How lucky and I, don't ask how I have managed it, but I have managed to find a few modelling hours over the last few days, and rather that spend this valuable time on the more important jobs on Foster Street, I have used it on an engine.

As some of you may recall, before my blog disaster where I wrecked a load of entries by accidentally deleting photo's in my gallery (I can still hear people cheering ) I was working on producing a passable Stannier 3 cylinder 2-6-4T for the layout. I had got to the stage where I had the loco painted, numbered as 2484 and lettered like a good little LMS loco should be.

I had decided to leave the loco in un-lined black, with maybe a very light dusting of weathering, so I set about eradicating one of my pet hates of crewless cabs, by drastically hacking a crew about to fit the cab, and some acetate sheet to fit cab windows. It was while I was doing this, that I had one of my "how hard can it be" moments and decided to have a go at lining the loco, so out came the red paint and the smallest paintbrush I had.

Not letting a very shaky hand stopping me I plodded on, oh as you can tell by the quality of the photo I have a new camera, so at least the quality of my blog entries has increased if the modelling quality has not . Anyway to improve the finish and thin a few lines I touched a couple of areas up with a little satin black, as you can quite clearly see in the photo, this is quite a contrast to the sprayed satin black finish. Thankfully this is not as obvious in the flesh, a few minutes work and the crew and glazing were both fitted to my fingers, thanks to superglue and a little while longer saw them in the cab.

Now it was time to add a little weathering to portray a working locomotive, not long out of workshops (and to hide the majority of the lining).

Well a light dusting of grime later, and most of the lining is covered up, of at least obscured from view, with the crew fitted and the lamp fitted to denote her intended duty, I think she looks like a working loco (maybe I should add a little more weathering but I will leave it a few days to decide).

I have in the process of working on the loco noticed 3 things,

1 The new camera is a very cruelly shows up how rough certain aspects of your models can be

2 I have not forgot the leading and trailing wheels (I just put them in a little box for safe keeping, and forgot where I left it).

3 The Domestic Overlord has been very quiet over the last few days, I can smell a plot brewing..........

As ever until the next time Happy Modelling