to work out what the hell is going on down there. I'll be honest and admit I haven't really paid much attention to these parts - I've seen them of course but don't really know what most of the bits actually do. To this end my plan is to copy the 4mm Class 33 I have noting the changes from the photos of 26's on the workbench and modifying the plans accordingly.

To start, some 1mm thick plasticard has been marked up with the basic shape. At this point the curved bits are squared up as I want to keep things as simple as possible. Note how I've marked the waste in each as from experience it's easy to get confused and hack off the wrong bit.

Next, some of the corners are curved, probably not enough for the purist but then they probably model by whining on forums rather than chopping up plastic so they can shut up. The sideframes are edged with strips of very thin plastic cut by myself as I didn't have any suitable microstrip and couldn't be bothered to go and get some. In the photo I still have to trim the bottom bits back but you get the idea.

Axle boxes are made by punching holes with a leather punch. This gives circles of the right size (the tool allows you to select different sizes) which just have to be trimmed to fit the slot and glued in place with liquid glue.

So far so good. Now I need some springs.

Class 26 underbelly

Time for some "proper" modelling. Under the 3mm scale Class 26, I need some underframe details. To this end, lots of photographs have been wrenched from teh Interweb and plans photocopied.

I studied them really hard and then came up with a better idea. In a pile of modelling stuff is a Heljan Class 33 that I've borrowed. Turning it upside down in the Peco loco servicing cradle give me a good view of all those funny shaped bits under a diesel.

In thoery, it was just a case of measuring each item, dividing the lenth by 4 and multiplying it by 3. Well sort of.

The main fuel tank took me two goes but now the result looks pretty good. Of course, the Class 33 and 26 differ slightly, especially since I want an early 26. That's what the pictures, a bit of imagination and a realisation that in 3mm scale, no one can see all the detail, give me.

Class 26 on test

During the weekend, when there was a suitable 3mm fan occupying the barrier, I gave the Class 26 a run to see if it would do what I required of it.

The good news is, it does. In fact it does very well. The BullAnt bogies work smoothly and quietly. Far quieter than the Class 22 - it's like Brian Sewell compared to Brian Blessed. The regauged axles trundled through the pointwork apart from the unpowered one which lumps slightly on one point. They stay on the track though.

Haulage capacity is around 6 vans through a couple of reverse curves. With a bit more weight, it's just got a lump of leftover chassis casting in at present, this should go up to beyond the capacity of the layout.

The unfinished model attracted a lot of interest, in fact that's why it did so many trips around the model. People seem to be interested in seeing, rather than being told, how models are made. Not too many though, we don't want shows full of half-built models thank you. Please finished most of them thank you.

In fact I was well pleased, right up to the end of Sunday when a wheel fell off. Looks like I need to glue it before putting it back on.

Running Class 26 chassis

The basic chassis I described on Tuesday has now been beefed up and turned into something suitable for use on the layout.

First, I've added some much deeper rails along the sides. These are leftover from etched kits. They don't need to be anything like as deep but it didn't seem to be worth cutting them down. At least they will stop the chassis from bowing !

At the ends buffer beams are fitted. These aren't nice simple rectangles, the centre section is but there are "wings" at an angle coming off each end. Having spent a lot of time studing pictures it occured to me that I have a Heljan Class 33 model I've borrowed for a magazine project. Digging it out I was able to measure up the ones on the model and make something in metal and 3mm scale. A bit of tack soldering and then some filing resulted in nice looking ends. This makes me think I can copy a whole lot of other bits under the footplate later...

The BullAnt chassis work well, although in my stupidity I had to dismantle the non-powered one to get the insulated wheels on the same side all the way along the loco. And then reverse the pickups too. The biggest issue is the very thin wires and lack of access on the powered bogie to solder these in. The attachment point is hidden behind the flywheel requiring some delicate poking of the iron to do the job.

Finally, the body has to be attached. The plasticard pads on the side just slide into the shell and friction seems to be enough to hold it in place. For the moment anyway.

Starting the chassis

While the Class 26 has a body, there is nothing supplied in the way of a chassis. That's not a problem, this is a modellers scale after all, I just need to copy what the RTR manufacturers do. So I went out and bought a £100,000 injection moulding machine and got stu...

Hold on, no I didn't. I'm not spending that sort of money - I could buy the real thing for leass ! The basic idea of a RTR chassis is sound though - you have a separate tray holding the motor and unpowered bogie in place, on to which the body is clipped.

To replicate this all I do is cut out a rectangle of nickel silver and bend down the edge 1.5mm to reduce flexing. Out of this are cut two rectangles in which the bogies swing. I won't bore you with all the measurements take but the most important is working out the bogie centres. Everything else for the whole is relative to this. The bend up flap near the flywheel is what happens when you get the dimensions a bit wrong and need more hole. Of course if you ask, I'll swear it's a safety feature in case the flywheel explodes under high revs !

Class 26 diesel

Time for a new project, and one for me this time !

We need more locos for Flockburgh and as it happens, I have a few kits stashed away. First out of the box is this, a Bruce Smetham Class 33 Diesel body. It's cast in resin and as well as the body, there are some pretty horrible lumps for the bogie sides and tanks. My experience of Bruce's kits is that the under footplate bits were done on a bad day and escaped as seconds. Certainly I wouldn't expect him to put out anything that's more air bubble than resin !

Now, I don't need a Class 33 for a layout set in Scotland. My plan is to turn it into a Class 26. This is a conversion we used to do (well, other people, not me) in the old days in 4mm scale. Once upon a time you couldn't just buy everything off the shelf you know !

To make the model work, I've bought a set of BullAnt bogies which have the right wheel diameter and a wheelbase only 0.5mm too long. Near enough for me, especially if it saves me a construction job.