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About this blog

What's on my workbench and other musings

Entries in this blog

2-8-2 after a couple of weeks

Those who made it to the Member's Day will have seen the 2-8-2 quietly simmering away on Summat Colliery.   For those who didn't here's a couple of shots showing off Roomey's "2 weeks into service" weathering that sets it off perfectly 🙂       Now, must get that article finished for Model Rail .....

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Big Big Hymek for Fourgig East - Part 5, getting noisy

Big thanks to Paul Chetter, a parcel arrived this morning with a Zimo sound chip and a selection of speakers to try to see which sounds best in the Hymek. Liking the look of the big round one to go under the fan 🙂     Also cab roofs are getting there, vents are in place, just need the airhorns then I can get them painted     EDIT: Cab roofs fitted out and painted, couldn't resist adding the pipework to the horns ....  

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Big Big Hymek for Fourgig East - Part 6

Quick update:   cabs are now painted, small amount of fettling to do but basically waiting for the body to be complete then satin varnish and glazing/wipers. Here's a couple of shots of it as it stands at the moment. Must get on with that roof!    

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Big Big Hymek for Fourgig East - Part 7, roof details

As most people (me included) will spend their time looking down on the Hymek I thought that the roof deserved more attention than say the underframe. Sadly this is the weakest part of the Triang model, apart from the roof section joins everything else is either wrong or missing!   So first to the fan grille, which should be offset by quite a margin. Existing grille filled and flattened and then a card template made with a 38mm hole fixed in place to mark out the new hole  

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Big Big Hymek for Fourgig East - Part 8

Thought it was time for an update.   I've lowered the loco on it's bogies by removing material from the bogie pivot - the thickness of two washers, so about 1.5 to 2mm. These washers sit inside under the shoulder screw to compensate.   JLTRT couplings have been assembled, just need to chemically blacken them and get them fitted     Green stripe has been airbrushed on using Humbrol 36 and electrical tape for a nice clean masked edge - a trick #1 son picked

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Big Big Hymek for Fourgig East - Part 9

The Hymek took a turn on Fourgig East at the Mansfield show and after a few initial hiccups performed well. I quickly learned that due to the large overhang the loco could not shunt wagons in the goods sidings - buffer lock was the order of the day. So one of the shunters took over these duties whilst the Hymek simmered next to the camping coach.   Traction was also an issue, ok on the straights but couldn't get more than two wagons and the brake van into the goods loop. It was happier

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Parkside RCH 5 Plank 12 Ton Wagon - 5

got the lettering done on the other side this lunchtime, so 'tis done     Going to leave it for a few weeks for the transfers to "set" then I will start the weathering. I'm going to use a combination of the techniques described by David Spencer in Hornby Mag Issue 6 and bounce spraying the underframe. I'll take it slowly as this little wagon has took a lot of time so don't want to mess it up in the weathering stage 😃

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Golden Arrow Crosti - Tender Part 2

Quick photo following fitting of handrails and a quick coat of Carplan grey primer, looks quite nice 😁     note top of drive unit poking through the hole in the coal space. The shell is not quite sitting down as well as it should, need to take a wee bit more off the top of the tender weight then it will be fine.   Will start fettling the loco body over the weekend, first issue is that the casting has the blower duct/tunnel on the left hand side of the boiler that was

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Golden Arrow Crosti - Tender Part 1

I'm currently doing a Crosti 9F for someone and thought it would be good to blog the build. It's my first go with a resin kit too.   Firstly thanks to Chris at Golden Arrow for his persitance getting a kit to me through the Royal Mail, hope you can use the second kit sent (received broken - thanks postie!) somehow ....   I thought I'd start with the tender to easy myself in. Castings cleaned up easily, one or two air bubbles to fill with Humbrol Model Filler but nothing too o

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Parkside RCH 5 Plank 12 Ton Wagon - 4

HMRS transfers arrived in usual speedy fashion so here's the wagon nearly finished in it's pristine Summat Colliery PO livery       There's a bit more black painting to do then it's going to have a nice photshoot before I attack it with a fibreglass pencil 😏     It's number 88 - a nod towards the days when I was involved with a motorcycle race team and club, we always used #88 whenever possible (two fat ladies .....)    

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Parkside RCH 5 Plank 12 Ton Wagon - 3

One can (well, not all of it!) of Halfords Ford radiant red later and we have this:     The intention is to do a "Summat Colliery" version of this little wagon from my childhood home town     Must get an order off to HMRS for some black shaded lettering etc, it's starting to be quite a pricey wagon 🤑

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Parkside RCH 5 Plank 12 Ton Wagon - 2

Basic construction is done on the Parkside wagon. I've fitted the Bachmann NEM pocket mounts - took more fiddling than I expected to get the height right. I ended up carving off the vertical projections off the mounts and then cutting back the underframe bracing until the correct height was achieved - silly me for expecting that they would just fit 😏   Here's a pic of the underframe prior to priming     and here's it resplendent in red oxide primer    

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Parkside RCH 5 Plank 12 Ton Wagon - 1

Picked this kit up at Wycrail along with some Bachmann NEM pocket coupling mounts. The wagon will hopefully end up as a severely distressed wagon on Summat Colliery used to ferry loco coal from the screens to the coaling stage.   Anyway, following half an hour's work this lunchtime we have this     buffers and couplings yet to fit, will rob a couple of NEM pocket couplings off Summat's 16 tonners to position the pocket mounts. I want to use the NEM pocket couplings

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George's Train Set - The Rebuild

George's train set whilst operational had it's issues. The main one was the need for the S bends on the centre board.     This was because the layout was originally just two 4 x 2 ft boards with an oval across the corners to maximise the run length. When the centre board was added by Santa it had to have the curves to make everything join up.     All those curves meant that my APT-E would not run and even the baseboard joints on curves gave the occasional

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George's Train Set - The Rebuild Part 2

So another damp cold Saturday allowed me to get all the track laid on the centre board. The adjustment the screws allowed for at the baseboard joints worked really well - allowing for the differences in alignment that somehow crept in between mine and Santa's workshops 😉     Just need to wire up the centre board and then we at least have a layout for the Mansfield Show 🙂 Didn't take long for George to move in though ...     The lack of power does not deter

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George's Train Set - The Rebuild Part 3 - Dead Short

Well, you'd have thought I'd have spotted that there was a short circuit way before I got to wiring up the turntable - HND Electrical & Electronic Engineering pah!   Of course having the two entries to the turntable and the desk permanently live means a dead short when you align it to one or the other entry roads. Something had to be done, I thought about insulated joints etc but decided to remove the problem altogether by making the longer curved entry into a siding and removing t

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Kaydees, no thanks

What to do when your 13 year old takes a shine to an old Atlas loco at the Mansfield Model Railway show. Prize out the Kaydees and glue in some spare NEM pockets. He likes the big old style couplings so we have standardised on them. Plenty of spare small Bachmann style ones for me 🙂  

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Postman Football, and why it's important to pack accordingly

This week I have been looking at a NRM Limited Edition Schools class 925 Cheltenham. It was sent to me along with several other DCC locos as a non-runner and the body fixing screw was loose. Problem being it had been packed inside its box without the inner tray, wrapped in a small amount of bubble wrap. Clearly it had moved around in the box quite a bit during postman's playtime (sent Special Delivery) and this is what I found when I unwrapped it ...         After a

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Not another Neverwazza!

A spoof photoshopped photo posted on Facebook has coincided with me having a Triang Evening Star with a disintegrated tender frame going for spares. So ladles and Jellyspoons, we have the BR Standard 9MT Tank Engine     Black outline is the stock 9F, red the 4MT Tank. Green is the extended tanks and bunker (well it is a 9F) which also moves the rear pony to a more suitable place. The blue line is where the bottom of the tank front needs to be raised to clear the weighshaft a

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9MT A Razor Saw Let Loose

So, one loco drive Hornby 9F, plus two GBL 4MTs were attacked with a razor saw.  There's a lot of bits....      Here's all that is left of the 9F body        And I've cut and shut two sections of tank and cab from the two GBL Class 4s to make this        Also been experimenting with a Triang Princess bogie for the rear. If this works ill replace the wheels with larger more prototypical ones and this will set how long t

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9MT - The Bigger Bunker

A class 9 loco with class 4 coal capacity was never going to work, also the twin axle rear bogie kicked out beyond the rear buffer beam. The end of the bunker was cut off where the footstep indentations were on the bunker tops and then slits cut to separate the sides from the coal load and supporting structures. Two scrap bits of plastic were cut to the right size to splay out the sides so they were parallel and more supports glued in to hold them. A steel rule clamped to one side helped to get

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9MT - Underpinnings

Once the bunker was fixed in place the underside of the loco needed to be sorted. Main problem is that the main body fixing on the 9F is through the bottom of the chassis into a boss under the cab floor. A floor that is no longer there as we are using the 4MT cab.   After a lot of thought the following pic shows what I came up with       A section of 4MT floor under the cab area with the 9F boss turned down in height and bonded on, with extra sections from the

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9MT - Rot

As I've mentioned before, I bought the 9F donor knowing it was on the Mazak rot list. It was sold without the tender so there was a good chance that the tender chassis had suffered, but I might have got away with the motor fixings.   No   The tell tale signs were there and so I ordered a few sets from Hornby for a couple of quid each. This is what I found when I took the front one off       As I said, expected and a cheap fix thankfully. They were co

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9MT - Body Fabrication Done (Almost)

I know it's been a while, but the weather has been good so gardening and mucking about with my car took priority.    Finally I have made the extended tank tops and filed them down to fit.  First photo shows the tops glued together and a card template I made to help with the fitting to the much wider 9F boiler.       A large file was used to knock them down to size - not one of those tiny little things that we modellers mostly prefer. Here's a shot of the body

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9MT - Rear Bogie

This has been bugging me for some time. The loco has been running a triang princess one with current spec standard 4 4-6-0 wheels. Main issue is those LMS footsteps. Also there was no representation of the sliding plate between the wheels.    I had a spare 9F front bogie left over from a previous project and of course a couple of the GBL rears from the donor 4MTs. So here's the bits.        After a quick go with the hacksaw       And I

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