Continental Conversions, Repaints and Weathering

[Buntobox]

This is a thread that I hope will show what can be done to improve the already superlative appearance of continental locos and rolling stock. My own experience is that this is seldom done, probably because of the high cost of the models and the even higher prices that can be obtained when selling these vehicles on the second hand market if they are discontinued and in completely mint condition. I, on the other hand, bought these to operate on my projected layout so, based on my admittedly limited experience of weathering a few British coaches I built for others, and seeing how much better they looked for it, I decided to take my courage in both hands and have a go.
These are the two coaches I scratchbuilt about twenty years ago and which were the very first ones I weathered:







The first continental coach I took an airbrush to was a Lima DB Av4üm in Rheingold blue and cream:



This was bought second hand for £18 just as an experiment to see if I still had what it took to do this convincingly. I doubt I'll use this coach on my layout as the windows are a bit small compared to the prototype so it doesn't match the Roco Rheingold stock I've recently bought which is far, far nicer (and much more expensive!)

 

[Buntobox]

I then decided to convert and repaint a Lima SBB EWI B saloon into a Bern Neuenberg Bahn vehicle. This was my first upgrade and repaint of a Lima EW I coach. It's the first of a set of six coaches for my projected BLS train from the seventies so naturally it had to have the rather gorgeous blue and cream livery the BLS introduced in 1976. After a great deal of research and conferring with various people who remembered the livery, a letter to the BLS themselves (who told me they didn't have a colour reference!) and various cottage industry manufacturers in Switzerland, I came up with a mixture of RAL 5017 and a touch of violet. It may not be 100% but it appears no one, not even the railway company who used it, can categorically tell me it's wrong.
The coach started out like this, in SBB 90s NPZ grey and blue:



This is the picture I worked from taken by the great Max Hintermann whose fabulous photographs of the Swiss railways in the 60s and 70s were my inspiration to do something other than simply run models of Swiss stock straight out of the box.



And this is how the model ended up. The transfers are my own artwork printed by Steve at Railtec Transfers and a wonderful job he did of them too. The weathering on the shell is a MIG neutral wash applied and then wiped off with cotton buds dipped in thinners as suggested by George Dent. The idea is that it tones down the paint without making it look too dirty. The roof was replaced with the correct type and weathered with Railmatch Roof Dirt lightened slightly with mid grey as the dirt in Switzerland wasn't as sooty as it was here and it is in fact dirtier than it appears in this photo. I also replaced the moulded handrails with 0.3mm wire ones:



I replaced the moulded handrails with 0.3mm wire ones.

 

[Buntobox]

The next job involved the Lima EWI A and B shown below, cutting them and assembling half of one to half of the other them to create a pair of AB's. One is in the blue and cream you see above and the other in the equally attractive 1960's Bodensee Toggenburg green and cream livery with the full title along the side.

 

[Buntobox]

This wss next on the workbench by way of a change from repainting EW I's and a bit more up to date this time:



A Liliput EW III Restaurant in the, I have to admit, fairly gaudy two tone violet and grey livery a few of these carriages wore. I would normally have repainted this into the original Swiss Express orange and grey of the 1970s but I have another one these in that livery which I intend to add to my LS Models eight car Swiss Express set which is presently on order. This therefore was an experiment to see if upgrading this model would be a decent match for the LS models vehicles. It already had had a new pantograph fitted as the original Liliput one was overscale and pretty awful. This one is a modified Sommerfeldt with a scale width bow fitted. The main stumbling block to realism in this model however was the windows. They had no frames whereas the prototypes had quite prominent polished aluminium ones as seen below:



This picture also served as the prototype for the weathering scheme once the upgrade had been done. I originally toyed with the idea of having the frames etched in stainless steel but it was prohibitively expensive and fixing them to the bodyside was never going to be easy. I then discovered that Railtec could do 3D transfers so I contacted Steve to ask if it was possible to create what I was after. He told me it was so I set about doing the artwork for them. Steve did his usual amazing job and the frames are just beautiful and at 0.25mm thick, just about right for the representation of what the real thing carried.



The first thing I did was install a height limiter on the pantograph. It's a 14BA nut sweated onto the base just in front of the bottom of the main arm which forms the spring mounting point. A cut down bolt is then screwed into place. The pantograph is then raised and the screw turned until the height it can rise is reduced to 70mm above rail level. It is then fixed at this point with a dot of Loctite 601 threadlock and allowed to set. Once the pantograph is mounted on the vehicle roof, the limiter is invisible.
My overhead wiring will be constructed from 0.2mm copper wire set to 69mm above the rails and this means the pantograph will always touch the wire with just enough upwards deflection to simulate reality. I developed this idea because there are four things in modelled overhead that have driven me demented ever since I was a boy. 1. Overscale thickness wiring; I've seen some layouts where the wiring is the thickness of drain pipes and not even straight or level! 2. Pantographs that push the wire upwards the equivalent of a scale metre or more, 3. Pantographs that get round these problems by being set so low they don't touch the contact wire at all and 4, are limited in height by the rather crude use of bits of thread or wire to hold them down which looks awful. For me, part of the fascination of electric traction is the interaction of pantograh and contact wire and I've spent a long time and tried many things before arriving at this method which is, in my experience, the only one that really does the job. It also means the structures can be built more to scale because the wiring doesn't have to have any more than minimal tension applied...just enough to keep it straight but without exerting any strain on structures, particularly on curves.



The next job was to chamfer the bottom corners of the bodyshell as in the prototype. Fortunately, Liliput thought to include the angled chassis members on the underframe which were never seen but are now correctly exposed.



I then created the circuit breaker array on the roof using bits of 0.3mm and 0.5mm wire. The original insulators on the transformer box were cut off as they were in the wrong place and repurposed as the support insulators for the two cranked arms of the circuit breaker. I had to drill these insulators 0.3mm and insert a wire to create a mounting post for the cranked arms, the wire of which was flattened using fine nosed pliers and then drilled 0.3mm. An insulator I had in my spares box was used as a main input to the transformer. I drilled a 0.5mm hole in it to accept a 0.5mm bus-bar bent up and attached to the circuit breaker support insulator using UV activated welding plastic. The photos are a bit cruel...from a normal viewing distance the whole thing, I think, looks really good.

A very fiddly job but well worth the effort as the Liliput model was bereft of any detail associated with the pantograph.





Now the roof and underframe have been weathered and the superb Railtec 3D window frames transfers have been applied to one side. I let them dry for a day or so and then airbrushed the side with satin varnish to protect them before I turn the coach over and apply the window frames to the other side. They absolutely transform the look of the rather basic Liliput bodyshell.



Then the other side got its window frames. I removed the pantograph for weathering. You can now see the circuit breaker and insulators that were added.



And here it is. Finished and weathered to a slightly grubby appearance. Handrails were added to the doors.
On the corridor side I added the handrail to the inside of the rightmost three windows. From this side you can more clearly see the circuit breaker and bus bars. I also added the air pipe to the pantograph lifting cylinder visible towards the pantograph's main hinge.

 

[Yorkshire Dave]

Nice to see the BLS, BN and SBB. No SEZ yet?

One conversion I did do when I modelled BLS and SBB was one of these BLS BD coaches from a Lima EWI/II (original rebuilt from a B wagen in 1988). Shown here in a cruel crop from one of my photos taken at Spiez in the 1990s with BLS Re4/4 191 Reichenbach on an Interlaken Ost service.

 

[Buntobox]

I've got plans, and the lettering, for an SEZ EWI B as part of my project 1976 six car set. It'll have to wait for a while though, as we've got the builders in and the whole house is in an uproar!

 

[Buntobox]

This was the next project, a bit more my era:



Another restaurant car but a much older one this time: SBB Type Dr4 No. 25. It will be repainted in green, renumbered as WR 10226 and be made to look like this gloriously filthy example:



The shell was first stripped and primed with Halfords grey primer ready for the Cherry Paints SBB green to be airbrushed on. I masked the interior using lightweight card inserted into the slots that normally hold the glazing in place.



The roof had its preliminary weathering over the AK Interactive white aluminium base coat. I used MIG general dust filter darkened slightly with their brown wash which is then wiped off in strokes across the roof using a cotton bud dipped in thinners. This gives the impression of rain-created streaks. I then gave it a dusting of Railmatch roof dirt, again in the direction of the roof ribs. The next process will be to put blobs of Maskol in various places and then spray the whole roof filthy black as in the picture above. The Maskol is then removed and the dirty silver shows through in patches as if the dirt had peeled off. It's a George Dent trick and this was the first time I used it.



I also weathered the underframe using Railmatch frame dirt as a base coat followed by various touches of MIG dark wash and Phoenix Paints weathering (which is like sooty thinners) to imitate oily patches and give the chassis a less uniform look. After that it got a fine misting of MIG dust to blend it all together.



The shell then got three coats of Cherry Paints SBB green. The lettering was applied and a coat of Winsor & Newton Galleria matt varnish added to protect the transfers and provide a base for the weathering which followed next. The card masking was still inside the shell to protect the interior from overspray through the windows.



And here it is, finished in all its grimy glory together with a picture of the prototype I modelled it on which proves the SBB wasn't always the squeaky clean operation it is now. The roof got new raintrips over the doors because the ones moulded by Roco were upside down (!) and I had to replace the curved handrails on the doors as the originals were broken. The lettering was masked with Maskol after two coats of MIG dust and then the shell was given more dust, a darkened coat of dust and the a light misting of Railmatch frame dirt. The Maskol was then removed giving the impression of the lettering having been cleaned with a wet rag. I wiped the dirt off in places like under the windows and around the destination board barackets to mimic water having run down the sides after the windows were washed. The kitchen windows were frosted and...job done. (Deliberate mistake though: the door handrails are on upside down...I've now fixed that.

 

[Buntobox]

This beastie was a far scarier proposition. This is an LS Models ex-TEE WRm which has the post 1979 SBB emblem on the lower bodyside. I wanted the version with the earlier TEE emblem on the upper bodyside between the kitchen and the main saloon. Unfortunately, that version was sold out and unobtainable anywhere...and I contacted model shops all over Europe to try to get one but it was not to be. That being the case I decided I had to get this version and backdate it. This meant removing the SBB double arrow and applying the TEE emblem as a transfer. A simple enough job with delicate use of very fine sandpaper on an ordinary coach but this exquisite monster was a good bit over £100 so I was slightly apprehensive shall we say!



I drew up the TEE emblem and Steve at Railtec got the job as always. The grey infill is the carrier film so no unsightly border at all.



Once I had attached them, the shell got a fine coat of satin varnish just to seal them in. After that, light weathering followed so the coach would end up looking like this:



Incidentally, if you think I've got a bit of a "thing" for restaurant cars you'd be right. I have around 30 of them, mostly Swiss, but some French, German and Italian ones too. I also have one I'd like to convert from a standard "leichtstahl" third class coach:



After some delay, mainly caused by my cowardice at the prospect of taking sandpaper to a coach that cost a hundred and twenty quid, I finally grabbed my courage in both hands and went for it. Because the burgundy colour of the bottom half of the sides is actually the colour of the plastic, I was able to use a small section of a 5000 grit sanding stick to remove the old SBB double arrow emblem without worrying about patch painting the red and possibly not getting a perfect match. The area where it was removed however now had a slight gloss as opposed to the semi matt factory finish but all things considered I'm pleased with how well it went. I dealt with the problem by feathering the edges of the "hole" in the varnish and once I gave it a new coat to protect the TEE transfers, it was invisible...even more so once the shell was weathered. Now that it's done, I think it's pretty much indistinguishable from the factory TEE version of the coach.





And this is the finished article:





The sides were given a single mist coat of MIG General Dust to take the ex-works shine off the paintwork and, to give the impression that the coach had been cleaned recently, I ran a cotton bud dipped in thinners along the rainstrip to simulate where the carriage cleaning plant's brushes take the dirt off the bottom edge of the roof. I then gave the roof another dusting of Railmatch dirt to soften the edge of the cleaned line that was created. Also dirt was run into the vents on the the kitchen side and the door seams and the underframe got liberal quantities of muck thrown at it. It now looked like a real vehicle with a good few miles on the clock rather than a showcase model.

 

[Buntobox]

This was next for a liberal coating of grime to match that of the 1930 restaurant car WR10226.



First job was the interior, which Roco supplied in plain brown plastic with a separate corridor partition that was roughly the right shade to represent wood. I painted the compartment partitions in Humbrol 71 cream and then 186 tan which, when brushed over the cream, gives the impression of wood grain. The seats were painted red in non-smoking and green in the smoking compartments as per prototype. The floor was given a coat of mid grey. I then added pictures on the compartment walls which are simply a self adhesive freezer label marked out in 5 x 3mm rectangles to represent the picture frames and then dabs of felt tip pen to create the impression of the paintings used.
They were then sealed in using Winsor & Newton Galleria satin varnish.




This was the exterior look I was going for:



I came up, after some trial and error, with a mix of enamels I had in my stock to create this thick grime:

About 1/4 jar of Railmatch Roof Dirt
A few drops of Railmatch Weathered Black
Three or four drops of Humbrol 62 Leather for a little bit of warmth.

I sprayed two coats of this, removing patches over the insignia etc., after each pass using a cotton bud dampened with thinners. I then added AK dirt & dust effects AK4062 to create streaks between and under the windows. It also has the advantage of creating a faded effect to the green area where the insignia is. It gets painted on in vertical lines and after a few minutes you go over it with a flat brush to streak it down the coach side and blend it in, taking away the hard edges that are created when applying it. I then used the dust/rainmarks and streaking dirt pencils from the AK10044 Weathering Pencils set to create variations in tone. You simply draw on the marks you want and then soften and blend them with a barely damp flat brush. They are excellent for detail work like this. I then created a light wash of AK012 Streaking Grime to darken the dust effects by combining some of the paint with MiG thinners. Then I applied another light wash made up in the same way from Abteilung Dark Rust pigment powder and pigment fixer to create the reddish brown finish. Once applied, I wiped it down with a cotton bud dampened in more pigment fixer. After that I used a little more rainmark pencil to redefine the marks under the windows. The glazing strips were masked off with Maskol and then the polished chrome frames given a coat of light grey to simulate age-related dulling of the metal. The roof was fitted with rainstrips above the doors, streaked with MiG Dark Wash and then sprayed with Railmatch Roof Dirt. The underframe was done in the same way as the other coaches I have completed and illustrated in earlier posts.

This was the result:



It's quite a transformation from the original out-of-the-box model and I think I captured the look I was after.

 

[Buntobox]

This time, German stock. Courtesy of Heris, a pair of Deutsche Bundesbahn MDDm911 car carriers. Only six of them were ever built in 1956, 1958 and 1960 for use on only one route, strangely, the Hamburg to Chiasso run through the Gotthard tunnel. I’ve therefore an excuse for having two of them to run at the back of a train composed of partly Swiss, German and Italian coaches.



These beautiful monsters were given the usual treatment of MiG General Dust and Railmatch roof and frame dirt to give them that well-worn look.

 

[Buntobox]

And for my next trick...another restaurant car!
The plan this time was to turn this:



into this:



It involved fitting a new pantograph, the metal steps below the doors and trickiest of all, removing the Klein windows' glazing bars and frames. This was to be done with finer and finer sandpaper followed by TCut for a final polishing. The shell was repainted in green and Railtec transfers applied. It was then be weathered but not too much as I think this one's colours need to be shown off a bit.

Here's a colour shot of one of the prototypes by the great Max Hintermann. This was the level of weathering I proposed to do:



The first job after stripping the paint was to remove the steps under the main doors as they have to be replaced. Some very careful filing and sanding was required to preserve the tumblehome at the bottom of the door aperture.
The white line at the end of the side is filler that was needed to correct for the misregistration of the mould where the end meets the side.



The interior needed some major surgery. Liliput had made the bulkhead at the toliet end of the saloon solid, so it needed to be cut to create the doorway. They had also omitted the bulkhead between the main saloon and the single table that was used by the staff so that had to be added. The kitchen was a bit of a shambles in that the bulkhead was in the wrong place that meant there was no access to the kitchen at all. The corridor wall and the bulkhead had to be cut and removed. The hole created in the floor was filled with 60 thou plasticard and Tamiya putty. The bulkhead was then repositioned further to the right to create the entrance to the kitchen. The stump of the remaining bulkhead behind the rightmost seat of the staff table had to be extended so that there was no way for passengers to see into the kitchen from the saloon.
I then created the upstand behind the sinks opposite the corridor wall as these can be seen from outside the coach and are quite distinctive:





I also opened up the bulkhead between the kitchen and the storage area and created some high level cupboards. I don't think these details are particularly accurate but I think it looks better than the bare kitchen interior that Liliput created. I wish I could have laid my hands on an LS Models spare EWI kitchen/restaurant interior. It's got every detail imaginable and much nicer seats. All that's missing is the food!



I next had to create new steps for under the main doors. I used an piece of Evergreen plastic channel section that gave me the step once the top web was removed. I thought that creating the step from two pieces glued together would be too flimsy:



It was attached to the coach using a reinforcement piece on the inside that meant the step would have more strength than if it was simply attached from underneath:



I then had to file away part of the chassis to clear this new element:



Painting was next. Halfords' rattlecan grey primer very carefully applied followed by three or four sprayed coats of Cherry Paints SBB Green...

...which turned out not to be the correct colour. It's more akin to GWR & BR green in that there's not enough blue in it. I eventually found a supplier in Grimsby that does the correct NCS range of colours. As it turns out, although the 'absolute' colour is NCS 8010-B90G, that had too much blue in it. I therefore took an LS Models RIC coach in what I judged to be the correct green to Humberside Paints and they spectroscopically scanned it to assess its colour. I asked them why the given shade was too blue and they told me it's caused by the fact that British pigments are slightly different from the ones used in Switzerland. The colour they came up with from the scan was one shade removed from the 'real' one, namely, NCS 8010-G10Y, so I got them to mix me a 100ml tin in cellulose which should last me for years.

Next job: those windows. As you can see the original model had the Klein pattern two element droplights:



But they have to be modified to the earlier full-pane droplights. I had seen videos on You Tube that showed the way aeromodellers remove unsightly seams etc. from aircraft canopies so I decided to try it. I used various sanding sticks, starting with fairly rough to get the window frames off and then went to finer and finer grades to get the glazing completely flat as it is very slightly concave as moulded:



I used further finer and finer flourpapers until I ended up polishing with TCut which gave me the high gloss transparency I was looking for:



Next, the interior got a repaint:



This is the finished interior. I found out that there were curtains that came about one third of the way up the windows in the saloon that gives a quite distinctive look from outside so I added a strip of 10thou plasticard on each side of the interior painted in the correct colour to represent them.

 

[Buntobox]

And this was the finished article:
From this:



to this:

 

[Yorkshire Dave]

But they have to be modified to the earlier full-pane droplights. I had seen videos on You Tube that showed the way aeromodellers remove unsightly seams etc. from aircraft canopies so I decided to try it. I used various sanding sticks, starting with fairly rough to get the window frames off and then went to finer and finer grades to get the glazing completely flat as it is very slightly concave as moulded:

I used further finer and finer flourpapers until I ended up polishing with TCut which gave me the high gloss transparency I was looking for:

This is the same technique I use to remove the moulded windscreen wipers from Triebwagen, electric and diesel loco glazing. I also use manicurists nail polishing sticks for this job.

Like yourself I am not adverse to chopping up and weathering HO rolling stock to achieve the vehicle I'm after.

 

[Buntobox]

This one fascinated me. The service/bar car for the Reisebüro Mittelthurgau's 1980s observation car train...



I have the five Roco observation cars, beautiful things they are too, but the service and bar car isn't made by anyone so I decided to create it to give me the correct six car formation. It's the third vehicle back from the loco in this picture. Here's another shot of it...



Finding pictures of it in its RMT guise was very difficult and this and one or two other distance shots are all I have of it in this form.

After a lot of research and conferring with people on the German Railways forum, it transpired that this was a modification of a DSG BR4ymg-52 speiseraum. This Roco model isn't available except as a three car set (45920) together with a 1st/2nd class Schnellzugwagen AB4bm-63 and a 2nd class Schnellzugwagen B4üm-63 and it took me a long time to find one. When I did finally track a set down on Ebay, it was in unopened mint condition and only cost me about £70, a real bargain.



It still exists as the service car of the Rheingold tourist train but it's been modified again and has lost five of its windows on one side...



This photo, however, gave me a great view of the grille that took the place of one of the windows when a diesel generator was installed in the coach. Using the GIMP software enabled me to get a broadside view that I could use to get the dimensions so I can build it.



The first thing I needed to do was strip the DB green and all the lettering from it (heartbreaking I know as it's a lovely vehicle as is), create that grille and the exhaust ports on the roof, and then repaint it in RAL 3000 red and RAL 1001 beige. I had already drawn the lettering and Mittelthurgau crest and both were printed up beautifully by Steve at Railtec.



The first job was to rebuild the interior:



This is the Roco interior as intended for the original BR52ymg model. It was quite a bit better than every other Roco interior I'd worked on in that the seats are seperate items clipped into place in the baseplate and the seats on the left are themselves in a subframe that sits inside the main frame. The seating on the right is a one piece moulding that inserts into place from underneath. The tables, kitchen area and partitions are all on the baseplate. This made modification and painting a lot easier than usual.

As I had no pictures of the interior of this coach, I had to improvise based on a few assumptions. The tables and associated seating stayed as they are although the table and four chairs next to the partition halfway along had to change sides to allow for the door in the partition to be reversed to allow for the storage cupboard to be built in the area of one of the blanked out windows. All the seating nearest the camera had to be removed and replaced with the generator compartment and a storage area which has a passenger corridor down one side . I couldn't think of what else to do. No one even at the RMT could tell me how this vehicle was laid out internally and I had never been able to source a drawing of anything but the donor restaurant car.

This then was the rebuilt interior, with the saloon converted to storage and the restaurant section modified to allow for the corridor to be on the opposite side. The oval table nearest the camera was removed and replaced on the opposite side, that section of the floor cut out and turned round with one stool removed and its locating hole filled into create a space for passengers to pass...



And here's the bodyshell fitted with a scratchbuilt grille for the generator compartment together with two windows filled in on the other side as per prototype and temporarily mounted on the much modified underframe. It's not particularly accurate...I only had a couple of photos to work from and only one of them was a broadside but even that had the salient details in shadow. This coach appears never to have been photographed close up in its first modified form so the underframe additions are approximate at best. It does, however give a good impression I think of the general clutter to be found under most catering vehicles and it looks quite close to what little detail I have seen on the real thing.





This was the end result:





I had written to Roco to ask what the colours were and they wrote back and told me RAL 3002 and RAL 1001. Unfortunately that was only partly correct. RAL 3002 is the colour of standard TEE stock but this red was brighter than that for some reason. I had the colour spectroscopically analysed at the local paint shop and the closest match was RAL 3000. Even then it was a bit dark so I experimented with varying amounts of white until it was correct. The final mixture was 13 drops of RAL 3000 and one drop of white. The mix was then thinned with 14 drops of acrylic thinner and it was airbrushed on at 20psi.

This is it married up to one of the panorama cars which will get the same light weathering so they all match up.

 

[michael080]

... for use on only one route, strangely, the Hamburg to Chiasso run through the Gotthard tunnel.

Hi Alan, very interesing work you do. I like the swiss restaurant cars a lot. Interesting to see that there were times when the SBB appearance wasn't as immaculate as it is today.

Regarding your DB car carriers, this route is not strange at all. It connects northern Gemany with the dream holiday destination if this time. Italy, mainly Rimini is still knows as the "Teutonengrill" (no towel or deck chair warrior comments please)

Michael

 

[Buntobox]

Regarding your DB car carriers, this route is not strange at all. It connects northern Gemany with the dream holiday destination if this time. Italy, mainly Rimini is still knows as the "Teutonengrill"

I didn't know that Michael. Now it makes sense...and it must have been a huge market for the DB to build only six very unusual, non-standard and presumably as a result, very expensive vehicles especially to cater for it.

 

[michael080]

In the 50s, cars were quite small, unreliable and the alpine roads were not what they are today. So you could either take the train to Italy, take the risk of crossing the alps with your car or you could take the luxury version and use one of these special trains. These six wagons were prototypes for the very successful idea of the "Autoreisezug", traveling by rail with your car on a extra trailer. Only these six prototypes were covered cars, all later carriers were open.

My parents have been travelling from Stuttgart to the Danish border a couple of times with one of these trains. Very nice time for the small Michael to spend the day watching all these lovely steam engines. Unforgettable the face of the gas station attendand when my father asked him to clean the back window of our cars from dead insects. Our car travelled backward looking on the train.

have a nice week end,
Michael

 

[Buntobox]

You too, Michael.