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Detailing and weathering workbench for Oswestry Works and Modelu product dioramas

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A cold morning at Pensyflog, Porthmadog

It's 1954 and another cold start to the day at Pensyflog. Mr Pritchard's woodbine smoke hangs in the cold air as he pauses on his morning walk to chat with Mrs Williams. What could they be chatting about I wonder... maybe Richard Burton on the radio narrating the recently deceased Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood, or how her garden looks uncommonly colourful for the time of year, or perhaps more likely they are just talking about the weather  

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A cold, damp morning at Porthmadog

A damp Sunday morning at Porthmadog shed.      GWR 43xx No.6324 stands outside Porthmadog loco shed, a sub-shed of Machynlleth 89C.  The two road structure was built by the Cambrian Railways in 1907 and survived until August 1963.      This is a box fresh Dapol Mogul and awaits light weathering, renumbering and reallocating to 89C.  This is the second of the dioramas built for Modelu by Dan Evason of Tunnel Lane Model Railways and is photographed in natural light.

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Mk1 Transit for Barton Road

The Barton Road diorama is suitable for a few time frames between 1950 and 1980 so I've been collecting vehicles to pose in the scene alongside some suitable Modelu figures.  The 1970's period interests me the most, with Bath Road 03's working the Avonside branch cement works and distillers.  First up on the list of vehicles to weather is an Oxford Diecast Mk1 Ford Transit.  This is my first attempt at weathering a vehicle and I've been following Mick Bonwick's blog notes on the process.  Any fe

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alanbuttler in Weathering

No. 9000 on shed at Portmadoc

January 2015 was the last time I did any modelling and Modelu was still a figment of my imagination. I was working out my 3 months notice from my IT job, living in Wales with my mother and spending my evenings trying to get my new 3D printer to work consistently. This Dukedog project was one of the first successes in those early days, with 3D printed top feed, sandboxes and whistles (these are in the product range). No 9000 was destined for Oswestry Works, but it looks just as good at home on Da

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Dusting off the workbench

My last post to this blog was the last time I did any modelling, way back in February 2015 when I was detialing stock for Oswestry Works.  Modelu took over my time completely from then on and the hobby became full time work.  5 years later and I'm blowing the dust off the paints and preparing stock and figures, not for Oswestry unfortunately but for 3 diorama's I've had commissioned for showcasing Modelu products.   All that work on Oswestry Works will come to fuitition at some point as it would

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No.9000 - Top feed and a coat of primer

Considering the benefits 3D printing gives when tackling something like the top feed and sandboxes, there is still a good deal of traditional modelling required to integrate them into the model. The sandbox pull rods have given me a few hours of amusement trying to solder them (mental note: now might be a good time to look into etching some!); the casing for the top feed pipe, where it runs up the side of the boiler, was equally challenging. I'd originally tried used masking tape to replicate th

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5726 - Primed, Numbered, Allocated... almost there!

I thought I was 99% there with No.5726, but boy does the macro lens show up a lot .... happy though, this has been a fantastic starter project in detailing, its been quite a journey since March 2014...! Credit to George Dent, Paul Marshall-Potter and Iain Rice for the inspiration to first take a scalpel to 7739.   Jobs still to do - varnish the decals, real coal, screw link coupling for the rear, steam heating cock and pipe for the rear buffer beam, left tank filler lid handle missing,

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Dukedog variations part II – No.9000

A number of the Dukedog’s had above footplate sandboxes as determined by the frames of the donating Bulldog. No.9000 and No.9005 will feature in the Works, both of which had this particular trait. There is also another slight variation, No.9000 and No.9005 had their pull rods above the filler lids, whereas 9008 had them running along side the sandboxes, in between the wheel splashers and springs (it’s quite hard to make out, but here is a picture courtesy of the GWSR)   This evenings t

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Dukedog variations part I – No.9018

With 5726 waiting on some final bits (smokebox number and shed plate) I thought I'd make a start on the trio of Dukedog's that will feature in the works. At this stage its detailing I'm concentrating on, converting them to P4 will be a challenge for later when I've developed some better skills...! There is a well documented process to convert a Dukedog to EM on Alan Gibson's website, hopefully this could be a good starting point.   The 3 Dukedog's will give some opportunity to model so

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5726 - Final entry on the subject of whistles...!

After what was in retrospect disappointing results with Spot HT – through my own ineptitude I must add, I went back to the tried and tested 1:1 mix of B9 Creator Red and Cherry resin. This isn’t to say one is any better than the other, but with little life left in the layer of PDMS silicone before it needs replacement I didn’t have the leeway to experiment further with Spot HT.   This last batch of prints has been more experimentation with what level of detail is possible. Second time

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5726 - Experiments with 3D Printed detailing parts

Other B9 Creator users have had some impressive results using Spot-HT resin, in particular for small highly detailed components (see Rab's creations!). The main difference with this resin to the proprietary B9 resins is that you cannot use it for casting, it is also much less viscous which should mean that it settles quicker. I'd just about enough life left in the layer of PDMS for another print, so today I tested printing some detailing components using Spot-HT. The test parts I've roughly draw

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5726 - Steam heating pipes

Happy new year all!   Today I've finished the replacement pipework on 5726. For the injector overflow pipe I've used slightly smaller washers, reamed out to fit the copper wire as I think they look a little more to scale than my previous effort. For the steam heating pipework I fancied having a go at creating the effect of cloth cladding so I've experimented with some surgical tape. Micropore has a fibrous texture and I think might be just about fine enough to look something like the r

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5726 - Pipework and Pull Rods!

It's been 8 months since I did anything to 5726, it being the first locomotive that I'd attempted to detail. It was turning into a bit of a test bed to try out techniques, some worked well, some didn't and some need revisiting (again!).   It's been a big help seeing the progress Tom Foster is making on his Panniers and we've both being taking inspiration from similar sources - PMP's Albion Yard and George Dents excellent Detailing and Modifying RTR loco's, both which have been invaluab

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74xx Injectors Part II

In the last entry I was trying and failing to get an injector built with the soldering iron. I had some good advice about using 188 deg solder combined with 145 deg to build up the injector without it melting into a lump, I'll give that a go when I'm back home in Brighton. In the mean time I've retried the process using super glue. It's been pretty successful, except I've not been able to make it small enough - without the pannier body to give it some sense of scale, it looks ok but it still nee

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7410 - Test run at scratch built injectors

I'm back in Wales for a few days and to keep up the momentum of progress I figured I'd set myself a small project, something that doesn't take up too much space or need too many tools - making some injectors to replace the whitemetal ones with the NuCast 74xx. By the time I'd packed the reference books, tweezers, pliers, components, lamps, soldering iron etc I might as well have brought the whole tool box, but that's another matter.   Whitemetal kits and etched kits are completely new

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57xx/8750 - Research and Reference Photos

Whilst the NuCast 74xx build has taken up space on the workbench, I've still got the disassembled remains of 5726 which I began detailing back in March to finish. Much of what I've done to 5726 needs doing to 7410 and more so I thought it would be a good time to share some photographs of preserved Pannier's which helped with 5726. Tom Foster is about to start out detailing on his blog here, hopefully some of these pictures will be of use Tom As you'd expect many panniers passed through the

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74xx - First attempt at a whitemetal kit

Oswestry had a number of 74xx Panniers on its books, as well as Machynlleth and Aberystwyth, so I'd been keeping an eye out for a cheap NuCast 64xx/74xx whitemetal kit on Ebay when one came up a few months back. I'm an absolute beginner when it comes to kit building in anything other than plastic, the only contact I've had with whitemetal was a brief foray into Warhammer 40k when I was 18 and that didn't involve any soldering so probably doesn't count! The rough plan is to use the kit to get som

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2301- Research & Reference Photographs

I always get an extra buzz seeing a preserved locomotive that spent some or most of its working life on the Cambrian, especially if it's one I plan to feature in the works. 2516 is up there at the top of the list along with Cambrian stalwarts such as 9017, 7802, 7808, well any Manor to be honest!   During the few days I spent working in Swindon this week I was able to spend an evening walking around the works, what's left of it, and the McArthur Glen Outlet centre. The whole experience

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43xx - Research & Reference Photographs

My continuing lack of modelling progress due to working away is counter balanced by it taking me near to shows, preserved lines and museums around the country that I otherwise wouldn't get to. Looking at the last month its been a bit of a whirlwind tour with there seemingly always something within an hour of the office that is worth seeing! The last couple of months I've been lucky enough to get to MOSI, Wakefield for Scaleforum, the NRM, York Show, Llangollen, The W&L, Didcot, The Bluebell

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56xx - Research & Reference Photographs

The 56xx class of 0-6-2T tank engines were infrequent visitors to Oswestry, from what I can find only one a year would receive attention during the 1954-1959 period. These were predominantly 84E Tyseley or 84F Stourbridge Rd locomotives employed on freights and passenger workings in the Midlands. Locomotives of the Red route class had to navigate their way to the works at Oswestry via Gobowen with only a handful of sidings unrestricted for their weight category.   This chart shows the

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90xx - Research & Reference Photographs

The 90xx Dukedog classes were obviously synonymous with the Cambrian system and as you'd expect many of them passed through Oswestry Works over the years, in fact probably all of them did at some point! Modelling the works gives a good excuse to model a number of Dukedogs and I've been researching not just which ones frequented the works the most often, but the many varied combinations of components, such as position of smokebox lampirons, sandboxes above/below the footplate, small/long/no whist

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5726 - Handrails, pipework and whistles revisited

Things have been a little quiet on the detailing front but I've managed to get a little time on 5726 again this weekend. It's becoming a test bed for detailing techniques so I'd imagine it will be a while yet before we see her finished!   Coming back to it after a break, the whistles and shield still don't sit right with me. The shield is too close to the cab for starters so that needs addressing. Plan is to attach short lengths of handrail wire to the end of the whistles to extend the

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5726 - Replacement Whistles & Shield

One of the last detailing jobs for 5726 is replacing the molded whistles and whistle shield. For this I've used the Comet GWR Detailing Etch which has short and long whistle shields and a pair of Markit's turned brass whistles.   It took a little while to work out which of the 4 versions of whistle were the ones required, Markit's provide Long, Thin and two variations of short. Here's a comparison of Long, Thin and Short type 1 against the original mold:     I'm no

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Gauge Decisions...

I've previously given which gauge to model some thought, when starting out again last January with a couple of small diorama's to get myself back into modelling. I'd toyed with the idea of going to EM but was a little put off initially, not thinking I'd be up to the challenge of re-gauging, or chassis building or all the other tasks finescale modelling presents, so I stuck with OO. That was a year ago now and I've gained some confidence in modelling, some good tools and a little more experience.

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Motive Power Ramblings

I'm waiting on some whistles for 5726, so with a little time to spare I've been giving thought to what locomotive to detail next.   My original plans had been to recreate various scenes inspired by the works registers between 1954 and 1959, for an extra level of historical accuracy. However to recreate various time frames over the 5 year period would require a considerable amount of rolling stock... and time... and expense...   You'll probably think I'm insane adding this extra layer of c

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