Just off the workbench is this David Geen diagram Y3 Mink C/D, one of two that I've got to build. The kit went together well, any problems being more to my lack of experience with the entirely white metal kit than the product itself, this being only the second of such that I've done. Unlike a plastic kit, where you can build the chassis and then "spring" the wheels in later (or remove as required) the nature of this beast is that you have to trap the wheels in during assembly, and once in place,
Back when I showed this pic:
I mentioned that I was thinking of adding lights to the coach. Last week I ordered a pack of DCC Concepts wheelsets, which cleverly incorporate pickup springs as part of the design. There are twelve wheels in the pack so enough for three coaches, and I thought that the auto-coach would be a good starting point, since I had a good idea of its construction.
Swapping the wheelsets is a doddle, or it would be if you didn't already have the extra brake gear u
Gwrrob suggested that it would have been nice to see the King, and how could I refuse? Apologies for a couple of "arty" interludes between the moving stuff...
Cheers!
I was playing around with the camera last night and made a short clip of some trains on the layout. Let's see if it works:
The hardest part was converting from my camera's .mov file format to something I could read in Windows movie maker, which I
always forget how to do each time. Hope you like the clip. It's basic, but I could try something a bit longer next time, with a few
more trains and different scenes.
I'm sure there are knowledgeable folk who can help with this one.
The track plan of the station area of the layout is very simple - a passing loop, two platforms, and a goods yard on what we'll call the "up" side of the line.
Trains arriving on the up loop can easily work the goods shed without a run-round move, just by backing into the yard - if necessary, leaving part of the train on the up line.
To shunt from the down line, an engine would need to detach from the train, run a
Digging around on the PC I spent a few minutes looking through some of the better pictures of my old layout. For those that remember, it was the one I was developing when I first started on RMWeb, although by that point it only had a year or two of life left in it. For most of its existence the layout didn't have a name but towards the end it was officially Wyvant.
The layout fitted into a 14 x 6 room and began as a much smaller project, only about 8 x 6 in size. This utilised the boards bui
One of the benefits of working on a painted backscene, as opposed to a digital one, is that it's relatively straightforward to make changes, either big or small. Looking at the pics I've posted earlier in this blog, I decided that the background hills needed to be pushed back a little more to suggest greater distance and haze. Working with the airbrush is tricky due to the height of the layout, so I decided to try and desaturate the hills using a wash of dilute white applied with a very wide art
Over the last week I knuckled down and finished laying the setts around the goods yard. Now, to be honest, setts are probably not something you'd get in the sort of sleepy, rural goods yard I have in mind here - I would expect a surface of dirt or gravel at best - but since the shed has to be removable, setts help hide the inevitable joins.
In fact, the shed fits into a dedicated area of setts which is itself removable, hence the line visible under the front wheel of the GWR vehicl
Shameless reposting of earlier images, but what the hell.
I still mean to do something with this Roco model one day, altough quite what my plans will be, I'm not too sure. Perhaps a diorama, to begin with - something that can be expanded as time/motivation allows? It's a cracking model, in any case, and really deserves an authentic scenic setting in which to display it. For maximum effect, it just needs some dead flies on the front.
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
Bit of a cheat this, since the loco doesn't currently have a decoder, but I'll aim to get that sorted before too long. The 14xx, as I've mentioned before, is the Hornby version of the venerable Airfix model, with the addition of the Mainly Trains detailing pack, and the trailer is an original Airfix one with the Dart Castings detail treatment. It was painted in "faded crimson" then given flush glazing via SE Finecast. I weathered it according to a photo in one of the colour albums, of an auto-tr
Following the comments after my last post, I decided - with the encouragement of Wenlock and Job - that it would indeed be a good idea to change the platform faces from brick to stone. If you've been following the saga, you'll know that the station area was originally going to be loosely based on Shillingstone on the S&D, which is why I opted for brick facing originally. As I started making the platforms, though, I made the fatal mistake of plonking my old GWR building on them as a reference
Following the excellent example of Wenlock's 7mm model of a William Clarke station building, I thought I'd return to my own model of Abbotsbury and try and improve the chimneys ... again. As mentioned in a previous post, my model was started some 32 years ago but had been looking very tatty and neglected when I finally decided to tart it up. The original chimneys were just lengths of square section wood onto which I had tried to carve an impression of stonework but they had none of the details o
Not much happening here lately, things tend to go in spurts, but there have been glimmers of progress in recent weeks. I had a fence in the foreground which for some reason didn't really work, although I couldn't quite say what it was about it that didn't click - maybe it was a bit too stark, perhaps. Anyway, browsing a model shop last week, I noticed some nice looking cotswold walling in the Hornby Skaledale range and wondered if that wouldn't do a better job. I bought a couple of packs (althou
Couple of shots of the removable cattle dock:
In place:
After removal, showing the gap into which the Provender store module
should drop:
You're probably wondering why I didn't just make the entire area in front of the dock part of
the same removable part, and to be honest that's probably what I'd do if I were starting
again, but at the time it was a bit hard to visualise how to arrange everything, especially
as I didn't have the fascia in place.
At the recent Manchester show I managed to pick up these three kit-built wagons from a second hand stall at an absolute steal of a tenner each. The LMS van is a Slaters kit, I think, while the two white metal Southern banana vans have the feel of David Geen kits. All have been built and painted to a high standard (better and neater than my batting average) and fitted with 3-link couplings. There was some damage to the roof of one of the banana vans, but I repaired it with plastic filler and then
I acquired some Modelmaster etched plates a while ago with a view to renumbering and renaming some of my GWR and WR locomotives, but as always I didn't really do my homework beforehand. My intention had been to rename my Hornby model of 7029 Clun Castle as Barry Castle, but as soon as I got the plates and took down my copy of Holden & Leech's book on the Castles, it seemed that this wasn't a good decision. My model of Clun Castle was double-chimneyed, and (as far as I can tell - it's a minef
I don't think there's any part of the hobby I like more than adding small details to a nearly finished scene, in this case some of Hornby's delightfully rendered wicker baskets and (just out of shot) some Bachmann's equally useful milk churns grouped around the front of the station building. It's a small touch, and really just open-the-box modelling, but I find it really enjoyable to add these kind of features - it's the kind of modelling you can do at at the end of a busy or stressful day and s
Not much progress here, to be honest - or at least nothing yet worth pointing a camera at - but at least one of the two removable platforms is beginning to look a bit more of a piece with the rest of the scene, having had some painting and weathering treatment:
I did the platform top using Wills paving sheets, which were joined together with a lot of trimming, filling and sanding. I use nothing more clever than a pair of chunky kitchen-type scissors to cut Wills sheets as the newer plas
As good as the Dapol Western is, I'm not about to get rid of my four Heljan examples. Quite apart from the fact that I can get quite attached to old models - especially when they were given as gifts - I'd rather regard a new model as an incentive to bring an older one up to scratch, rather than rendering it obsolete. Of course if there is a huge change in detail quality or performance, there might not be any argument - but even then I'd be minded to see what can be done to keep the older model i
Some close-ups were kindly requested, so here are a few recent shots of the Spring module.
Tree with enclosure around base of trunk, inspired by one I saw from a train on the Severn Valley Railway:
Close-up of the tree with Preiser horses:
An attempt at tall, unruly grass in the meadow around the abandoned barn. I used Woodland Scenics long grass, glued down in clumps, then trimmed with scissors once it was dry. Finally, I hit it with some household bleach to try and tone d
A visit to that fine emporium, Wilkinsons, saw me returning with a large tin of green paint. I decided that, on balance, the pale blue I'd gone for as the fascia colour for the 4mm layout was a bit cold and offered too much of a contrast with the hues in the scenery. It was fine in the Winter scene (still undecided about what to do there) but didn't really set off the Spring module as well as I'd like. I thought it would look even worse on the Summer module, so I decided to take the plunge and r
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
Couple of shots of the 1366 tank after the alterations mentioned in the earlier blog post. After squaring up the boiler and pannier assembly, then fixing everything back in place, I also added glazing, rear cab window grill bars and a load of coal.
The grills are from the Mainly Trains etch and a bit of a cheat in that I simply fixed them as an overlay over the existing window
apertures. But I think they look better than having no bars at all.
The wonky "G" in Great Western will have to
One of the last obvious detailing jobs to do on the Spring module has been the addition of telegraph poles, but I must admit it's one I've been putting off for quite some time. I wasn't sure how to get the telegraph line "off scene" at either end of the module, especially at the tunnel end where I couldn't decide whether to run the poles over the hill or assume the line would have been sent through the tunnel.
Eventually I found a good picture of the end of a row of telegraph poles just befo
