I'm slowly building the David Geen E83 Toplight brake composite, the last vehicle I need for the set of 1930s GWR through coaches to serve by one day to be built ex-SER branchline. The sides were a bit fiddly to put together, but include all of the good feature you want in a kit, including the door hinges etched as a single component per door, corridor handrail spacers and separate droplights.
I've deviated slightly from the instructions and have assembled the basic body before adding the en
The D&S etched Chatham six wheel coach featured a few blogs earlier is now finished. The lining isn't the greatest, but it's all my own work. The yellow is Valejo acrylic applied with a cheap ruling pen, the black is a 0.1mm fibre tipped drawing pen. Lettering by HMRS pressfix and the Smoking signs in the windows are from a Fox sheet of SECR coach lettering.
I could do with another of these, and a SER birdcage brake van to replicate a typical branchline train of the late 1920s and early 1
I've been busy with other things during the last month, mainly work and stage managing an amateur pantomime (oh no you haven't....), so it's come as a surprise how much I've managed to get done.
This is a 51L kit for a Midland long low wagon. It's the first time I've built a complete kit from this source, and it was rather good (although the fiddly etched brake gear was, well a bit fiddly). Apart from using some thicker Evergreen planked styrene for the floor, it's been built exactly as per
I've not had much time to spend on modelling over the last few months, so I've concentrated on wagons. These are a lot easier to work on in small doses, and this has allowed me to finished quite a lot of models that have been lurking half finished or in the pile of unbuilt kits.
These two SECR vans are from the Cambrian kit. I didn't like the axlebox mouldings or buffers, so these were replaced with MJT and ABS parts respectively. I had to keep the plastic brake gear as I couldn't find a sui
I've finally finished building the David Geen LSWR refrigerator van that I bought at Scalefourum in 2008. I'm afraid that in my excitement the photo came out a little blury.
This was a nice kit, but suffered from poor etched brake gear - most of this was replaced by MJT brake shoes and various bits off a mainly trains etch. I also added a thicker roof - the curved bit of plasticard supplied was too think for the very thick roofs on these vehicles.
One nice feature of the etch was the fold
I've not done much modelling over the summer, mainly due to being busy at work. But recently I'd finished off a few projects, and attacked my pile of unbuilt kits
This plywood shockvan is a Red Panda kit bought off eBay, although they now seem to be back in to production again. It's been painted but unlettered for a while, so a burst of activity saw it finished.
The later shock wagon square markings were done using the white lines that come on the HMRS wagon transfer sheet. These were use
After a gap in my modelling over Christmas and during January, I decided to clear down the backlog on nearly finished models that I've accumulated (as we all do).
These two first appeared in this blog a few years back!
The Parkside LMS CCT has acquired some rather nice cast buffers of the correct pattern from Lanarkshire Modelling Supplies. The incorrect buffers supplied with the kit were a big weakness, and my attempts at modifying other types were't successful.
The ancient and now d
My model of the Thanet Third in set 331 has been on hold for a week or so whilst some photos arrived from the Bluebell Museum's John J Smith photo collection. This is located here http://www.bluebell-railway-museum.co.uk/archive/photos/ and has a useful selection of BR(S) photos.
Most of the photos of this set concentrate on the SECR rake comospite, as it's the rarer vehicle of the pair. However the Bluebell have one photo showing both vehicles, which shows the Third well enough to build an
Some progress on my coach building.
The two Phoenix Maunsell coaches are now painted in 1930s Southern Olive Green. I've cheated with the lining - it should be a yellow line with a black line inside it, but I've only done a yellow line. My defence is insanity (avoidance of). The lining is from HMRS pressfix, with the corners added by hand.
The interiors are now added - Southern Pride seats and Slater's passengers. All a little crude, but good enough when the roof is on.
The Worlsey Wo
After a bit of a hiatus caused by the need to finish my entry for the 2011 challenge, one half of set 331 is now finished.
The vacuum formed roof proved tricky to get to fit - it does now fit despite appearances in the pictures.
The roof ventilators are a strange mix on this particular coach - one large torpedo vent, and some odd looking oval ventilators (no doubt somebody's patent carriage ventilator that the SECR decided to try out). These were made from some ABS torpedo vents with t
This is the state of play tonight. It's sitting on it's bogies, with the body and underframe mostly complete. The nastiest bit so far was adding the bogie footsteps - the etched brackets were rather small (scale size?) and a bit flimsy. Some then dropped off when trying to bend them to shape and had to be replaced. Soldering the footboards in to place without melting the whitemetal springs needed a steady hand and plenty of patience.
Next step is the brake linkage. I cheated on the bogies an
6 hours in to the build of this Roxey SECR brake composite and I've got a basic bodyshell.
No massive problems - the biggest issue was soldering the droplights in straight. The only deviation I've made from the kit so far is to file out the window frame on the centre birdcage window. These had been changed from opening to fixed windows by the 1940s.
I'm not a fast worker by any means, but I managed to assemble another coach for my GWR through train in 2 weeks and a day. Well almost - after the C.54 I realised what a brain numbing task drilling out the holes for the hinges was, so this was done a few at a time over the 2-3 weeks before I actually started building the kit. Other than that this Comet E148 brake composite flew together. There's a rather nice preserved example on the SVR, which I've ridden in.
This time I used the whole etch
The Comet GWR C54 third and Worsley SR Continental 3rd are now complete.
I couldn't find a decent photo of the compartment side of the C54 in 1930s livery, so for now it's missing the various smoking/no-smoking signs. Not that any of the passengers are likely to smoke, being a mix or plastic and whitemetal....
The Continental is finished in late 1940s condition. As an experiment I used Humbrol acrylic Malachite green, which seems slightly darker than the Precision equivalent but isn
The Continental third is nearly ready for the paint shop. The body is complete, but I'm just waiting for a few Comet parts to finish off the underframe. It's going to be Malachite Green.
The door handrails were a bit of a pig to bend to shape. These were originally straight when the coaches were built. When the doors were rehung to open outwards in the normal way (they originally opened inwards) the handrails got a joggle in then to avoid people scraping their knuckles when opening the
This is almost the current state of affairs (it's now had a scrub and is drying off as we speak!)
I've now got my head around the design of the etches. They are too wide because it's intended to use a Comet roof - I had to reprofile the ends to take the shortened Southern Pride Bulleid roof. This is much closer to the real thing.
The main problem from narrowing the body was that the chassis no longer fitted. As per Comet kits the chassis etch had an upward projecting strip to align the bo
Not updated this blog for a while now - I must get a bit better at doing it.
I've built a couple of Phoenix/Branchlines "Goldstar" coaches - a Maunsell Open third and one of the 1935 type brake composites.
I'm not a fan of the original BSL/Phoenix coaches - nasty stamped aluminium sides and some strange pressing that are supposed to be the chassis. However these are much better, having much thinner etched sides for starters.
I replaced the rather crude Phoenix bogies with MJT
I've built yet another shock absorbing wagon - in this case a Red Panda Shock Van (bought off Ebay for a sensible price as this kit seems to be out of production). It's been completed as one of the batch with the shock absorber located between the frames and not visible.
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It uses some rather nice case buffers from Lanarkshre model supplies, some Parkside solebars and the original Red Panda break gear.
I've also finished the BR wooden Lowfit - actually about 2 months ago but it took me
Not had much spare time lately, and have been doing things other than building wagons. I am trying, however, to clear down the vast collection of half built brake vans.
I managed to get the LNER van ready for painting.
The principle body modification was to replace the inner ends with spares from a Dapol kit of the BR version, fitted with a new planked door (the early vans have no windows in the door), Other body modifications included new wire handrails, bigger ventilators on the roof
A trio of finished wagons, starting with the BR steel shock open, painted in typical early 1970s rust and grot. These wagons seem to have got in to a right state in their final years of revenue earning traffic. I'm quite pleased with how this conversion turned out - the dodgy join between the floor and the sides is prototypical and not my modelling. The joys of modelling poor workmanship!
Parkside fruit van and Dapol/Parkside LMS designed van. The "ventilated" lettering on the fruit van was a
Having done the fitted version, I've also turned out a trio of the unfitted 21 ton mineral wagon.
This is a Chiver's MDV modified to remove the top doors (with a very sharp scalpel), and mounted on a Parkside chassis to represent the unfitted welded variety which nobody does a kit for. Even in 4mm scale there are plenty of common wagons that aren't available as kits.
It's riveted cousin is a straightforward build of the Parkside kit. The only modifications are buffers, wire handrail
I'm sure we've all got models lurking half finished in boxes, and it's always good to get them finished. Both of these Maunsell coaches were started in 2000 and are now finished.
The Roxey Nondescript brake was in my blog unpainted a year ago. It got half painted, then stripped down and repainted as I wasn't happy with the finish.
The First has been lurking in a painted but unglazed state for years, as it was a very early effort where I didn't pay much attention to how to fit the glazi
Not much progress recently due to all sorts of other distractions (skiing holidays, parties, boring stuff like that) but I've managed to get a few wagons ready for painting today.
A Parkside BR van built as the Fruit van version using the optional ventilators. It's also had the solebars replaced with the plate fronted ones from the ever useful PA16 underframe kit. The yellow van is a Dapol ex Airfix "LMS van" which is actually a BR diagram 1/204. I bought a job lot of "second" bodies from a
Now ready for painting in rusty bauxite. The original Parkside chassis was reused with modified axleboxes. Various details were added from scraps of plastic (the buffer beams are Evergreen channel), shock spring covers were spares from another Parkside kit and some MJT shock buffers finish it all off.
For some reason none of these wagons seem to have lamp irons, despite being fitted. Presumably there must have been a reason for this - other shock wagons have them.
I've finished off some of the LNER wagons. I'm impressed with how well the 3H LNER opens have turned out, despite the many problems getting them square
The LSWR stone block wagon is also finally painted, after months lurking in my shoebox of stuff to be painted!
I've also been working on an Airfix meat van. Not the most common prototype - only 100 of these were built, but for some reason they chose this over the more common 12t van.
As with the cattle wagons this went together very we
