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Great Western Ramblings

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Baseboards and a name for my project!

I've finished painting and lining my Dean Goods, but it needs a final coat of satin varnish and some number plates before its ready for viewing on the blog. While I've been waiting for the various coats of paint to dry, I've made a start on building the baseboards for my proposed Edwardian, GWR, branch line terminus. As a reminder of what I'm trying to build, here's a picture of my 1/7th scale foam and cardboard mock up.   Mock up   The layout will fit along one wall of my workshop and com

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Dean Goods part 5 Ready for paint!

I've spent the last week or so adding all the detail components, this always takes longer than I expect, but I do find very satisfying. I used a photograph contained in Locomotives Illustrated of No 2467 as running circa 1905 as a reference. Socket type lamp irons from Laurie Griffin's range were fited and handrails were bent up from stainless steel wire. The dome, safety valve cover and chimney top were polished using abraisive wheels and cotton mops. (they are just balanced in position for the

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Dean Goods part 4 Coming together

The boiler/firebox and smokebox sub assemblies had been temporarily fitted together with a brass screw to check their alignment. The footplate was also nearly complete apart from the front splashers, which can't be fitted until the boiler/smokebox have been fitted to the footplate.   Boiler/Firebox/Smokebox assembly and Footplate   The boiler assembly was checked for fit on the footplate, fortunately very little adjustment was needed to get the boiler to sit in the corect position. Once I

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Dean Goods part 3 Footplate, Splashers, Smokebox and Boiler

The footplate was cut from the fret, then the splasher sides were folded up at 90 degrees following the half etched lines. The valance sides, buffer and draw beams were folded 90 degrees down in a similar fashion. The kit provides a footplate overlay incorporating rivet detail, this was soldered into position using Carrs 188 solder paste using a miniflame. The addition of the overlay really stiffens the footplate and gives a good foundation to build the rest of the locomotive on. Similar overlay

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Dean Goods part 2 wheels, brakes and pickups!

I've standardised on Slaters wheels for all my stock, I'm sure there are better ones out there, but Slaters are easily available, come in most sizes and have a consistent profile. I have heard that some people have found them to be prone to rusting and oxidation, I must be lucky as I've had no problems so far! I like to blacken my wheels chemically and find that I get a better finish by polishing the wheels before I apply the blackening solution. Carrs Metal Black for steel was applied using a c

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Dean Goods part 1 chassis construction

In between my plasticard dabblings I've made a start on my 7mm Dean Goods. I quite like having a couple of different projects on the go, when I've had enough of one, I can often muster up the enthusiasm to have a go at something else! As I enjoyed building the Martin Finney 2500 gallon tender kit, I decided to use a loco kit from the same manufacturer. The kit comprises of a number of Brass and Nickel Silver etched brass sheets, along with some very nice Brass and White Metal castings.  

William Clarke style Goods Shed part 3 (Corbels revisited!)

In light of the discussion caused by the the corbels in part 2, I decided that a bit more thought was required! After a lot of pondering, I've decided that I still like the idea of the building having corbels, but if they are going to stay, then they had better be done properly! As Nick, Ian, N15 and Iain pointed out, they did look as if they had been stuck on as an afterthought and didn't look at all convincing. This wouldn't do at all, so armed with a glass of red wine and wielding a scalpel,

William Clarke style Goods Shed part 2

It's been a while so I thought I'd show the progress on my Goods shed project. The application of the quoins did seem to go on a bit, not helped by the fact they had to be placed both the inside and outside of the shed. Working out the angle the plasticard needed to be cut at for the arched door and the round windows defeated me, I should have listenened harder in geometry! In the end I resorted to a best guess, along with a bit of judicious filling here and there until they fitted.  

William Clarke style goods shed

After my etched brass diversion, I'm getting back on track and making the buildings for my 7mm GWR branch line project. I want a goods shed to compliment the station building, so something designed by William Clarke would be ideal. I also want a style of shed that's platform mounted and has a track running through it, finishing at an end loading platform. I spent sometime researching possible prototypes, the "Modelling Questions, Help and Tips" section of the forum was very useful (Thanks to all

Dean Goods 2500 gal tender Part 2

Its been a couple of weeks since my last blog entry, so here's the progress on the Dean Goods tender build. Part 1 ended with the body almost completed, but with the chassis needing more work to finish the project.   Chassis at end of last blog entry     Setting up the brakes was the next step. The components were removed from the fret, cleaned up with a file and the holes drilled with a 0.8mm drill.   The kit provides a choice of brake shoes, one mad

Dean Goods

I haven't posted for a while, I'm afraid Mrs Wenlock has decided that the house needs decorating. Funny how painting walls is nowhere near as satisfying as painting models! The William Clarke goods shed has progressed to the stage where the walls are cut out, but I'm suffering from a lack of motivation to finish it. I think the time spent constucting the station building, got cutting plastic card out of my system for a while! One of the things that I love about this hobby of ours, are the number

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William Clarke goods shed

Now the station building is complete, I'm giving thought to a design of accompanying goods shed. I like the idea of a shed abutting the platform with a line running through it into an end loading bay, in a similar position as the ones at Ashburton and Bearley. Although the station building is based upon Abbotsbury, I'm not a fan of Abbotsbury goods shed, which in my opinion shares little of the aesthetic style of William Clarke's stations!   I'd like my model to complement the architectural

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Station building 5 Completed!

Well it's been a long time coming, but here are some pics of the finished William Clarke station building. Its painted using Humbrol and Railmatch enamel paints, with the colour being built up in a number of washes and then followed by some dry brushing. I followed the discussion on the forum about GWR window colours in the Edwardian period with great interest. I found the evidence presented highly convincing, so have consequently painted the windows chocolate. To my eyes the black and white pic

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Station Building Progress 4 (Getting by with a liitle help from my friends!)

I've mentioned in previous posts in my blog, that although I was happy with the basic construction of the station building body shell, I wasn't sure how to best tackle the awning brackets or valance. William Clarke's station buildings have a distinctive valance style, which I wanted to capture in my model. The canopy brackets are also quite ornate, some of his designs had a monogram of the railway incorporated in them. The first thing I needed was a decent photo of the bracket style, ideally a

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Station Building Progress 3

Considering the diminutive size of William Clarke's station buildings, they have one heck of a lot of windows and doors! I've been busy with the micro strip and plastikard and the results are below. I'm going to try using slide glass in the windows of my next loco, but for this building I've used a clear plastic sheet for the glazing. The glazing bars are held in place with a tiny drop of liquid poly, applied with a 00 brush. I find capiliary action, rapidly bonds the bars to the glazing m

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Horse box finally finished!

I've finally got round to finishing my D & S etched brass horsebox. Its been on the list of "things to do" since I last published pictures of the finished build back in June. It was primed using an aerosol can of Clostermann acid etch primer, before using an airbrush to spray the enamel top coat. Lettering and numbering were applied using HMRS transfers and the wagon was glazed using off cuts from a box of chocolates ("you spoil us ambassador!")       All in all, I'm pleased with

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Station building progress 2

Nothing much new to say, just some pics of todays progress. The chimneys are now in situ and the roof is ready for the application of slates. I must admit I'm releived that the brickwork inlaying is finally finished!   Platform view   Forecourt view   Additional views   Loads more still to do!   Dave

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Chim Chiminey!

Excuse the title, I couldn't resist! I'm still plodding along with my model of a William Clarke station building. Progress has hardly being made at lightning speed, but I'm happy with the end results so far. As I've said before, I think the chimneys on William Clarkes buildings are their crowning glory, so I wanted to capture their appearence as closely as possible. I used layers of plastic card to construct the stacks, inlaying "bricks" as required. Once the assembly had dried, the corners

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Station Building progress

Its been a couple of weeks since my last blog entry, so I thought I'd post a progress report on my station building project. Thanks to information provided by Buffalo and Tim V, I've got a much better understanding of how Will Clarke's buildings were constructed. The main body shell is nearly complete, window sills and corbels still need to be added. The next stage is to start construction of the ornate chimneys that adorned the building, before moving onto the roof and then the platform awni

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Station building 2

I'm sure you all gathered from my last post that I was not entirely happy with my station building project. Although I'm happy to accept that the main building doors would have been an imposing 8' 6" tall, setting the right impression to the Victorian passenger, Im not so convinced about the Porters store room / Gents Toilet situation. Buffalo's information about Camerton's, (another William Clarke building) doors being 6' 6" for the store and 6' 9" for the toilet sounds far more likely in my

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Help needed with station building!

I thought the building was progressing along nicely, I still needed to sand down the quoins to get them flush with the brickwork, but that apart I was fairly happy with it. All was well until I decided to place a figure in front of the building, it was at that point when doubts started to set in!   The figure is 41mm tall, which works out at around 5' 11" in 7mm scale, a fairly decent height for a chap in the Edwardian period. He appears to be dwarfed by the doorway as can be seen in the pho

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Station Building

One of the few good things about a wet Bank Holiday weekend, is the opportunity to get some modelling done! I've long been a fan of William Clarke's buildings, I think they have great proportions and just cry out to be modelled. Paul Karau's combined edition of "Great Western Branch Line Termini" contains a good drawing of Abbotsbury in 2mm scale so I used that as a starting point. I enlarged the plan using a photocopier to the required 7mm scale, I find it much easier to measure directly off

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Simulating torn canvas roofs!

Close up of torn canvas on a Slaters Plastikard Cattle wagon I've had a few positive comments about the torn canvas on the roof of one of my cattle wagons, along with a request for the method I used to model it. I'm not sure how well the method would translate to smaller scales than 7mm, but this is the technique that I used.   1. The area on the roof where the canvas is to be to torn is scribed with plank detail using a compass point or needle, held against a steel ruler.   2. A fibre

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Sheeted 5 plank open

I'm still busy building pointwork for the proposed layout, 4 points completed so far and I'm about halfway through the double slip. The C & L timbertrack bases, preformed crossing vees and milled switch blades, really help speed construction up. I was never much of a fan of building 4mm pointwork and viewed it as a "necessary evil," drilling sleepers and tapping in rivets wasn't much fun in my opinion! I'm now a convert and find 7mm track building very satisfying and almost pleasurable!

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