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
On the left is another 'quicky' P4 conversion using a Gibson conversion pack sold by the EMGS, and the source for the EMGS manual sheet for the conversion. It has been renumbered to 47465, a Bath Green Park loco in the 50s and 60s. On the right the first loco I've ever built, from scratch in plasticard running on a Perseverance etched chassis and Gibson wheels as S&DJR No.24 as running in 1929. If you look you can see the obvious height difference - because I didn't realise when making up th
(A repeat of my very recent Bachmann BCK entry by way of introduction ...) 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 tr
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
So here are the photos of 3650 with all those bright metal bits painted:
Front 3/4 view fireman's side:
Rear 3/4 view fireman's side:
Front 3/4 view driver's side:
Just maybe crew to add - it looks odd when it moves with an empty cab ....
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
I've made some progress on putting the final details (I hope) to my model of 3650, a BR period P4 conversion based on the Bachmann 57XX GW Pannier with an 8750 cab swapped from a K's kit. Fellow blogger Ullypug suggested that adding the sander operating levers at the front was worthwhile as they were so prominent a feature. Looking at the model at that stage I realised there were at least four other prominent features I had missed or needed to change: (1) the handrail at footplate level above th
Here is progress quite a while later. I've flush glazed the windows, made frames to hold the window bars and representations of the 'things' behind the bars that look like either the back of shelves or the bars that CCTs had to lock down vehicles. Anyone know which these are? The roof is now retained by the top set of handrails, (Like many Lima model coaches, the roof and glazing are one piece, the roof painted. To accommodate the flush glazing, all the glazing material was removed apart from ta
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
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
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
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
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
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
Couple more photos - work on the railway room infrastructure (insulation of the garage in which it lives) has made progress on this project very very slow. So months later, I have at long last given a grey 'undercoat' to the sides partly to see what is not up to scratch (cracks, wrinkles etc!) and a base for the maroon livery that the coach will eventually wear. I've also started painting the old Triang-Hornby interior moulding. As well as painting I'm narrowing the corridor partition windows
Reality Warning: My location is fictional and much license has been taken. There are categorical statements about train formations of services that could have run in my chosen (imaginary) location. I have researched in detail what might have run, correlating with photographs where possible - reader beware and please don't take offence! It is also written while I'm away from home and away from the modelling bench ....
This is a draft of my thoughts that have been being in my head fo
Well not much has happened on the modelling front since my last entry on the Dapol LMS lavatory non corridors, with good reason. My new house came with a massive garage which is in the midst of conversion into a workshop and a new model railway room, with a partition in between. The result will be a railway room approximately 8m by 3m (25 ft by almost 10 ft). The garage is substantial, being brick with a pitched tiled roof, but as such was very cold and damp inside. So it is being upgraded with
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
