Jump to content
 
  • entries
    41
  • comments
    137
  • views
    15,838

About this blog

A record of the trials and tribulations of an average modeller

Entries in this blog

SE Finecast 517 0-4-2T

This has been a frustrating project. Progress has not been helped by having to clear, and eventually sell, my mother's house. She is living with my sister and modelling has taken a back seat of late.   In my last entry I commented on the difficulty in trying to find a suitable prototype. Although a large class the number of individual locos that mirror the Finecast kit is very small. I eventually settled on 848, there is a photo of this loco on the internet and, fortuitously, a photo of the ot
JDaniels

JDaniels

4

GWR 4 wheel coaches - further photos

I haven't yet worked out how to attach a photo to a reply so in response to Mikkel's comment I attach a photo of the inside of the first almost completed coach.   Unfortunately my camera and lens is better at landscapes than close ups but I hope this shows how I tackled the fitting of the body to the chassis. The folded tabs on the ends are no good as using these means that the ends, and consequently the sides, sit on top of the floor. I cut these off and made my own tabs out of brass sheet be
JDaniels

JDaniels

3

More wagon matters

I haven't spent much time modelling as I have set myself a number of jobs to do around the house, too many my wife says. I have though had another look at a David Geen kit I have that is rather wobbly on the track. The kit is for the outside framed van and whilst the detail is excellent I found having separate axleguards for each wheel did cause some problems. The problem arises as white metal has no "spring" and one of the wheel sets was very loose in the bearings. Try as I might I could not cl
JDaniels

JDaniels

0

Siphon C - an update and thoughts on the future.

There's nothing like a photo to embarrass and that's hom I felt about the photo of the Siphon C in the last entry. It hadn't looked too bad until I applied the Pressfix transfers.   It's a good idea to use 3mm transfers, the 16inch GWR would then become 12 inches. as Mikkel pointed out, thye size is given in the Fox Transfers website and I think it was 5.3mm which equates to 16inches in 4mm.   I had another look at the Pressfix sheet and noticed that for wagons, i.e. in white
JDaniels

JDaniels

1

Photos

Rather than add them to the album I've done them as an attachment here. Slightly concerned that the rectangular photos appear square. My son is something of a whizz at computers but even he found this more complicated than he imagined.   Looking at the 64xx shows how far handrail knobs have advanced!
JDaniels

JDaniels

6

Yet more photos

A few more photos that I took today.   The first shows the Blagdon branch goods in the mid 1930's. The second van is another ABS kit, as I mentioned in my earlier blog these are excellent and cover the more unusual prototypes. I would also add that not all my coaches and vans have roofs this white!   The second and third are shots of the platform and station building. The station buildings on the Wrington Vale line followed a standard pattern but that at Blagdon and Langford were extended a
JDaniels

JDaniels

5

The final part of the steam railmotor saga

Christmas Day and having watched SCD I had the greater pleasure of seeing the steam railmotor work under its' own power. There have been times though when the chassis nearly ended up in the bin.   Following on from my last entry, having done the basic chassis it was time to set up the motor and gearbox. Unusually the High Level gearbox was not as smooth as they normally are when I fitted the brass final drive. The motor was a Mashima 1624 which fitted neatly in the brass frame I had constructe
JDaniels

JDaniels

0

Progress on the steam railmotor chassis.

Since my last entry I have made more progress but it's painfully slow. I did have a good photo of a railmotor chassis which looks to be taken outside Swindon works. I had been using this as a basis for the model but now I'm not so sure whether this is the right thing to do. The GWS railmotor was built from plans so must be correct and there are many photos on their website but there are subtle differences from the photo I was using. In particular on the photo the frames protrude beyond the cylin
JDaniels

JDaniels

0

Confessions

Firstly, I have to apologise for the absence of any blog entries. Life as they say overtakes you sometimes and I've had a number of issues to sort out, most notably an aging mother and, more recently, mother-in-law having to go into care homes. We now have yet another house to empty at a time when I should be at my modelling desk. Still had two good walks this year, another part of the SW Coast Path and almost all the Cotswold Way (weather interrupted).   I did notice in my prolonged a
JDaniels

JDaniels

7

Progress to date.

I wil get the hang of this eventually. I've tried taking a few photos and in the process broke my desk lamp so no modelling tonight. Instead I'll let you know what I've done so far this season (as those who read my earlier blog, modelling for me has a season, rather like grouse shooting).   My first task was to finish off the outside frame brake van which needed painting. This was one of the ABS kits and I have to say they're rather good, excellent in fact. The white metal castings are crisp a
JDaniels

JDaniels

1

Current collectors

When it comes to the running qualities of our locomotives, I've long thought that the weak point are the current collectors, the way in which the current is picked up from the tyres. We have very good motors and gearboxes and with compensated, and now CSB suspension systems there is no longer any problem in ensuring all wheels are in contact with the track. However when it comes to collecting the current from the wheel tyres we end up fiddling about with pieces of phosphor bronze wire or strip.N
JDaniels

JDaniels

0

Musings on the forthcoming modelling season

As readers may know from my earlier blogs, I treat modelling as very much a winter or at least dark evening hobby. As the days are getting shorter, (yes really) I am thinking less of gardening, holidays and walking and more about modelling.   I have completed a couple of the POW sides private owner wagons. I was conscious that on a prototype based in Somerset the wagons should be from collieries in that county and POW sides do have a number of examples.These are based on the excellent Slater's
JDaniels

JDaniels

2

Westbrook

As a change from Blagdon I can share some of the limited progress made with Westbrook. This was a very small station on the Golden Valley Railway that ran between Pontrilas and Hay. I had already constructed a baseboard and laid the track but since then that baseboard has sat under Blagdon. Rather than buy anything new I thought I should get the unfinished projects completed so a faltering start was made on completing Westbrook. The first job was to construct the station building which I did som
JDaniels

JDaniels

1

Making a start on the steam railmotor

This entry will be of interest to those changing the chassis on the Nu cast steam railmotor. I guess that won't be hundreds of you!   As I model in EM the chassis provided with the kit was not really suitable, it's a large lump of white metal with little detail and no provision for springing or compensation. The only chassis that I can find for the railmotor is the one produced by Alan Gibson in etched brass. Having aquired this I made it up in the usual way with EM frame spacers with one axle
JDaniels

JDaniels

0

Yet more wagon matters

For those of us modelling the early days of the GWR, I've just found out that Coast Line Models do an etch of GWR wagon plates along with the numbers for the Ratio Iron Mink (V6). Most importantly they also do the cast solebar plates that carried the carrying capacity and tare so I can take off all those sloping Pressfix transfers.   The website is well worth a look. I've just ordered a couple of two plank Cambrian open wagons from Cambrian (who else?) and Coast Line also do the necessary tran
JDaniels

JDaniels

0
×
×
  • Create New...