So I started off rebuilding a kit using my hackbash as a guide and I ended up rebuilding my hackbash using the kit as a guide....
The DJH model is now completed and represents #871 as she appeared around 1912/1913 (as-per the photograph in Yeadons). My hackbash.... well I'm satisified with the splashers and beading now, so attention shifted to the smokebox saddle. It looked too angular... easy enough to rectify at the rear with a couple of files, but the front needed to but cut off and rep
Hmmm, the beading to the splashers on my hackbash D6 really doesn't cut it, compared with the DJH example. So I did something about it.
Some scrap 0.3mm plastic sheet and 0.5mm plastic strip later, and...
Much better, I think. Even better when the varnish dries....
Then I'll look again at the smokebox saddle and maybe the tender.
Meanwhile the DJH kit has been fully repainted and lined out, and just waits on being given a number and final varnishing.
I've now reached the point where I can line out my DJH 4-4-0/ I have to say this is a very, very nice little kit, it's a shame it isn't manufactured any more.
And with the loco at this stage, it seemed a perfect opportunity to haul out my hackbashed Pollitt 4-4-0 as a sort of compare and contrast exercise. I think it matches up quite well.
I got bored with the constant stream of carriages and wagons. So I pulled an engine out of my roundtuit pile.
Just over a year ago I was able to buy a DJH Pollitt 4-4-0 and a scratchbuilt Pollitt single. The 4-2-2 is a lovely piece of work, the 4-4-0 is also very nice but for some bizarre reason the original owner had decided that a metallic light green was exactly the right colour for GCR green.
It had to go...
The physical changes I have made to the model took all of
There's something missing on the Mac B of course- a load....
I originally had in mind a horsedrawn wagon of some description for a load- a pantechnicon or a dray, perhaps. Then somehow I ended up on a Lesney/ Matchbox collectors site and after that things get hazy. For some reason then a Matchbox 1/80 scale traction engine turned up in the post.
It fits so it sits.
I had a small, far away, sort of a moment as I was expecting something perhaps a little bigger...
As one pr
Nearly finished now.
I fitted three link couplings and built a suggestion of the brakes from plastic sheet. Then I made new decks fore and aft- the planking arrangement is totally different- and gave the model an initial first coat of paint- Humbrol #64 all over.
I'm increasingly disappointed with the quality of Humbrol enamels. Variously they're too thin, take days to dry, some attack the plastic sheet and others (like my current tinlet of #64) have gone almost like a gel- unless yo
A second session on the Mac B last night saw me picking fault with things that had been done the night before. The conversion is plainly possible, but in my enthusiasm to start I had overlooked a few things and got other bits wrong.
I pulled it apart and set out to improve what I had already done. I had left the basic axleboxes alone, having stripped them of springs and surface detail, but now they looked not only very blocky but plainly too large. So I cut them off flush with the sidefr
I was going to commence the last of my MSLR 6-wheel carriages after completing a pair of GCR clerestory carriages, but for 1. the discovery this afternoon that I am out of '1st' class transfers and 2. the domestic authorities being on hand to potentially pick fault with my fire hazard of a soldering set up. I prefer to solder when I am alone in the house.
So I pulled a Dapol Lowmac kit out of my roundtoit pile.
The BR Lowmac wagon was based on an LNER standard type of the 1930s, which
This last week I have been working on a pair of clerestory all-thirds. Quite pleased with how they have turned out, but really the blade on my silhouette cutter could do with being changed now.
I finished the second of the six-wheel carriages last week.
I thi
I think I have reason to be quite pleased with that.
Progress has also been on-going with a few other projects too; I'm about at the point where I can't take any more on until I get my to-do list cut down a little. This is of course why I have ordered a pre-lettered Manvers Main wagon from POWsides, and a GCR horsebox and bogie brakevan from Brassmasters, but those are neither here nor there....
A few weeks ago
Works managed this weekend on the second 6-wheeler:
1) Re-soldered the vertical screws on the chassis after they came adrift. Unfortunately the act of soldering these left the original carriage floor ruined, leading onto 2) Building a new carriage floor. 3) Couplings were then fitted, and the body test-fitted. 4) One end of the body was originally glued up skewiff, so it was squared back up. 5) Happy with the fit of the body, it was removed and the interior built. 6) The carriage sides
With the first of the three finished, I thought I would keep the impetus up and therefore set about the second. This is going to be another five compartment all-third, whilst the third in the set will be a four compartment all-first. I also have a drawing of a 25' 4-wheel luggage brakevan, so eventually I will be building a few of those too to bookend the six wheelers.
So I broke out the second Brassmasters Cleminson chassis yesterday and set to work, but almost before I started I ran int
And now the first of the rake is finished....
I think I have reason to be quite pleased with that.
Right, one down, two to go... plus a couple of 4-wheel luggage/ brakevans.
When I started to look for photographs of 6-wheel stock to get an idea of what they look like below solebar level, I had no difficulty finding the basics out- the last of these carriages were built as late as 1899 and they appeared on London Extension expresses well into the 20th Century. There are even photos from the 1920s showing massive Robinson 4-cylinder express locos in Manchester with a couple of these archaic-looking vehicles behind the drawbar.
What I quickly gathered from the ph
This week then I have built an interior, fitted roof vents, painted the roof, and reunited the body and the chassis. Oh, and fitted some couplings.
Now the next step of course is going to be building the solebars and everything below solebar level.
You may recall, just after Christmas, that I decided to try my hand at soldering and, as a first attempt, built a Brassmasters Cleminson chassis. I then plonked an old Ratio GWR coach body on it and left it, for the present, at that.
With #858 off the bench, attention now turns back to this before bits start to go walkabout. As a first step, I separated the chassis and body and repainted both.
The chassis gets just a plain coat of matt black.
The body gets a scumb
And.... she's finished!
I have fitted a vacuum pipe to the front bufferbeam, glazed the spectacle plate, fitted the last of the handrails and filled the tender with real coal.
I think this is probably one of the best locos I've yet built, certainly the best of my hackbashes. You really can't tell she started off, a few years ago, as a Trang Jinty boiler and a couple of broken bits of a Ratio Midland 4-4-0.
That's more like it!
The lining is finished, having taken the better part of a week, and now I'm looking to the smaller finishing touches. Parts still to be fitted run to the cab handrails, reverser, the whistle and the vacuum pipes, the bufferbeams need painting and some coal and a crew need to be added.
Repainting is now getting into its stride. The new frames and smokebox saddle look a lot more convincing, and with the longer smokebox the loco assumes a much more powerful appearance.
I think I have good reason to be pleased with myself going over projects done this year.
I've managed to get a reasonable number of locomotives repainted into Great Central livery, a couple of projects off of the to-do list and made a sizeable dent in the rolling stock gap; completing two mainline rakes of five carriages each and progressing a pair of suburban rakes. I've bought a silhouette cutter and used it to make a few carriages- and I anticipate next year I'll be making more use of i
2001, a secondary school somewhere in Staffordshire. "Yes, you've made a good job of soldering that LED in there James, well done." And thirty seconds later I picked the iron up by the hot end.
2006, a halls of residence in Lincoln. 'I'll just solder these two brass rods together and then we'll see how it looks'.... HISSSSSS followed by my jumping around the room swearing.
When I say jokingly that when I solder I generally pick the iron up by the hot end, I'm usually being completel
The latest candidate for a rebuild and backdating is my hackbashed LNER D6, which is currently in the works to be rebuilt after the fashion of the photograph of her at Trafford Park in GC days in a Yeadons volume.
Work so far has taken the form of lengthening the smokebox by means of a new paper wrapper, reprofiling the splashers and fitting cast brass chimney and dome, which really transform the look of the model.
It's getting there slowly.
And another one in GC livery! This took longer than planned, partly because I decided to do some work on the chassis (to stop the wheels and pickups binding against each other) and partly because for three weeks the kitchen table had the kitchen sitting on top of it. Which put a definitive stop to any modelling work.
