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GWMark's Workbench Blog

A blog by GWMark in RMweb Blogs

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About this blog

My various attempts at modeling and building bits for layouts

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Dusting off the Duke - return of an old project

I've recently made myself a promise not to start any new projects until I finish some of the part built, stalled projects. We will see how long that one lasts, but by way of a start on this new resolution I got my Mallard Models GWR Duke out of its box and have done a little work on it over the last week. Although it may not look like it has progressed much, there has been a fair bit of fettling going on. I removed the pickups I had put on before, they were a little fragile and prone to

May 26, 2016

8

72xx progressing slowly - in more than one sense

The 72xx that have have been building for quite some time now has progressed a little more since my last posting here. For some reason I only ever seem to work on this when I go to the Missenden Weekends, so one or two weekends a year makes for slow progress. The job tackled this year was to get the chassis moving under power - this took somewhat longer than expected, mostly because it turned out that not all my insulated wheels were! I'm sure you can guess how I discovered that one. A lot o

June 7, 2011

6

Movement from the Mallard Duke

It has been a couple of weeks since my last post regarding the Mallard Duke. You may recall I had a bit of a problem with it that meant a slight rebuild and some remedial actions. That complete I have now done a bit more detailing, but more importantly I decided it was time to have it move itself along the rails. So I completed the task of making up the cranks, reaming them out and fitting them. After a bit of tinkering I had the cranks in place and quartered. I then looked at fitting the co

June 13, 2016

6

A Quick Diversion

Partly from frustration and partly because I like to see things move I decided I wanted to do a little project that was going to be reasonably quick to get to a stage were I could run a loco. About 2 weeks ago, at Expo EM I purchased an unbuilt Wills Finecast kit of an 1804 GWR Saddle tank, last week at Railex I also obtained the etched nickel silver chassis from SE Finecast and some Gibson wheels for it. So on Friday evening I decided to make the chassis. These Finecast etched chassis go togeth

June 3, 2013

6

Preparing for Missenden

It's less than two weeks to go before the Missenden Abbey Spring Railway Modellers weekend. This year, in a break from tradition I am booked on the painting and lining course with Ian Rathbone. My chance to learn to finish my models from probably the best around. Although rather daunting I am looking forward to hopefully gaining some new skills. To this end I thought I should try to finish a few items to the state that I can try to paint them at Missenden, time allowing. My Black Hawthorn wa

February 22, 2017

5

An old project resurrected

The very first locomotive kit, if you can call it a locomotive, was a NuCast Steam Railmotor. In retrospect this was a poor choice for a first kit and could easily have put me off kit building for life, but I have liked the look of the rail motors since I first heard about them and the guy on the exhibition stall where I purchased it said it was not that heard to make. Oh well, you live and learn. Anyway, I started on this kit back in 2004 (as far as I remember), managed to solder the body t

November 16, 2016

5

Dapol Railbus & Branchlines motorising kit

As a bit of a diversion I also built this back in March..... I purchased it as a used kit at Astrolat, the "chassis" had been built and I just had to finish it and build the interior and body. These went together very quickly, most unlike me. Unfortunately the wheelset was P4 - how did I not notice that one! So I ended up cutting the axles, big mistake, one is now too short and the back to back is a little too small - need to replace the axles some time. True to form, I may have

June 5, 2011

5

PDK 72xx Haulage test on Hinton Parva

I've done a bit more work on my 72xx, steps have been added, vacuum pipes, smoke box door and a coupling loop. So I thought it was time to see if it would pull anything. So it went back to Hinton Parva tonight, I borrowed the coal rake normally pulled by one of the two Garretts at exhibition and off it went. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqXNVKTKNzM It seemed to manage with the 68 loaded coal trucks, but did have a bit of wheel slip if not driven with care. Still a bit more work to d

July 20, 2011

5

New Challenge

Obviously I don't have enough unfinished, or un-started, projects, so this weekend I decided to try something I have bean meaning to have a go at for a while - making my own track. To be precise A C&L B6 turnout kit that I have had on the top of the cupboard for nearly 2 years. Why did I choose now? I have no idea, other than I had to wait for some paint to dry on my 72xx, you know what they say about paint drying! Anyway, after 2 evening, about 8 hours, I now have this.... One

January 22, 2012

5

Transfix disaster

Tonight was going to be the night I got my 72xx to a runnable state, buffers, plates, a little paint touching up, coal, crew and transfers, Not too much to ask. It went fairly well, I had the buffers in place, the plates attached, the cab interior finished, except for crew and the transfer went on well. The I noticed my mistake, I had spaced the lettering differently on the two sides. Looking at my picture in Russell of 7240 I decided it was the side with the most spread out lettering t

February 3, 2012

5

Return of the Duke

Following a good weekend at Missenden Abbey with my new High Level kit I didn't want to just ditch the Duke in favour of the new kit. I had decided not to take it to Missenden this Autumn as there was little new to do on it and also the Black Hawthorn would fit better on my little shunting puzzle. It seemed sensible to make the most of the time with expert advice on hand to start something very different from my previous modelling attempts. So this weekend it was the turn of the Duke again.

October 20, 2013

5

Cylinder slope

I think Horsetan is right, there is not enough slope to cylinders, this view shows them better. A little more progress last night, I really ought to get on with the chassis however.

April 17, 2010

4

Patching the boiler of my Duke

I thought I would document the latest steps in my efforts to resolve the build issue with my Mallard Duke. As noted in earlier posts I have built it with both the boiler and smokebox the wrong way around. The problem manifests itself in the chimney and dome being in the wrong place. This entry is about my latest steps to resolve the problem. The smokebox is simply a wrapper on nickel silver and white metal formers, so was relatively easy to remove and will be reattached the other way around.

May 28, 2016

4

One Missenden Weekend, Two High Level Kits

Today saw the end of the Autumn Railway Modellers Weekend at Missenden Abbey. as is now the custom I attended with my son, now 17, for a few days of locomotive kit construction. This year the numbers of kit constructors was down, with people being seduced by the laser cutting, scenery, weathering and electronics side of the hobby. This meant there were two small rooms of us loco builders, we were placed under the care of new boy Tony Gee in a room with 5 other 4mm modellers, whilst next door Kev

October 13, 2013

4

And then there were two....

I attended the Amersham model railway show on Saturday with my teenage son, and he came away with a purchase. A part finished Cotswold kit of a 72XX! Now, I wonder, is he trying to outdo Dad here! Anyway, the upshot is that my planned day of working on the PDK 72XX got highjacked, first by household jobs like fixing a leaking tap, but then by aiding Daniel get his 72XX chassis working. By Sunday evening I had lost my work area and tools to Daniel who was busy soldering whitemetal steps to hi

April 18, 2010

4

GT3 and 72XX progress

Well, for one reason or another I have not got a lot done recently or posted very much here on RM Web. I have, in the past 6 weeks made a little progress on a few projects however. My GT3 has got to the stage of painting, well primer at least, but will need some work still to sort out the blemishes the primer is showing up. I went on the Missenden Abbey weekend again this year and made some significant progress with my PDK 72XX kit. Hopefully I will get more time available to m

March 21, 2010

4

Preparation - Missenden Autumn 2013

The autumn weekend of railway modelling at Missenden Abbey is almost here again, once again Daniel and I will be attending. This time I am going to start a new project, the Duke is to a stage now that I think I can probably finish it at home, plus I am keen to start a project that will run on my little shunting puzzle. Therefore my plan for the weekend is to make a start on a High Level kit of a Black Hawthorn 0-4- ST. As part of my preparation I have started (several times) to read the ver

October 8, 2013

3

Missenden Spring 2013 - A family affair

The weekend of the 8th, 9th and 10th of March saw the running of the Missenden Spring Weekend, the 31st year of the Missenden weekends. Daniel and I were lucky enough to have once again received the weekend as a Christmas present from my wife - I suspect this is partially so that she can get rid of us for the weekend and partially because she knows we both enjoy the weekend and it is a present that does bring "more junk" into the house! Normally we are unique amongst the modellers that atten

March 11, 2013

3

Duke Dismantling - starting to resolve build issues

If you read my previous entry you will have seen that I managed to mess up somewhat when I did the assembly of the smokebox and boiler on my Duke. Both the boiler and smokebox had been assembled the wrong way around, this resulted in the chimney being too far forward and the dome being on the wrong ring on the boiler. I had thought of two option, reverse both the boiler and the smokebox or reverse the smokebox wrapper and move the dome without removing the boiler. I have had to go for the se

May 27, 2016

3

The most precious things....

Having just returned from another weekend of modelling at Missenden Abbey I intended to write up my progress on my workbench thread, then, last night I looked at it and realised I have not made an entry since the last time I was at Missenden, back in the Spring. This got me thinking, my plan had been to show off the progress with the model I had taken and talk about the events of the weekend, but I soon began to think that this gap in my workbench was more indicative of something else, at was at

October 15, 2012

3

Duke relocation

Just to close this sequence of entries for the bank holiday weekend and my attempts at fixing the mistake of a few years ago I thought I would show where I was in the process of getting the dome and chimney in the right places. Basically I had fitted the smokebox and boiler the wrong way around and this resulted in the chimney and dome being further forward than they should have been. Today I had less time than I had hoped, domestic duties meant the toolbox was employed on garden gates rathe

May 30, 2016

3

72xx In Motion

As promised I did a little video last night of the 72xx moving on Hinton Parva. It's not the best video ever and it is a little short, but it does show it moving. http://youtu.be/xWOIUcAB2Fo Later I had it doing circuits of the club test track, it was taking 10 minutes to do one circuit, I'm not sure of the size of the test track, but I think it is about 20 feet by 10 feet. Now all I need to do is finish it, there's that word again, "finish", I must look it up some time, something to

June 16, 2011

3

Daniel's Various Project

I realised after Captain Kernow's comment on my last post that I had not been true to my word and posted some of my son's projects. So this post is really to redress that. I apologies for the heavy photo content. These are things Daniel has put together either at the Missenden weekends or when he was at home from University during the summer. The first item has been here before, at least in incomplete form, it's the High Level Hawthorn Leslie that he has been building. All finally ready for

November 25, 2016

3

GWR Diagram R2 - first coach kit

I'm not normally a builder of coaches, although there is no real reason for this, just that I got hooked on building locos and the occasional wagon. As part of my desire to finish some of those long started and put aside projects I pulled this Blacksmiths coach kit out of the cupboard. I was given this for Christmas many years ago and got as far as doing a fold and soldering the two ends before realising I had messed up by not putting the tumblehome in the ends. Annoyed with myself at making a m

February 17, 2017

3

Missenden Coming Around Again

Following our last visit to the Autumn weekend at Missenden I was sold on the idea of an RSU, fortunately I had a "significant" birthday a few weeks again and my wife bought (let me buy) an RSU as a birthday present. With about 3 weeks to go before the next Missenden weekend I as keen to try out my new toy. I did not want to go straight into attacking my High Level Black Hawthorn that I had worked on last time, so I looked around for an alternative. Fortunately I found a wagon kit I picked up a

March 3, 2014

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