Kitbashing Grand Trunk 719 - Part 7

While the progress on boiler modification is moving at a fast pace, I sprayed the model with black primer to see if there was any obvious defects on the shell. So far, it is better than I thought and touch up will be minimal.

My next challenge was installing inspection and clean out plugs. I had two choices: buy expensive brass parts that don't look like the prototype and are oversized or make them myself. I went with the Red Green's second option as you can guess.

I made the plugs with a combination of holes and 0.040" styrene rod. I first drilled a small pilot hole in the shell of same diameter as the rod.

Then, using a 5/64" drill bit, I enlarged the hole surperficially to create a small recess in the boiler jacket.

Finally, a piece of styrene rod was glued into the small hole. The rod was extending from the surface and was later cut flush with the boiler using a X-Acto blade.

Sure, it lacks the typical rim around the plug, but on many older pictures, it is almost undiscernable. If one would want to make more detailed plugs, I would advise to make the parts independantly, then drill the boiler and insert the plugs. The plugs could be made out of a sprue or a styrene rod with a diameter slightly larger than the largest drilling bit used to shape the plug. Follow my original instruction and you will soon have cheap and easy to install inspection plugs.

To be noted, I also drilled the stanchions mounting holes according to the prototype and enlarged the cab windows. There are still a few holes to drill and running boards to mount.

Kitbashing Grand Trunk 719 - Part 6

The biggest problem you will encounter while kitbashing a Bachmann 2-8-0 is related to the running board height. If they are mounted lowe, i.e. flush with the cab bottom, there will be lower than the boiler shell.

This is a double issue. First, the Bachmann boiler is made a a plastic shell and a pair metal weights. You'll will see the seam between both part and slots for mounting screws. Also, the weights are undetailed (no boiler straps, etc.).

The second problem is related to mounting the running boards. You need them to be sturdy enough to survive normal handling conditions and to be locatedd in a such fashion they won't be nuisance when dismantling the locomotive for maintenance. This means you have to mount the running boards on an incomplete shell and this is the big challenge.

The milling in progress. The smokebox will need to be thinned down too.

After discussing the problem with Doctorwayne, we came up sith a set of different solutions. I decided to use one of them and will explain how it works. I suspect this is a solution similar to the one Marty McGuirk and Iain Rice came up in a 1999 MR article which unfortunately I couldn't locate at the local model railway association library.

The basic idea is to simply extend the plastic shell as low as the running boards will be mounted. It means adding extra styrene sheet at the bottom of the shell. However, this simplistic solution require you to mill the metal weights to remove a equivalent amount of metal. In my case, 2 mm thick of styrene must be added to the boiler. This is exactly the thicknees of the metal weights walls encasing the motor.

Milling the frame took about 90 minutes using unspecialized tools like a tool grinder, a Dremel sanding drum and a large flat file to finish the work.

When done, styrene sheets were laminated against the boiler and left to dry overnight. At this point, the metal weights slide easily inside the shell as it should be. It must be noted you must mill the weights on all their height to make sure it will be possible to insert it. You also need to mill it up to the fron too.

To attach the running boards, small brackets will be pinned and cemented into the new shell extentions. Brass wire, music wire or phosphore bronze wire can be used: choose a material that will be strong enough to keep its shape under normal handling conditions. The new running boards will be them glued on the brackets, exactly just like the real prototypes. If wanted, the running board could be made out of brass and soldered on the bracket to make a single and sturdy assembly.

Sure, there is more than a way to tackle this problem, but I feel this option is manageable even for a not-so-skilled kitbasher.

Kitbashing Grand Trunk 719 - Part 5

Kitbashing isn't an easy process. There's to approach: the casual one when somebody loosely follow a prototype to make something similar and prototypical one when you try your best to reproduce exactly the real thing. None of them are superior because they serve different purposes and both require the same skills. The first one is pragmatic, the second one exacting. And both find their way on real railroads: at some point the railway decides to do what it can with a limited budget, on other moments it needs to respect standards and established practices: just like building a locomotive.

In my case, the GTR project is in the second category. My big problem is that I have very little understanding of what I'm doing (early 19th century compound locomotive) and have limited access to information. To be honest, I started the project without thinking too much, knowing I would find my away around arising issues. Worst, while the Bachmann locomotive is indeed a good starting point, the way it is built isn't compatible with a prototype with low running boards. This is going to be the most challenging part, even if almost invisible.

Today, it came to my attention I goofed on two key parts. I first used wrong measurements to make the cab window. All week long I found them very weird and badly proportionated. This evening, I opened my CAD drawing with 719 pictures and verified the results against my HO scale version. I was 2 mm off! Not wide enough and not by a small margin. So I'll have to enlarge the windows and make new parts. Well, it's not a bad thing since my window frame were oversized and badly attached to the cab walls.

The second problem is more important. Wayne pointed out my cylinders weren't correct. In fact, he was polite because they are total bogus. He kindly sent me good reference pictures and the conlusion was easy to reach: a GTR compound had two cylinders on the fireman's side and a single large cylinder on the engineer's side (with a flat top). It was also a good occasion to find out my running boards were also wrong.

I'll have to start again on these 3 elements. It could be disappointing, but in fact, it is motivating. Sure, it's a "waste" of time, but I had fun making the wrong parts and it was about doing what I had never done before.

There's no shame in going wrong when working on a project, except for abandoning. Except for brass locomotives, I've rarely seen people modelling compound cylinders. I knew when I started the project that kitbashing a "correct" Grand Trunk compound Consolidation as built by Schenectady wouldn't be a walk in the part. At some point, I could have abandonned the idea of making a Russian iron version in favour of building a later rebuilt with normal cylinders and black paint scheme. But I feel it wouldn't have been beside the point of modelling something unique: big early Canadian steam in Russian iron.

By the way, I got my hand on a stash of old CDS dry transfer including Grand Trunk, Intercolonial, Canadian Northern, Canadian Pacific and Temiscouata. All are for freight cars. I'm not sure if they are in good shape, but I thought an alternative could be to scan the lettering and make custom decals out of it.

Old Time Decals

As you know, I made HO Grand Trunk locomotive artwork. I also intend to make a set for Canadian Northern.

I also redrawn the Central Vermont pre-wafer sans serif lettering artwork. However, most CV locomotives used the serif lettering. Using commercial fonts is a no go and I prefer to redraw each letter from actual pictures to be prototypically correct. If some of you are interested (and I know some are), high resolution pictures of CV locomotives (preferably side views with minimal distortion) would be very useful. The biggest challenge is to have enough photos to have an example of every numbers from 0 to 9. It is interesting to note some CV locomotives kept the old GT-inspired paint scheme until the late 1930s.

Kitbashing Grand Trunk 719 - Part 4

The GTR 719 is progressing little by little. Recent work includes modifying the cylinders, sculpting and detailing the turret and adding cab roof hatches.

GTR 719 was built as a compound locomotive. I was required to remove the steam pipes out of the cylinder and replace them by square boxes made out of laminated styrene filed to size. Small steps with rounded corners were added on top of the boxes just like the prototype. Before gluing the boxes, I filed the cylinder tops flat. This way, I didn't have to adapt the boxe profile to the cylinder radius, which could have been tricky and not easy to glue. Archer anti-skid thread pattern decals will be added later on top of the steps and lubricator pipes too.

The steam turret is made of a Roundhouse sand dome from a 0-6-0T shell. I extended it with Magic Sculpt putty filed to size then glued with putty onto the boiler. When everything was dried, I drilled a small pilot hole on top and carefully using a larger drill bit by hand, I hollowed the interior.

A flat floor for the turret inside was made out of 0.5 mm styrene. Safety valves taken from a Bachmann 4-4-0 shell and one salvaged from the 2-8-0 shell where glued following the prototype.

The new cab roof got a putty job to smooth rough parts. New roof hatches are being build from styrene sheet. The hatches aren't yet glued, what you see are the side extensions that will be later filed down a little bit to the correct height.

Completing the running boards and drilling mounting holes in the boiler are among my next challenges. A tedious sand job to smooth out the surfaces before painting will be also required.

I'm really pleased to see the Bachmann stock model morphing into something completely different.

Kitbashing Grand Trunk 719 - Part 3

The work continue on GTR 719.

Among many things, the firebox was slighlty enlarged with putty to make it sloped just like the prototype. A new ashpan was build from styrene sheet to conform to the real prototype. I still need to file the plastic shell that exceed the ashpan.

Magic Sculpt putty was used to fill boiler slots. Since the running board will be lowered, I need the boiler to be extended down. I used paper strips to keep putty in place until it dried hard. If the loco was painted black, that shouldn't be a big problem, but a Russian iron boiler won't forget such details.

The domes were reattached to the body using screws. Since the domes are black and the boiler in Russian iron, I prefer to paint them separatly and attach them later.

The only exception was the steam turret which is permanently attached to the boiler.

Correct cab windows were also added. I feel the frame are a little bit large even if I carefully measured them on scaled pictures. I'm afraid one painted bright read, they will look odd. Maybe redoing it could be a very good idea.

You will see I cut then reattached the cab roof overhang. At some point, I got sidetracked while measuring the cab for modification. I was convinced I had to lower the roof and proceeded to remove it... until I found out the Bachmann cab, while not a 100% perfect match, was far better than I thought... Fortunately, I didn't butcher the overhang... unfortunately, I made my life harder and the roof is now much more brittle than anticipated. I'll cover it with a .25mm styrene sheet, hoping it it be enough to hide the problem and strenghten the parts together.

There's still a lot of prep work to do, but just adding the boiler straps is a good indication I'm in the more rewarding part of the work.

By the way, I've redrawn Grand Trunk lettering in AutoCAD using several pictures. The process was tedious as I had to draw each letter and each number individually to make sure they matched the prototype. Each character was reverse engineered to fit out the geometric rules used by the typograph to make them.

I was just not interested in using an "almost similar" commercial font, I want the real thing. While doing this, I found out GT had at least two variations on this classic paint scheme: one with bold numbers and stripes and one, more common, with regular numbers and thin stripes. I've drawn both.

Now I'm looking forward to recreate at least two CNoR paint scheme commonly seen in the early 20th century.

It should be noted I discovered Grand Trunk, Intercolonial and Canadian Northern shared the same number font on several locomotives. Also, the regular cab font was also the same for the three railroad. Temiscouata seems also to have used a  variation of the same font and I have photographic evidence QRL&PCo jumped in the bandwagon too. Well, it seems Canadian railways lacked imagination or hired the same designers or just copied available fonts from graphic standard books. The good thing is that reproducing many paint scheme shouldn't be too hard.