Well my stock taking continues, and the number of locomotives I forgot I had is slowly increasing, which is good news I think?
Before the stock count I thought I had 5 Duchess locomotives, but it turns out that I actually have 6, I had a very vague memory of finding a bargain Duchess in the old Farish lined black livery (you know the one with the yellow/green lining). I honestly thought though that I had converted this into a "Semi" and painted it into Post War lined black but apparently I d
It might just be my glacial pace, but the construction of the buildings on Lugsdale road is taking slightly longer than I planned, but they have got to the stage of getting their first coat of colour.
I'm looking to create a typical urban look of an average town in the Northwest, so a bit like me the shabby look is the one I'm aiming for, so the first building to get some attention was the corner pub. The first couple of coats have been applied to the pub, and I think it looks like a buildi
Well while the industrial accident investigators are still to allow the Price locomotive works to re-open, I have been doing some thinking. In the collection I have a total of 6 Duchess locomotives.
Four of which I am pretty happy with, they still need a few little tweaks but they represent locomotives in the following conditions.
1 x In original build condition pre-smoke deflectors (crimson). 1 x Smoke deflector fitted (crimson). 2 x Semi-condition (post war lines black)
That leaves
The last few weeks have been what could be called manic to say the least, the strange thing is you can always seem to find extra hours to spend at work, but you can never find hours to spend on modelling.
As a result modelling time has been like a Midget Drug Dealer, in Very Short Supply, anyway I digress as a n LMS fan I managed to find a prototype picture of two Terriers totally flat out. With the cheeky girls snoring their heads off at the side of me, I managed to produce a few "slate" s
Well in my last blog, I told you that the Domestic Overlord had allowed me to have my felt tips back, well I have been a very good boy, as this weekend I was allowed my glue as well.
Being positively angelic, the Domestic Overlord even allowed me so time to "play with my trains" as my reward for being good, or maybe it was just to get rid of me for a few hours. Anyway I ruches to the spare room to get my hands on my secret stash of card, my modelling knives (of the heavy duty Stanley variety
Well thanks to a little coercion from various people on here (you know who you are) I have secured another Jubilee from EvilBay for the fleet. Being a very very good Boy I told the Domestic Overlord what I had done, and I was told that it does not matter as I could have as many trains as I wanted, HOW Lucky am I?
Anyway before I go on a mad Jubilee shopping spree (don't worry it wont happen, as I like having money I have not used yet too much) I thought I would start a proper stock count of
Well a little time, and I mean a little time was spent working on the plan for the urban setting on board 1 which has meant that the Domestic Overlord even let me have my felt tip pens back (I'm not allowed my crayons back, as apparently if you eat them it does not colour you on the inside )
After I promised to use them properly I used them to flesh out the progress so far, and some of the colouring was even between the lines. I like doing this when I'm working on a layout, as it means you
Well despite the lack of presents at Christmas from Santa, I must have been a good boy as the Domestic Overlord let me have a little time off from my chores to do some modelling
So I got my paints out and decided to apply the final finish to the façade on the corner pub for the new layout, the aim was to portray a stucco finish on the upper floors suitably grimy and well worn appearance.
The building was painted using my trusty acrylics, as the base for the buildings is card, I find if
The modelling gods must be smiling on me lately or maybe they just pity me as they gave me a little more modelling time today, so I thought I would do a little more work on the buildings for Lugsdale Road.
I still working on my plan to gain access to the inside of a pub only so I can do some research on the interior, so that I can make a better model you understand, this plan still requires a little more work. So while I was working on my master plan, I thought I would crack on with producin
I'm sure you are all getting bored with my updates on this project, so I think I will start to increase the length of time between updates, at least for the following 2 reasons.
1. There are far better things to read about on this forum.
2. If I post too many, the Domestic Overlord may conclude that I have too much free time, so increase the list of Domestic duties I have to complete each day before I am allowed to go to bed each day, just to dream about another day of servitude. Yes I'm
Well a little progress has been made on the locomotives clogging up the Workbench of DOOM, progress has been slow as three of them need lining, and trying to do this by hand in N gauge is not easy, especially with hands that seem never to stop shaking.
Anyway a decent coat of weathering will hide a multitude of my sins, so really when you come to think about it, is it really worth the effort, and boy has it been an effort. The first of the Locomotive slowly progressing towards completion is
Well a couple of weeks ago, with the full permission of the fantastic Domestic Overlord I managed to add another crimson jubilee to the fleet, by rescuing her from Evil Bay at a very reasonable cost.
She sat at the back of the workbench of doom for a couple of weeks while I got on with a few other jobs and decided on which identity to allocate to her, well the waiting is over, her identity has been chosen and her numbers applied. Now this should have been the last Jubilee to enter the fleet
I'm not sure how this has happened but recently I seem to be finding just enough modelling time to actually make noticeable progress on may latest projects. So much so that the corner Pub I have been building for Lugsdale road now has its front sides fully glazed. I have even managed to apply a little colour to the roof and a little detail on the chimney stacks. As I said in a previous post, I sometimes like to make the roofs of some buildings as a sub assembly to make the construction process
Well over the next few weeks there will be a lot less posts from me (I can hear the cheering already) as my Foster Street, and Lugsdale Road layouts are going into hibernation.
As the Domestic Overlord and I are in the process of looking at a new mansion, the layouts along with a lot of other stuff will be going into a storage locker
Will they ever see the light of day again? Is this just a plot by the Domestic Overlord to lock me away in a container? Will I be given to some unwitting c
I don't know how, but I must have really upset the Gods of Railway modelling, as they have decided to severely restrict the amount of time I have free to model. However risking further wrath from the Gods or worst still the Domestic Overlord, I managed to find the smallest amount of spare time since my last update, and I have even had what I thought was a good idea.
Stand by your beds, first things first the good idea, whilst I was pretending to take in the details on a recent house viewing
I don't know how it happened, but I have managed to get a little modelling time over the last few days, so in a break away from producing endless buildings I thought I would work on my Tram idea.
My initial idea was to try an add a little more movement to the new layout other than just the trains, I know there are various systems available to produce moving vehicles, but they all seemed to complicated to a simple chap like me. So where did that leave me?, well thanks to a wining bid on Evil
Well as I mentioned in my last post, I had managed to pull of the crime of the century and managed to get away with just applying emulsion paint to the backscenes on Lugsdale road.
The good news is that the heat has died down now and the Domestic Overlord is still none the wiser, but not wishing to tempt fate further painting of the backscene will be strategically delayed for a while. What I have managed to do while laying low avoiding the fuzz is to work on what seems like the endless supp
Don't tell anyone especially the Domestic Overlord, but being the sneaky little chap that I am, I managed over the weekend to actually do some emulsion painting.
In my opinion this was massively successful for at least two reasons, the first being that the painting was the actually to the backscenes on Lugsdale Road and not a wall in Price mansions, but far more cunningly without the DO getting even the merest sniff of my exploits.
To be honest I'm not sure how I managed it, as I have th
I really don't know how I did it, but I managed to find a little time to spend on the layout over the weekend (well I suppose its not really a layout yet if ever), and typical of me rather than spend it on something useful I used it all up working on a little redevelopment.
My intention for Lugsdale road was to depict a little LMS station on the outskirts of a typical Northwest industrial town surrounded by terraced houses and typical industrial buildings. On the far side of the station I ha
Apparently its a Bank Holiday weekend, and we all know what that means........yes your right having to take your better half round IKEA, well I'm sure there are people out there who actually like visiting Ikea, but I bet they also think the world is flat, or even flat packed. I on the other hand do not count myself amongst the fruitcakes so have a healthy aversion to the place.
The Domestic Overlord thinks its a good place (I'm not saying he's a fruitcake...honest), so we are planned to visi
Modelling time, in fact any free time has been in very short supply lately, despite a career change that in theory would have given me more time to model, I appear to have an uncanny ability to fill this time with lots of none modelling stuff .
As a result of this, perhaps I should have tittle this blog entry as "spot the progress"? One of the jobs I have nearly completed is the addition of the end backscene panel on board number 1. As I have used 4mm ply for this rather than my usual 6mm I
Well in one of my more recent posts, a regular contributor on here who will remain nameless, oh what they hell it was MIKKEL, said that my station canopy was curvy, how rude To be fair, he was right (I cant believe I have committed that to writing), but on the other hand he was just stating the obvious.....so I thought I better do something obvious to try and fix it. As luck would have it the Domestic Overlord was a little poorly today (not that the DO being sick is lucky for me), so Price t
Well I don't know how I managed to do it, but I managed to find some modelling time and managed to spend it productively for once. In my previous post I mentioned that I had decided to that the station buildings should be modelled on those used by the LNWR.
As most people know, they built some of their stations from standardised wooden panels, and as a result they could erect buildings that suited their intended environments quickly and cheaply. I must admit being a prudent (some people say
Well it seems to me that it has been a very long time since my last update, but I can hear people screaming from here that it has not been long enough, still I will ignore the screams of complaint and carry on.
So what had been the reason for such a long period since updates, its not because I was abducted by Aliens and taken back to my home planet for a little holiday, because as the Domestic Overlord remarked, they went through all the effort to dump me here in the first place, why would t
Well despite MetrOLands very generous help on my last post, I am still having problems thinking about how I will wire the layout, I knew that Electro-frogs would be a little harder than my usual Insul-frog points but who would have thought it would be this hard?
So any ideas, I have managed to scribble down the track plan, unless it changes again, it does not look that complicated does it? I think this weekend I may have to engaged my brain and work out this wiring mumbo jumbo. I must admi
