And then there were... two? Two and a half?
The original pair that I bought from the Severn Valley are now finished; the all-third only required an interior and a repaint, and so was a quicker job than the brake third. The roof for it is a plastic moulding, I'm tempted to say it's from Coopercraft?- if so, that's a shame. I rather like it and would have bought some more to match the rest of the rake, but err.... well we know their reputation don't we, and that's all I'm going to say
I repainted the roof and then refitted both it and the bogies. You inevitably get gaps between the roof and the body; as an experiment this time (this was after the photogrpah was taken) I tried glue 'n' glaze as a filler, reasoning that as it can be applied quite accurately it might make for less of a cleanup job afterward. I think it works!
Then the solebars were repainted...
I think all that is left to do now is to fit the transfers and varnish it.
The list of things that I'd like to change on the pair of carriages I bought is, actually, quite short.
1. Fit Kadee couplings. 2. Fit interiors. 3. Clean up the cut and shut job on the brake third.
So I started with the brake third, cleaned up the hacked up brake end easily enough with filler and solvent but of coursethis ruined the paint work which I had to do over again. Two coats of matt yellow and two coats of satin brown later....
Oops, no, that's just after the yellow
Well, I'd finally finished my rake of Metropolitan Ashbury carriages. I'm not entirely happy with how they've turned out, but they'll do. Until I find something more appropriate. I found something more appropriate a lot quicker than I was expecting though!
Pretty much everybody, I guess, has a pile of bits and pieces that may come in useful someday. In my own pile are about seven or eight Hornby clerestories. Some have been used as donor vehicles for GCR carriages, some have been scrapp
And.... it's finished! No.1 of 4, anyway.
The roof: I used the roof formers that had been drawn, fitted to a sub-base. I laid thin strips of balsa wood over them, then the final covering is paper. The underframes: Battery boxes and bufferbeams had been drawn up and cut. I used some BR Mk.1 buffers, which look right. Underframe trusses I made up very simply from some 10 thou plastic sheet. Couplings are my usual Kadee type.
Right, next project I think.
Well, there was going to be a photo here, but it came out so dark that I think I'll attempt it again later....
Anyway, I've been busy.
Solebars are now fitted (3mm x 2mm plastic I-beam, sanded smooth on one side), and I've started the roof. 20 thou plastic sub-base, then the silhouette-cut roof formers, then some very thin strips of balsa wood on top. Now all it needs is the covering, which is going to be a paper laminate.
And once the roof is done, all that's left really are the
After two coats of Humbrol matt orange to begin the teaking process, I fitted the bogies. I'm using Hornby Gresley bogies for these, with the detail removed.
Then returning to the teaking process, a drybrushed coat of Humbrol satin mid-brown finishes the job.
At this point I tested the model on some track and found that each bogie needed a 5 gram weight fitting inside, and the body needed two 10 gram weights fitting inside the saloon just in board of the bogie pivots. This
After a lot of swearing, frustration, wasted plastic and quite some time spent just idly staring off into space whilst the silhouette cutter does its thing, I think I'm getting somewhere.
This is just the basic body shell. It's not quite ready yet- there are some small gaps to fill- but now that the drawings are back to scale I'm hoping the second one will take a lot less time to get to this stage. No, I'm not building them in tandem!- the idea is to build the first one and then the
Well, I got going. And I got stuck. What happened, quite simply, was this. I imported the drawings into Silhouette Studio, then I set up the parameters for the material (size of sheet etc) and, without my noticing or even asking for it, the Studio software took it upon itself to rescale the drawings to suit.
Frankly this is a deplorable thing for the software to do and especially so if the re-scaling is so slight as to not be immediately noticeable. I ended up with a pair of sides of ar
Well. I wasn't anticipating a break away from locos and rolling stock for quite that long.
Since I finished the Pollitt saddle tank back in January, I've built a 1/600 RMS Mauretania, an entry for the Cakebox Challenge and most recently been working on a "Your Model Railway Village" station building, trying to convert it into some goods offices but more crucially turn it into a structure that could actually have been built.
This last is an on-going project and I've frankly had to put
And we're about ready for some paint....
There have been a couple of interesting challenges with this one. Firstly the safety valves, which barely protrude above the saddletank. The way I solved this was to take the original safety valves and cut them right down, then I used some plastic sheet to form the bar above. Secondly the saddletank filler cap. I started this by using a holepunch to produce several 5mm diameter plastic circles. These I then glued together to give me a solid plast
Progress on the little saddletank. This week I have been fabricating some new 'cheeks', I suppose you could call them, running down from the saddle tank to the running plate. I can't model the boiler as such as the motor and chassis get in the way. Speaking of the chassis, the original one I found had pizza-cutter wheels with very deep flanges that couldn't run on my Code 75 track without bumping along the sleepers. Fortunately I had an identical chassis of a slightly more recent vintage (an
Well, for the last fortnight I've been working on rather a nice WWI biplane but now that that is finished there is no reason why the little shunting loco can't make a reappearance on the bench.
So; The prototype.
The starting point.
And now, to continue....
Last time I discussed this model I had gotten as far as cutting it up into several pieces with a view to lowering the body. So, to continue that idea, I took some measurements from my drawing (since starting t
Onwards, now, to a new project, and I've chosen to model a Class 18 converted.
Photograph from the RCTS LNER locos books.
These are quite interesting engines which started life as 0-6-0 tender locos in the 1880s and were converted to tank engines in the early 1900s.
My starting point for this project is a Triang 0-6-0 dock shunter, which looks vaguely similar but the similarities stop there.
I started then by cutting the bodywork up into separate components. The sad
Since last time, I have added the transfers, I have finished the paintwork, I have added footboards.
This one, then, is now finished. Would I build any more? No, probably not like this.
Since last time, I have added the transfers, I have finished the paintwork, I have added footboards.
This one, then, is now finished. Would I build any more? No, probably not like this.
Well, I've fitted the roof, I've added the glazing and the seating and introduced the body to the underframes.
With the exception of the transfers and the varnish, this one is (just about) finished.
Ending 2017 and beginning 2018 as I mean to go on, clearing some more of my longer-waiting projects, I've started on the last of the four cardboard ex-Metropolitan Ashbury carriage kitsI started last Summer.
Carriage underframes; having started with the simple open box structure from the kit (a floor and four sides to fold up), I added a sheet of 0.5mm plastic sheet on top to brace the floor and provide the carriage footboards. I've also added the couplings (knuckle couplings from the
I said last year that 2017 would concentrate more on trying to clear my to-do list than taking on new projects.
To a degree I have succeeded in that; at the same time I seem to have failed woefully.
I did very well at paring down my stock of unbuilt wagons, but unfortunately as quickly as I was building them I was buying more. To my recollection my unbuilt wagons collection now runs to five or six cattle wagons, a GCR open wagon, a GCR double bolster, a pair of LNWR opens, a Midland c
Nearly finished. I'm now thinking about how to weather it, specifically how to realistically model the limewash.
I went back to my test piece.
I tried tipex; it doesn't look right. There's something decidedly off and unsavoury about the appearance.
On the other side, I tried matt white paint. I did think this might be a bit too thick and on the nose, but actually it looks about right....
Well, I finished the body panels after using a lot of plastic strip (half a packet's worth!- I'll need to order some more of that if I'm doing six or seven of these), and then I was in a position to build the bodywork, or some of it.
I remember the first of these wagons which I built many years ago I had issues with making sure everything was square, so this time I made sure of it.
I was then able to look at the doors. I re-used part of the lower door from the kit; the upper door
For the last few months I have been looking for a specialised freight train to model. I have, in the past, built a bogie fish van or two and had another gifted to me, so you might be thinking a fish train would answer the bill, but my understanding is that fish trains usually ran to 30 or more vehicles, just a little too long for my tastes and storage.
It was whilst discussing some alterations to an N gauge cattle wagon with a friend that I first found this image, courtesy Steve Banks' webs
As I said last time, my current modelling activities are generally of a variety that don't, taken individually, merit blog posts. Taken as a group though I think they do.
Last time I said I had finished a cardboard kit for an ex-Metropolitan carriage and was working on a pair of Parkside LNER fish vans.
Those vans are now finished and I have 'converted' them into GCR-ish vans of the unfitted variety. The conversion was very slight in nature- it amounted to omitting the vacuum cylinde
