Tomcat's 1/35 Trumpeter BR86 Dampflokomotive

[digger303]

Super complicated made worse when the instructions aren't great, but she's looking sweet.
That flange work like you say doesn't look quite right looks unbalanced, but over all it looks smashing.



Ps....This is good https://www.passion132.com/gb/pigments/ ... -45ml.html

Absolutely awesome work.

That resin looks great and will look B E A Utiful when painted

Nicely done getting the resin parts sorted!!

Just keeps getting better Neil

Thanks chaps and for that link as well @digger303 - these things got really grubby so definitely planning on giving it a damn good weathering when we get there.

For anyone wanting to tackle this on a smaller scale Hobbyboss do what look to be the same kits in 1/72 (just in case @RangerNeil needs to smuggle it past the wife )
[/@digger303 I think there is even a 1/87 scale kit out there somewhere.

[Quax]

now its beginning to look like a locomotive! some really super detailed stuff has gone into this and it going to look immense
Paul

[DRUMS01]

Been watching from the beginning and I have to say that is some really nice work Neil.

While the kit shows amazing detail lets not forget your ability to get this kit together to the standard in which you have already. I'm looking forward to your paint and weathering of the kit.

Bravo, Skills A+

Ben

[RangerNeil]

<snipped>
For anyone wanting to tackle this on a smaller scale Hobbyboss do what look to be the same kits in 1/72 (just in case @RangerNeil needs to smuggle it past the wife )

Ah - I have that one sussed... Being of the sneaky and devious mindset the Army so loved I will keep one of the 1/48 scale Hind boxes and would pop one inside the other, the wife being accustomed to seeing Hinds everywhere.......

[digger303]

<snipped>
For anyone wanting to tackle this on a smaller scale Hobbyboss do what look to be the same kits in 1/72 (just in case @RangerNeil needs to smuggle it past the wife )

Ah - I have that one sussed... Being of the sneaky and devious mindset the Army so loved I will keep one of the 1/48 scale Hind boxes and would pop one inside the other, the wife being accustomed to seeing Hinds everywhere.......

Hmmm that's a new level of sneakiness I usually resort to waiting until SWBO is watching a show then bolting in.
This build is the top of my list to catch up on each day......won't say favorite will I cause that might cause issues

[Parker]

looking forward to the paint job & weathering!

[Stokesy44]

This build is the top of my list to catch up on each day......won't say favorite will I cause that might cause issues

We know where you live.....

[KungFuDrew]

Awesome! But as others have said, that looks like an absolute pig to paint.

[digger303]

This build is the top of my list to catch up on each day......won't say favorite will I cause that might cause issues

We know where you live.....

[Twokidsnosleep]

Love the added weights…what are they from car wheels???
A surprise heavy feel of a model is a cool feature to me
Nice work, lovely details

[DBMiller]

Sweet looking machine!

[Stokesy44]

Love the added weights…what are they from car wheels???
A surprise heavy feel of a model is a cool feature to me
Nice work, lovely details

Its one of the things I notice with metal tracks on tanks. Makes them feel bad-ass when being handled.

[ForeverPlasticKits]

It's not a relaxing build but how interesting it is!

[Tomcat64]

now its beginning to look like a locomotive! some really super detailed stuff has gone into this and it going to look immense
Paul

Been watching from the beginning and I have to say that is some really nice work Neil.

While the kit shows amazing detail lets not forget your ability to get this kit together to the standard in which you have already. I'm looking forward to your paint and weathering of the kit.

Bravo, Skills A+

Ben

looking forward to the paint job & weathering!

Awesome! But as others have said, that looks like an absolute pig to paint.

Sweet looking machine!

It's not a relaxing build but how interesting it is!

Thanks for stopping by and commenting guys

This has been a really enjoyable build seeing it all take shape

<snipped>
For anyone wanting to tackle this on a smaller scale Hobbyboss do what look to be the same kits in 1/72 (just in case @RangerNeil needs to smuggle it past the wife )

Ah - I have that one sussed... Being of the sneaky and devious mindset the Army so loved I will keep one of the 1/48 scale Hind boxes and would pop one inside the other, the wife being accustomed to seeing Hinds everywhere.......

Love the added weights…what are they from car wheels???
A surprise heavy feel of a model is a cool feature to me
Nice work, lovely details

Cheers mate - and yep they're strips of wheel weights, I got a box of them a while back and either add them as a full strip if there's space or split them out and tuck them in when there isn't.

[Tomcat64]

Just a quick update from this week's evening work which has entirely focussed on building up the parts from the Tolkien-Knorr Compressor & Water Feeding Pump upgrade set.

Compressor and Water Pump

Once again the instructions show a set of close up reference pics, but also a breakdown of the parts. I've pulled the pdf instructions into photoshop and exported a few pages as pngs to (hopefully) give you an idea of how they looked.

Here's a sample from the compressor:




And this is how it's supposed to look - they include a decent length of copper wire for detailing


And then the water pump - Some of the parts are a little fragile and were broken but nothing a dab of CA didn't fix


And here's how this is supposed to turn out...


And here's what I ended up with - hopefully most of the parts are in more or less the right place The cylinder to the right of the water pump looks a little scruffy as this needed some fiddling about to get in place but should look ok once primed up.

Next trick is to try and get them attached to the boiler

Thanks as always for looking

[Donkeywalloper]

Oh my what a beauty. Credit to yourself in abundance.
DW

[digger303]

Marvelous and great skills too.

[Stokesy44]

Loving all the detail with the greeblies. Whenever I see stuff like that I help but think about how it will all be painted and weathered. beautiful stuff coming me thinks.

[digger303]

Only ever dealt with one piece of resin before so the thought of cleaning up so much and staying safe is a concern. I know your supposed to do it wet, but guaranteed I'd lose the bits down the sink plug hole.

[Stokesy44]

Only ever dealt with one piece of resin before so the thought of cleaning up so much and staying safe is a concern. I know your supposed to do it wet, but guaranteed I'd lose the bits down the sink plug hole.

a bit of reasonable care and you would be fine!

[Tomcat64]

Oh my what a beauty. Credit to yourself in abundance.
DW

Thanks DW appreciate you stopping by in the engine shed

Marvelous and great skills too.

Loving all the detail with the greeblies. Whenever I see stuff like that I help but think about how it will all be painted and weathered. beautiful stuff coming me thinks.

Thanks as always for following along chaps

Only ever dealt with one piece of resin before so the thought of cleaning up so much and staying safe is a concern. I know your supposed to do it wet, but guaranteed I'd lose the bits down the sink plug hole.

What I do is put a couple of bits of dampened kitchen roll onto a tray and work on that (especially for sawing & sanding) and then just keep the sanding stick moistened - otherwise I'd been rummaging about down the plug hole like you

To be fair once these parts are off the casting blocks there's been relatively little cleanup and I've done most of it with a scalpel.

[digger303]

Oh my what a beauty. Credit to yourself in abundance.
DW

Thanks DW appreciate you stopping by in the engine shed

Marvelous and great skills too.

Loving all the detail with the greeblies. Whenever I see stuff like that I help but think about how it will all be painted and weathered. beautiful stuff coming me thinks.

Thanks as always for following along chaps

Only ever dealt with one piece of resin before so the thought of cleaning up so much and staying safe is a concern. I know your supposed to do it wet, but guaranteed I'd lose the bits down the sink plug hole.

What I do is put a couple of bits of dampened kitchen roll onto a tray and work on that (especially for sawing & sanding) and then just keep the sanding stick moistened - otherwise I'd been rummaging about down the plug hole like you

To be fair once these parts are off the casting blocks there's been relatively little cleanup and I've done most of it with a scalpel.

Good advice I have a plastic tray here somewhere.

[smokeriderdon]

Wow. Thats some fiddly resin right there. Is it even going to be visible?

[digger303]

Wow. Thats some fiddly resin right there. Is it even going to be visible?

yep and you should see the resin upgrades for the BR-52

[Tomcat64]

Wow. Thats some fiddly resin right there. Is it even going to be visible?

Wow. Thats some fiddly resin right there. Is it even going to be visible?

yep and you should see the resin upgrades for the BR-52

Yep - here's a sneak preview of the water pump attached... the compressor is proving to be a little more tricky - hoping to tackle that one this weekend

[Tomcat64]

Welcome back to the engine shed folks - I didn't get as much done on the loco as originally planned at the weekend as amongst other household jobs I was on cake-making duties for my Mum's 80th birthday, so in the tradition started by DW here's a cake to start


I have had a couple of days off this week though and made some decent progress so here's today's loco themed tune

Boiler

Onto the build at last, and this update is brought to you by the letters "e", "P" and "m"... more of that later, we'll start with section 12 of the instructions which involved adding the water pump and other bits of pipework on the boiler


So I've added the water pump and fiddled the piping into place, again needing to trim to size to fit the resin AM parts


And pipework added on the opposite side - I decided that part number H35 in the instructions is actually replaced by the top box on the compressor

Cab

Now... section 13 has you adding the front wall of the cab, but the fit is really loose and there's nothing to really line it up against, sooo I combined selected elements of section 13, 14 & 15 to build the cab up. I'll return to these sections later to complete the pipework and other components.


The footplate in section 14 is what I started with...


I then added the front wall and side walls to try and get everything in place and aligned


But before building anything I spent a couple of sessions dealing with the aforementioned EPMs. Now these have been prevalent throughout the build but in most cases they've either been on the side of components that won't be seen, or have been easy enough to sand out without damaging anything important. Since these are on the inside walls of the cab I decided they warranted a little more care & attention


For those that are interested my method is to fill the EPM with a dollop of AK Interactive putty, sand that flat once dry, and then add a blob of Mr Dissolved Putty into any remaining gaps and re-sand. I could probably get away with just using Mr DP but it stinks

Bunker

Anyway while that was all in progress I decided to skip to section 16 and build up the rear bunker


Pretty straightforward and my first encounter with PE in the kit - the window cowls were bent into shape around a suitably sized paintbrush handle


I've also added some weight to this construct to balance out the weight added to the boiler tube

Cab and Pipework

Then back to the cab - and here's how that turned out...


And as you can see I've started added the control rod thingies as well - once again the alignment will require a little poetic license as the AM parts don't always line up where the kit parts expect them to be


I've also made a start on the remaining boiler pipes

Tanks

I also skipped forward to do the basic assembly of the water tanks as this allowed me to bin the empty K & L sprue frames


These will be finished off later

Dry fit

Now... with all those components available I couldn't resist dry fitting things together to see how it will look


And for those interested in getting a sense of the size, here it is with an old Tamiya Kubelwagen in the same scale

So hopefully I can get the compressor fitted & finish the boiler pipework and then fit out the cab in the next few days.

Thanks as always for stopping by

[digger303]

Truly a engineering master piece for the times and looks magic even at this early stage of construction.

[RangerNeil]

Thats a LOT bigger than I thought it was.... Going to be impressive once built and weathered!!

[kpisnuts]

That is looking awesome.

[Twokidsnosleep]

Pretty cool indeed.
Love the pipes!

[Kevthemodeller]

Wow that's some cake there Neil, are you sure the Mrs didn't have a hand in it? It certainly matches the build, it just keeps getting better

[DRUMS01]

The detail on this is most impressive. I've always wanted to watch one of these go together. Even with the fit issues of the kit and after-market details your persistent dedication to the build surely make this a stunner.

Thanks for sharing the incremental updates as they are inspirational.

Ben

P.S.: nice cake too.....

[Stokesy44]

Cracking build mate. it looks kind of beautiful but brutish at the same time.

Massive too

[Quax]

Clearly making these detailed kits is a piece of cake for you... I hope you have a new bottle of Ultimate because this is going to swallow primer!

Paul

[BigWall]

This is an epic build! There's so much detail to bring out.

[digger303]

Hanging out for another update.

[Stokesy44]

Hanging out for another update.

Don't worry my friend, the train will be along soon!

[RangerNeil]

Hanging out for another update.

Me too......

[digger303]

Hanging out for another update.

Don't worry my friend, the train will be along soon!

Love train sets, ever since when I was a kid the local trades fair had the same layout every year. About 4m x 2.5m turn table and 3 running at once,tunnels and a fence right around to keep little beggars like me at bay. I'm not sure of the scale except to say I know it was bigger than N maybe HO. It was the star attraction for me and the roasted cashew stand.



Ps.....I've never bought a train set or want to, isn't that strange.

[Tomcat64]

Thanks for checking in and commenting on the trains & the cake everyone

@Kevthemodeller you're right Mrs TC was involved in the cake - she ate the "leftover" mix from the bowl

@digger303 I actually do still have my old trainset from when I was a kid up in the loft - one of those nostalgic things I can't bring myself to get rid of so it just lives up there with the scalextric set gathering dust. I've always been fascinated by locomotives both steam & diesel - just the sheer power of them is fascinating in itself - we're lucky enough to have a couple of heritage railway centres less than an hour's drive from home so can go and watch the trains go by once we're allowed out to play

[Tomcat64]

Just a small update this morning as I've had a minor encounter with conjunctivitis over the weekend so have been wary about using CA & TET and picking up fumes while that sorts itself out.

Boiler

So first up I've attached the final steam pipe on the left side of the boiler - once again this required some trimming to fit the A/M parts, and it ended up fouling on the top of the water pump cylinder so it's got a slight bow in it towards the front that I'll live with

Compressor

Then around the other side to the fitting of the compressor assembly... I was struggling to figure out how to fit this and whether I should use the mounting bracket (H24) or just attach it directly to the boiler, sooooo I mounted the boiler on the frames, dry fitted the right hand tank and as a result it became obvious how it would need to sit. If the mounting bracket was used the compressor would foul the drive cylinder below so the locating hole for that was filled and a blanking plate was added to cover the other locating hole where H35 would have gone.


You can also see in the previous photo how the three-way junction assembly replaces parts D19x2 & G27 on the steam pipe that runs around the front of the boiler. Here is the compressor assembly CA'd in place


I then added the other small assembly from the A/M kit - from the photos in the set I think it "should" be mounted where the orange arrow indicates, but if you do that it fouls the side tank - so I've dropped it down about 10mm and it sits in there fine - wrong but fine...


The last thing to do was add the bottom pipes (G1 & G2) and again these both needed cutting to size to fit the new parts. One other note from the reference photos is that there is supposed to be a pipe from the flange (orange arrow) to the back of the compressor which isn't supplied - I'll see if I can get some wire in there to fit, but it's all a bit tight so we'll have to see how that goes


And finally I've attached the front plate (H26 from stage 17) as I wanted to make sure the pipes didn't foul on it once I'd got everything in

So that's it for now - the eye is on the mend so hopefully I can get back to the cab assemblies later this week.

Thanks as always for looking.

[Kevthemodeller]

@Kevthemodeller you're right Mrs TC was involved in the cake - she ate the "leftover" mix from the bowl

[digger303]

Hmmm I don't like the problems your having getting the parts to line up correctly. I thought LZ would be better than that having seen the way he is so precise in his own building.
Still looks the bee's knee's though.

[Twokidsnosleep]

You are having fun!!!
Looks great

[Kevthemodeller]

More lovely detail work there Neil

[ForeverPlasticKits]

It's definitively not an easy kit but what a pleasure to follow it!

[Stokesy44]

Looks great and will be stunning when the paint goes down.

Sorry to hear about the eye trouble matey, hope you're on the mend now

[Tomcat64]

Hmmm I don't like the problems your having getting the parts to line up correctly. I thought LZ would be better than that having seen the way he is so precise in his own building.
Still looks the bee's knee's though.

There's no doubt the LZ bits look great and are a step above the kit parts, but the "instructions" really leave a lot to be desired - it feels a bit like he knows the subject so well that he assumes everyone else will know what they're looking at too. Some of the problems are no doubt down to me not doing enough research and just wanting to get on with it - it's one of those situations where it'd be a lot easier to do it second time around but that gets expensive

You are having fun!!!
Looks great

More lovely detail work there Neil

It's definitively not an easy kit but what a pleasure to follow it!

Thanks guys - I'm really happy with how it's looking

Looks great and will be stunning when the paint goes down.

Sorry to hear about the eye trouble matey, hope you're on the mend now

Cheers mate - last day of medicated drops today and feeling much better

[Tomcat64]

Well things have slowed down a bit now I've got to the cab, but here's a quick update on progress...

First I've added the control pipe thingies that pass through the cab front and connect to various things on the boiler


In this case it seems the LZ after market has left me with a pipe that doesn't properly connect (or more likely that I installed wrong!) so for the moment this pipe is just connected to the end of here. I'll see if I want to fashion something out of scrap to make that look a bit more connected.


Then it was time to add bits to the end of the firebox...these are all kit parts (including the PE) so no real dramas (except for the mandatory TET spillage!)


Here it is installed in the cab - I needed to drill out a couple of the "loop" on top to get the pipes to slide through cleanly


And finally with all the control wheels installed


I've also made a start on the last of the LZ after market parts for the interior, and the instructions are similar to the previous two - although labelling two different parts with the same letter was a nice touch




This one did at least give a nice view of the overall assembly which does make figuring out where bits go a little easier


Some supplies have turned up...


And finally I've ordered up the Eduard interior set - mainly because there are no decals (or alternative) for the valves, but also because the Ed set includes a wood effect floor which these things had. Hopefully this will be here in time for the weekend by which time hopefully the temperatures will have dropped a bit.

And finally, finally here's the reason I didn't get any bench time this past weekend - It's not a steamer but Mrs TC and myself are armchair members of the group that owns this beast so we spent Sunday out and about playing with a real loco


Thanks as always for looking

[Twokidsnosleep]

What you don't innately know where all those bits and bobs go??

Resin detail sets drive me crazy with their constant lack of instruction or detailed photos
You are making a masterpiece