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  #1  
Old 08-14-2016, 10:25 AM
Erik Zwaan's Avatar
Erik Zwaan Erik Zwaan is offline
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A4 Pacific Sir Nigel Gresley, O-scale

Back from summer vacation and time to start a new build. I must admit to prefer building flying things such as airplanes and birds and the occasional something traditionally architectural but it’s time for a change. Papertrade published this wonderful O-scale (1:48) A4 Pacific steam locomotive earlier this year, obtainable in hardcopy and download via - Zeist Bouwplaten - Import, verkoop, ontwerp en productie van papieren schaalmodellen, maquettes en bouwplaten (cardmodels), Modelbouw, Rietveld cutoutmodels and I’m just curious about building such a great machine. I’ve never built a steam locomotive before so it will be sort of a quest, undoubtedly complete with all the inevitable humps during the journey. Well, that’s part of the charm.

The A4 Pacific locomotives served on the long distance railway tracks in Great Britain between the mid-1930s and 60s and several speed records were set by these wind tunnel designed machines. Pre-war record was 126 mph by the “Mallard” and the post-war record of 112 mph was reached by the “Sir Nigel Gresley”, being the subject of this model and named after the designer of the A4 series.

Out of the 35 operational A4’s only six still exist and are kept alive and kicking by various musea and private organisations. The Gresley for instance is preserved by the A4 Locomotive Preservation Society and the Mallard can be seen in the National Railway Museum in York. Several film clips can be found on YouTube as well as pictures and other information on the internet about these great machines, which provide a wealth of background information. Perhaps useful to enhance the model with a few extra details during the build.

Back to the model. It consists of 8 A3 size sheets, folded and stapled in a neat A4 booklet, looking very attractive and detailed and was designed by the Dutch graphical designer Cor van Haasteren, who has designed several models for Papertrade in the recent years. All together the model has some 400 parts.

A laser set is also available, which contains the most delicate parts that otherwise would have to be laminated with 1mm thick board. I decided to order this set as it would be finger breaking work to have to cut out all the spokes of the wheels and rods of the gear mechanism, as to mention a few of the complicated parts.

There’s also a short erratum list, concerning mainly typos in the part numbers, instruction drawing and a non-critical scaling error in the formers of the steam boiler. Not really something to worry about and a pdf is provided with proper scaling instructions for printing when you order the model.

It took me some time to study the parts sheets and the building instructions. It is recommended starting with the tender body as this is a rather straight-forward section of the model and I duly followed this advice.

Although the real machine appears to have a glossy surface, for the time being I have sprayed all sheets with eggshell matt varnish before starting to cut. Varnishing provides better paper strength and it’s my experience that it does not really impact bonding, either when using white paper glue or acetate based glue like Bison, UHU or Velpon.

Herewith the first pictures to show you this project has been kicked off!

Erik
Attached Thumbnails
A4 Pacific Sir Nigel Gresley, O-scale-dscn3905.jpg   A4 Pacific Sir Nigel Gresley, O-scale-dscn3906.jpg   A4 Pacific Sir Nigel Gresley, O-scale-dscn3907.jpg   A4 Pacific Sir Nigel Gresley, O-scale-dscn3908.jpg   A4 Pacific Sir Nigel Gresley, O-scale-dscn3909.jpg  

A4 Pacific Sir Nigel Gresley, O-scale-img_3431.jpg   A4 Pacific Sir Nigel Gresley, O-scale-img_3432.jpg   A4 Pacific Sir Nigel Gresley, O-scale-img_3433.jpg  
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  #2  
Old 08-14-2016, 10:31 AM
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Don Boose Don Boose is offline
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Magnificent locomotive! Excellent work so far!

Don
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  #3  
Old 08-14-2016, 11:16 AM
Diderick A. den Bakker's Avatar
Diderick A. den Bakker Diderick A. den Bakker is offline
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In preparing this model together with designer Cor van Haasteren I paid a lot of attention to the correct colour. It turned out the basic (fairly dark) blue colour was very susceptible to change under the influence of sun and rain - in the course of a few years it became very much lighter.
Same for gloss: of course the remaining engines are lovingly polished and kept almost unnaturally shiny. We finally chose a matte finish as being nearer to reality of engines in everyday use. Those who like gloss can allways treat the model with appropriate varnish.
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Old 08-14-2016, 12:05 PM
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Kevin WS Kevin WS is offline
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Looking forward to the build.......
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Old 08-15-2016, 07:59 AM
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Wonderful start!! Looking forward to future updates..
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Old 08-22-2016, 03:27 AM
Erik Zwaan's Avatar
Erik Zwaan Erik Zwaan is offline
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Work on the tender body continues

Thank you Don, Diderick, Kevin WS and Eatcrow2 for your reactions. It’s good to have you all on board!

Continued with the tender body last week and although the assembly is not difficult and the fitting in general is very good, a few remarks are worth noting:

Inside formers 132e of the tender body are a few millimeters too high. Bottom plate 132c of the tender would otherwise not fit within the bottom rim as indicated in the instructions.

For a better span of “gluing control” it would be my preference to place the formers inside the body already and to not attach them to the bottom plate as per instructions. For the same reason, place engine side bulkhead 118 at the tender body before fitting the bottom plate (and attached to it, part 132d). Save it for last as in this way only the bottom plate has to be glued in place instead of the entire assembly with formers.

Engine side bulkhead 118 has to be trimmed on the curved side by approximately 0.5mm to make it fit properly in the “arch”, considering the small gap on the lower side required for fitting the bottom plate properly.

To make the inside of the tender body stronger I laminated it with 1mm thick board but a cereal box would be just as fine. By doing so, gluing strips 132c are not required. Their dimensions are not entirely correct anyway. I only realized this after gluing them to the bottom plate and subsequently partly removed them as you can see in the bottom plate picture.

Although the print of the cokes look very realistic it is clear to see that the same pattern has been copied three times, which is a bit of a pity. I’m considering changing this later on by adding a layer of sand particles or something on top, and then painted appropriately. Still have to find stuff with the right dimensions. Any suggestions?

The inside lining of the coach and engine side bulkheads is not correct. At the coach side it is too short whereas at the engine side the print is not aligned properly. I took a picture of the coach side to illustrate this. Luckily I scanned the sheets before starting the work and with a print of the parts concerned, trimmed to fit, it's easily solved.

Next will be further body build-up and related details before starting the tender chassis.

Interesting to note is that this type of tender had a build-in narrow corridor along the right side to allow the engine staff to move freely between the engine and front coach. Especially for longer distances they could find a place to rest in this way, and a double crew could take over. The outline of the roof of this corridor is clearly visible from above in the model.

Wikipedia and YouTube provide a wealth of interesting information, not in the least about how a steam engine works in the first place!

Erik
Attached Thumbnails
A4 Pacific Sir Nigel Gresley, O-scale-1_img_3444.jpg   A4 Pacific Sir Nigel Gresley, O-scale-2_img_3470.jpg   A4 Pacific Sir Nigel Gresley, O-scale-3_img_3471.jpg   A4 Pacific Sir Nigel Gresley, O-scale-4_img_3445.jpg   A4 Pacific Sir Nigel Gresley, O-scale-5_img_3472.jpg  

A4 Pacific Sir Nigel Gresley, O-scale-6_img_3446.jpg   A4 Pacific Sir Nigel Gresley, O-scale-7_img_3447.jpg   A4 Pacific Sir Nigel Gresley, O-scale-8_img_3476.jpg   A4 Pacific Sir Nigel Gresley, O-scale-9_img_3477.jpg   A4 Pacific Sir Nigel Gresley, O-scale-10_img_3475.jpg  

A4 Pacific Sir Nigel Gresley, O-scale-11_img_3473.jpg   A4 Pacific Sir Nigel Gresley, O-scale-12_img_3474.jpg  
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  #7  
Old 08-22-2016, 05:46 AM
elliott elliott is offline
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Off to a great start Erik! This is going to be a fun build to follow.
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  #8  
Old 08-22-2016, 06:38 AM
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Don Boose Don Boose is offline
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Beautiful work on the tender. I appreciate the detailed narrative and the information about how you overcame problems.

Don
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Old 08-22-2016, 10:24 AM
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Tim Crowe Tim Crowe is offline
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Another great build thread, Erik

Will be following this closely

Tim
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  #10  
Old 08-22-2016, 11:32 AM
Diderick A. den Bakker's Avatar
Diderick A. den Bakker Diderick A. den Bakker is offline
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For realistic coal, google for 'chicken grit', then find a friend who keeps chicken or other birds: you buy the stuff in 5 kilo bags...
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