Blogs

Making waves...

It's been a little while since I last posted. I've been concentrating on getting the sea finished. Eventually after 48hrs the PVA dried. Now for the fun part of tacky glue and making some wavy texture. (Dock ready for texturing) Put an angle on it to make it look like the breeze is blowing across the Dock. The glue holds its shape pretty well and with the aid of a cocktail stick I could get rid of the bubbly bits and make it more wavy. I did two treatments of this

MoonMonkey's findings and thoughts

November 1

Fen End Pit's Blog

16mm photo-plank - Hammer Time and a load of rubbish

Over the past week I've managed a few more bits of 3D printing, pushing my 3D modeling skills and my Anycubic photon to the limit. The power hammer had lots of odd shapes to model up and my favourite feature, the large spring between the two parts of the hammer mechanism. I was astonished that the foot peddle which engages the clutch mechanism came out, this is only 1mmx.8mm in profile. I printed this in 4 pieces, the main frame casting, the two fly wheels and the main hammer mechanism. This wa

Fen End Pit in 16mm photo-plank

November 1

Shelf Island

Wellwood (provisional version)

"Wellwood" will be the final section of my "Shelf Island" project, and maybe I will make a start on it in late 2021. In the meantime I have made a temporary arrangement on part of a flush door: This layout is important to me, because it connects Shelf Marshes (on the right here) to the rest of the scheme, and it lets me connect my TrainSafe tubes to the layout, but it may not be of much interest to anyone else. I suppose, the main thing is the use of Unitrack because this lets

47137 in Layout modules

November 1

Blacklade Artamon Square

Postcards from the Layouts

As Blacklade is effectively completed, and so is the Boxfile there isn't too much to post in the way of layout construction these days. Lockdown efforts have mainly been focussed on sorting out the litter of unfinished stock projects - and if the truth be known, drifting into one or two more. And those things have gone onto my workbench blog.. However just to prove that the silence is not that of the grave, here are a few snapshots from when each of them was last up - "Pictures from

Ravenser in Operational

October 31

Halloween fun for the layout

Halloween, anyone? My lad saw these Noch figures and I ended up buying them... excellent fun for today!... Down on the up platform, the local monks gather to commence their Halloween protection activities, and then a vampire hunter joined them... Then Dracula turned up on the down platform... It all got a bit feisty... Then the vampires decided to head into town on the lash, ignoring the COVID-19 restrictions and

MoonMonkey in Halloween fun

October 31

Barry Ten's S&D blog

Stourpayne Marshall - motive power #3

Some examples of 4MT and 5MT motive power on the layout, including an exciting blooper! First off, a Bachmann 4MT 4-6-0 which has been renumbered (using HMRS and Modelmaster transfers) to an S&D example: Light weathering is applied by brushing on liquid acrylics, then almost immediately swiping it off or buffing it around using cotton buds. I must admit I rarely use the airbrush for weathering these days, preferring to use brush

Barry Ten in S&D

October 31

A Pair of Bulleids

Two recently completed tasks, one rebuilt Battle of Britain and one unrebuilt West Country. The camera has gone away for a jolly good seeing to so, with any luck, normal service will be resumed soon. The same colours have been used for both of these locomotives. See if you can work out what they were.

October 30

Hornby Class 60 Colas Rail Freight. Step 4 - Airbrushed Underframe Completed.

Problems with my camera (or maybe the lens) have disrupted progress recording with this subject. I have managed to salvage one shot of the airbrushed underframe, though, and here it is. Once the main colour was finished, an application od MIG Dark Wash was run into all the detail areas with a rigger brush. This served to highlight the shadow areas and bring out the intricate details of the bogies.

October 30

sigtech's Blog

Sproston - Sorting the Stove R, and a sudden increase in the population!

Howdy folks, It's been a long time (well over a month ) since my last missive about the goings on in Sproston, - my only excuses are 1. it's been cold in the loft, and 2. I have had a bad cold. The major project which had been ongoing for at least a month, and had been held up by a lack of available parts ( Bachmann 14mm dia coach wheels ) was the improvement of the Dapol Stove R. This has now been completed successfully, by carefully following the steps outlined in Ray's ("Silver Sidelines"

sigtech in Update on Stove R . 30/10/20

October 30

MES Body & Paint

Yu Jing 2

I made more work on the Yu Jing for Infinity. Firstly, I finished building the Shaolin Warriors; Kind of dynamic looking. The heads were all separate and finicky. I hated it. I had another box, labelled Imperial Service Starter Pack. Only supposed to be six figures in the box. I found 12. Firstly, what wasn't supposed to be there; Thankfully, the bottom three were one piece each, and therefore complete. The top three were eac

AlfaZagato in Kitbuilding

October 30

Wenlock's Blog

G.W.R. 2 Plank Wagon part 2

Back in mid August I posted an entry in the blog about the construction of the GWR 2 plank wagon. Well since those balmy days Autumn has hit with a vengeance in South Wales, we're back in full lockdown and it hasn't stopped raining! Still the upside of this is that there's not much else to do other than a bit of modelling The model was more or less completed and ready for painting , but I struggled to find a prototype photograph of a 2 planker in my admittedly fairly sm

wenlock in GWR 2 plank wagon

October 29

Barry Ten's S&D blog

Bulleid Light Pacifics on the S&D

Westward Ho, above: seemingly not a regular on the S&D. I've seen lists of the Bulleid WC and BoB classes which ran on the S&D, but I can never find them when I want them. As much for my own reference purposes as anything else, as I look to renaming some of my examples of these locos, I thought I'd have a go at compiling a non-exhaustive list. I went through all four volumes of Ivo Peters' photo albums on the S&D in the 50s and 60s and noted all the WC/BoB cla

Barry Ten in S&D

October 29

Stop Go...

So today the self adhesive road markings arrived from scale model scenery. Having read the instructions which seemed straightforward enough I gave it a go. Tried out one of the cycle lane logos first as a test which with a bit of help from a craft knife and a strip of masking tape. This all went well so tried a 'stop' white lining for the Linkspan. A few minor issues with trying to get the various letters to unstick themselves but in the end all was well. Having managed both stop white lining de

October 28

Hornby Class 60 Colas Rail Freight. Step 3 - Underframe Airbrushing.

The three colours are mixed in the airbrush paint cup, but thinners (white spirit) are placed first. That is because the first thing to reach the nozzle is then thinners rather than unmixed paint. The latter will block the nozzle before you even start the weathering. When mixing colours, start with the lightest and add the other colour(s) using small amounts at a time. In this case the orange was added to the thinners first (a small drop), the leather was added next (one brush load) and the bla

October 28

Addleford Green

Fiddle yard adventures - Part 3

With the fiddle yard board constructed, I rolled up my sleeves and had a grand tidy and move around in the shed! Everything was put into it's new place and I made a simple removable stand for the fiddle yard to sit upon. Next up - creating the piece that would join the main layout to the fiddle yard. This would need to curve the track so that it met the fiddle yard at it's centre. I did some measuring, calculating, crude offering-up and plain guesswork to create a templa

JRamsden in Addleford Green Blog

October 28

Mixing the civil engineering...

So today was a lot of bits being done round the layout to complete minor bits and bobs whilst waiting for the pva glue water to dry out. The video I watched said the layer of pva would take about 1 hr to dry. Try about 24hrs! So I had plenty of time to do other things First job was marking out the precast concrete units for the bridge abutments. Having completed this all the lines were weathered to tone them down a bit (all lining complete) (some

October 27

Shelf Island

General Arrangement

"Shelf Island" is my model railway layout, and it represents the railways of the eponymous location. The layout is in the mould of a typical British narrow gauge project but built as a standard gauge line. And in 1:87 scale. The layout has a fiddle yard (which rather resembles a motive power depot), but the long-term plan is to create a model of a self-contained railway system where trains move imaginary freight and passengers between different locations. So far, I have built the rai

47137 in Editorial

October 27

Hornby Class 60 Colas Rail Freight. Step 2 - Underframe Preparation.

The underframe is where I invariably start with any model because everything that follows can be done with the model on its wheels. I was introduced to foam cradles, that originated as worktop edging protective covers, by a friend who liberated some from a skip. I use them for most models that I work on now. Having exhausted the supply that I, in turn, liberated from waste disposal receptacles, I decided to buy some direct from a manufacturer, but had to order a minimum quantity. I n

MikeOxon's Pre-Grouping Blog

October 27

O Gauge Modeling

Connoisseur Kit's LNER J68 Part 5 End...?

Hello again, it's been a rather long time since I put something up on the J68! It's fair to say I have finished the locomotive, and I have moved onto other project's, so the best way to go through this, is since getting the loco into black I then moved to paint the cab, cream followed by all the cab fittings, this didn't take too long to do and I really enjoyed doing this part, as it reminds me of when I get the loco's ready in the morning cleaning the cab polishing all the brass re

Norton Wood in O Gauge Modelling

October 27

Track Maintenance

Most of my train-running recently has been for the enjoyment of my young grand-children. For this, I tend to use my reliable ‘1854’ saddle tank, with its heavy ‘Wills’ cast body and ‘Hornby’ chassis that make it fairly ‘bomb-proof’ Trains at North Leigh Suddenly, after what has been many months (if not years) of reliable running, the engine de-railed on the three-way point at the West end of North Leigh station. Following application of the ‘big hand in the sky’ bre

MikeOxon in general

October 26

I see the sea...

A family game that was played on the holiday car journey was who could spot the sea first from a glimpse down a valley. Whether heading to the ferry or just a coastal trip the first sight of the azure greeny blue sea on the horizon would illicit a chorus of "I see the sea, I see the sea." from the back seat of the car! And so it was my turn to try and create the alluring sea which I used to sea on my family holiday. I had watched a video by Kathy Millett on an easy way to create wat