The Hornby King is not that bad a model, really - it looks the part from most angles, has some very fine detail, and runs superbly. Perhaps some manufacturer will announce a new version, but for the time being the Hornby one is what we've got to work with. The big let-down, for my money, is in the side-on view, which is particularly an issue with my layout set at eye-level. The excessive gap between the front frames and the bogie is distracting, and an ugly throw-back to the tender-drive model o
After a trip to the dentist last week I treated myself by popping into the toys & collectables shop on our high street. They sometimes have some railway stuff and I had my eye on a Superquick church kit that I'd spotted in the window a week or two earlier. Alas, the aforementioned ecclesiastical structure had gone but a rummage in one of the bins turned up a nice little white metal car kit in the John Day range. Although I didn't realise it at the time, it's a prewar/war Hillman Minx.
Funny how the last few details seem to take forever ... or is it just me?
Cab interior painted, crew added, cab windows glazed, vacuum pipe added and a lamp fitted - buffer beam number on. What's left? Wheel balance weights, but they weren't in the kit so will need to be made out of thin plastikard or something, which I envisage being a bit of a fiddle. And the tender could do with more coal so that it's visible from the side...
As with the S15, the one detail that's eluding me is c
Recent developments in the hobby have thrown several factors into relief, including the relative cost of new models versus spending power, and the general demographic of modellers as we all age. I've certainly been spending less on my UK outline in the last year or so, although it took a conversation in a model shop - talking about the relative merits and price points of the Accurascale and Bachmann Class 37s - to finally pin-point, to me, the reason why I'm spending less, at least on engines.
I thought it was time for an update on the Blue Pullman project, which has been grinding its way toward completion through most of the spring and summer (so far). I can safely say that this has been one of the most demanding modelling projects I've ever attempted, with most of the last few months being taken up by a seemingly endless cycle of priming, filling, sandpapering, priming, filling ... all to achieve the neat finish I was after, with an absence of visible transitions between the etched
At last the WR Blue Pullman seems to be entering the home stretch, after many trials and tribulations.
Painting this one proved to be more troublesome than I'd anticipated, with seemingly endless problems of masking and paint lifting, necessitating much frustrating reworking of the coaches, and a goodly number of cans of Railmatch paint.
Each of the cars has presented its own challenges, with only the power cars being relatively trouble-free. The kitchen cars needed a lot of work to achi
Over the week I've been adding more cars to the Western Region, mostly quick work because I already had a large number of bogies assembled. I've also been developing a simple but (hopefully) reliable coupling solution, which consists of a simple hook running from one car to the next, bearing against the inside face of the headstock. A bit of trial and error has been necessary as I wanted to get the coaches as close as possible on the straights, while allowing just enough clearance for curves.
I've posted a few updates on my Blue Pullman project over the last couple of years, but I really thought I ought to get my a*se in gear and finish the thing! One of the sticking points (other than the boredom and laziness instilled by a very repetitive, drawn-out project) was a lack of suitable decals, but on a recent ebay search I found that suitable British Rail style "Pullman" lettering was now obtainable, so over the last weekend or two I've cracked on with some of the jobs that were still t
I always feel like I'm on the home stretch when I put primer on, and hopefully that's the case here, but as always putting a flat coat on a model reveals all sorts of issues and imperfections that must be dealt with before thinking about the main colour. I suppose that's the point of it, though - better to find out these things now, while they can still be fixed with more filler and sandpaper!
Nonetheless, the primer does start tieing everything together and if nothing else, as here, I think
Prompted by the burst of progress on the FFA/FGA sets, I thought I'd dust off another long-stalled project, this being an attempt at producing an eight-car Western Region Pullman set. I started getting the bits for this together long before the Bachmann model was announced, and I must admit although I carried on the with the best of intentions, the arrival of Bachmann's Midland Pullman did take the wind out of my sails a bit, in that it's a superb model which definitely (for me, at least) scratc
Over the last few years I've dipped in and out of a very long-term project to create an 8-car Western Pullman set. As the model is now close to completion, and there is interest in the 6-car WR sets due to Bachmann's new version of their original Midland Pullman, I thought it wouldn't hurt to do a bit of a recap of the story so far.
Back in 2007 there wasn't any hint of an RTR Blue Pullman on the horizon from any of the manufacturers, with most commentators of the view that it would
Some LEDS were ordered over Christmas and once they arrived I set about adding front and rear lights to the power cars.
Here's a grisly shot of the internal wiring - can you tell it's still at the prototyping stage? I'll tidy it up once I'm satisfied that the
wiring is complete.
It's not as complicated as it looks! Somewhere in that tangle is an 8 pin DCC socket so any decoder (or blanking plug) can be swapped in and out in seconds. I made all the lighti
When the pre-production models of the Bachmann Blue Pullman appeared, I thought that the Tri-ang model held up pretty well in terms of the basic body shape and detailing. One area where the Bachmann model particularly impressed me, though, was the detailing around the power bogies, with the brake pull rods very finely modelled.
My model uses Chris Leigh castings for the bogie frames, which are fine in themselves but omit any representation of the brake gear:
On Friday I popped into Lord & Butler in Cardiff and collected one of their limited edition versions of the Dapol Western. This is Western Invader, with no warning panel and yellow buffer beams, and my example has also been shop weathered by L&B. I also took home a decoder, but for now my model has been running in on DC.
I've seen some adverse criticism of the model, but overall I'm pretty happy with my example. It was certainly noisier than I anticipated, but after an hour's running
Totally open the box modelling this, but with products this exquisite, do we really care? The grime is via Lord & Butler's Dirty Boy weathering, no connection other than a satisfied customer, as they say, but the quality of the work really impresses, I think. Yes, it can be regarded as a basis for further improvement, but on the other hand it looks very acceptable as is, from the overall tone to the variation in treatments on the boiler.
And what a cracking model the C class is. Mine run
Sometimes a really useful product can slip under the radar a bit ... at least in my case. My 4mm layout was never intended to be anything that a glorified test track with a bit of scenery, and so I wasn't overly concerned that the fiddle yard capacity was rather limited. There are six storage tracks, but only three are of what I'd call a decent length, and two are really only comfortably long enough for a B-set or two car DMU. I was fine with that - it's only a single track cross-country line an
As mentioned in an earlier post, the C2X was stripped down and re-detailed in readiness for repainting into Southern black. Here's the state of play - still some final touches needed, but not far off being done - and I've even put coal in the tender.
As my first kit, there's a lot that's not quite right with this model, but I'm very pleased with it nonetheless and I like the splash of colour from the Southern lettering, compared with the rather dull BR look which it had before.
Mean
After looking at pictures of Urie S15s, it struck me that I was using the wrong motion support bracket. I'd originally folded up the right one, then put it back in the box as it didn't look like the one in the chassis instructions - there were two brackets supplied. I'm guessing that the chassis instructions are generic for S15s, and it's left to you to figure out which bits are specific for the Urie variants. In any case, the correct bracket looks a lot better, although it needed a massive amou
Over the weekend I finished the valve gear on both sides of the S15, and I'm pleased to report that all went well. I've still to add the slide bar support bracket on this side, but as it needs to be cut down drastically so as not to foul the bogie, it's easily done at a later stage. Now that I'm happy with the running, I soldered the return cranks into position.
The next stage, as mentioned in earlier entries, was to consider adding brake gear. The kit makes no provision for brakes, but the
Following a brisk bit of hillwalking to blow away the winter cobwebs, I spent a couple of hours soldering up the final cylinder assemblies. I was a bit puzzled by the kit's intentions, but after some head scratching I worked out how the slidebars were meant to function, and once "trapped" by the cylinder end castings, the final design seems pretty robust and quite neatly thought out.
I tack soldered the cylinders in place and tried a simple running test with the connecting rods loosely in pl
The loco is nearly done barring fine detail and of course painting. I've not done the handrails yet because I don't want to use the split pins supplied with the kit (I think DJH supply proper turned handrail knobs now) and I've either misplaced or run out of my Gibson ones for the time being.
I anticipate a bit of a struggle with the smoke deflectors as they don't sit terribly well on the frames at present.
Over the weekend I built the tender. As mentioned earlier, one of the castin
I ordered some longer M1 bolts over the weekend which arrived today, meaning I could push on with the valve gear. Tonight's work involved the assembly of the crosshead, union link, and combination arm. I used rivets which I've always struggled with a bit, but (at least for me) I think the trick is to start off with very small taps, rather than one big whack.
I tested fitted the piston valve rod into the cylinder - it's all loosely in place here, but (phew) does work, and there are no clearan
On the home stretch now, with the olive green on and most of the lining.
I sprayed the model using a Railmatch aerosol of dark olive green, over several coats of primer, with a lot of careful rubbing down between coats. The black areas were then brush painted.
I lined the boiler bands using waterslide transfers - Modelmaster, I think - and the tender and cabside lining using acrylic ink in a bowpen. The numbers and Southern lettering were from an HMRS pressfix sheet. I chose an S15 that
Despite what I said in the last blog entry, I couldn't leave well alone. So last night I did a partial strip down of the valve gear, which wasn't as painful as expected. I eased out the hole in the coupling rods for the end axles, and this has lessened the tight spot quite a bit. It's still noticeable as a slight hesitation when starting off slowly, or running at a dead crawl, but it's not there at all when running at even the slow plod of a non-fitted goods train. So I'm going to call it quits
These pictures could form the basis of one of those "spot the difference" competitions in a newspaper...
Here's another thrilling angle on the S15, but with one crucial change compared to last night's installment:
The brakes are all on! It won't win any neatest soldering awards, but it should all look fine once painted; I tend to notice when brakes are missing from an engine but I don't spend too much time looking at them once they're in place; they just become part of the mass of d
