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Considering what I've just spent on Bachmann Scenecraft quaysides, I'm very impressed!

It's often worth looking beyond model  railway suppliers.  I've built some lovely vehicles from war game kits and just got some very nice mooring bollards from a model boat shop. The crawler crane in my first two photos is built from a laser cut metal kit intended to be a desk ornament.  It scales out very close to N gauge and while being a bit too modern for my era the cab could modified to look older. At a quarter of the cost of most other N scale cranes, it's cheap enough to use as a donor for the jib, tracks etc on scratch builds.

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Not one of my better moments.

 

I decided to give myself a rest from track laying and scenics and build a third loco.  A Parkwood Maunsell diesel shunter ticked a lot of boxes as a Southern rarity which I thought would go well with my Bullied Q1 even if they never actually worked anywhere near the coast.  I bought a cheap Farish 08 on eBay without realising that I needed the Chinese external frame chassis and not the British one that I had managed to buy.  Never mind back to eBay and I eventually managed to get a modern Gronk and started the build this morning only to find that I had somehow managed to break the left hand front step off the Parkwood body.  A  deep clean of the work area found nothing so I've fabricated a new one from plasticard that should look reasonably OK under lots of grimy weathering, but meanwhile I've managed to lose a buffer while transferring them from one body frame to the other...Another deep clean and nowt found so far!  A search in the scrap box has turned up several possible alternatives but they are all either bigger or smaller than the one I lost.

 

The old style chassis will be going under a P &D Marsh J94/Austerity.  I like the look of the deeper 3 ton bunker, but how many actually had that?  Also how many had the gas producer chimney and did any have that with the bigger bunker?  And for that matter how many had the ladder up the side of the tank for watering; the ladders from the Chinese Gronk would cut down nicely.

 

Must be time for  a beer

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  • 1 month later...

Not one of my better moments.

 

I decided to give myself a rest from track laying and scenics and build a third loco.  A Parkwood Maunsell diesel shunter ticked a lot of boxes as a Southern rarity which I thought would go well with my Bullied Q1 even if they never actually worked anywhere near the coast.  I bought a cheap Farish 08 on eBay without realising that I needed the Chinese external frame chassis and not the British one that I had managed to buy.  Never mind back to eBay and I eventually managed to get a modern Gronk and started the build this morning only to find that I had somehow managed to break the left hand front step off the Parkwood body.  A  deep clean of the work area found nothing so I've fabricated a new one from plasticard that should look reasonably OK under lots of grimy weathering, but meanwhile I've managed to lose a buffer while transferring them from one body frame to the other...Another deep clean and nowt found so far!  A search in the scrap box has turned up several possible alternatives but they are all either bigger or smaller than the one I lost.

 

The old style chassis will be going under a P &D Marsh J94/Austerity.  I like the look of the deeper 3 ton bunker, but how many actually had that?  Also how many had the gas producer chimney and did any have that with the bigger bunker?  And for that matter how many had the ladder up the side of the tank for watering; the ladders from the Chinese Gronk would cut down nicely.

 

Must be time for  a beer

The Maunsell has turned out well. I've painted it in a lightly weathered black with no wasp stripes, which I think might be a swine to align on the sloping rear panel with the down-facing windows. It is not possible to cut out the window apertures on this kit but I am, however quite pleased with the effect of a couple of thin coats of gloss varnish over a very thin wash of slate grey. Here she is on  the quayside with a very nice white metal 'walrus' which I bought on eBay. I think it was built from a kit and would love to find more of them if at all possible.

 

I have shelved the J94 build for the moment having got incredibly frustrated trying to assemble it with runny superglue.  I now believe that I should use superglue gell as it has more 'grab'.  I was trying to align components with masking tape or bluetack while the glue dried only to find that bits has either not stuck or were out of alignment on returning to it hours later.

 

However I now have enough motive power to allow me to finalise the track plan and start laying and testing track. The crossings between the two baseboards will be interesting as I don't think that I can get them all to cross at right angles.I want to  keep things as simple as possible but I may have to have a couple of short lift out sections rather than butt joints. Has anyone tried lift out track sections with pins that plug into sockets on the baseboard or is that a complete non-starter?

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Edited by Dickon
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  • 3 years later...

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