And now it gets dirty!

Having painted up those details on the chassis of the Lima Class 117 DMU, I have now dirtied them up! A bit of dirty brown paint by Ammo was airbrushed and the chassis does actually look a lot more realistic - well I think so anyway! I need to add some more detail to the front end so hopefully I will be aable to post abou thattomorrow.

In the meantime I am pleased with my dirt!

Being all moulded in black plastic means that the detail just disappears.

Time to think about doing some detailing on the chassis of the Lima Class 117 DMU. I am not doing anything too fancy, just making the best of what is already there. To be fair, there is a fair amount of detail with various air tanks, lockers, pipework and so on but being all moulded in black plastic means that the detail just disappears. 

Having looked at some photos on line of the real Class 117, the paints and brsuhes came out and I got busy!

It already looks a bit more interesting and whilst the colours are all very bright, I am going to weather the whole chassis so that will all tone down. That is a job for once the paint dries though.

To couple or not to couple- that is the question!

I had intended to post about the Spalding Model Railway Show that Mrs. Woody demanded I take her to (well that is my recollection of our conversation) but it is late so something to do tomorrow. In the meantime I did have a chance to do a little more on the upgrade of the Lima Class 117  DMU.  I this case I had to decide if the DMU was to couple or not. Obviously the two coaches that make up the unit have to couple, but are the couplers at the outer ends really necessary? Well, given that it is unlikely that I will couple it up to another DMU and that the existing coupling just looks so big and ugly I decided to remove them.

A short session with a razor saw cut off the coupling which is moulded as part of the bogie. I just had to clean up the sawn edge with a file and all is well! I have to say that as there is no going back now!

Seated passengers.

Having painted the interiors of the Lima 117 DMU, it was time to add some colour to the seats. In real life the DMUs underwent several refurbishments and the seats were upholstered in blue towards the end of their use with British Rail. I went with that brush painting a suitable blue onto the seat faces.

It took a while but eventually both interior units had heir seats  painted.

I also took the opportunity to highlight the existing detail in the cab. Just painting some of the controls brought the cab to life.

Now as to the reason for spending time sanding down the end tor pin marks on the seats and it is contained in this recently procured pack.

These are not highly detailed or particularly well painted seated passengers but for the inside of the DMU they are ideal. Just to get an idea of how they would look I temporarily placed a few figures on the seats. I think that is look good!

It looks fairly drab and toy like!

 This is the interior of the Lima Class 117 DMU.

It looks fairly drab and toy like which I guess for its 1980s origin was the common approach by manufacturers who were still selling vast amounts of train sets for the younger market. Now, whilst much of the interior is unseen through the body windows, I still felt it could do with brightening up and be made to look a little more like the prototype.

First job, having taken the seating unit off the chassis was to filo down the various ejector pin marks.

Now, given that you cannot really see these through the windows of the DMU, you may wonder why I spent time on fikling these pin marks flat. Well, there is a reason for that as I will explain tomorrow! In the meantime, the seating units were sprayed up in grey primer from a rattle can.

It already looks far better then that beige colour! However there is more to come!

A bit of a service!

Whilst doing work on the pickups on the Lima Class 117 DMU I thought I might as well give the motor a bit of a service. Not that there is much to do on these old pancake motors but it was worth opening it up as I found this.

The blackish ring is dirt on the commutator which needs to be cleaned off as it is affecting contact with the brushes supplying power to the motor.

That was soon done with some fine abrasive. With the cover back on having lightly lubricated the spindle, I turned my attention  to the other side of the motor casing and the gear wheels. They needed a light greasing but also, Lima gear wheels are renowned for having these ejector pin marks on them from the manufacturing process. The edges can stand proud of the surface and cause uneeded friction with the rest of the gear train. I used a fine sanding stick to smooth them down

After reassembly I used a 9volt battery, whose terminals conviently match the two brush holder points on the motor, to test that it all still worked which amazingly for my work it did!

I just need to replace that burnt out DCC chip now.

Pick ups!

With an hour to spare I thought I would pick up on upgrading the Lima Class 117 DMU by adding an additional pickup to the rear bogie. At the moment it only collects current through one side of the bogie. Adding pick ups to the other means that it should run better!#

I have done similar on other Lima models so my first thing to do was to add a strip of styrene to the side of the bogie to mount a phosphor bronze strip to.#

Next stage was to super glue the phosphor strip to the strip once I had soldered a wire to go to the DCC chip.

Then it was a case of drilling a hole in the chassis for the wire to go through.

I am thinking of doing the same with the unpowered trailer car which would really add to the reliability of running but I will have a think about that! At the moment I am pleased with what's been done so far. 

A certain irony - making things better!

A few days ago I posted about the DCC chip that fried itself in my Lima Class 117 DMU. I have been looking at it with a view to putting a new chip in. However, with the power car dismantled it struck me that my plans from years ago to freshen it up were ripe to be carried out now!What brought this thought on was finding my chrome pen and just trying to colour in the door handles on the bodyshell so they were chrome as on the prototype. 

The interior can be painted up too from that drab brown to the blue that the seats were uphuulsteed in later on in their lives.

To make running better I will add some additional pickups on the trailing bogie as I now have that in bits!

So that is the plan - it will be ironic if I actually complete it though!

A certain irony!

there is a certain irony in what happened to my Lima Class 117 DMU after posting about a Blue day yesterday! The DCC chip blew up! The DMU had become stuck whilst I was too busy with something else like going through Mrs. Woody's job list and the motor was still drawing current. I am guessing it all got too hot and the chip blew! I knew it had gone as I could smell it. On the workbench the good news was with a bttery on the motors terminals it ran. Meanwhile the lack eveidence on the taope was enough to confirm what happened.

Peeling back the masking tape showed that the plastic sleve that the chip is wrapped in had melted and the chip did not look very well!

Lesson learnt! Don't look at Mrs. W's job list whilst operating trains!

At least the motor is OK so I can fit another chip when I have tiime from that job list! The irony of it!

Chipping the Lima Class 117 DMU

I talked about the Lima Class 117 DMU a few days ago and said that I wanted to fit a DCC chip to it and amazingly this is a project that has now been completed rather than sat on a bench for days/weeks/months/years/decades!

With the body off the motor was once again revealed and a suitable DCC chip by Lais brought out of the WMD Stores..

The actual fitting of the chip went quickly with no complications.

Once the wiring had been soldered it was time to wrap the wire up and locate the chip in a discrete place within the body. It was at this point that I could very easily been drawn into a rabbit hole of a project as I could add additional electrical pickups, lighting both external and internal and detail the interior with a repaint and driver and passengers. However, I have resisted leaving that for another day/week/month/year/decade!

With the body back on it was time to test on the layout and given that I had cleaned the wheels a few days ago there were no issues. It will never run as well as the current Bachmann models but it runs fine for what I want and given that the motor growls there is no need to add a sound DCC chip!

A hesitant runner!

Having got one of my Lima Class 117 DMUs out the other day which featured in this post - click here to see that - I thought I really ought to give it a run just to make sure it was OJK before fitting it with a DCC chip. Placing it on the track and turning up some DC power resulted in a somewhat reluctant movement from the DMU. It was then that I seem to recall that the last time I ran this DMU was probably before the pandemic! It now needed some attention to get its decades old mechanism running smoothly again!

First job was to actually get it on the work bench.

Then it was trying to figure out how to get the body off. There were two screws under the chassis which came undone easily but the clips at either end of the body took some locating and undoing but eventually the body was off the car with the motor bogie.

Having got into the body the motor bogie comes out easily. It was very clean so just a few drops of oil on appropriate places was needed.

The wheels were cleaned (being brass they were both dirty and corroded) and the back to back measurements were checked and adjusted.

I then moved onto the trailing bogie which also collects power through one side of the wheels. Again the wheels were dirty and corroded and the back to back measurements needed adjustment.

With that done I put the chassis on my USA switching layout as my dual DC/DCC controller was hooked up to it and performance was restored.

I can now think about fitting that DCC chip!