ASSEMBLING A COUNTY DONEGAL RAILCAR by Rik Bennett
Rik Bennett goes on a voyage of discovery in etched brass.
The Peckforton Light Railway represents an imaginary three-foot narrow-gauge railway set in 1932, when the internal combustion engine was beginning to make inroads into fleets of steam locomotives. Several lines had closed or were struggling, and so, I have a legitimate reason for their rolling stock to have made its way on to PLR metals.
By coincidence, in 1932, the Clogher Valley Railway in Ireland took delivery of the first articulated diesel railcar from the Walker Brothers’ Works in Wigan. I have always admired the Walker railcars, particularly the first, which subsequently found its way to the County Donegal Railway as railcar No. 10.
At the Llanfair show, I spied a fine model
of this railcar built from a John Campbell etched brass kit. Now out of production, I persuaded him to produce a one-off, barebones kit – just a set of brass etches with none of the additional resin and whitemetal cast fittings.
It took over two years for me to pluck up the courage to tackle the model, having never constructed a brass etch kit before, and it was somewhat a voyage of discovery. After three weeks of effort, some singed fingers and a fair amount of experimentation, the kit was completed.
No doubt those who are skilled metal workers would have done a better job, but hopefully, those who have never tackled an etched bass kit will take comfort from my experience and might even be tempted to have a go themselves. After all, if a ham-fisted bodgeller such as me can do it, I’m sure anyone can!
Getting started
After removing the etched sheets from their packaging, two tasks revealed themselves. Firstly, the brass had become tarnished through its years of storage and secondly, the myriad parts needed to be removed from the etches.
The metal was quite heavy gauge, so I used carborundum slitting disks in a mini drill to remove parts from the etch. A dozen disks later, they had a tendency to snag in the slots and shatter, my workbench was piled high with around 100 brass parts, large and small.
Cleaning up was laborious but satisfying. It was achieved with elbow grease and a couple of sponge rubber sanding blocks. A small amount of filing was required to smooth off any remnants of the tangs, the slitting disks having done most of this work for me.
Before wielding the soldering iron, I carried out a couple of dry runs on spare bits of brass to help build my confidence.
There were no instructions with the kit and so, I had to consult various photos to figure out what went where. I think I was largely successful – though I did have to post photos of a few unidentified parts on the GardenRails.org forum, which elicited helpful suggestions from fellow modellers.
The most significant obstacle for me was motorisation. In the past, I have had very little success with making reliable working mechanisms, fortunately, Jonathan at G-Bits, produces a purpose-made motor block complete with connecting rods designed with Irish railcars in mind. Although the wheels were slightly over-sized for this particular railcar, I felt it was something I could live with.
Soldering
Information on a range of websites and from fellow modellers about soldering brass was helpful, overwhelming and occasionally conflicting. I had only the minimum of equipment – a 75-watt soldering iron, resin-cored solder, plumbers’ flux, a vice and a “Helping Hands” clamp. Following advice, I invested in a bottle of liquid flux and nonresin-cored solder. With some trepidation, I decided to press ahead and figure things out as I went along.
I did a couple of practice runs, soldering brass etch offcuts together, dived-in, and was surprised at how easy it was. OK, some of my soldering isn’t the prettiest, but I tried to make sure, when possible, that the solder was applied to the side of the joints that wouldn’t be visible.
The technique that worked for me was to hold the two parts together and apply liquid flux to the joint with a small paintbrush. The tip of the iron was pressed onto both parts to transfer heat to a spot between them, then solder was pushed behind the tip of the iron. The solder ran onto the two parts and into the joint as if by magic – though actually, it was the flux that aided the flow. This process was repeated, dependent on the size of the joint until the two parts were effectively ‘tacked’ together. The iron was then moved slowly from one end of the joint to the other, with solder being fed into the joint as needed to provide a continuous soldered joint between the two parts. It really was that easy – well, most of the time!
As I had no fancy clamps, I often resorted to holding the parts together with my fingers. Mostly, the parts were large enough for the heat to dissipate before scorching my fingertips but occasionally, I had to resort to using a heat-resistant glove, which I borrowed from the kitchen.
Some parts were trickier to solder than others, particularly where I had to get the tip of the iron inside a structure, such as the bonnet or the cab. No matter how hard
I tried, solder occasionally seeped through some of the joints and onto the visible side of the model, but a little filing soon sorted this out.
The trickiest process was joining two flat surfaces together – such as the beading below the windows to the flat sides of the railcar. To accomplish this, I tinned the two surfaces (applied a thin layer of solder), then positioned the two pieces together and tacked them by applying heat to the outside surface of the upper piece in one or two places. Eventually, the heat was sufficient to melt the solder between the pieces. Once tacked, the iron was moved along the whole length of the upper layer until I could see melted solder oozing out from beneath it.
Where there was insufficient space or parts were too small for fingers to hold the parts in place, long-nosed pliers were used, such as attaching the seat supports inside the passenger compartment.
Forming the shaped sections
The missing domed and shaped sections, such as the bonnet top, the cab and passenger compartment roofs and the tail end of the passenger compartment were made from basswood strips, obtained from Eileen’s Emporium, glued together with PVA to make up the required thicknesses and then cut roughly to size.
Each section was initially hewn with a craft knife to an approximate shape and then filed and sanded using a rasp, various files and finally increasingly finer grades of sandpaper until the more or less correct profile was attained. Curves were mostly formed by eye though the curves for back of the cab and the front of the passenger compartment roofs were matched to their relevant brass end-plates.
Some fittings were provided as etched parts, such as the chopper couplings, ladder frames and luggage rack, but many were not present and would, presumably, have been supplied as whitemetal or resin castings in the full kit.
The radiator for my model was carved from a couple of pieces of PVC foamboard leftover from making the brewery building ( Garden Rail Feb 2020). Drivers’ controls were made from a few offcuts styrene, some styrene rod, a couple of mapping pins and a paperclip. The rear bogie was made rescued from a battered LGB wagon, with sides made from Plastikard and foamboard. The lamp on the roof of the cab was made from a solid whitemetal casting obtained from Garden Railway Specialists, hollowed out with a drill and fitted with a 3mm warm white LED.
Seats for the passenger compartment and the luggage on the roof rack were 3D-printed, details of which will appear here in the future.
The electrics
The motor block was squeezed in between the frames of the tractor unit, with some minor adjustments to the frames as the wheelbase is slightly longer than the original.
Three good quality 18650 li-ion cylindrical batteries with solder tags from Ecolux were squeezed in under the bonnet. One of the batteries encroaches into the driver’s compartment, but there was just such an intrusion in the real cab, to make room for the back of the Perkins diesel engine.
The batteries were wired up to a Deltang Rx65c receiver controller via a li-ion battery protection board. Initially, the railcar was fitted with a secondhand Dallee Galloping Goose railcar soundcard, which I obtained via eBay, since replaced with a MyLocoSound diesel soundcard, which has sounds that are more appropriate including a far less ostentatious horn.
The receiver and sound card were fitted into the roof of the cab, which was hollowed out to accommodate them. A Rapid Electronics miniature encapsulated 8-ohm speaker for the soundcard was fitted snugly into the space beneath the driver’s cab.
The cab and passenger compartment are lit by three 3mm warm white LEDs wired in parallel.
Painting and finishing
Before painting, the brass sections were thoroughly cleaned in dishwasher fluid using an old toothbrush to reach into all the nooks and crannies.
Once dry, the model was given a couple of coats of red primer from a Halfords rattle can aerosol. Any dints and gaps were filled with Squadron White Putty filler and then everything was sanded smooth.
Another coat of primer and then two coats of Vauxhall Burgundy Red spray paint were applied. My usual passenger livery is Rover Damask Red, but Halfords seem to have stopped supplying this. Burgundy Red appears to be a good substitute.
The chassis and bogie were given a couple of coats of Halfords Satin Black.
Once the paint had hardened off, the PLR logo was applied to the sides of the cab and passenger trailer, having been printed on white vinyl self-adhesive sticker paper and carefully cut out with nail scissors. The sides were then given a couple of coats of Halfords clear lacquer.
The interior of the cab was hand-painted with cream coloured acrylic paints and the interior of the passenger trailer was painted dark brown, the seats being painted dark red and black.
Conclusion
I certainly learned a lot from making this model, however, I am not certain I would rush to make another brass etched kit. This has nothing to do with the quality of the kit, which is excellent and certainly saved me a lot of effort over creating the parts myself from, say, Plastikard, my usual modelling medium of choice.
The advantages of etched brass seem to be that the finished model is tough and will certainly survive any knocks and possibly crashing to the ground from one of the bridges. Finer details are stronger than their plastic alternatives and, once the solder has cooled, joints are almost instantaneous.
However, after the model was finished, I found it necessary to thicken the depth of the window openings with Plastikard to match those shown in the photos. I also added some of my own detailing as, for example, the louvres on the side of the engine compartment weren’t sufficiently prominent. I also found that making modifications on the fly is more difficult – for example, when I needed to create more space for the batteries.
With Plastikard, it would have been easy to cut out a section of the cab sides whereas with brass, I had to disassemble the relevant section and use snips, a saw and some heavy-duty pliers to fold up part of the side. This probably suggests that my existing modelling techniques are founded on the principle that I make modifications as I progress, rather than thinking everything through in advance. If I were to move over to metal-working, I might have to carry out a lot more forward planning.
Maybe this differentiates two types of modeller – those who are meticulous and engage in a lot of preparation and planning and those who, like me, are a bit more slap-dash and enjoy the challenge of solving problems as and when they arise.
I enjoyed the challenge and acquiring new skills along the way. Meandering its way around the garden the model does look good. But I now have to solve the problem of turning the railcar at each end of the line. Do I construct turntables as on the County Donegal or do I, as they did on the Isle of Man, construct another railcar and couple them back to back?
Maybe I should have thought of that before pestering John to sell me the kit?
But I’m afraid that would have required me to engage in a high level of forward planning... ■