When I wrote about my third attempt at some Robinson stock I was asked if I could get a couple of more detailed photos to show what was involved. Now I didn't get all four of the carriages down to photograph, like I said I would, but I did manage to get down the last carriage I rebuilt and get a few more detailed photographs of it.
The simple black line is sufficient to suggest matchboarding at normal viewing distances.
Next up is my latest locomotive, the B4 'Immingham' cla
Since my last update, finally getting a decent result for a Robinson matchboard carriage, I've been quite busy. The intention is to rebuild all four of my matchboard carriages in one go, and so far I've completed two and got a third roughly half-way finished.
Yesterday progress on these came to a halt when the postman delivered a copy of W.A. Tuplin's 'Great Central Steam'. A quick flick through brought me to the obligatory centre pages of illustrations, complete with line drawings of loco
With my latest attempts at creating GC-esque carriage stock from RTR and Ratio offerings producing results, my first tries (a rake of matchboarded 1911 mainline carriages) started to look a bit tatty. In addition, since first creating them new information has come to light, suggesting I made the matchboarding too heavy in appearance and got the teak wrong- I went for a generally lighter hue, whilst photographs and paintings seem to suggest the matchboarding should be nigh-on invisible and the h
A few weeks since the last update and I'm pleased to say the model is, for all intents and purposes, finished!
The model was painted using Humbrol acrylics and Revell enamels. The apple green was made up using a single coat of Revell 'leaf green' which was then given three coats of Humrol 'apple green', because the Humbrol colour is so thin as to need a bit of help to get a decent deep colour.
I found some Hornby handrail on that well-known internet auction site and used a
I've made a fair bit of progress since last time:
Let's start with the tender.
Believe it or not, I've managed to re-use the B12 tender... I had to saw the chassis into three, and then use 2mm square plastic strip to lengthen it and also give the appearance of the tank being lower than it actually is. The tank itself was sawn in half and the fake coal sawn away (along with all of the top of the tank). I was then able to insert a 7mm length of plastic sheet between the two ha
No paint on yet but we're nearing the point where we'll need o break out the brushes!
Frustratingly I cam to fit a few parts tonight and couldn't find the materials... the steampipe down the drivers' side of the boiler needs 1mm plastic rod (I had a few odds and ends of this stuff left after my first GC clerestory carriage, but between putting it away a few weeks ago and coming to use it tonight it has done a disappearing act) and I need to buy ome new handrail (on order from an Eba supplier
Suddenly the model starts to look like a locomotive again, rather than a pile of scrap....
What I have added here, if you can't see from the photo (damn plastic sheet being white and the photo being backlit!), are the splashers. Interesting fact is that the radius of a £2 coin is pretty much bang-on for a 4mm scale version of the splashers- so just draw around one and then measure 6.5mm down from the edge and cut a straight line, bingo!
I cut the splasher faces from 0.5mm plastic
Last time I showed how I'd hacked up a B12 and a Patriot to form the basis of a B4 'Immingham'.
I think we've turned the corner in that we've started to fit the bits back together, though there is still an awful lot to do...
The firebox clearly needs bulking out, and then the retained running plate needs cutting down and reattaching, and the cab needs reprofiling....
The newest project is my last planned locomotive for this year, and is a B4 or 'Immingham' class 4-6-0.
This will use bodies from a Hornby B12 and Patriot, and a chassis from the Hornby B12.
The chassis is actually the easiest part to do; in hindsight I should perhaps have done this model first, rather than leaving it this late- both my Jersey Lily and B5 use the same chassis but with major modification that were great headaches at the time. With the B4 all that is necessary is to cut do
The last thing to do on the model was to add the insignia, which as usual came from the HMRS pressfix range. Now then, onto the all thirds and the brakes....
I reckon this looks quite good.
I built a very rudimentary interior from scraps of plastic sheet and balsa wood, repainted the body in a solid light brown then brush painted a very thin coat of dark brown over the top- this I think works much better than my previous method of teaking as used on the Robinson mainline stock.
Still to do obviously is the roof and the detailing there, the ventilators above the doors and lavatories and the numbers and insignia, but it is practically there..
After posting my last instalment, and feeling fairly pleased with myself, I then found I had in fact been more than a little foolish and had to pay for it by going back and starting over.
Basically, using white putty was a good idea- for a brake van. For forming new window pillars however it is about as useful as dust.... it crumbled. Badly.
There was nothing for it but to remove the putty, cut out the remnants of the middle three compartments, and then rebuild in plastic sheet. Luc
I've always wondered just how much work is involved in converting old Hornby short clerestories into Edwardian GCR suburban carriages. I've read it can be done, and I've seen one or two projects achieving just such a feat. I've also read in Peter Denny's 'Buckingham Great Central' that the amount of work involved meant his rake of three took as long as a scratchbuild would have done whilst giving him much less pleasure.
You can perhaps get a better understanding of my curiosity when I tel
Now for one of my smaller projects....
A few months ago I bought an F1/ F2 off of ebay. The body I thought was sublime but sadly the same couldn't be said of the chassis. In particular, the wheels were woefully under-sized.
I began by taking the wheels off (and ripping my fingers and thumbs basically to shreds in the process- who knew that bunt brass flanges make excellent knife blades?)
I then replaced them with spares from a Hornby M7, and fitted new connecting rods which a
I've decided until I've gotten a few of my non-railway modelling projects out of the way that I'm not going to do any more locos or rolling stock.
Which is of course why despite my working on an Elswick cruiser the last week has seen me replace the wheels on a B3, cut a part of the cab roof away on same, fit my new A1 and B5 with loco crews and, today, fitted new wheels to an F2 2-4-2 I bought a few months ago.
In honesty I'm working on projects I know, or at least think, I can manage
My model 'Lord Faringdon' arrived last Saturday and although I don't anticipate doing any major work to it for at least a year, I have made a start of sorts in that I've replaced the bogie, driving wheels and removed the huge coarse motion brackets....
It already looks much improved, but clearly there is a lot of work to do! I'm currently pondering how I can lower the body on the chassis without doing too much of a hack-job on either body or chassis.
There were three ex-GC 4-6-0s on Ebay this evening and I came away with one of them.
The other two were a B6 and a 'Sam Fay' (which I was also bidding on but lost in the last 5 seconds )
Anyway, I ended up with a B3 or 'Lord Faringdon' class.
There are a few things with it that are suspect and I'm sure I can improve. I'm considering giving it a new chassis, new cab sides and a new paint job at the very least, and at the end of it I'l have a nice and certainly unusual additio
My conversion of a Hornby Railroad 'Flying Scotsman' to classmate 'Centenary' is now good-as finished, so it's time for a couple of photos...
I'm surprised how well even the cheaper Hornby offering scrubs up with just a little work. Most of alteration of course concerned the tender, which needed an entire new body (which could only be sourced in a dark navy blue clour and thus needed repainting). The coal rails I eventually added by folding some brass wire to shape, and then g
Not really much to show, but a lot has been going on this week. Trouble is, it's mostly been things I've talked about before...
First up, I've completed my rake of GCR stock. These were four hackbashes of Mainline LMS stock into GCR 'lookalikes'. I'm now the proud owner of a pair of brake thirds, a composite and an all-first. Of course, this was before I found that GC expresses generally ran to five carriages of the order brake third, restaurant first, composite, open third and brake thi
A few months ago I bought a Hornby Railroad 'Flying Scotsman' on Ebay. I already have a 'Flying Scotsman' and as it was my first engine (at the grand old age of 4!) and bought by my grandparents, I have something of a sentimental attachment to it.
But I don't really want a pair of Flying Scotsman's, and of course the Hornby offering shows an A1 in about 1934/35 condition.
The answer came when I found a photograph of #2555 'Centenary' in as-built condition in 1926.
The first step
This last week I've been looking at my B5 and attempting to improve it.... I think I've managed to succeed.
I first stripped it back to the state it was in when it arrived from Strangeways. Then I refilled and sanded the boiler and cabsides, to improve the surface finish on the completed model. Once I had got this to a state I'd be happy with I resprayed it back in matt black, then I refitted the boiler fittings. At this point I replaced the original safety valves with a scratchbuilt set
A bit of a query...
... my period of interest is the mid 1920's. Early days of the LNER and when the liveries were probably most interesting. Most of my builds so far (well, of them) are of locos toward the end of this era, 1927/28-ish when the livery had standardised (that is, when pretty much all of the pregrouping engines had been repainted). But I'd like to do at least one model 'the other way'- very early days (1923/24-ish).
So; the last D9 was repainted into LNER apple green in
Well, it had to happen eventually.
After finishing my Met Bo-Bo and reworking my current rake of GC Robinson stock, I looked to my locomotives and specifically, the B5.
On the whole when I finished it I was pleased, but over the last few weeks the lining irked me, and after I remedied that by painting it out the grainy nature of the basic material started to annoy me.
There was only really one way out of this, save scrapping the whole thing and starting over. I removed the brass
I thought progress was going too well with my Met electric, and then everything started to go wrong....
It turned out I'd managed, somehow, to get even the basic colour wrong! What looks like choclate brown in some photos looks deep red or even almost purple in others.... researching (which I should have done before I started painting) I found that the colour is actually a very deep red. Out with the brushes again
It was a simple job to rectify.... I broke out some burgundy paint and
