An afternoon spent watching my Horse in the office sweepstake fall at the National has given plenty of modelling time...

I've started off with more work on Class 47s. 47817 has had its buffer beams fitted (having found a set of screw links and glued them into position, the buffers were glued to the headstock which in turn was glued to the model.) I also set about attacking the roof which needs to be converted from the rectangular boiler port panel to the round Spanner type. Again I am using the Shawplan etch for the conversion. A little more difficult will be the perpendicular rectangular panel to the left of the boiler port which is only found on the spanner fitted locos, really it could do with an etch....

Moving on, a little bit of painting on the roof grills of 47768 and what will be 47813, with a bit of luck with the weather I will get the sides of the latter sprayed green next weekend...

The Res loco still needs another coat of grey (having made the mistake of priming the grills and panel around them before painting) whereas 813 was painted directly onto the metal, not only resulting in the paint going on better, but also leaving the grill mesh a lot crisper.

So thats the 47 fleet for now (I still think that I will end up adding the Royal pair if Vi Trains release them and would end up replacing my Heljan model of 47853 in XP64 again if the livery becomes available, but for now thats enough 47s!

Next attention turned to 33116, detail painting is nearing completion, the buffer beam units are now fully painted and ready to fit to the chassis (this cant be done until the bogie towers are swaped with 207 so that the latter gets bits with NEMS fitted ( the coupling pockets foul the snowploughs when fitted.) I have been thinking again about the ploughs as currently I have the full 3 piece fitted, whereas the prototype only has the side ones. That said the centre plough does help hide the dodgy bogie ends.....

Along with painting the buffer beam bits, I have also painted the cab mounted air pipes, handrails, lamp irons, roof fan and bogie frames (the latter have now had the centre springs relocating to the correct position.)

The unpainted solebars and roof grill have all been removed, primed, and now await a coat of BR blue (although this does have to wait until I next see shawplan to get said paint.)

Still need to add the new numbers (and sort out getting transfers for them) and varnish the side....

Finally, a chance find of the etched steps/lamp irons for it in a bits box while looking for a spare air pipe for 33116 has resulted in a little bit of work on my Heljan Western D1015. This was intended to be modelled in 2002 condition as it was when working on the clay trains, with the wrap around V warning panel at one end. However I never did quite get round to doing the respray...

My thinking now as we get to the stage with so few new prototypes remaining for D&E rtr models is that a new (Accurate) western in the next couple of years really wouldnt be a surprise, so I dont really want to put the effort in on such an inaccurate model. After coming across a photo of the loco in 2005 without the wrap around panel has made me decide to just finish it off in that condition and be done with it! Will do the job properly once I have a base model which is up to scratch. That said, should someone end up bringing out some high quality detailing bits for it, I may reconsider...

Not a lot of work to do on this, other than drilling and fitting lamp irons (which still need some paint), folding up and gluing the steps in position and finally removing the etched plates (which had started to peal off) and reattaching them with superglue.

Finally, more VSOE work: The comet conversion for the RKB is coming along nicely. The aforementioned problem with the lenght has been solved in 2 ways, one side it was fine to just remove the excess from one end. The other was a lot more tricky, the gap between the end and nearest detail was too small to take the excess off an end, so I made a cut on the back wall of the kitchen and removed the required length. Now waiting for the first half to dry before working on shortening the last bit. One final bit which needs work is adding a window into the end door on one side, however I really need to find a photo of that side of 1566 in green to see if the window is a later modification...