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The Works Log
“For they’re launching a boat on the ‘morrow at noon.”

“For they’re launching a boat on the ‘morrow at noon.”

The ship is now 85 percent complete. Next it will be moved to the fitting out berth. After it has arrived there, many ancillary detail items will be added, these include: windlasses, winches, anchors and chain, cowl ventilators (photo below), and a propeller. Since this model can also float, ballast will have to be added, I’ve already started this long and lesions process however. Also in the yard is the hull for a tug boat, but I made a fearful mess of cutting the hull so that is currently, err
Will's Western Workbench
 

Welcome to my blog

Hi - and welcome!   I've been interested in the GWR since my parents brought me a Hornby pannier with a few trucks and an oval of track over 40 years ago.   My Dad and I tried to make a ratio 4 wheel brake coach in the 1980s but it never got finished.   In the 1990s, I started to try Cooper Craft and Cambrian wagon kits. I then moved onto Parkside and other manufacturers whose kits are sadly no longer available. My first try a kit bashing was to convert Ratio Iron M
WillCav

WillCav

0
TS's lockdown diary
Day 52: bendy board

Day 52: bendy board

Slight flaw in the baseboard I've made - the front centre is warped upwards by about 5mm relative to the ends. While not a massive issue, this is supposed to be a shunting layout, so any wagons running away of their own accord will not be a good thing. I think this has happened from being stored poorly, as well as being lightly built to facilitate house moves and so on. If I'd built the front a bit deeper, I'd have got away with it.   To try and counteract this, I bought some aluminium
The Wednesford Chronicles
 

Where are we?

Having 3d printed the platforms, I can't say as I'm completely happy with them, so I decided to bite the bullet and buy some Wills kits to replace them, so pending their arrival, track laying is on hold.  So, I've been thinking of how to do the platform signage.  As said before, as the layout will be in a shed, it will be subject to possible weather affects, so I want to remove as far as possible paper based signage which might be affected.  So, I developed my own design.   The idea is Wednesfor
The Works Log
Shipping out to nowhere

Shipping out to nowhere

If this doesn’t fit in with the forum, sorry, I can delete it if needed.   I’ve always liked steamships, specifically cargo ships from the turn of the century. And I’ve scratch built my fare share of ships, mostly none than 3 inches long. Then a year ago I made a half hull model of a the first Blue Funnel ship, Agamemnon of 1865. It was all wood and brass, but I still wanted to do a full hull model. Something very much like the Bassett-Lowke ship pictured below. So today I began t
46444's Blog
 

Time for a brake... New Hornby LMS brake van.

My new Hornby LMS brake van in BR guise appeared in a previous blog entry.     As I mentioned then I felt the curved moulded rain strips were reminiscent of the old Airfix BR brake van kit. Prototype photos showed angled batons. Microstrip was used to make these.      The lower handrails were bowed so replaced with brass wire painted with Halfords white primer.    I painted the buffer beams bauxite to match the body. The veranda foot boards w
46444

46444

5
western viscount's Blog
Impromptu meat van butchery

Impromptu meat van butchery

Here are some pictures of a spontaneous modelling decision i took recently.    I am sure i have seen this done here and before i knew it i was tearing off the door and bashing some new ones.    The doors have a huge gap at the top and oversized hinges to enable an opening action. The roof is also too thick...oh and the decals don't look right to me.      Due to slightly heavy handedness the kit doors were broken to new ones fashioned from plastikard. 
TS's lockdown diary
Day 51: irritatingly close to success

Day 51: irritatingly close to success

Ah, the joys of 3D printing. The first test of the SER brake van (diag. 1553) looks to have come out ok at first glance - but a closer inspection shows that the print lifted from the print head on one side, meaning the footplate is warped up in one corner. Throw out, try again!   This is probably an issue with the print head levelling, which I triple-check before starting every print these days, as it's been so unreliable. Looks like I'll have to have another go.  
greslet's Blog
 

Hornby Q6 is added to the fleet

The Rede Valley Railway is finally getting the engines it needs to make it look authentically in the English borders. First one into traffic is a Hornby Q6, weathered and sound fitted. A steam railway set in the North East needs the engines that made that part of the world distinct. Steam ended on the […] The post Hornby Q6 is added to the fleet appeared first on Rede Valley Railway.
greslet

greslet

0
The Works Log
The Scots Grays are charging at dawn

The Scots Grays are charging at dawn

A few months ago I bought an old Keyser GWR Beyer goods, and it was pretty awful. So I in my infinite wisdom decided to make it even more awful. I hacked it up into a London Chatham & Dover Railway small Scotchman. And I was quite happy with it. Then it got in a rather bad accident, mostly wrecking it. So I began the process of reassembly, and promptly got bored and stopped. So it been languishing in a corner for a few months. It doesn’t have many redeeming qualities in terms of scale, but I
Highland in 2mm
Scrap Tank - body shell

Scrap Tank - body shell

With the footplate ready I decided to press on with the basic body shell. First stage was to laminate two layers of 0.25mm nickel silver, again taken from the scrap surrounding an etched sheet. The pattern is stuck on with double-sided tape - I arranged the parts on the drawing to make use of one straight edge. The buffer beam is crossed out to remind me that I already made it!   Before cutting out the pieces I drilled the various holes using the Proxxon. Then it was a case of cu
TS's lockdown diary
Day 50: reflective waffling

Day 50: reflective waffling

I've made it to 50 days of modelling! I certainly wasn't expecting to get this far, but it's been a good challenge so far to get some progress done every day, no matter how small. Times have been tough for me personally (though related to work, not directly as a result of lockdown or isolation) and a bit of creativity each evening has helped keep me sane, so in an odd way, it couldn't have come at a better time. The blog runs a day or two behind real life in the event that I miss a couple of day
Up the Line - 1918
Another distraction

Another distraction

With progress on the little Ruston on hold until a suitable battery and motor arrive and having got fed up of jigsaws I started on something else that I have been meaning to explore for a long time and just to add a little more audience participation I shall let you try and guess what it is!   I had assumed that getting the bends correct would be no problem with the little bending jig that I got from Metalsmiths I think, quite some time ago. Getting a nice bend no problem but in the co
KH1

KH1

2
rockershovel's Blog
 

Porterhouse Blue

I’ve just had an exchange with another member which reminded me of my years in Cambridge. It brought to mind the Tom Sharpe novel, and subsequent David Jason vehicle, Porterhouse Blue.   Most of Sharpe’s locations around Cambridge are easily identified, if you know the place. Porterhouse College notionally stands on a site now known as All Saints Garden, at the junction of St John’s Street and Trinity Street, near the Round Church. Skullion lives in the Gwydir Street / Sturton Street a
Turning the Clock Back
Hymek renewed (again!)

Hymek renewed (again!)

Having got to the happy situation that I could actually run stock without something falling off the rails all the time, I can turn my attention to building or rebuilding items of stock to run, knowing if they stay on the rails with the current set up, they should (!) run nicely on any successor set of baseboards (!!)   So I turned my attention to my trusty (very) old Triang-Hornby Hymek, subject of a much earlier blog entry. The prototype I remember with much affection having travelled
pbkloss

pbkloss

0
Barry O's Weathering Blog
 

LMR Locos.. weathered!

Been busy detailing, renumbering/renaming a few locomotives.   Two Duchesses.. City of London.. rename, renumber, fit details weather The photo for this one shows where they painted over the "LMS" on the tender.   and the boiler top     Next up Duchess of Buccleuch      again rename, renumber etc. Very light weathering applied   Then one of the "Saltley Ladies" 44919. New numbers, details added an a new smokebox pl
Barry O

Barry O

0
The Farthing layouts
The Bumblebee Mk2 - a new traverser for Farthing

The Bumblebee Mk2 - a new traverser for Farthing

I’ve built a new ‘one-size-fits-all’ traverser for my Farthing layouts.        My latest layout - The Stables - has two levels, so I needed a traverser which could accommodate that. After I had proposed various harebrained schemes, Stu suggested the principle that I have sketched above. This was clearly the way to go. But how?       After mulling it over I looked at my old traverser (above) and realised that I could kill two birds with one stone.
Mikkel

Mikkel

29
TS's lockdown diary
Day 49: SER brake van CAD complete

Day 49: SER brake van CAD complete

The CAD drawing stage of this project is over, and it's ready to go to print! Before anyone points it out, there are brakes, I just haven't bothered to add them to the virtual assembly! I'll need to do a bit of maintenance on my printer first to try and make it behave itself.   Is there anything else I'm missing off this model? I hope not, the number of features and rivets etc. is making it run in the lowest graphic settings possible, and my processor still feels like it might melt!
A different approach to model railway operation?
 

Episode 7 – Looking to the future

Anyone who has had to work with me closely in any capacity will know that I tend towards having bright ideas, tossing the hand grenade into the conversation and then sitting back and watching things develop.  Indeed, at one point when I was working for the US Navy I went into the office one morning and said to my team “I had a really neat idea on the train on the way in” – and they all scarpered, every single one of them.  Oh well!   INCOMMING!   Now, I must prefix this post
DutyDruid

DutyDruid

2
TS's lockdown diary
 

Day 48: 30hp Planet build/test video

I showed the (almost) complete loco in yesterday's post, last night I finished editing up a video of how I built it, so if you're interested please do take a look. It's exactly the sort of project I needed - a lot of what I've done lately has been fiddly to set up, or used expensive parts, or just taken a long time to do, this one was refreshingly simple and quick, probably done in under an hour if you don't count painting time.     

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