Coming back to the class 455/9, the unit will be numbered (45)5907.
I have made a little further progress on adding the vinyls, this time to the Motor Brake Standard Open (MBSO), and in matching the blue on the Driving Trailer. There is some work involved in finishing these off and correcting a few errors in the vinyls, but overall the vinyl overlays take a lot of the hard work out of adding the livery elements and details.
Note that the DTS is not sitting correctly on its chassis in the
After a long wait, the Electra Railway Graphics (ERG) vinyls have arrived for the Bratchell class 455/9 kit I was building in South West Trains livery.
While there is still work to do and some adjustments to make with paint, I am happy with the effect on the first Driving Trailer Standard (DTS). Putting these on and trimming slightly to compensate for the odd discrepancy is time consuming, with the use of a hair dryer set on hot to help settle the vinyls over raised detail and form it around
After a long pause, I have done a little more work on the Bratchell class 455/9 unit, having received a message from Adam of Electra Railway Graphics that he is nearly finished with the South West Trains vinyls for the unit. I have long been putting off painting the window frames, but recently bought a Sharpie permanent marker pen in silver with a view to trying it out on the frames. So far, I think it has been very successful: marking out the raised frames took me around 45 minutes to do the lo
Continuing progress with the Bratchell Models class 455/9: the body shells have now had a couple of coats of grey primer, then a couple of coats of flame red (all from automotive aerosols) to approximate the final base colour for the South West Trains suburban livery. The driving ends remain unattached (except for a couple of spots of Blu-tack!) and unpainted at this stage.
The bogies have been assembled, although the motor bogie sideframes remain to be cut down and fitted. I have adjusted t
Continuing with the Bratchell class 455/9, I have built all of the unpowered bogies now, but will need to adjust the ride heights of these upwards slightly, and the powered coach downwards slightly. The Powered bogies will have to be cut and shut to lose 1mm from the wheelbase but, as with the previous class 455/8 and 319, the blank sideframes on the Replica Railways motor bogies can be used to reinforce these, using the Bratchell sideframes as cosmetic items only. Bratchell Class 455-9 U
Another new project, but one that will take a little while to complete: I have an unpainted Bratchell Models kit for a class 455/9 unit, which will eventually be in South West Trains red inner suburban livery.
The unpainted shells are very dark and my lighting was poor, so these first two shots are only just sufficient to show the initial construction. The clear plastic driving ends will need a little modification to the lights to match the later, refurbished condition, and are not glued in
I have been working on an original form Merchant Navy locomotive sporadically over the last few years, but am making an effort to complete it before the new Hornby model of 35023, Holland Afrika Line, arrives, probably in June.
The chassis was adapted from a Hornby rebuilt MN, with Hornby's air smoothed West Country/Battle of Britain connecting rods and cylinder assemblies. I hard-wired a DCC Concepts Z218 decoder to it with its 8-pin plug cut off.
The Golden Arrow Productions MN tender
Having previously described modifying the plug and wiring for fitting non-Hornby decoders to the Hornby Huntley & Palmers Peckett W4 and Sentinel diesel shunter, I failed to take a photo of the decoder actually in place to show just how easily the TCS M1 fits inside. Being smaller than the Hornby 4-pin decoder, there is room to spare, so I use a small blob of Blu-Tack to stop the decoder moving around.
Having just received a second Peckett, this time the Peckett pale green Dodo, I went t
I have long held a dislike of Hornby's own DCC decoders (their Sapphire excepted), so when I purchased the Peckett W4 saddle tank loco, I declared at the outset that I would use something different, even if it meant hard-wiring it. Unfortunately, Hornby are the only manufacturer offering a 4-pin decoder. I never took photos of that conversion, so when I received Hornby's Sentinel diesel shunter, I resolved to treat it the same way.
The decoders I favoured for these conversions were TCS M1 (2
Progress on the A Stock train.
There was a delay while I awaited the delivery of some new wheels with shorter axles (25mm) but those have now arrived from Steam Era Models.
In the meantime I managed to find a flat aluminium paint I was happy with, so painting has continued apace, with only a few extrnal retouches needed, but complete internal painting is still to be done.
The bogies have been assembled and mounted on the underframes. Being all metal, with metal wheels and metal coupl
I have now made a proper start on the 4-car A60 Stock train. Initially, I had sprayed the body shells in a metallic silver, but I really didn't find the effect convincing. The A Stock in original form had actually quite a dull finish, so I have experimented with shades of greys, settling on Humbrol colours #129 for the main body, #126 for the corner castings, driver's doors and communication doors, and #67 for the roofs. I have included some before and after photos of the bodies to show the effe
Another recent project on my workbench: an LT pannier tank, L91. This is actually a new locomotive wearing old clothes! L91 was an earlier release from Bachmann with the dreaded split chassis. I hard-wired a DCC decoder into ti, and the running was good apart from a constant waddle. I replaced several of the wheelsets, but still none were entirely concentric. Eventually, I managed to get a much newer pannier (BR black 9759) with a decoder already fitted. With some very minor modifications, the o
Glazing of my Q Stock train continues apace. The Q31 DM has now been completed, leaving only a Q23 DM to be done. The latter is also the only motorised car in the train, with two Black Beetle motor bogies wired together through a TCS T1 decoder.
I am making progress on glazing my Q Stock train. The latest addition is the Q38 car. I tried Phil Radley's moulded flush glazing but didn't like the effect at all. I pulled the bits I had already done back out, and started again from scratch. The four large windows in the middles of each side were glazed as two pairs, and will have the window pillars painted back on from the outside. Likewise, the angled vent glass will have the dividers painted on by hand.
The Krystal Klear I used as the g
Yet another project which has been sitting on the back-burner for a while is my Bratchell Models class 319. The pantograph, salvaged from a Bachmann class 350/1 being converted to a class 450, should sit on quite a substantial framework.
I have a good photograph of the pantograph well, kindly supplied by another modeller, so used that as a guide to make up something resembling it, albeit rather cruder. Some of the plastic sections I have used are not only too big, but also the wrong cross-se
A job I have been putting off for ages and ages is to glaze the various London Transport Q Stock cars. Part of what slows me down is that I like to paint matt black (or dark grey) into the window rebates.
Anyway, I tackled the first two cars of the five car set yesterday, with a Q23 DM and a Q27 Trailer now done. I chose to flush-glaze the windscreens on the DM, and the glue (Krystal Klear) was still wet on the centre screen in the photos - it starts of like a white PVA glue but dries clear.
After several soldering sessions over some days, I have been adding lighting strips to each coach in turn of my Underground S Stock train from Bachmann and the LT Museum.
I have tried a few different resistances to lower the brightness, which mostly failed to dim them. I also tried a different lighting strip with a slightly warmer colour and lower light output in the third car, but that too wasn't satisfactory. The results are shown in the photos below, with the first showing the car with th
I bought a second Sutton's Locomotive Works class 24, D5016 with sound, and it duly arrived in Melbourne. On test, it worked fine but emitted clicks and pops from the speakers whenever it was placed on powered tracks, programmed, or power was switched on when already on the track. There were a couple of anomalies with the functions but a decoder reset fixed those. Jamie from SLW suggested I swap the decoder into my previous SLW class 24, D5000, and D5000's decoder into D5016 and see what happene
Having played around with my early issue Hornby Hogwarts Castle by converting it to DCC and adding headlamps and flickering firebox glow, plus a crew, I was less than satisfied with the running qualities of the Airfix-derived chassis.
Someone on these forums mentioned that the newest Hornby RailRoad County 4-6-0 chassis would be a good DCC-ready substitute, so I duly ordered one from Rails of Sheffield.
The wheelbase is spot on, but on comparison of the two chassis side by side, I discov
A fairly simple task (albeit requiring steady hands) is to fit etched nameplates to locomotives to replace or cover printed ones.
Two more of my class 73s have now had the printed plates covered with proper etched versions: 73 004, The Bluebell Railway, and 73 129, City of Winchester, both look much better now with their Fox Transfers etched stainless steel plates. Both are on Hornby chassis, but 73 004 has a Lima body. I mix and match bodies on the Hornby chassis - I have eight of the chass
While awaiting paint drying and vinyls settling on the second Bachmann class 450 conversion (to be described in a future blog entry), I was giving one of my oldest class 73 models a run, and noticed how crappy my painting of the roof grilles for the electrical compartments was. I had weathered them early on, but never tidied it up, so the grilles were indistinct and just a grey-black blur.
Now the Lima class 73 body mouldings have some of the finest moulded grilles you'll find anywhere. So
Now for a simple task (albeit, requiring steady hands): fitting further etched nameplates to a few more locomotives.
Two more of my class 73s have now had the printed plates covered with proper etched versions: 73 004, The Bluebell Railway, and 73 129, City of Winchester, both look much better now with their Fox Transfers etched stainless steel plates. Both are on Hornby chassis, but 73 004 has a Lima body. I mix and match bodies on the Hornby chassis - I have eight of the chassis but around
Some years ago, I decided to try and improve the running qualities of one of my Lima class 73 models by replacing the Lima armature with a ModelTorque motor (available from the manufacturer just a couple of kilometres up the road from me at the time - sadly no longer available since the passing of the man responsible for them). This was almost a drop-in replacement but promised much better, smoother and more responsive running. It still used the Lima gearing and did deliver what was promised, al
I have started to letter the SECR 6-wheel brake van. There is very little specific information available on the Internet regarding liveries and lettering, but from what I can glean, the SE&CR lettering for the period I want goes in the left hand lower corner and should be approximately one plank tall - I think mine might be a little oversized but it's all I have. They are PC Models pressfix transfers (currently available from HMRS).
One snippet I did pick up was that the SECR wagon
Footboards and steps added. I have used the ones from the MR 20 ton brake van kit, but shortened the footboards by cutting a short section out of the middle and filing the clearance for the centre axlebox. There is a small amount of filler needed on one side, but the other side seems to have worked quite neatly.
I also used the plastic hangers from the MR kit, but moved the middle ones outwards slightly to clear the centre spring hangers.