Prepared by Tommy Day Originator Mike Cole

Cole4892 - Jun 28, 2018 at 6:33 PM
Now that the 4MT tank is more or less finished - (the water capacity plate arrived today and will be applied over the weekend) I can now return my attention to the Diag 1/551 Inspection saloon 'cut and shuffle' exercise that I started last year.

I decided that the way forward was to finish the sides and ends before the chassis and bogies on he basis that if the 'cut and shuffle' didn't work out then I had not wasted my time of the rest of the kit. So the Ersa was fired up this morning which has resulted in

from this

I built a jig that was long enough to take the full length of the side and peeled off each of the pieces from the masking/carrier tape in turn, cleaned them up, held B against A and against the jig, applied heat and moved on C to B, etc left it all to cool off, then cleaned the excess solder off with a scratch brush, brushed off the arisings and then sprayed a witness coat to check for any tell tale lines, which fortunately, they were not too bad. So stopper putty was applied which seemed to be going off in this heat as soon as it was out of the tube, that was then left to harden off.

In the mean time, attention was turned to the 'other side' which as you can see, needed two of the four foot windows to be reduced to two foot. I had cut out three pieces when I had had use of the guillotine, which just needed to be trimmed to fit. The opening lights were removed from the foor footers and the corners made square rather than radii. The new infill panels were then soldered in, cleaned up and again witness coated and stopper puttied and left to dry.

The stopper was smoothed down and again witness coated and the results are shown above. The ends are next up, a question of marking out and forming the three identical windows, unlike the ex LMS Diag D2046 saloons, there were no central droplights on these two conversions. Hopefully, more to come soon.
regards
Mike

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Cole4892 - Jul 28, 2018 at 7:18 AM
Now that the 4MT is out of the way, I have made some progress on the Inspection Saloon over the last few days, in as much that I have now fitted the centre fixed lights to the ends. I obtained a couple of blank D2046 ends from Malcolm Binns at Sidelines and using the etched D2046 ends from the kit as a pattern, drew round the inside of the fixed light window openings as a guide for the replacement fixed lights. Measured up the rectangular opening meant for the droplight and superimposed that rectangle over the previously drawn fixed light shape. I then milled out the new fixed light openings and then using a piercing saw, cut out the rectangle and then spent a couple of hours with fine files fetling them to be a good fit within the opening and then soldered them in place.

both ends - before and after, but before any cleaning up

end 1 after cleaning up.

end 2 from the outside and before cleaning up.
Next step is to fit sides to ends then make up the box and fit the roof - hopefully next week.
regards
Mike

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Cole4892 - Sep 5, 2018 at 6:30 PM
….a week is a long time in model making as well as in politics!!
Much water has passed under the bridge since July and I have just about stayed calm, mainly sitting on the bank waiting for the mojo to float pass, and strangely, since that injection in the arm that is Telford, I have reeled it in and carried out the task in the last line of the previous post:) having put it off for far too long - mainly because I do not like using Bostik.

The chassis and bogies were completed last week and the body ends screwed on, giving a good 'platform' for the sides to be added. The roof was then offered up to the box only to discover that my assumption that it was already cut to length was out by a mere 12mm and having put the vents and filler pots on, I thought that disaster was staring me in the face and major surgery might be needed, but thankfully, there was sufficient 'slack' at the small saloon end and the repair only required two vents to be removed, which as yet have not been replaced.

seven into one will go - 1

seven into one will go - 2

the guards side with the two outer small windows formed from standard 4' windows

revised end now with a fixed light in lieu of the droplight

test run being propelled by 37193 on the inner circuit and no buffer lock\\. The fittings on the ends and roof will be the next task, then inside the body and making the furniture.

I have decided to finish it in Blue/Grey and fit the Southern Region reporting panel at the bottom of the central fixed light with 'RT' at the leading end and unlit red panels at the trailing end. Transfers already in stock from John Peck at Precision Decals.
regards
Mike

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End of thread