Finished Railcar

Job done. The Park-Royal Railcar is finished. At least it's completed to my satisfaction.

I know this isn't a perfect model. When Heljan eventually bring out their RTR version I'm sure that mine won't look as good, but then that wasn't the point. I had always wanted to build this kit and now I have.

Not all the faults are mine either. The side steps are incorrect as supplied and I didn't worry about scratchbuilding a new set of folding ones. There should be some side door handrails too, but these will be fiddly since they bridge the chassis/body divide and either need to clip into one or the other, or you better hope no maintenance is required...

Apart from this, well one side window (on the other side, you don't think I'm going to photograph it for the blog do you ?) is slightly fogged. I blame the passengers for breathing on the glass.

The lining isn't perfect but looks OK from  a normal viewing distance. In fact, to me, the whole thing looks fine that way. This has been a really satisfying project and one I'd recommend to anyone. It's not too difficult. If only I could get something similar in 3mm scale where I actually have a use for it !

Variable people quality

Look at this lineup, perfect illustration of the variable quality of 4mm scale people. I dug through my miniature figure box to find some occupants for the seats in the railcar and pulled out this selection. They are either whitemetal or plastic and of varying ages.

Prize for best detailed person goes, I think, to the lady in the middle who I think is of Arifix origin. Her proportions are right and the face is nicely carved. OK, the plastic is a bit soapy and prone to flash if you get a late moulding (earlier ones are sharper I find) but someone spent money finding a good pattern maker there.

On the right hand end we have Slaters plastic figures. They are a bit of a cliche nowadays as you'll see the limited range of poses on everyones layout but they are cheap, crisp and a nice hard plastic which takes paint well and can be chopped around if required. My only complaint is that they tend toward the two dimensional being a bit thinner then real people. Maybe I'm just jealous...

On the left hand we have Replica railways drivers which are very nice indeed. Both are well modelled and the guy on the end is in a useful pose. I like them although the range is a bit limited being spares from the RTR lineup. Well worth grabbing hold of for the diesel modeller.

Finally, the lady in the middle in the dark brown coat. A fairly typical cheaply made whitemetal figure. What is going on there ? I mean the overall proportions aren't too far out but the head is at best mis-shapen and at worst the result of some sort of steam hammer accident. There is next to no detail either. No idea who the manufacturer was of this one but I hope I picked it up cheap.

Of course with all of them going to live in the railcar, none of this matters. I'll just sit mishapen lady by the isle. Nicer moulded figures will get window seats.

Headcode - Plan B

So I tried to install my repainted headcodes. First I discover that you really need to do this before putting the etched interior in. The driving compartments are in the way otherwise. My solution was to cut a slot between the digits and slide them down. However I think that they are too small. At least they didn't seem to fill the windows for me - something I should have discovered before putting some glue on them but never mind.

As an added bonus the typeface appears to be wrong as well. Hmmm.

So, down to the computer and fire up the desktop publishing software. A few minutes with the ruler and then some nifty mousework, I managed to produce a sheet with a few versions of the headcodes on it. If you want the, download it from here (PDF file).

This time I separated the digits and slid them into place using tweezers and PVA for stickiness. The 1 is a bit wonky in this shot but the real thing was often less than perfect so I'm not going to worry. Actually the who roller blind thing on railways seemed to be less than perfect. Digits were rarely level because you would have to get out and look at the front to check, not something to be done on a wet day !

Installing seats

If finding colour photos of the outside of the railcar was tough, interior shots are impossible – unless you know different of course. If that’s the case and you tell everyone, I will have my fingers on my ears and hands over my eyes as it will be too late for me.

According to the Branchlines instructions, the floor is blue lino. Seats are blue moquette but there’s no indication if they are the same shade of blue. My feeling is that lino tends toward pale shades whereas seat materials are stronger colours. My eyes tell me that the windows aren’t that clear anyway and with the roof on some approximate colours will be fine. I have tried to be neat with the grab handles on the seat backs which are silver as these will be reasonably visible.

The interiors are a snug fit in the body but by flexing the sides slightly they will drop in with all the glazing in place. I used a couple of dots of superglue to make sure they don’t rattle although one half will also be screwed down when I bolt the chassis to the captive nut soldered to its floor.

One surprise – just how heavy all this brass makes the railcar. I still had to sneak a little lead in there thought in the entranceway which provides the best cover for a heavy floor. Mind you, if you were building this and fitting a quantity of whitemetal passengers, a test run or two over the layout would be advised to make sure the single axle drive can cope !

Purple - WHY ?

At the front of the railcar is a route indicator. Behind the rectangular windows should be some lettering. Someone very cleverly decided that the easiest way to supply this was to print it on the instruction sheet. This could be cut out and stuck into the model So far, so good.

Back in the days of old money, Airfix instructions were in black and white. To be honest, when this kit was designed, everything was in black and white, colour not having been invented. By the time the kit I bought was produced, some numpty graphic design bod at Dapol presumably decided this wasn’t radical enough and opted for dark purple instead. (I know it looks red in the photo - I assure you in real life it's a regal purple)

Now, I’m no expert but I’m pretty sure that British Rail never used purple as a background on destination or indicator blinds. Not even your new fangled railway companies with their crayzie liveries have tried this one. Therefore I’ve got to fix this. The ideal solution would be make up new blinds with transfers. That’s not a goer as the typeface is a bit weird (does anyone know what it is called ?) and the only transfers I have in it are for a Class 20, whose headcode box is a lot bigger than the one on the railbus. I’m not buying a pack of letters for 2 digits on one model – far too tightfisted

Plan B involves doing something on the PC. I probably could find something nearly right but to be honest that meant going downstairs and switching the thing on and quite frankly I couldn’t be bothered.

Which leaves plan C. Paint over the purple with black. The result doesn’t need to be perfect as the “glass” it will be visible through is s scale 8 inches thick. Careful brushwork is giving promising results although I think I’ll need to do the white as well. If I can find my white gell pen and it hasn’t dried up then that will be the tool for the job.

If not I’m back to plan B.

Glazing the railcar

The place where an injection moulded plastic kit scores over all others is when you get to glazing. The parts are moulded so they fit nicely in the openings and the result is flush with the sides. This is especially important on the corners where the prototype designer incorporated curved glass. The only other way I can think of achieving this effect would be with some vac-formed plastic and even then it would be a fiddle to fit, albeit slightly clearer. Bending flat styrene would never work as the natural spring back would defeat any glue used to hold it in place no matter how much bad language went into fitting it.

Anyway, the first job I did was painting the bars on the side windows that represent those greatly missed opening sections. Matt aluminium from my nearly empty Humbrol pot (why don’t they do this anymore, it’s so useful) applied with a fine brush looks good. Where the paint ended up in the wrong place I used a sharpened matchstick to move it before it dried. Not a totally successful trick but better than nothing.

Glazing started at the front. I found that separating the four window part into two side and windscreen pairs made the install a lot easier. The gap between the flat panes could be reduced ever so slightly with the resulting join invisible behind the pillar. Working my way around the body I tacked the “glass” in with plastic cement (Revell Contacta) and then washing some Mek Pak along the top to get a nice strong join. Handling the parts with tweezers meant only one slightly fogged corner and that I can write off as weathering.

Dirty underframe

Photos of the Park Royal railcar are surprisingly difficult to find. Colour pictures appear to have been taken on film based on unicorn skin. The only ones I’ve found, in "Scottish Region Colour Album No 1" by George C. O'Hara, are gloomy and really only show the vehicle end on.

Only a single picture gives me any indication of the state the sides got in after a little running. Basically the underframe is filthy. Really filthy. This contrasts with pretty clean bodywork. At a guess these things were looked after by the shed staff who cleaned the shiny bits and ignored the rest. I’ve never entirely understood this, surely you want the mechanical bits kept clean as well so the dirt doesn’t stop them working ?

Anyway, in mode form my solution has been to paint everything below the body with Precision Weathered black. This was dry-brushed with some rust and gunmetal. Then the mechanical bits are airbrushed with a few dilute coats of track colour. Finally I brought the body and chassis together and wafted more very dilute brown along them both. The look I’m going for is a railcar that is in service and has been cleaned but not recently.

Body painted

The speed whiskers haven't gone to badly. Pedants will point out they are a bit undernourished but with the rounded ends I don't think they look too bad. A better match for the paint colour of line and whisker would help but I refuse to re-do the former and don't fancy painting over the later. The weathering (yes, this will be dirty) should take the edge off this anyway. I hope.

BR logo from HMRS, numbers from MoPok and data panel from Dapol complete the set. It's a good job I have a big box of spare transfers !

Finally the whole body received a coat of satin varnish. This has unified things a bit from the mix of sating and matt finishes exhibited. The data panel still shines when the light hits it wrong thanks to a big chunk of transfer film but only a modern transfer would be able to avoid this. Mind you I'd probably break it up and spend the rest of my life pushing tiny digits around !

Speed whiskers

The Park railbus sported a fine set of what BR called "speed whiskers" in its early life and it was these I wanted on my model rather than the yellow warning panel applied later. The shape is distinctive being quite chubby compared to other DMU's and the Dapol transfers are a good representation of them.

Sadly when I actually try and put them on my model I have to wonder if anyone have ever managed to get or these to sit on the model properly. For instance there is as much transfer film beyond the edge of the yellow as there is withing it. Since the whisker has to skirt the headlights that stops the things sitting down. Cutting the excess film away reduces the adhesion so you'd need to fit them superglue. That film isn't helping around the headcode box either.

Then the colour is far too yellow, except where there isn't enough ink on the end of one. Basically they are useless. No matter how many proprietary decal adhesion and softening products I use, they won't do.

Plan B involves using the Fox transfers. They are a bit spindly but will fit. The ends are square but I hope a bit of touching in with body green will sort this out.

Railbus lining

Airfix, bless 'em, helped the modeller to line the Park Royal Railbus by moulding raised lines where the yellow should be painted. They did this to most, if not all of their kits. While it's an idea, tradition has it that we modellers spend ages scraping them off as it's not de rigour to make use of them.

My railbus arrived with the lines flattened so now I've whacked some paint on it's lining time. Hooray !

First up, I have some lovely Fox transfers. Along plastic tub was filled with water and the first line floated. After it released itself from the backing, I slid it onto the bodyside.

Where it broke and curled up. I threw it in the bin and tried another one. This time I cut a length off, enough to do half a side and part of the front. Once on the bodyside I poked it around a bit and then it broke.

So I got more out and tried again. You know what they say about not succeeding first time. In fact I try, tried again so much that I used a quarter of the pack. The results are in the top photo. Nice, straight and nearly in the right place. You'll notice that the line only extends half the length of the vehicle - because attempts to add to this went wrong.

The problem is that the Fox transfers are too good. The lines are thin and there is no excess transfer backing so the results when applied by someone competent are absolutely top notch.

Me, I decided that all I was getting was angry so perhaps there was another way. I seriously considered obtaining a new body with the lining lines still moulded in but in the end decided that since the shops were shut I might as well have a go with the lining pen.

In my box of bow pens I found my old school compasses which included a bow pen. Setting the distance and filling the pen with cream paint, I had a go. The result wasn't bad. In fact it was good enough that I carried on all the way around the body, both top and bottom lines. A little touching up with a normal bow pen followed by some bits of green to tidy up the lines.

In the photo, the results look horrible. In real life as long as you are a suitable distance away (say, the next room) it's acceptable to me. OK, so the transfers would have been better but I do need to get the hang of bow penning and I was hating the first goes. Anyway, a project less than perfect but finished is (to me) better than a perfect but incomplete model. Anyway, it's my train so I get to choose.

Multiple unit green

I don’t normally prime plastic before painting but since the railcar had received quite a lot of attention from knives and abrasives, a thin coat seemed like a good idea just to show if there were any horrible scars. Primer comes from Mr Halfords excellent aerosol cans whereas paint needs to be laid on using an airbrush with all the resultant cleaning and faffing around that that entails. The results looked promising, not perfect but near enough for what is supposed to be a quick fun project. Where the raised lining lines have been removed the replacement transfer versions will distract the eye and a reasonably thick coat of paint should do the rest, or so I hope. Even the joins between bodyside and end aren’t too obvious.

Happy with the grey base I gave the bottle of Precision “Early Multiple Unit Green” a good shake. Opening it up, the paint seemed thicker than usual but I prefer it this way. You can always add thinners (white spirit in this instance) to taste but going the other way is much harder. Perhaps someone needs to invent the paint equivalent of cornflower !

A paint cup of green later and I have a nice, slightly shiny, railcar body. The colour seems a bit bright to me, and if anyone thinks I’m wrong, please let me know. Contemporary photos aren’t much help as those few that are in colour seem to have been taken on some very dodgy old film stocks and the rendering can’t be described as accurate. I don’t have a great history with this colour either, my 07 diesel is finished in Brunswick green rather than the correct Malachite. The finish is good and the weathering went well so my enthusiasm for sorting this out is tiny. People are normally too polite to mention it at shows anyway.

Minor modifications

In a Park Royal Railbus the designer hadn't allowed much space for the driver. He was expected to sit in a little cubicle at the end of the vehicle, slightly more roomy than that provided in a Routemaster bus but not much. According to Branchlines, and I'm not going to argue, his seat was quite impressive with a substantial headrest which looks like it would not only have prevented whiplash but keep his face pointing forward with blinkers to prevent side vision.

The partitions fit into a half etched line in the floor. After quite a bit of fiddling I managed to get the angle right and fitted the first one. On trying it in the plastic body it became apparent that the front needed to be reduced by a couple of millimetres. Easy to do before you fit it but a bit more awkward afterwards so be warned.

The other modification carried out is to split the floor in two. Without doing this I don't think it's possible to fit it into an assembled bodyshell, or at least I could do it. A quick snip with the scissors and now I can drop each end in by flexing the sides a little.

Seats in

When the railcar kit came to me the floor had been removed from the etch and all the seat supports folded up. The builder had tried to brace these with a little bit of solder but not to any great effect.

There are two sizes of seat supplied, wide and narrowish. Once released from the fret they have to be folded and the located on the supports using a tab on the later. Initially I assumed that the tab went all the way through the slot but this isn't the case, it's not long enough. All it does is locate the back and solder has to do the rest. The different widths are marked on top of the supports with X's and O's to aid assembly.

Assembly once you realise all this is simple - locate the seat and then grip the top of the support and the base with some sprung tweezers. Then run solder up the back to fix the two together.

My worry was, would the things fit in the body ?

Answer, yes once I'd made a few tweaks to the position of a couple of seats. The final job was to unbend all those delicate handrails on the backs. Then realise that the angles and verticalness of some of the seats needed a little adjustment. Then unbend the handrails I squashed while doing this...

Local model shops are good

This is why I will always buy RTR locos from my local model shop. On Saturday I was able to walk in and say, "Mark, what colour should that railbus kit you sold me a few weeks ago be ?"

Apparently BR Multiple unit green. There are two shades of this and the one to use depends on whether I will be painting the front yellow or using speed whiskers. Since I want the later I need the earlier paint which of course wasn't on the rack. A quick trip down to the stock cellar later and the proprietor returned with a bottle of it. During this time I'd remembered my bottle of Mek was nearly empty.

Best of all, in the transfer drawer were some Fox cream lines and whiskers which will apparently do the job. I'm sure my stock includes numbers so I didn't look to see if there were any of these in.

All of this is good because I know very little about railway rolling stock with windows in the side and so being able to ask the question is invaluable. I appreciate I'm not the biggest customer, although this changed a bit when he got a machine to take credit cards, I still try here first. The shop has been open for just over ten years and is maturing nicely with all sorts of junk, sorry goodies, building up and making even regular visitors feel a good rummage is worthwhile.

Body assembly

I've got two sets of instructions for the railbus kit. The original Dapol ones and a suplimentary set from Branchlines. According to the later I should paint the body sides beofre assembly and put them together around the interior. The later won't go in through the top of the model in one piece thanks to the tapered profile of the body.

Stuff that I thought. The glue will eat my nice paintwork if I try that. As far as I am concerned, the interior can be chopped up to go through the hole. People build models of ships in bottles so a set of seats shouldn't be a problem should it ?

Well it better not be as I've already glued the body together. There's 8 parts plus a floor to centend with. Each side is made up of a front and back end plus the doors. Airfix intended these to slide open and closed for extra play value but I've glued them firmly shut.

To keep things nice and flat as you can see I put the roof on, being careful to keep fixatives away from it, and weighted the lot with a CD (The best of Miami Vice, £1 from local music shop but others will work just as well) balanced on the edge of a box and a can of soft drink on top. Handy weights these, compact and easy to manage yet a useful source of refreshment and aluminium. Every workshop should have one.

Chassis cladding

The Park Royal Railbus kit is more prototypical than I had expected. Now I've actually done some research I find that the power unit was a separate item to which the body was bolted. Quite sensible really as a simple lift would remove the later, leaving the mechanical gubbins available for spannering.

The brass kit chassis is encased in plastic parts. I’d wondered what the holes in the brass either side of the motor and toward the back end were, and it turns out that some plastic pillars go through them and into the body. This allows for realistic separation between the two parts and also enough space for the top of the motor and pick-up strips.

If I was being picky, the plastic details aren’t as sharp as I might like but they are good enough for a working model. If you want to go to town there are definite possibilities to improve matters a little, for example the springs on the end (dampers I suspect) could be chopped out and replace with sections of bolt or even real spring to improve definition. The pictures I have found are unclear but I’m betting that there was a certain amount of pipe and cable work that Airfix ignored for production reasons.

In the original kit the chassis is simply glued in place. On a working model this would preclude maintenance so a single bolt fixing is allowed for. These original pillars will still be used for location but must now remain glue free.

Pickups

A long chassis needs long pickups. For the railcar fitting starts by gluing a couple of strips of PCB to the top of the metal sheet. Nice thin PCB too, better than the sleeper strip I normally use !

The pickups themselves are phosphor bronze wire. A length is supplied but I swapped it for some thicker stuff which I felt would hold its shape better. This might not have been a wise move as getting the pressure on the wheels light enough so picking up electricity didn't cause braking wasn't easy. Even when working, some weight is needed over the powered axle to get the thing moving.

Compensation

How nifty is this ?

At the opposite end of the railcar from the motor we have a very neat little cradle carrying the wheels which pivots on a bolt to compensate for any wobbly trackwork or a slightly twisted chassis.

As the picture shows, there is far more movement than you'd hope to need. Even my track building is better than this !

Park Royal Railbus

If you read classic car magazines, the advice is always against buying part completed projects. You don't know all the bits are there and some of the work may have been bodged. In theory the same rules apply to model kits. They may look tempting, but if any of the component parts aren't in the box then you could have bought a pile of junk rather than the ingredients for a model you can be proud of.

Of course there are exceptions to the rule. An experienced car restorer can probably source any missing bits and make good badly done work. Likewise, I think myself sufficiently experienced to be able to scratchbuild absent parts (not always the case). Anyway, second hand model kits are cheaper than cars and you can throw them away rather easier than car and unless you are daft enough to try writing up the results on a blog while building...

Anyway, a few months ago I was in my local model shop and on the wall was a second hand Park Royal Railbus kit. In the bag was the Dapol model and (this is the good bit) the Branchlines motorising and detailing parts including motor and wheels. £30 instead of 45 which sounded like a bargain to me. I've always wanted to do one of these, even though I have absolutely no use for one in 4mm scale.

While digging out the Ford Y kit I also re-discovered this bag of goodies and thought, "That won't take long and be a bit of fun" so here we are.

The motorising parts have been part assembled, the interior bent up and given a touch of solder. The plastic parts are off the sprue and the raised lining sanded off. Instructions are included and for a change I've even taken a look. All the big bits appear to be there and lets be honest, if there are plastic parts missing, a new kit isn't expensive.