A nearly finished tower car 2 took to the rails at the Model show in the Tram Shed at Heaton Park, this was quite an effort, as I only started building it on Tuesday evening. It's shown here only part glazed, missing transfers and minus the inner tower, but hopefully you can see the overall effect.
It ran like a bag of spanners at first, gradually running in and performing better, it does need more weight so both cabs will be stuffed with lead.
Inner tower will hopefully be moveabl
Bit of progress on the turnouts for the extension, most of the plaster has stayed where it's meant to, there are a few spots where it needs a repair. So onto the scribing.
I'm going to build the whole corner unit up, including the new scenic break ready to drop in instead of the current corner section. I may also ease the radius of the curve all the way round to the hidden section, if I do this it should allow bogie cars to use the inner circuit.
Buoyed with the success of this junc
As I mentioned in a previous entry, I wanted some 'Leeds specific' side adverts for the Grime Street fleet, to my mind it sets the scene nicely.
The obvious one was Melbourne Ales, a brewery long since vanished into the Tetley's empire, in the period modelled, looking at pictures, it seems that half the Leeds fleet was emblazoned with the brand and its bowing courtesan trademark.
Anyway, the first of a batch of home (computer) poduced water slide side ads, shown on a blue Horsfield
Contrary to the previous pics 'Grime Street' wasn't the only layout at the Festival of..., Paul kindly sent over a few pics of some of the other layouts
Sealane Sunderland trams in 7mm
Sealane Sunderland 48
Greg Marsden's superb Stockport 20, 3/4" scale
Stocport Water Car by Greg Marsden again.
Pete Whiteley's illuminated Blackpool Western Train
illuminated Hovertram
Foxwood Park by Gordon Bulmer as in RM recently.
Video showing
Last Saturday and Sunday saw 'Grime Street' at the Festival of Tramway modelling show in Manchester, this featured tram models from 3/4" scale down to 'N' gauge. Unfortunately I forgot to take any photos, the camera was stashed in my stock box all weekend. However Paul (PLD) has sent me a few over.....phew!
Saturday was pretty busy all day long, fortunately I had a guest operator (I was on my own otherwise), taking time out from the cockpit of the 'Stealth Bomber' Paul found 'Grime Street' a
Well, I'm supposed to be, but I'm fed up with glazing trams, so seeing as a pictures worth a thousand words thought I'd stick a couple of (very average!) videos up.
Got the Feltham running pretty well now, this was running a little rough round the corners, traced to a slightly tight uj, now running as well as the four wheelers, pretty happy now with most of the fleet on new Halling mechs, just about run in.
Sorry about video quality and background noise! Ok, back to flush glazing a Sou
I'm sure your all fed up with me espousing the virtues of Halling motor bogies, the one problem being how to actually fit them to the item you want to motorise. The vario units normally fit the Halling trams by small clips on the main body of the drive, the tram truck being made of flexible plastic.
So, thinking cap on and I came up with this....
It's a basic cradle made of 80 thou plasticard that can bolt up into the tram body, so easy removeable for access to the lower d
Whilst getting ready for the Middleton Railway exhibition last weekend I decided to attack a couple of the works trams with some Tamiya weathering powders, I always felt that they were too clean and tidy. Seemingly weathering trams appears to be not the particularly done thing, I've only ever seen Paul (PLD) mention it on his motorising a Horsfield thread on RMweb3
Anyway, thought I'd have a go so here's a pic of, perhaps slightly overdone, tower car 1. I really must stick a driver in there,
What's going on, two entries in less than a week! Mention was made of the modded PC trams chassis for a Corgi Feltham, so here it is in primer
And with the Corgi body fitted
The general idea behind this is to do with the proposed resin body kit for LCC1/Leeds 301 which if all goes to plan (yeah, right!) would feature an r-t-r chassis using the PC/Halling chassis as a base unit but with platforms/stairs/doors/bulkheads/controllers etc, basically fit lifeguards, bogie sides etc a
Today I managed to visit the TMS store at Clay Cross, this is located in the former Midland Railway Goods shed near Clay Cross junction.
Purpose of the visit was to get some info and detail pics of Leeds 600, for a preserved vehicle, pictures of 600 are quite few and far between, I'd particularly been struggling to find any info on the boxes on the roof, interior and the rear of the advert boards. So a few pics for posterity.
Big thank you to all who ma
As mentioned in the last entry Leeds 600 was one of the next cars I fancied building, so what's Leeds 600 most RMwebers go? This is Leeds 600
picture from wikipedia and used and credited as such
It was a 1950's rebuild of an earlier Sunderland single decker, though how much was retained is debateable, it still exists but as it is at the Tramway Museum Societies Clay Cross storage facility it's currently not accessable.
So armed with plasticard, plastruct, solvent, filler, photos an
Austerity 104 nears something like completion, to call this a 'kitbashed' EFE, is possibly a bit of an uderstatement, but it does include a few EFE bits. I'm pretty happy with it overall and it's more modern shape has helped me get a few different ideas about it's and other cars construction. Which leads me nicely into the 'resin' bit in the title.
The next two cars I fancy building are the 'iconic' Middleton Bogie and also 600 which was a ex Sunderland single decker, now ideally I'd like
Nearly finished scribing setts and flags, heartily sick of them now!
With a Yorkshire Woolen TS8 making an appearance. Colour is built up from acrylic paint washes.
Suppose I'd better crack on and turn it into a layout now..................
Whilst I've been predominantly working on my 2mm Grimsby and Immingham stuff recently, I have had a bit of a break from the small stuff to continue building/finishing some more cars for Grime Street
Another pivotal nearly ready, this is the one shown earlier, top deck now built and painted, this one a re-trucked version.Quite pleased with this one, going to have an experiment with home made advertising decals for this one. I want to ty and get some more typical 'Leeds' adverts rather t
Ok, that's going to be the last easy street pun for a while, it's grating even on me! Much more scribing and sore fingers later, I've done all the sets in between the tracks and the crossover looks like this now
I've had a Halling power truck running quite happily on it, overall very happy with it. Rest of road surface is underway, I haven't made my mind up yet if it will be srcibed as setts as it was tarmaced over in various pictures of the area that I'm going to base the model on.
Very quick update, track all soldered and checked, so thought I'd start on the road surface, which is Wickes ready to use plaster plus pva on base board. With the track being thin it dried in no time, so armed with a steel rule and one of Mrs Red Devils' darning needles (inherited...never used!!!) We have this
Pretty tedious, but once you get going, and it was considerably more interesting than watching Liverpool v Reading on the box last night, well up to the 90th minute!
Try t
As was mentioned before I'd ordered some 'Easy Street' girder rail for the proposed extension to'Grime Street', it's produced in the US and available from http://www.proto87.c...tcar-track.html (usual disclaimer)
So what do you get?
Well this is a twin left hand points module, as you can see you also need the plain and curved track sections to complete a working point, so I duly ordered some! Also shown is one of the downloadable drawings available on the Proto 87 website, these ar
As mentioned in the last entry a few more cars are being worked on, so thought I'd stick a couple of pics up, may be of interest to someone!
Tower car 1, built from much modified E1 kit, bec reversed stairs, peckham cantilever truck, dashes from tinplate and plasticard laminate. Shown in first undercoat so needs rubbing down etc. Tower could be fun as I'm finding a good picture hard to come by. Will have a Halling vario truck for power.
Re-trucked pivotal car, this began life
The re motor begins, I've just received a parcel of Halling mechanisms, to be honest these don't seem to be that widely known (well I didn't know how good they were until recently!) so thought I'd stick a picture up, I'm sure they could have many other uses. Shown are 3 vario units, the base plates on these unclip and you can move one or either axle to alter the wheelbase from about 24 to 27 and 30mm and replacement wheel sets are available for HOe or HOm! The bigger units are 35 and 41mm respe
As I said in the previous entry, I've pretty much decided to swap over to Halling mechanisms and derivatives for mechanisms, I find them far superior to anything else I've used, for the uninitiated they come in various sizes and combinations one in particular allows you to unclip a base plate and just reposition one or both axles in slots to increase the wheelbase from about 24mm to 27 and then 30mm. There are also 34mm and 41mm units which are ideal for the Horsfields and pivotals. Bec and ABS
Back from Grime Streets first outing, pretty happy overall, everything ran reasonably well, the major problem being it's operator-yours truly!
Trying to operate and answer questions was not that easy, the planned use of cars went out of the window, less being used but swapped over more frequently, I think I may alter the hidden storage at some stage to ease this. Other lessons learned, Halling mechanisms are superb in operation and the Grime Street fleet may shrink in number for a while as a
Surprisingly everything is going pretty well at the moment, still waiting on the street lamps from China, need to make some dividers for the stock box and and to make a wooden box for all the electrics.
Other than that it's just finishing of a few more cars and minor details, hopefully should be ok for Sunday.
Quick pic also showing finished fascia with street sign.
Now less than a week to go to Grime Streets first outing (see http://www.britishtr...newsheaton.html ) and mild panic is setting in, I fully expect it to be replaced by blind panic by Thursday!
Having said that most things are going ok, the actual layout and presentation are pretty much there, I couldn't get the 'proper' street sign in time so had an old style GRIME STREET sign made up by a local sign maker, bargain for a tenner, really finishes of the presentation. I'll stick a picture up w
... stumbled around for a while, think I may have got the gist of this blog thing, we'll see!
As some of you may have seen on the previous rm web, I'd decided to build a smallish 4mil tram layout, not being a great fan of the architypal 'run one from each town' tram layout I decided on the Leeds system, mainly due to the EFE and Corgi diecasts availability.
I'll not bother re iterating all the previous posts, but update it fom here. Well, with less than a month to go to Grime Streets fi
