The following blog is not a 'how-to' guide which should be followed, but gives a beginner a chance to follow the same thought processes I did, and benefit from the lessons I learned whilst still respecting the same constraints I had as a starter project.
As a child I didn't have a vast number of models and the preference I had was of an eastern-flavour thanks to, like many, a love for Flying Scotsman. I did however always want some Great Western locos, I adored their ornate charm and clean, handsome looks. So, when I became a reborn train geek, the first thing I did was scour eBay for some affordable GWR locos. What I ended up with (for which I was surprisingly lucky) was an early-BR 2251-Class by Mainline, a post-war GWR 43XX Mogul by Bachmann (which really was a steal) and a Hornby R.759 Hall Class loco which is the subject of this write-up.
I had never intended to modify or build locos, rather I wanted to get started on building a layout so that I could enjoy it with my children. The Hall was however missing its nameplates which I thought would be easily enough replaced, but as I started to teach myself more about the history of the railways, I soon realised the model was flawed in other ways. The tender wore 'Great Western' branding with the later crest nestled between the words, lined with a single orange line, but the smokebox door had a plain BR number plate moulded into it, and the single orange line pattern on the cabsides was to the BR 'square' design rather than the GWR pattern which should follow the edge of the cab panel. It was also missing the firebox lining which the GWR-era loco would have had but not a BR loco.
Accuracy and Flaws
These things wouldn't have bothered me before but, once the bug had bitten, these details became important. It was also soon clear that there were no replacement transfers available for the R.759 Albert Hall, and therefore the only way to get nameplates was to buy proper plates from the likes of Modelmaster Jackson Evans or Fox Transfers.
There are a number of other issues with the Hornby-Triang Hall, it uses an identical chassis block and wheel set (albeit painted black) to their LNER B12, and spun 180 degrees, also their LNER A3 (with larger wheels used). The real locos often have asymmetrical wheel arrangements which I believe is attributable to weight distribution and direction of travel, as well as motion arrangement, so often when considering a loco's 3-driven axles, the leading and centre axle are usually closer together than the trailing axle. However, on the Hall, B12, and A3 (and whatever else the same basic chassis block sits under), the three driving axles are equally spaced. The motion is very primitive by today's standards, too. Many early models of real locos with external valve gear simply did away with the extra complexity leaving just con rod, slide bars, crosshead and coupling rods, but fortunately, the real Halls (and in fact nearly all GWR locos) housed valve gear between the frames, but nevertheless, the slide bars are modelled as a pair of rods and the cross head which should slide between the bars actually loops over the two rods on this model. The relationship between the frames and boiler is also incorrect, with the front end being too long or boiler not long enough. Fortunately, unlike many earlier models, the boiler is towards the front is not moulded directly into the running plate and there is a visible air gap between them, unlike on Triang's Princess or Jinty.
Being an older model, the handrails are moulded directly into the boiler, we'll come onto that a bit later on. The other messy feature is the name plate plinth which is moulded into the body shell above the centre splasher and is inevitable due to the draught angle of the plastic injection moulding tooling employed and the simplicity models at this time needed to have at their price point. It's also missing lamp irons, these fiddly extra parts are often omitted on models of this generation, and even when they were included on newer models like the Mainline offerings, they tended to be oversize for durability.
Identity, Livery and Outline Decisions
Impressed by the real life Rood Ashton Hall, I quite liked the idea of modelling her, and the deal was done when basic research revealed she had actually been bought for preservation under the belief that she was Albert Hall until stripped and the locos true identity was revealed. The real loco (at least as preserved) carries a much smaller tender than the R.759, which I wanted to emulate so I set about finding a tender shell from eBay, and picked up a part which had most likely been off a tender-driven Hornby Saint or 4-4-0 County.Â
Early on, I had wanted to keep this a Great Western livery like the real 4965 currently wears, but this was to be my very first paint job, and I also thought (naively) that choosing early BR would mean I could mix and match more locos form all over the network more credibly. I had no confidence I could manage the lining, especially not that of a GWR loco, and wasn't even sure I could manage to paint a loco that was both black and green. As a starting position, BR Black is a very good place to start, it's not going to get any easier than that, so this I could recommend to any beginner. To this day I still don't have airbrushing equipment, but I didn't want to handpaint either, leaving aerosol spray paint as the only option to give a consistent and high quality finish. I know many people choose to hand paint models and can achieve quite high quality finishes, but to this day I've never come across a model loco painted by hand that looked right, even though the real things are brush painted. The next decision was lining. I quickly learned there weren't any easy routes to hand painting lining, but at this stage I had an irrational fear of waterslide transfers due to bad experiences as a child in trying to use them, and settled on some self-adhesive lining printed onto high quality paper by Lawrence Hogg Productions and purchased through eBay. These have a number of different shapes to cover the different radii found on the cabside, but only suit square patterns, they would not be of any use on a Saint cab, for example, where the lining has to reverse with the red line on the outside on some corners. I also sourced some early BR logos from eBay that were stickers printed onto clear plastic rather than waterslides. I sourced some etched brass nameplates from Modelmaster. As with waterslides, the resulting mix of transfers and stickers require sealing with a clear varnish or lacquer.
The lesson at this point is that things have become quite expensive; by now I have spent more on transfers, nameplates, paint and varnish than I did on the loco itself, and that's before you consider the tender shell. It is much better to source a model that is closer to what you want to end up with than to settle for something and making a load more work for yourself, especially at these formative stages. Now, clearly there is massive satisfaction in doing this yourself, but as a financial investment, what I have described makes no sense.
Handrails
On any model I undertake now, I would never dream of leaving on the moulded handrails along the length of the boiler, unless linked to the value of the individual model (i.e. I wouldn't attack a MIB Lord of the Isles with a craft knife, which is now becoming very collectable), and a coloured loco looks especially terrible with moulded hand rails. To try and make these look more presentable, model makers often painted these silver to separate the rails from the rest of the loco, but most of these locos in real life, especially later GWR, would have been 'body' coloured, so if the loco's boiler barrel wrapping is green, then so too is the rail where parallel, and the portion around the smokebox is black. This isn't always the case, but largely holds true. On a BR black loco, all of the rails are black. The moulded hand rails are also quite precise, but are very apparently one piece with the boiler and smokebox. If there's one colour you can get away with it, it's black, and for your first effort, rather than take a craft knife to your project, it may be worth choosing to retain them until you build in confidence.
There are better ways to learn these kind of modifications than to trash your very first investment, this could easily put you off, and so I consciously decided to leave the original hand rails intact for my first effort. Considerations when undertaking replacement of handrails on other projects are whether the effect you will achieve is better than the plastic part, and in some cases on coaches and diesel traction, you may consider it better to leave as it is than to use wire and brass knobs where you will be limited on the size and type of which, and how fiddly it is to assemble. Adding handrails that look wavy, with oversized knobs and offsets that are too large often look worse. Equally, at this stage I didn't attempt fiddly lamp irons, nor to address the messily moulded-in nameplate plinth, and in fact I've never dealt with the latter on any of the subsequent R.759 based projects I've done, either, as it will be a mammoth task to put right.
Glowing Firebox Kit
Before paintwork began, I also experimented with a glowing firebox. There are kits sold on eBay affordably by a seller called 'handmansignal'. Usefully these cheap kits come with LED, Battery and holder and a switch. It also came with a generous supply of yellow and white LEDs as freebies. Initially I mounted the battery inside the smokebox as the door is removable, but the door kept popping off and the wire I used was too stiff, and not to mention a bit tight passing through the boiler, over the motor, so I sourced some generic two pin connectors from eBay and relocated the battery and the switch to the tender, switch into the front of the tender body and making the battery easily removed from below. I used a hot glue gun for this, meaning it is removable but holds components and wired adeptly. The only problem with the kit is (and may well have been changed since) is that the LED pulsed rather than flickered. Under load with the regulator open, real locos do just this as each blast of steam exhausted by the pistons through the blast pipe creates a stronger vacuum draw in the smokebox, sucks hot gas from the fire through the boiler tubes to heat the water, and pulls up fresh air in its place into the firebox through the grate giving a bright flash with each 'chuff'. The problem is when stationary, this isn't happening, and when running the timing of the flashing matches the loco speed, which this kit naturally can't. Instead, I replaced the pulsing LED with a flickering LED that had a more natural and random pattern, and I also filed down the face of the plastic LED bulb so that a) it sat flush with the boiler backhead and b) it gave 'frosted' sort of finish for a more even spread of light which was more visible.
Paint it Black
Chortle, what a cliche. Terrible headings aside, this is the point where things really start to happen. The Hall loco and tender body were stripped from their chassis' and cleaned up. The Hall does feature the embellishment of two brass whistles and a removable copper chimney cap. The whistles were removed but you may find the cap is so tightly fitted by ageing of the plastic and corrosion that you are better off masking it before paint rather than removing it and risk damaging; I've done both ways in the past. For a proper job once cleaned with detergent and very thoroughly dried, any damage filled or sanded flush, the first job would be coat in a plastic primer, however, where the two plastics are the same colour, providing there is a good bond, you could go straight at it with a black aerosol. I have tried various types over the years but the best quality items seem to be from Halfords, cheaper types being more susceptible to 'spatter' or giving nasty reactions. Painting can feel like a dark art and sometimes it feels like the more 'correctly' you try to do it, the worse the outcome can be. This isn't to support doing it 'wrongly', either, there will always be a reason it's gone bad, it's just not always obvious what that reason is.
On this model I cheated in bypassing primer, but ensured the body was warm and the can well shaken. Two coats left it with a nice satin finish which was exactly what I needed. The other lesson I would share, and still get wrong now, is don't overdo it and drown the model in paint. If you get an reactions or it starts beading, leaving areas uncovered as though the surface is covered in oil, do not try and put extra paint on, as tempting as it is. Let it dry properly, leave it, best of all for a few days, then get the very fine wet and dry out to remove any edges in the paint, clean it again, and go for another coat, very fine dustings at a time.
I painted on the red boiler bands and buffer beams. The bands were a nightmare and red paint does not cover well when thin, so often you end up adding too much and then wiping / scraping off. If you end up with a messy edge, you can use a black felt tip and run a neat line along the edge but the real answer here is use waterslides and do it properly if you can. To make paint work, you could opt to flat the paint on the band just to give the red some better adherence ('keying' the surface).
Lining, Plates and Decals
Addressing the lining first; what Lawrence Hogg have tried to do is provide a range of simple to apply products to breathe life into aged common Triang models, and for the most part that is quite a good idea. They are printed with high quality ink and resolution (but not perfect, look closely and you can just about see the inkjet dots) onto decent quality paper with adhesive backing and a satin sheen which is more than appropriate. They are not precut, however. On the loco-specific packs, it's a case of cutting out the panel around the lining and sticking on, it's the right size out of the packet. Removing the backing paper though is fiddly and made ten times more difficult with the generic packs where, like here, you need to cut strips and corners from the sheet, then end up often using the craft knife to part the backing paper. The knife needs to be nigh-on perfect. I used disposable knifes but they break so readily when doing proper work later on that I'd recommend you buy a set of metal bodied knives with replaceable blades up front. This is where the surface of the printed sheet is easily damaged. Overall the sheet is not so thin as a waterslide (even if you don't dissolve the membrane layer on the waterslide as many do), so you will get a lip. The process of lining the loco and tender was less fiddly than waterslides, and with none of the drama where some waterslides disintegrate too quickly, or separate into different colour layers, or don't release fast enough and break as you try and tease them from the backing paper, but, unlike waterslides, you only get one shot to stick it in the right place. You also don't want to overlap and have double thickness. This can happen with waterslide, you don't want it to, but sometimes this can be hidden, but with these transfers, no chance.
Everywhere you have stressed the surface of the sticker when peeling, cutting or handling, you'll have lost some ink, so now you need to attack the model with a pack of felt tip pens to touch it up. Which can be a pain. I've used the Lawrence Hogg sets for a Triang Princess and a 3MT tanks which made more sense than this project. They've served their purpose, and I'm not going to knock their use. They also offer a range of headboards and signs as well which I have also used and found useful. But, all the same, I wouldn't use this lining pack again and finally had to bite the bullet on later projects with proper waterslide transfers, and whilst fiddly, you get the feel for each type; it's the only proper way to do this. I will cover this more in depth in subsequent build stories.
Applying the BR logo to the tender is easy enough, just remember, on these earlier types (cyling lion), the lion faces forwards and any sticker or transfer pack should have two versions, one facing left and the other right. Late steam-era BR logos (ferret and dartboard) weren't handed (with some exceptions, that's another story). Finally, applying the name and numberplates; The moulded in plinth is a curse here because it's oversize even for a name as long as 'Rood Ashton Hall', let alone Albert Hall, and the shape isn't quite right, but being black helps to hide a multitude of sins, so fit as best you can. I used a drop of superglue but you need to be very careful because it will haze the surface near where it sets, and if you use a tiny drop to be cautious, the edges of the plate will be loose and you can guarantee that you will catch and bend the delicate etched plate at some point when handling or storing the model. I also have found at times if using superglue, the first application won't adhere properly so it would be a good idea to ensure the back of the plates are clean, and perhaps leave the glue a touch longer before sticking in place, adding a little to body body and plate. Most experts recommend instead using PVA, it'll be far easier to remove if you need to and do a lot less damage, and I would tend to agree with this advice rather than what I have largely done. The plates are of very high quality usually but aren't that cheap if you're needing to rename many locos, by the time you add postage you're probably spending near enough £10 per loco, but you get a delicate and finely detailed plate for this. Non-GWR locos often have the option of being supplied with cabside numbers printed, rather than having to align individual numbers from a generic sheet (one is always wonky when you look at it after it's dried and lacquered!). All of the plates are from brass and whilst the black parts are painted black (and at additional cost name and cabside numbers can be red as per early early-BR era), the letters and numbers are left brass. This is a slight issue for the smokebox door number as these numbers ought to be white. In this case, and on most models, I've left these brass (or silver on Fox Transfers equivalent in steel) but on models where I have been more grown-up in my approach, I have painted the whole plate white and left to set properly for a few days, then painted over in black and instantly and lightly wiped the numbers to leave white numbers on a black plate. Some could probably paint the numbers directly without this hassle but you'd need a far steadier hand, a finer brush point, a magnifying glass and great light to cover the numbers and no more.
Stop! Don't Panic. See Clearly
Once all of this is complete and plenty of time has passed for paint to dry and harden, I sprayed over the whole model in satin varnish, Humbrol branded in this case. This is a very tricky stage and one where it is easy to mess everything up. Lacquer and varnish is nasty stuff that can often attack the paint underneath and cause decals to lift, buckle and warp. Especially if you cake it on. And if what's underneath does survive the onslaught, the coating can itself turn frosty, cloudy or milky. This is all very scary, and I have had it go wrong too, but you will only learn by doing. If it does go a bit wrong, you've still got techniques like weathering that could still save the work you have done, creating a viable, authentic looking, working loco (and to be honest it can feel perverse doing a great job on a model and then making it look aged, battle-worn and dirty on purpose), but prevention is better than cure, and best tips with varnish or lacquer are let the paint and transfers rest a while, leave it as long as you can, days, a week, as long as you've got. Make sure it's clean, and make sure it's at room temp. Make sure the can is properly shaken as per manufacturers guidance and make sure it too it has been normalised at room temp. Lightly dust the coating on, even if it looks poor after one coat. I've found, especially with more aggressive lacquers, that this is the only way to protect waterslide transfers from crinkling. In doing so. you are very gently letting tiny amounts of lacquer sit atop the transfer and dry, which then protects the transfer from later, possibly slightly thicker, applications. If these early coats are just a touch cloudy, don't panic yet, later coats will often restore this to clear. Dry the body somewhere warm but not boiling. If it dries too slowly in too lower temperature, cloudiness ensues, but if it dries to fast in places you will get a patchy finish, and worst of all, too close to a heat source and you may get reactions or bubbling as gas escapes from paint, plastic, glue and filler.
Reassembly
Give the lacquer plenty of time to set, days; you don't want to be leaving finger prints in your model (yup, I've done that, too...), you can now reassemble. If the model is unglazed, as this one was, you can now attempt to address that now. The best models use flush glazing and achieve this with specific parts by the manufacturers, sometimes special kits (these exist for several diesels where the original part was behind the opening and not flush, custom made glazing inserts that are precariously glued in, or use of a clear resin product specifically designed for the purpose. For where I was in my journey, the option was to use some clear plastic packaging cut oversize for the hole and then glued on from behind. I've been lucky with superglue where I've used that and it hasn't frosted up, I'm not sure why, but do not under any circumstances use superglue as I have somehow managed. Stick to PVA, it's all I'd use now. I used Bachmann loco crew which come as a pack of six, pick the two you want for the job. The packaging they came in was perfect for the glazing, so I snipped some squares from there before adding the crew themselves. Whilst reassembling the tender, I added some extra metal for additional weight, and secured with superglue. Although the later tender shell fit the older tender chassis nicely, it is designed to only clip rather than screw on, so added just a a couple of drops of glue to secure to the chassis as in this instance it is fairly unlikely to need disassembly with only weights inside.
Enjoy!
It's probably cost twice what the model did to make it into what I wanted, and still has no separately fitted rails, no lamp irons and a non prototypical boiler / frames or wheelbase, but it is mine, works well and set me on my modelling journey. I've written this out in a very long form, too, so that you can get a feel for the thought process, but as these blogs mature and become of a more defined, rational process, the build stories will reduce dramatically in length and become more bullet-pointed, but for a first entry, I wanted to go through the detail to help you understand more about the journey. I look forward to hearing more about your first projects.
Next time:
Woodworm2014 "009 Glyn Valley Type Tram"
I'm going to jump to a much more recent project to give you a flavour of what's out there at the other end of the budget market for DIY-ers in an increasingly-popular gauge.