Heljan O Gauge Class 33 DCC fitting and reassembly - part II - all finished and ready to roll!!

Over the last couple of days I have managed to finish putting my Heljan Class 33 back together. This has been one of those projects where nothing has gone right and the modelling has been a bit slow and disjointed. I originally reassembled the locomotive and installed the DCC sound chip, only to discover that one of the motors was not running correctly, which created stuttering, especially at low speeds. I took the locomotive apart again and stripped the bogie down; I suspected a cracked gear but could not find one. When the locomotive was running the motor seemed to working upwards a little in the motor casing - this was despite making sure every screw was tightened up. Ultimately, I could not find the reason for the poor running....

Finally, the class 33 ready for service!

So in the end, I decided to remove all of the gears from one of the bogies and disconnect the motor, snipping the wires and sealing the ends in insultation tape. I left the motor in-situ to provide some weight and balance to the locomotive. The upshot is, the loco runs perfectly well on one motor, however I am bit miffed that one motor has effectively been consigned to the rubbish bin, when the locomotive has barely been run.

Despite the trials with this project, I am pretty happy with the end result. At normal exhibition viewing distances the class 33 looks pretty good!

After some testing I was pleased that the locomotive was running correctly and reinstalled the Heljan hand rails.  I have no idea why Heljan opted for plastic handrails - they are somewhat fragile, surely metal would have been better? However, they have now been reattached and look OK, although one of the hand rails is sticking out a little too far and I will reset it this morning. 

I was particularly pleased with the detailing on the underframes and bogies, the colour contrasts have worked well.

So finally, the class 33 project is now finished! Lots of errors along the way and also a brilliant learning curve for working and detailing O gauge models. When it was all put back together and was running on the DCC test track, I did think, yes that looks pretty good. In a few years time I might well revisit this locomotive but for now it can happily plod up and down the layout. With a lot of lessons learnt, I am about to start the weathering and detailing of a class 122 bubble car and class 42 warship, although I hope to complete these projects a little more quickly than the class 33! It is great to now have another completed locomotive to run on my layout and I am getting close to having enough rolling stock to run at an exhibition; I just need to get the layout finished.......more on that soon.....

The class 33 idling on the DCC test track, pulling a couple of pieces of rolling stock from the engineers department.

North Devon creamy goodness! Slaters Milk Tanker in service (and a Merry Xmas)

So I managed to put the finishing touches to the Slaters milt tanker, which amounted to gluing down the ladders and gluing in the straps. It was all a little fiddly to get it finished but it is now over the line and ready to roll. On the next build I will definitiely drill out the bronze castings that the straps fit into - this was a bit of an error in this build, which meant that gluing them into place was a little tricky. Overall, I am pretty pleased with how this one turned out, although as always there are some places where the modelling can be improved....

Anyhow, it is great to finally have some time to model over the festive season, now that work is finished for the year.  I have several other projects that are nearing completion - so I really hope to be able to find the time over the coming weeks to get these finished off.

All that remains to be said, is Happy Xmas everyone - I hope you all have a wonderful time.

Milk tanker finished in typical 1970s condition, i,e. filthy!

O Gauge Slaters Milk Tankers - first one nearly finished.....

The Xmas break has arrived for me and this year I have a decent amount of time off over the festive period. Alongside seeing friends and family, I should be able to get a few days of dedicated modelling time and I aim to put this time to to good use, finishing off various projects. I have quite a few models in the paint boxes that are close to being completed - so I plan to get these models over the line, rather than starting too many new projects.

So the first one that is heading towards the finish line, is this Slaters GWR 3000 gallon milk tanker. The building of this kit is a joy - although it is a bit fiddly in places. The painting is a little awkward and to be able to fully paint the tank, you need the underframe and tank kept as separate pieces. So yesterday, with the paint and transfers finished, I glued the two body parts together, desperately trying not to spill glue over the paint finish. Today I need to glue on the ladders and undertake a tiny bit of touching up of paint in a couple of places. Hopefully this will only take a couple of hours and then the first model of the Xmas hols will have been completed.

GWR milt tanker nearly finished. There are a couple of small areas that require paint touching up, and the ladders added.

End view of the milk tanker, with the level of detail in the kit evident.

This is the first Slaters milk tanker I have built and it is the start of a small rake. Having now nearly finished this wagon, there are a few tricks to the construction and finishing of these tanks that I will employ on future builds, so this has been a very good learning curve. I have a second kit in the stash to start in the coming months and I am hoping construction will be a bit quicker. Ultimately I would like to build between 6-8 of these tankers to run into the dairy, although at the current rate of progress that might take me a few years to achieve!

O gauge Tunny and Grampus kit builds

With the layout packed up for Xmas I have made a little progress on finishing off some wagon builds. The couple I have been working on are two engineering wagons, being a Grampus and Tunny. The Grampus wagon is the standard Peco (Parkside) kit, built as per the instructions, which I finished off a few weeks ago. This is a simple kit to build - the parts go together cleanly and the end result really looks the part.

The Grampus wagon - now waiting for a good clean before heading into the paint boxes.

The second kit to finish building was a GWR Tunny wagon. This is a 3D printed kit from Skog. Compared to the Parkside kit, there was a lot of cleaning up to do of the printed parts, not least trying to remove the print lines, particularly from the exterior of the wagon. The wagon was built with a lot of spare parts from other kits; the brake levers are the spare set from the Grampus build and the axle boxes are Slaters spares. However, overall it is has built up into a good representation of the prototype and I am sure will look great once painted. The kit will need a thorough scrub when it gets cleaned later today before heading into the paint boxes.

The Tunny wagon.

The sides took a lot of filing down to get rid of the 3D printed lines.

The close ups are probably a little bit cruel when it comes to the Tunny wagon. However, with a good wash later today and a decent paint job I am certain it will look the part. Whilst the Tunny kit was a bit more basic than the Grampus waggon, it was also under half its price. It therefore represents excellent value for money - although I would definitely recommend having a cache of spares available to help detail the kit.

With Xmas fast approaching I am limited to a bit of modelling on the kitchen table alongside doing a bit of painting. The next wagon build has already been started - a Slaters SR BY wagon, again to be finished in BR engineers olive green. I also have severeal buildings to finish off for the layout, alongside completing the painting of severeal wagon. So there is plenty to keep me busy over the next few weeks, whilst the layout is packed away.