With the exterior now largely painted, save for the roof, thoughts are beginning to turn toward how exactly to represent the interior of my Metropolitan electric locomotive.
One of them, of course, was exhibited in 1924 with the side panelling removed at the British Empire Exhibition (photo from the London Transport Museum):
Now what I think this shows is one large block for the motor with lots of wire and ancillary equipment along the sides. Unfortunately we can't replicate this
The state of play of my Radleys Met Bo-Bo this morning. Frames were sprayed with Revell 'Ferrari Red', body was brush painted in Revell 'Chocolate Brown' as a precursor to spraying in the same colour (which, all being well, I'll do this afternoon). Internally it has a rough coat of matt black and a rough coat of mid-green. Im not too concerned about the finish in here as it won't be visible when the model is finished....
Herein we start to see why this blog is titled "The GC and Met in OO"...
... Because I've started my next loco build, and it's a red (well, chocolate brown) one....
It's a Radley resin kit for a Metrovick Bo-Bo which I am planning to build pretty much straight out of the box. Sorry, no, got mixed up there- I never do that
I want to see what can be done with this fairly basic kit to improve it.... I know the panelling is overstated by miles but my efforts at removing panel lines on c
I've been considering the last few days how I can improve my Robinson stock. The main problem with these carriages is that the removal of the panelling on the donor coaches was patchy at best, and it began to irk me.
What I did was to see if it was possible to do on the upper body sides what I did with the lower, in the way of a paper overlay. I quickly decided that a one-piece overlay was going to be too tedious, so I chose to do it in slips instead. One long slip a cantrail level for t
Well, finished for a given value of finished! There are of course a few little jobs to do as and when I 'get around to it' but the model is at the point where I could think 'enough' and it wouldn't look incomplete.
I think this is my best model to date.
Someone recently asked me how I built my N5 and it occurred to me that I hadn't actually discussed that particular project here.
I built it somewhere around about a year ago, and I regard it as the first of my successful hackbash/ scratchbuilds.
I started with a Hornby J83 body and a Triang 3F chassis, the reasoning being that the boiler is about the right diameter and length (not including the firebox) and that the overall proportions are more or less right for some stretching.
T
Thoroughly tired of laboriously hand-painting my models, and then finding a streaky finish and brush hairs on the completed model, I decided to have a go at airbrushing.
I found a very cheap airbrush on ebay- now I know some argue to only buy the best but I've been burnt before spending lots of money of something that turns out to be a disappointment. So I bought a cheaper brush-if all goes well then no doubt eventually I'l work my way up to more expensive equipment. I've been given a com
New purchase!- found this on ebay this evening....
It's described as a scratchbuilt LNER tank locomotive- it looks to be either an F1 or F2. Both classes built by the GCR in the 19th century to operate suburban trains around Manchester. My plans for it? The driving wheels look too small- I may look into replacing them with some 5' 7'' drivers. The chimney is a 1930s LNER standard flowerpot design, and will be replaced with a Robinson example. The loco will be given a clean up and a
Just a few photos to show work to date on the B5....
The complete model at the moment. Lots to do- I'm sure you can see all the bits I've yet to get around to without my needing to point them out....
The tender body- started as a Triang Fowler tender top to which I laminated new sides, added a flare in plastic section and then added plated coal rails. This is, if anything, rougher than the loco at the moment! But once rubbed down, filed and finished it should look the part.
As is my fashion things suddenly have gone rather quiet. You see, the B5 isn't the only project on my bench at the moment- the other is a 36'' live steam Edwardian launch (6'' Mamod boiler with a twin cylinder oscillating engine set up in a balsa wood hull). The weather being so nice last weekend and this, and coupled with my going out to Stratford yesterday with my madcap Vicwardian friends, I decided that it would make a nice change to do some work outdoors for once. Hence my weekend modelling
Well, what do you think?
Still masses to do obviously but to my mind it does now start to look like a B5 rather than a generic loco.
I've paired it up with a Triang L1/ 2P tender, which I'm going to hack up in the same fashion I did an identical Airfix tender for one of my J11s.
On the loco itself I've added a spectacle plate in slivers of plastic sheet- not quite finished yet- and I removed the cab roof, straightened it out a little and then re-instated it. It looks a lot b
There is always a point with a project, I find, where whatever I am working on goes from being 'a lump of stuff' to 'a recogniseable x/y/z'.
I think I reached this point with the B5 last night when I added the chimney and dome.
I firstly went through another bout of 'fill, sand and smooth' on the boiler to eradicate the angular appearance, then I added a few layers of 0.5mm plastic sheet to the smokebox to bring it up to full length. I thought I had drawn it to size, then the print tu
I've been trying to work on my B5 for the last few days. Nothing is ever easy....
Having finally succeeded with the coupled wheels.... getting me this far
I turned attention to the valvegear and bogie. Ah. Oh buggar.
The bogie needs to be drawn in toward the coupled wheels by a good 8mm or so. Unfortunately I couldn't pull the link bar in to this degree (I managed it on the C5 only by cutting it and drilling a new hole, which managed to wreck one of my dremel drills), so I
Well, another of my 2013 models is now finished.
Last night it was a fairly simple job to paint out the '2' in '12 tons' and then replace it with a '5' off of the HMRS transfer sheet. It would have been easier to have noticed before that the thinner backing paper for the transfers comes away quite easily from the thicker card-like stock of the main sheet once scored through.
Overall I'm quite happy with it- the van certainly looked the part idly partnered up with my L1 and a couple o
I've been a little quiet of late, working away on my Hornby hack-bashed GCR brakevan.
I'm pleased to say that it is probably within an ace of being finished....
Having cut up the original body, and fitted overlays to the sides and ends, I then added overlays over those to create the panelled effect. I've lost count of how many coats of bauxite paint it's taken- it must be at least five.
Works still to do pretty much run to completing the paint job, amending two of t
I was reading the June issue of Model Rail last night and thought the feature on modelling the London Underground was superb. The first of the trackplans in particular I found interesting, as it basically shows a station throat and a bit of a station in a space 7'6'' by 2'. It planted the germ of an idea...
My ideal model would be of Marylebone in a 'what-if' scenario of joint LNER/ Metropolitan operation. In the real world of course the ex-GC shares tracks with LU as far as Canfield Place,
Just a few 'work in progress' shots of my GCR brakevan.
So far I've managed to:
-Cut down the Hornby body by 6mm (removing a strip from the guard's central compartment, slightly offset to bring the screw-fixing more or less to the middle of the chassis and remove the lion's share of the ducket).
- Removed the 4-wheel chassis and substituted a 6-wheel one from a Hornby milk tanker.
- Fitted a strip of 2 x 2.5mm plastic strip below the hacked-up body as a foundation for t
There is one slight problem with my latest loco builds. Most of them have been goods engines... which is fine, I have the rolling stock to go with them, except for one crucial example.
A decent brakevan....
I've got three ready to run- two GWR Toads (one Dapol, one Bachmann)- but they don't count on account of being GWR- and an LNER 'D' (at least, I think it's a D....) from Bachmann. Thing is, of those three, two are completely the wrong geographically speaking, and the other I suspec
First off, the project down....
The Ratio suburban carriage is finished. I've now got two brake thirds, another all third and an all first to either build or re-build.
The project half done is the third of my LMS/GC bashes. I'm doing a composite carriage and so far have finished the interior, added the matchboarding and begun the teak finish and white roof. I anticipate that the teaking will be finished today and then I'll be able to reassemble the carriage.
The project newly be
I've finished, for a given value of finished.... there is always more to do or bits to improve as and when time permits and my skills get better.
So, this is how 'King Edward VII' looked when I first finished her (him?) back in January....
Some may remember it from a post I made in one of the sub-forums describing how I bashed it from a B12.
Now at the time, I was really pleased with that. But then little things started to irk me- like the wonky handrail and the lining on the
I've decided that before I carry on with the rest of my new projects to revisit and perfect an older one.
The first project I described on RMWeb was a hackbash of a Hornby B12 into a C5- compound Jersey Lily. When I finished the model back in January I was very happy with it; but since then I've finished one or two more models and it began to look a little down at heel.
The list of things wrong with it really ran to
- poor cab lining
- wheel splashers too thin
- buckled handrail
Well, I've managed a few hours here and there in my evenings this week and this is how the Ratio suburban carriage is shaping up....
The eagle eyed will see that I've replaced the Ratio bogies with Gresleys. Let me explain....
Basically, I found a really nice clear image in George Dow's Great Central Album of a rake of GC suburban stock which shows the bogies very well. They are (were) quite hefty, slab sided things. The Midland ones supplied in the Ratio kit, in contrast, are li
My latest project... well.... you won't find it on my 'to-build' list.
A few weeks ago I was going through one of my boxes and I found a set of Ratio 48' Midland suburban carriages I'd built two or three years ago. And I thought, 'they look appalling. I can do so much better'. So naturally I took one, pulled it apart and then got stuck, so left it alone and got on with 'Jutland'.
Deciding that if I did nothing I'd no doubt lose half of the carriage, I decided to make it my next proj
A friend of mine recently asked if I could do a group shot of all of my projects together. This is what I came up with.
From front to back and left to right we have
-LNER class D10 'Director' "Sir Clement Royds"- a resin kit.
-LNER class D11 'Improved Director' "Jutland"- a whitemetal kit.
-LNER class L1- a resin kit.
-LNER class N5- a very heavily hackbased Hornby J83. Though all that can be seen of the J83 is the smokebox!
-LNER class J11 'Pom Pom'- a whitemetal kit.
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Way back a few years ago when I first tentatively began dipping my toe into the joys of hackbashing, kitbuilding and scratchbuilding, my first project was an attempt at the 1888 Flying Scotsman, as recreated by the LNER in 1938 with Stirling Single #1 and a rake of 6-wheeled carriages.
I began with a Bachmann 'Emily' model and had to compromise right at the start by modelling one of the later Singles with plated-in splashers over the 8' drivers. I bought a few Ratio GWR carriages and attem
