Jump to content
 
  • entries
    63
  • comments
    104
  • views
    41,218

About this blog

scratch building with cad and card

Entries in this blog

My Metro-Vick 3

The two coats of Acrylic paint made a difference to the roof, making it harder and filling the course grain of the Balsa. Next came the base plate, I made this from 2mm thick plastic card with 2x2mm strips of angle along the sides to which I glued some T shaped strip to replicate the base in the photo.       Next came the bogie frames, these I cut from Slaters plastic card but the top section I cut from some French card which is softer and more 'bendy' than the British card, this enabled

sleeper

sleeper

a rather juicy experiment in roofs

I've a couple of things to talk about in this blog. One is about my recent acquisition of a 12 volt mini drill. I bought it from a seller on Ebay it cost £9.95 and came all the way from Turkey post free! how do they do that? I've had stuff shipped from China for nix too and yet some sellers in the UK are asking anything up to £35 yes £35 for a coach that cost a tenner, who's fooling who here? Anyhow, here's a picture of it and this one shows the spec   I attached it to my trusty H&M

sleeper

sleeper

GW Mink G van 5

Well at last it's finished, well as near as. It has now been painted in GWR freight grey and weathered to what I think it might have looked like. On checking online I had a lot of guidance on the state of some wagons when in service, on refering to some of Paul Bartletts work some wagons were virtually falling apart, I didn't want to overdo the weathering to that extent though. See what you think,           I've ordered a sillhouette portrait vinyl cutter from Amazon which is due

sleeper

sleeper

Southern Region 28ton Bogie 'B' passenger van

I might have mentioned in an earlier blog that I was also putting some plastic wagon kits together. While the Mink G van is awaiting a slot in the paintshops I've posted a couple of photos of the Ratio bogie B passenger van I'm doing, alongside the Mink G, which has now had the body painted and the decals fixed. When it's been varnished and the underframe paintwork finished I'll post it up.   I find the Ratio plastic kits go together reasonably well and (this 'B' vans bogies aside), are quite

sleeper

sleeper

GWR Mink 'G' van 4

I'm sorry this blog hasn't been updated for so long, but work on the house has taken priority, so the only modelling done recently have been a couple of Ratio Vans. 1 is an LMS ventilated van the other an SR 28ton bogie 'B' luggage van and a Parkside Dundas 'vanwide' kit. The two small vans were a doddle and a pleasure to build, the SR 'B' van was a bit of a pig with lots of fiddly bits making up the bogies and I'm not happy that I've got them right even now. Another thing I wasn't happy about

sleeper

sleeper

Mink 'G' Van 3

I started adding some detail, first the doors, here's where I realized my second mistake , I'd forgotten about the doors and made the body 1mm too wide. This was because I didn't want too much overhang at the sides of the roof and so the faces of the doors are outside the edge of the roof. I may have to fit another plastic roof over the top of the aluminium one with a larger overhang at the eaves. . I cut the 'T' bar strapping to size, adding an angled cut-off on the ends and fixed these ont

sleeper

sleeper

Mink 'G' Van 2

With the roof sort of sorted I turned my attention to the building of the body. After experimenting unsuccessfully with scribing planks in to plastic card I settled for using tongued and grooved boarding from the wills 'scenic series', seen here. The next photo shows the sides cut from a Wills T&G sheet and in it you can see the roof section (third from left) with the plastic card attached   I stuck the sides to a floor panel and left it overnight to cure before going any further. Unf

sleeper

sleeper

Mink G van 1

Whenever I throw any packaging into the re-cycling box I think ' now I wonder what I could make out of that', and so it was with the item in the photo below. I thought I'd have a go at cutting one of these cylinders into a strip that could be used as a roof on a coach or wagon. Now before you all jump on me and say ' you aren't supposed to puncture aerosol cans, yes I know what it says on the tin but if you are wary and you know what these cans contain you need have no fears. Some aerosols c

sleeper

sleeper

Toby or not Toby

Some time ago I bought a brake van body because i could see a certain resemblance to 'Toby the Tram' hence the title of this blog. I did some research on steam trams, gathering together a collection of images and articles on the subject. here's a photo of what I broadly wanted to achieve I don't have a photo of the original body but here's one soon after I started mucking around with it some time last year I fitted some half panels to the doors, filled in the place where the duckets would

sleeper

sleeper

Toby or not Toby 3

So here's the model with it's final coat of Matt black acrylic paint brushed on, it's now got a chimney. These trams sometimes hauled a tram car behind them, very similar to the horse drawn trams but also similar in appearance to the later electrified trams that preceded these steam trams. I'll leave you with the rest of the photos of this build.   This is only loosly based on any original because to tell you the truth I didn't think it would ever get to fruition, if I'd known I'd h

sleeper

sleeper

Toby or not Toby 2

So we'd got as far as the chassis build, I worked out what sort of aperture to leave in the base so the worm on the shaft of the can motor would poke through to engage with the drive gear.The original metal retainer was too long for this body so couldn't be used, but I used it as a pattern to determine the angle of entry for the shaft and made up a motor bed/retainer assembly from 2mm plastic card and added 0.25 shims untill the worm engaged with the gear satisfactorily. This was quite a trial a

sleeper

sleeper

Bags of space

Phew! I had to dig deep to find this blog, way down the list as it's been some time since my last waffle. Time for a nice cuppa I think. Which reminds me why I dug out this blog. I've been pretty busy of late with one thing or the other and concequently no modelling has been done so here's a little something to keep this space alive. This :-   I've often thought about what could be done with these cartons once emptied as they're made of nice fine white card, just crying out for something t

sleeper

sleeper

TGV- Ramblings from rural France

Hi Folks,   It's been a while now since I last posted anything in this blog, largely due to having resumed work on the house renovation, realising that if I didn't do it no other bu@@er would. Apart from that I recently took my half yearly trip back to the UK. I had recently bought a French Senior Citizens rail pass which gives me 50% off of SNCF fares so booked 4 months in advance for Eurostar. I was very impressed with the TGV, very comfortable, smooth and quiet too. Eurostar looked a bit j

sleeper

sleeper

My Metro-Vick 4

With the base and body complete all that remained was to paint it, I had used a maroon coloured card for the body but I now think that is the wrong colour it should be more of a red oxide colour I think. here's how it looked when I'd finished it       This was the original photo and below is my Diorama to replicate it       That's about it really, apart I suppose from this little fellah     if you look at the original you'll see him down on the rails between the engine and t

sleeper

sleeper

My Metro-Vick 2

I stuck the two halves together then made some floor sections of the right shape fixing them inside to brace the sides. I cut glazing strips from a perspex shirt collar stiffening strip which comes with most new shirts, I stuck these in with superglue.     The cab rear panels are not correct as it is possible to see right through the prototype but they added rigidity and don't forget that this was just for a photoshoot so detail wasn't too important. Next I traced around the body and made

sleeper

sleeper

My Metro-Vick

Well it's been a while again now since I posted anything, due in part to awaiting a coach kit to arrive from Comet Models and a very smart kit it is indeed, I hope I can do it justice when I come to assemble it as it will be my first brass kit build. Two other reasons for my absence, one I've started work on the house renovation again after some considerable time so I now have less time and even less energy for the models. The other reason is because of a spate of electrical breakdowns, in a f

sleeper

sleeper

4101 Dubs Crane part 8

In my last post I showed how I constructed the connecting rods, they looked a shade too heavy so I slimmed them down a bit. Next came the tricky bit, how to secure them on the crank pins. I sought advice on the questions page and have received some very sound advice, thanks to all who contributed. Here's a picture of the rods on one side set up with oiled cigarette papers in place ready for the 'quick dab' with the new Antex 25 watt iron.     Once the soldering was sucessfully completed I

sleeper

sleeper

4101 Dubs Crane part 6

Hi everyone, I've been at it again although nothing much seems to change, I painted the inside of the cab where it would be difficult to access when the back and roof were on. I've added the buffer beams and square buffers, cab roof, water tank filler cap. the shaft and flywheel are to drive the crane turntable, this is driven by a cylinder and con rod situated in the right corner of the cab (see previous entry). In one photo I found online it looked like coal hadspilled out onto the cab floor

sleeper

sleeper

4101 Dubs Crane part 5 ( the resurrection)

Hi everyone,   Some time has passed since my last entry mainly due to waiting for replacement wheels, the arrival of which proved too much for my computer which sadly passed away despite desperate attempts to revive it. I now have a new little notebook, I chose this because hopefully being much smaller dimension wise might follow through on the problems front, wishful thinking I'm sure. The said notebook is French of course as that's where I'm based, French computers don't have qwerty keyboar

sleeper

sleeper

4101 Dubs 0-4-0Tcrane project [the truth]

The problems I mentioned in part 4 just compounded, I'd test run the motor at each stage of the build to check everything was free running, when I fitted the gearbox into the chassis I put 2 brass washers as spacers either side of the gearbox to keep it central within the frames. I noticed that things had got a little tighter but put this down to a tight fit of the axle in the frame bearings so I ran the motor for half an hour or so to bed in the components a bit. As I don't have a proper whee

sleeper

sleeper

Name plates and numbers

Having received the Name plates and numbers for both the Double Fairlie and Lady Margaret I've spent some time today fixing them. Previously I've used Hornby Satin Cote but it took a while to set, which resulted in the smokebox plate on the Gaiety pannier tank going askew slightly,[ something I have to put right sometime]. This time I thought I'd give Acrylic varnish a go, my thinking is that it would harden more rapidly and indeed it did. The first 2 nameplates I cut from the fret with a scal

sleeper

sleeper

4101 Dubs 0-4-0Tcrane project part 3

well it's been a while since the last entry, largely due to making last minute decisions entailing much research and thought. I finally settled on the Mashima 1020 motor because I was concerned about the space that would be available inside the boiler. This model will have roughly the same proportions as the Dapol pug and the boiler area on that looks positively minute . I took Paul HW's advice and went for a High Level Gearbox I ordered the Compact Plus as that one seemed to be the smallest, b

sleeper

sleeper

4101 Dubs 0-4-0Tcrane project part 2 update

Not too much has happened since part 2, the crane is now complete and painted ready for mounting on the locomotive when it's built. I'm just in the process of making out the orders from Mainly Traiins for the various detail parts such as Alan Gibson wheels and universal coupling rods, Mashima 1220D motor and a suitable gearbox yet to be determined. I have no experience of chassis building or fitting motors and gearboxes, this is a complete learning curve for me so it's fingers and toes crossed

sleeper

sleeper

4101 Dubs 0-4-0Tcrane project part 2

Some of you who've been following this blog will remember me having problems with uploading photos due to the post getting too full, it's why I only post a few photos with a bit of text, because it becomes a nightmare once the thing crashes, so in this case less is more, if you get my drift.   So where was I? Once all the 'rivets' had been punched I stuck the 0.25mm layer on to the 1mm layer. Some will have noticed that in the last picture the layers are marked 0.5mm. Originally I had planned

sleeper

sleeper

4101 Dubs 0-4-0Tcrane project part 1

With the 1308 Lady Margaret on hold awaiting nameplates I thought I'd get my next project underway. For some time I've been researching the Foxfield Railway's preserved crane tank loco.   Affectionately known throughout its life as "Dubsy" but never actually named, this locomotive was built by Dubs and Co of Glasgow in 1901 and delivered to the Shelton Iron & Steel Works in Stoke-on-Trent. It remained at Shelton Bar throughout its life. "Dubsy" was originally coal fired but was converted t

sleeper

sleeper

×
×
  • Create New...