Phil's Workbench

A first appearance in Narrow Gauge World magazine for me this month. I've made the most of it with a couple of articles though!

NGW joined the Warners stable a few months ago and I was asked if I had any narrow gauge content for a revised and hopefully improved modelling section.

Obviously, as a freelancer, I said yes and then wondered exactly what I had that would fit the bill. I've done a few NG projects over the years but not that many have been photographed to a standard that I'd be happy to send to an editor for print.

However, the joys of selling articles on a "first serial rights" basis is that there's nothing stopping me from re-using something I've done already. Simply stuffing an existing article in the e-mail, while perfectly legal, isn't acceptable to me. Nor would I expect any editor to be happy with that sort of this - at least in such a small market. Perhaps if the magazine was an overseas publication it would matter less, but I'd still want to tweak it a bit.

Which explains why the first piece in the mag involves Owen's Bridge.

Yesterdays photo showed Nellie painted, but looking a bit flat. The colours were there and all very pretty but I felt there was no life in them. That's not unusual, especially for matt black. There is only one solution - weathering!

First up, all the black was dry-brushed with dark grey (Humbrol 69). This works for anything black and immediately looks better.

After that, I wanted a dirty loco that had been cleaned so worked around the model using Lifecolor Rail Weathering paints and some MiG acrylics. Little squirts of brown were put on a palette (plastic lid from the swwet'n'sour sauce pot from my local Chinese takeaway) and then painted on the model.

After the paint had dried, a matter of a few minutes, it was wiped away with a paper cloth. Difficult to reach areas got the cotton bud treatment. If anything seemed to be sticking where I didn't want it, a brush with some water tackled that.

After this, there was grime around the rivets and in one or two areas where the resin surface was a little pitted. This could have been a problem but I quite liked it.

Emett's cartoons showed careworn locomotives so that's the effect I've tried to replicated. Working in a large scale (this is G gauge) is different from the smaller ones but in this case not much.

Finishing touches were to fit a jewel in the lamp and glaze the windows with Krystal Klear. Now all I need is a driver, and I have a kit for one of those...

So, there I was talking to Chris at Phoenix Precision Paints during the York show.

"I need something to paint an Emett Nellie locomotive", I said.

"Certainly sir. Something from our extensive cartoon locomotive section will meet your requirements I think.", he replied.

Actually, he didn't say this as they don't have a such a section, but I did acquire a nice can of Blackpool Green. It wasn't chosen for the name - the colour just looked nice. Not too dark but not too pale either. In general, light colours never look right, even on imaginary locomotives. I once painted a garden rail loco lime green and quickly covered it up with Brunswick.

Anyway, other colours are obvious, except the metalwork. These colours come from the Darkstar Molten Metals Range. I've got them for review so suffice to say here, that I like them very much indeed. Metallic paints can be tricky, the Humbrol enamels need constant stirring to keep the pigment in the liquid for example. Not a problem here.

Now painted, the model looks a bit flat to me, so I think some weathering is in order.

All the parts are fitted, apart from some copper wire inside the cab, so the model is ready for a quick scrub in the sink to remove any mould release and grease from my fingers. After this, there will be a shot of car primer and then paint.

But what colour?

The illustrations I have found don't help as they are black and white line drawings.

Personally, I fancy a green body, black footplate and deep, red bufferbeams. A bit of brass for the whistle, dome, spectacle plates etc. and then perhaps some weathering. The photo on this Gn15 forum is irresistible...

One of the joys of Nellie is the crazy detailing to be carried out. It's the first time that I've found a load of large round-head pins to be sued on the ends of cylinders and tops of sandboxes (I think that's what they are).

The buffers are fun - brass tubes for shanks and drawing pins for the whacking great heads. Plenty of supeglue and they will look the part.

I've gone off-piste with the smokebox door handle. It's supposed to be another pin but I couldn't resist adding clock hands by inserting a couple of bits of brass wire.

Zap superglue is marvellous stuff but like all such glues, there are times when the mechanical joint isn't as strong as you would like.

A good example is on the back of Nellie, where the cab back meets the footplate. The are of join isn't very large but the chances of catching the component with an errant hand are pretty large.

Add to this the lever effect on the join and you can spot the potential for trouble.

Fortunately, resin is easy to drill so I popped a hole through the bottom of the cab back and into the footplate. A length of brass wire was glued in to this and cut off with flush cutters.

Not being able to get the cutters in to the cab properly, there was a small remaining stub. This was dealt with using a curved file called a riffler. This can be poked in to small spaces and manipulated to file away the excess metal.

The dome provided an interesting problem. The cartoon loco didn't have to worry about the niceties of actually working, so Emett could draw a ball balancing improbably on a point.

Real life means the dome is make up of two castings that have to be joined. With such a tiny contact area, only drilling both parts for a thin wire and using this to join them can work.

The ball was drilled by eye and wasn't too bad. A little bending of the wire ensured the parts are in line.

It's Easter Monday and I suspect most people will be happily tucking in to chocolate eggs or doing religious things rather than cruising the web for model train stuff.

With that in mind, here's a quick picture of the progress so far on the Rowland Emett inspired "Nellie".

Apart from the cab roof, all the big bits of resin have been fixed in placed using Zap-a-Gap superglue.

Cleaning up has been minimal apart from the top of the chimney which has a deliberate large flash area to be trimmed away.

In case anyone is wondering, the model is 18cm tall - I'll need to be careful with any future tunnel mouths!

The cylinder arrangements are pretty simple on Nellie. The Hornby connecting rods slosh around in big holes, not unlike the way they work in the original Smoky Joe chassis.

While they are moulded with quite deep holes in the back. These need drilling out even more. Best tool for this (IMHO) is a large drill bit held in a chuck and rotated by hand. It's only a few moments work this way but if the drill appears to be heading off at an angle you can do something about it.

Stick it in a power tool and you'll be out the side before you know it.

"Take one nice Hornby chassis and hack bits off it with a saw" pretty much sums up the instructions in the kit.

It appears that the Hornby 0-4-0 chassis has changed over the years. I know people have told me that later ones run better than the early versions but it appears that the design changes extend to the fixings. This means that the Smallbrook instruction book mentions drilling for screws but the slip of extra instructions tells you the chassis will now clip in place without extra fixings.

And it does. At least it does once the couplings and cylinders have been removed with a fine saw. I used a piercing saw and finished up with a knife paring away the remnants of the soft plastic bits.

Now it fits perfectly. I'm impressed.

Last year, I visited the excellent Rowland Emett exhibition in Birmingham. I couldn't resist coming away with a souvenir of the day - a Smallbrook Studio kit for "Nellie". Since I'm desperately in need of a project that won't turn into a nightmare, it's been dug out for (hopefully) a quick trip across the workbench.

The kit is moulded in resin and designed to be powered by a Hornby "Smoky Joe" 0-4-0 chassis. Normally I dismiss these things as running like jackrabbits but here, it should be just right.

The resin bits are very cleverly moulded. To add weight, the footplate is full of lead shot and since it's very spindly (a consequence of turning a cartoon into a physical model) the cab front has brass wires incorporated in it. All very neat.

Complementing the kit is a book of instructions including an exploded diagram that has a cartoony element could have been drawn by Emett himself.