As some may have noticed, I bought some NZR kitsets some time back. I already had some plans for doing something NZR-y
For those who don't know, NZR stands for the New Zealand Government Railways, NZGR or NZR for short.
The track gauge here is 3'6"(1067mm) so instead of H0, the most popular scale is 1:64, which means you can use H0 gauge track. It is also called 3/16th scale, as 1 foot scales down to 3/16th of an inch, an important relationship in the days before calculators.

Why the 1900's? Because I think it's a really interesting time period. 1n 1908 the North Island Main Trunk was completed, the Wellington & Manawatu railway Co. was taken over and brand new A class De Glehn compound 4-6-2's were just new from the shops. Rollling stock was colourful, with coaches being painted either Pullman green, Pullman brown or Indian red. Locos could be black with either gold lining or chocolate and gold bands. Grey was also worn by some engines.

Now the kit. The first one I will do is a lowsider, classified as an M-2. this type was first built in 1891. The kit is made by Cross Creek Models.
For the princely sum of NZ$ 45 you get a one-piece resin body

Did anyone mention Swiss cheese?
And a collection of whitemetal and other bits.

Quality is not as good as other kits I have built, but that doesn't mean that it won't finish up being a nice model.
Instructions were in the form of a NZR general arrangement, probably one drawn in the 1930's by Cedric Green. These drawings are very popular with modellers heer as they happen to be drawn in 1:64 scale. The rest of the single A-4 sheet is filled with some handwritten notes and an exploded diagram. not exactly much, but fortunately the New Zealand Rolling Stock Register contains a lot of good photos of these and other wagons, which saves me a lot of searching.

First up I deburred the frame pieces. These are two sturdy whitemetal castings with a lot of flash. This was cleaned up with a file. Chalk is smeared onto the file to prevent the soft whiremetal clogging up the file.

The next item to do is soldering the bearings in. The usual method for whitmetal is followed, with plenty of flux and a little low-melt solder. In the photo my fingers are holding the solder, my second hand is holding the camera and my third hand is holding the soldering iron

The frames are supplied way too long, so you can cut them to exact length to fit the resin body. A sensible thing to do, as resin will shrink during production, but production methods mean that not each body will e exactly the same length.
Here they are marked for cutting with a fine toothed saw. the mark in the middle is for centering.

After being cut oversize and brought down to the correct length with a file the frame bits were marked for their respective sides(their lengths did not turn out to be equal) the defects in the casting were fixed with styrene and filler.
The obligatory test fit

Once ready, the frames were superglued to the body, with the wheels being inserted as well, as I don't think I am able to remove them later on without damage.


Tomorrow I will continue with the rest of the "undergubbins"

Happy modelling
Rick

Edited by user 22 August 2013 23:52:43(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Thanks John

Time for undergubbins, aka underframe details.
The kit supplies materials for the handbrake, brake blocks and a Westinghouse brake(WHB) cylinder.
As this is a little bigger than my usual scale, I wanted something more. Again, looking at photos I discovered the real arrangement of brake blocks on these wagons. Crawling under real four wheeled wagons with a camera revealed the rest, so a good shot at detailing could be done.

The WHB was done first. The brake works one one pair of brake blocks. Linkages were built from bits of styrene and brass, and attached to the whitemetal castings

The handbrake was next. Period photos and current ones again provided the required info. Because I was not satisfie with some castings, these were butchered for useful bits and other castings that were not needed were left in the box. The brass strip came with the kit, this was bent in place and the rest of the linkages were again built from scratch. All measuring was done with the Mk I eyeball


Hopefully more will follow soon

Rick

Lots of patience mate and a fantastic job

Thank you Dale and Lord Macca

Coming soon: a true Kiwi #8 fencing wire coach, A 300. More will follow as soon as I can find the camera

Rick

Nice photo Macca

Time for the next project, A 300.

On the 20th of March 1877 the Wellington Section District Engineer asked 'Head Office' for permission to splice together two older carriages and enable the resulting rebuild to run on the "American Bogie" principle. The rebuild was costed at 50 pounds, and permission was duly granted. This was New Zealand's first bogie carriage, which became known as A 1, and was renumbered to A 300 in 1890 when all the provincial railways were combined. This historic carriage was written off and scrapped in 1924

The carriage was built from a six wheeled carriage and either half of another carriage, or some new material. At the time, the Wellington section was short of rolling stock, so the extra space would have been appreciated by the people running the railway. This carriage set the precedent for 48 more conversions, mostly from 1 1/2 six wheeled carriages, which were very unpopular due to their bad riding qualities. Of these, A 222 has survived and has been beautifully restored by Ferrymead Railway in Christchurch.
This information comes from a series of very good articles on the NZR's bogie carriages by John Agnew, published the New Zealand Railfan.

Drawings, photos and info from the article were combined with measurements from one of the few surviving six wheelers to be able to model the historic carriage.
This is how the six wheelers looked later in their life:

Note that the axleboxes are modern roller bearing ones, as the origionals could not be overhauled in time. They are still present though.

A start was made with the underframe. The outside members are channel section, while the buffer beams and all other members are rectangular styrene made from two bits of 1mm thick styrene as I did not have the right size.

If you look carefully, you will notice that the frame is not symmetrical, a leftover from the donor six wheel carriage.

A start was made on the sides as well. The car recieved new cladding as part of a rebuild to all second class in 1905. This is the bottom half of the car, the top being all windows.

That's it for now, more will follow soon
Rick

Edited by user 29 December 2012 23:36:38(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Following on from last time, the ends I made up were glued to the sides, so the whole thing is starting to look like a real carriage now

Behind the carriage you can see the M class wagon. I havent forgotten about it, It got a black coat of paint when I had the airbrush out for the BR 23. I will now have to mask it and find some time to give the top a coat of red.

On A 300, the walls were then thickened to their scale size. I used scrap styrene that I keep from other projects to build up the height.

Seats were then scribed and built up. The back is glued to the wall, and the horizontal bit and the legs are attached to the floor. This way the top is easy to paint and maintain, while there are no major visible seams.
Here you can see the bottom.

The real thing has nice turned legs, but round ones will do for me. You won't see the diffrence anyway once the model's completed.
Here's the seats installed in the carriage. At least the passengers will have plenty of leg room.


Rick

And now back to the M-2.
Together with the BR 23, I had the chance to finish painting the M-2. As I mentioned a couple of posts back, the black underframe was done first, after the obligatory coat of primer.

The top coat could then be done. The question was, what colour to paint it? Macca's picture shows the wagon as it was at the end of it's days, painted in the standard red oxide livery. However, this colour was not used in the 1900's. It took a fair bit of research to find out that the most likely colour was Haematite, with "the Nelson company being preferred". In a thread on the nz_railchat group on Yahoo, I found a link to a Resene colour that apparently was close to the "Nelson Haematite" I was after, although the colour was based on dubious research. Colours in the early days were nowhere near as consistent as now, not even taking into account weathering, so I decided to go with the Resene colour. After a trip to the local Resene shop,I mixed up the colour myself from a swatch using some Humbrol paints. After I had figured out the right combinaton, I mixed plenty for the wagon, and set to airbrushing it.
This is the result:

happened to have a NZ Model Railway Journal lying in the workshop for modelling the axleboxes on A 300, so I used that as a background.
And another pic, because it looks so good

While I cannot vouch for the colour being 100% accurate, It could be quite likely that a wagon looked like this one a century ago, which is fine by me.
I have quite a bit of my haematite paint left over, but I will tweak the colour slightly for the next wagon, to represent a diffrent batch of paint being used, as well as the effects of age on the paint.

This only leaves couplers and decals to do, neither of which I have got.

Cheers,

Rick

Fabulous! I love craftsman kits

Nice!

To finish off the safety features located on the carriage's balcony I had to make some gates. In real life they are easonably sturdy iron things, but in S scale they are a right old pain in the butt, but I eventually managed to get them to look reasonably simular.

That just left the roof to do. As the interior would be very hard to get into with the roof on, I painted it first. I used a two layer technique to simulate the wood: First I gave the inerior a reasonably even coat of sand coloured paint. When this was dry, I mixed up a reddish-brown colour and mixed it with some varnish. Again, I tried to keep the coat even, but small brushstrokes enhance the wood effect. Once it is dry, you get this:

A start was then made on the roof. The basis is plain styrene, with grooves scribed into it to simulate planks on the underside. The top was painted canvas in real life, so that was left smooth. Ribs were then cut for the roof. These have the dual purpose of getting the right curve in the roof, and also of holding the tops of the walls apart at the right distance. Bases for the gas lights were also punched out of styrene using sharpened brass tubes.

The end is no in sight, with some final details to go on before I can paint the exterior

Rick

Some time ago I got some couplers from VCC models , which I recieved within a week of ordering The couplers themselves are cast brass, and work just like the real thing. Some hardware is also provided to mount the couplers, in the shape of whitemetal draft boxes and some centring springs. To fit them to the M-2 and A 300, a slot was filed into the headstocks into which the coupler shank could move. The draft boxes were filed to fit each item of rolling stock. In the case of A 300 this involved a good deal of butchering, but a bit of filing was enough in the case of the lowsider. The couplers were then assembled and fitted.

Besides couplers, rolling stock is also fitted with safety chains. To save the effort of ordering and waiting for ready made hooks, I decided to make them myself. The chains and hooks are made from two sizes of copper electrical wire, which is easy to shape and it happened to be the the right size. To get the point on the hook, a bit of wire was fitted in the chuck of my drill, and with the drill going, I shaped the wire with a file. The wire was then bent around bits of other wire, and the oval links were made by wrapping the wire around two bits of wire side by side. The nice thing about soft copper wire is that you can cut it with a sharp knife, giving you a straight cut without any filing. The hooks were soldered together, and attached to the chain and then to the wagon and carriage.


The various stages of assembly of the side chains. To put things into perspectivem the hook is about 3.5mm long!

Of course, the big question; Does it work? Both the chains and hooks work almost exactly as the real thing, the main coupler will couple without intervention and uncouples easily by hand. The side chains can be hung into eachother, but it took me about five minutes to do one pair, so they will just be cosmetic.

The coupler bits were then painted black, except for the coupler faces and moving bits, which were chemically blackened with gun blue.

Close ups can be so harsh...

A 300 also got it's proper wheels, and to top it off, I airbrushed the ends in "Chocolate".


Barring some paint touch ups and numbers, the M-2 is done. A 300 is not awfully far behind, next up is a coat of "Indian Red" and a few other coats of paint.

Thanks for watching,

Rick

I still had the other NZR kitset kicking around. With the model show that was in Devonport this weekend I usually give a modelling demo. This year I decided to make a start with building the K-6 goods van. The van is a little younger than the M-2, but the underframes were nearly identical, making research easy.
This is how the kit looked on saturday morning

And this is how it looked saturday evening

What has been done;
-body assembled
-new floor and underframe
-solebars and wheels assembled
-air brake rigging assembled
-Couplers assembled
I discarded a few parts, because they were just plain awful, and I've replaced them with scratchbuilt parts.
The solebars required a fair bit of remedial work, which included reconstructing part of the web of the channel section of the solebar, as well as adjusting the holes for the bearings.

I didn't spend the whole day modelling, I also spent some time annoying purists

Surprisingly, There were not many moaners, and unsurprisingly, the carriage didn't like R1 curves

Unfortunately I had other commitments today, so I could not do any "live modelling". I did get some stuff done at home though.
The handbrake rigging, which is identical to The M-2 was made. Following that I cut some ribs to support the roof.

The provided roof was an absolute joke, and looked more like something cut out of packaging that a model roof. I therefore made a new one from 0.4mm thick styrene, measuring off the body for the right shape.

There are just a few details left, which is the nice thing about these kits; you can finish one in less that a week's worth of evenings

Thanks for watching,
Rick

Thanks Svein

Today I finished off the detailing. To start with the handbrake ratchet was made. Air pipes and hoses were also made up, followed by handgrabs made from 0.3mm wire. Safety chains were also made up and attached, as well as the iron straps around the wooden headstocks. This finished off the construction stage of the build, only three days since I've started the build


And the underside for the detail-fanatics

I just have to add some missing bolt heads and the usual filling work. I have already drilled the holes for the bolt heads, and I have also made a start on filling holes.
That's all for now, more will follow soon.

Thanks for watching

Rick

It's been a long time between drinks for the little K-6, but just before new year's I got around to finishing the paintwork of the wagon. Painting is not my favourite task, and it usually gets pushed aside by more interesting things, like building more rolling stock. However, as those wagons reached the painting stage too I could not dodge it any more. The wagon duly recieved a coat of Humbrol No.33 on the underframes, and once those were done, white paint was added to the little amount of black remaining. The resulting dark grey was used to replicate the roof colour, which was painted canvas. The roofs quickly got a thick coat of soot in service, reulting in an off black colour.
This is what came rolling out of the paint shops, with my H0 scale workshops foreman giving an idea of the size of the wagon.

No wonder things are taking so long around here...

After the obligatory touch ups, it was time for a protective coat of varnish, the usual Humbrol No.135

And that rounds of the construction of the wagon. I know, it took a bit longer than a week, but I did have another two projects on the go, resulting in this one being pushed to the back of the pile. Painting took about two evenings excluding drying time, which means that the actual construction period was only about six days. If you don't believe me, buy a kitset like this and surprise yourself

Thanks for watching,
Rick

That looks like a familiar face So now all the punters on the net can see the face behind the models.

This shows how you don't need any flash workshop to do your modelling. I could have easily made the whole model on that table, with the exception of the airbrushing. The workbench is about as organised as my normal workbench, with tools scattered in a rough arc around the cutting board

For the eagle eyed among us, there are two models visible in the photo. Who can spot them?(I actually had more models set up out of shot, somewhere between the clutter but there's no point guessing those, as I can't remember which ones they were)

Cheers,
Rick

Good spotting Elukka.

Great work Rick! Love it

I have finally managed to get some decals printed, so one by one my almost finished models will be finished. I hope.

The decals were drawn up in Inkscape(a free vector drawing program) based on photos I took of the real thing. The stencilling is a special font I found especially made for modelling NZR stencilling.

The class and number plate decals were stuck on a disc punched from 0.25mm styrene painted yellow. With the decals on the plates were stuck on the sides of the car using Krystal Klear. The underframes were decalled, after which a clear coat was used to seal the decals and make them blend in. After that, a coat of dirt was added to give the car a lived-in look and the axleboxes got some "oil"(gross varnish) leaking out from their covers.

The result was photographed while the sun was out yesterday:

A close up showing the bogies and car plates

The whole car

And looking through the window in the end door


Cheers,
Rick

Thanks Steve

With the modifications done, it was a simple matter of putting the decals in place, giving it a coat of satin varnish and a little bit of dirt. The mixed is starting to grow slowly

Rick,

You really have fantastic skill with putting this stuff together. I enjoy seeing your updates. Very nice improvements on the base kit.

-Brandon

Thanks guys,

With the handbrake done, the air brakes were tackled. Fortuately I was able to photograph a similar wagon's underframe a while back, so I had some reference photos to work off, resulting in a pretty good idea of what the air brake setup looks like, which can then be modelled using the provided brake blocks and brake cylinder plus styrene and wire extra's.

The air hoses were also modelled, being made up of wire and some styrene bits. Again I got lucky because I happened to have photograped an old Westinghouse spares book with many handy drawings.

After that it was just a matter of bending up a handrail from 0.35mm wire, and the wagon's ready for painting, after only half an afternoon and three evenings build time. Not bad considering my scratchbuilt cars have taken the better part of half a year(in between other things)

Now off to the paint shop.

Cheers
Rick

With the primer dry, a suitable colour was mixed up from the usual Humbrols. For reference, a colour that is apparently close to the origional haematite colour used on the wagonswas used, which can be seen in the bottom of the pic. The difference in gloss makes the colour looks more different than it is in real life. However, as the real paint varied quite a bit I'm not fussed by some differences in colour. Because I don't have my airbrush handy I just painted the wagon with a brush.

That leaves the underframe to do, which I will airbrush together with a couple of other things, hopefully this weekend.

Cheers,
Rick

It looks really, really good Rick!

Well done.

Brgds - Lasse

I slowly continue to detail the car van.

I haven't done much to the interior except for adding interior walls. In the first pic you can see the toilet top left, with below that the passenger compartment. Further down is the guard's compartment, complete with an alcove for a little potbelly stove.

More work has gone into the outside. Truss rod queenposts were chopped up to suit my prototype, and details were made up to suit from styrene. The provided headstocks were discarded, with new ones to the right shape made up from two layers of styrene. The outer layer is thin annd contains the embossed rivets, while the rest is thicker stuff. Outside floors are also styrene replacements to get nicer detail. The steps are also replacements. Unlike A 300, the steps are a combination of brass strip and styrene. A 300's all styrene steps kept breaking, so I've gone for something more solid this time. The couplers are also on, although the height still needs to be tweaked a little.

Next up are the handrails, which are going to be an interesting soldering job.

Cheers,
Rick