The last in this glut of blog entries for my historic projects, but one i hope to continue working on soon!
This has been a long running 'improvement' saga. Take one pair of Airfix B-Set coaches. Attempt to turn into a representation of the real thing. The body is correctly dimensioned but so many details are wrong. So far I've:
- blocked off the incorrect extra guard's window on the left hand side
- carved off the end detail and replaced the emergency brake gear on the
In a previous post called 'modelling again' I described the trials of detailing a pair of Airfix Inter District LMS non corridors (now made in kit form by Dapol), tackled just before a house move. Now having moved, some modeling has resumed in the midst of the necessary work after moving in. So first in the queue was the local train.....
Almost finished, I discovered that the underframes were the wrong way round on both coaches. This I found by looking at prototype photos in 'Mode
One of my earliest conversions to P4 was my attempt to improve my Airfix auto trailer. I elected to try to make it look like the A28 as built in 1929 / 30 which involves pushing the recessed driver's door out to be flush with the body and cutting end windows into the luggage compartment. I swapped the bogies for Airfix 7'. However, I have not done any other work to the very inaccurate under frame - that awaits further work. I've numbered it as 170, which may belong to the previously introduced s
Reality Warning - this locational is fictional and so is almost every thing that follows, but it interests me!
I've mentioned early on in the blog the chosen 'real' location for my layout, that is an imagined Somerset & Dorset Railway terminus at Weston Super Mare (henceforth abbreviated as WSM). To me it has several attractions, as firstly, historically it was something that really did almost happen, and secondly a very attractive variety of services both local and long distanc
This was a 'quickie' project to get a running P4 locomotive for my 'Weston Super Mare' layout. Converted according to the EM Gauge Society Manual Sheet and not too difficult to do and runs reasonably well with my Compspeed / Gaugemaster walkabout controllers. I had a spare Bachmann 57XX body and decided to make it an 8750 as someone had given me a K's 8750 kit. For the identity I settled on 3650, the preserved 8750 with the GWS in Didcot as this was shedded at Bristol around 1960. So I took the
Well I ran out of cash for all those juicy Bachmann Mk.1s I need for my 1961 period express / through services, and so turned to that cheaper knock-off the Hachette Mk1 SK which has some resemblance to the Bachmann Mk1 .... to see if with a little work (which cost me nothing but time which being retired I should have lots of. but somehow don't really) I could make something approaching the quality of a Bachmann Mk.1
BTW - why use the Hachette rather than Hornby? because I want the cl
After a long break getting ready to move house, I've been able to get at the work bench again. The target - a couple of old Airfix non corridors, modelled on the LMS Inter district stock, to make my 'scratch' S&D local train. My excuse is - there was a pair of Period 2 Inter-district coaches running Bath Green Park to Bristol, they appear in a photo taken at BGP in 1954. From looking at photographs, some of the S&D local formations running from Highbridge to Evercreech had one of these w
After 2 1/2 years in store, my 'Weston Super Mare S&D' baseboards were unpacked yesterday. Looking a bit sorry for their time in storage, with some damage from the house move, but very re-usable in their new location. So some photos for you of my 'scrap yard challenge' baseboard support frame - two single bed frames, 6'6" (2m) by 2'6" (76cm) supported about 3' (90cm) above the floor. Being made of 6" / 150mm deep timber edge boards they only need supporting at the ends, giving very handy cle
My last entry on this topic was in 2017!!! Just around my last house move had caused a huge hiatus in modelling well blow me down, I've moved again, the layout is all packed up still and I'm thinking, while waiting for my new railway room to emerge, what do I do?
Answer: post an update on this very long running project (It's not the longest by any means) to try and complete *something*
So here are some shots of that BCK's interior completed, and reassembled. In addition,
A trial of the new look RMWeb - my first new entry since the update so see goes
So I've been silent a long long time while other jobs on our newish house take precedent. And there has been the agonising over how much of the old layout construction I can recycle into its new environment - a space much longer (at 7.1 metres / 23 feet and a bit) but a little narrower at 3.05 metres / 10 feet) the its old home. The bit narrower is a bit of problem as modelling in P4 a complete double t
Dear All - and in the middle of a house move, decided that some stock needed working on before the move to keep me sane! So I found an old Lima LMS 42 ft CCT I had in a box, partly converted to P4. looking at the other entries here on rmweb it gave me some ideas for a little more work to do - so I added extra strips to the side (as most in the photos on the web have them), replaced the roof vents and am flush glazing the windows, not complete yet - and of course, replaced those little hand brake
I kid you not, I attempted to convert a Triang Hymek to P4. Why? because the body is actually close to scale and didn't take too much work to look half decent with wire handrails and SE Finecast flush glazing. The chassis was an entirely different matter. The biggest problem is that the Triang bogies are only a scale 8' 6" long - the prototype had 10' bogies. My solution? Bodge in the power and trailing bogie from a Lima 'Warship' and stretch the cosmetic bogie side frames. Not using the origina
This is my station area under construction - a fictional S&DR terminus at Weston Super Mare built on the site of the 1866 Terminus, which was superseded in 1884 by the opening of the Weston super Mare loop line. In reality it became a goods depot, and remained intact until the 1950s when it lost its overall roof, but then survived into the 60s. Now there is a supermarket on the site.
So in my fictional scenario of the S&D building the B&E (Bristol & Exeter) proposed line f
Here is my simple upgrade to a Mainline (now Bachmann?) Period III (Stanier) 50ft Full Brake in BR lined Maroon. P4 conversion running on MJT compensation units, sprung buffers and Dingham couplers (I will have an overall roof so need some kind of auto-coupler). All handrails carved off and replaced with brass wire - question: should they be painted? If so how to get the paint to stick to shiny brass wire? (thinking - metal primers not kind to plastic, don't want to damage the really good paintw
Whilst waiting to move house I've been doing a little modelling. I've temporarily abandoned my partly finished B-Set and turned my attention to a Bachmann maroon Mk1 BSK I bought partly disassembled at the last Expo EM member sales. This was supplied with a TSO interior but for the price I thought I can make a replacement interior - and its taken till now to start on it. The BSK is meant to be one end of a maroon named train set - the 'Pines' or the 'Devonian' for my location and period. For the
Just came across an old photo (well from 2016) of a posed shot on my yet to be dismantled (before house move) partly complete weston super mare S&D of a very GWR scene with my rather lovely Bachmann City 'City of Bath' renamed and numbered as 3440 City of Truro just before I disposed of it as being surplus to my requirements on Ebay (sob sob) ... well it will get resurrected as a monstrous hybrid of Airfix kit with a Bachmann mogul Swindon No.4 boiler on to make amends for the rather undersi
So my last entry found me trying to debug the point work in the station throat and the curved approach track. I had replaced the first 10cm of the approach curve as most stock fell off without fail at the point marked with an arrow:
sadly, all that happened is that the stock ran on the replaced track and then fell off at the next original section -dash it. Here the obvious occurred to me. Even though I thought I had laid this curve very carefully, I had not taken suf
Having got a decent enough test track to run things I've been adding to my freight stock. I need a couple of brake vans and in an exhibition a little while back (when we had them things) I bought a partly built Cambrian models SR brake van kit from a 'member sales' stand. The chassis had been assembled (as rigid) and the duckets had been glued to the mixed plank sides (great as that is the variety I'm modelling). Putting this together has been bit of a pain as the body interior is actually l
Apologies - this seems very disjointed as it was written across a house move and as a result my plans had to adjust as the space the layout will go in is different, again. In the process I had to pack the layout to move it, and I decided to renew the boards as the old ones, with 40 year old chip board had distorted with time so that none of the joints were flat .... so this is a June 2022 edit / correction of what I wrote nearly a year ago before the move, forced by the rmweb catastrophe that w
Turning the clock back (or forward)
This explains what I'm trying to do and why ...
OK you can accuse me of being a pedant. But I would like a loco, coach or back scene look like it really did at the time period claimed. I can't claim perfection but there is now a lot of information out there in dated photographs to allow a fairly accurate depiction of a time frame. Of course there are catches due to inaccurate dating of photographs, failing memories etc. But at least I will try, and enj
Since the last report I've wired up all six new Dingham electromagnets, and tested them with a couple of Dingham equipped coaches, and even got loco - coach uncoupling working! So some photos of the top view of the 'control panels' distributed along the baseboard sides. The push buttons are for the uncouplers, the switches variously are linked to signals, points (the switches linking the electrical sections controlled by said signals / points), or are isolating switches e.g. at the loco run-rou
Since my last entry on this topic soooo long ago I've now managed to add couplings and the hand rails. Still missing are the vac pipes, the vacuum pipe up the chimney side of the van, (I'll have to hack that one, its missing from my kit), the central lamp irons on the body ends and some writing on the sides (number, tare weight ....). Sadly after the event I found an article in the Scalefour news of a hero's previous efforts at building one of these kits and like me, he had an early production
The last entry on this project to make a frankencoach from a Hachette coach chassis and roof combined with heavily modded sides and interior from an old Triang-Hornby Mk 1 CK was in October. Every so often I would pick up on this project and do a little more .... then a few weeks back I got the bit between the teeth and attempt the finish stretch. This covered: painting the sides (maroon), roof (grey). Painting the glazing bars a proper shade of maroon (Precision), lining with HMRS Presfix trans
Having a couple of years with bits and pieces from my previous house assembled as a 'testing plank' pretending to be a layout I have decided at long last to attempt to bridge the gap from one side of my converted garage to the other to make something approaching a real layout - one where you go from one bit to another (!) in this case from the station on one side to the storage sidings on the other. Having bought a quantity of 12mm ply as tops for some new baseboards, and 18x44mm timber for the
A small project thats been sitting unfinished for years is my retro mod to the Lima Inside framed Siphon G. Of a kind built from 1930, modelled with wrong bogies (just their version of the BR Mk.1) I thought I'd try to see how it looked with Airfix 7' bogies and a repaint. So here it is with the handrails carved off and painted brown. Waiting replacement handrails ...
Question to viewers ... does anyone 'do' pre-blackened brass or steel wire? just that the handrails should be black, and b
