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About this blog

My various attempts at modeling and building bits for layouts

Entries in this blog

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
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5

Back to GT3

Well, the New Year period has enabled me some time to get back to doing a bit of loco building. The project, a resin GT3 from Golden Arrow with the detailing etches from Bill Bedford and Ian (macgeordie) of RMWeb. Progress has been slow until now, as with most of my builds, being interrupted by other projects, electronics modules for club layouts and the general things in life that take away our time. However since getting home from a Christmas visiting my mother I have built the buffer beam, ca
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Dusting off GT3 for Christmas

I wanted a little project to do during that time between Christmas and the New Year, it had to be a small project as time would be an issue - it isn't fair to lock yourself away from the family for too long at this time of the year after all! But I wanted something I could look back on in these depressing first days back at work and think - 'I actually did achieve something during the holidays'.   I decided my long mothballed GT3 project would fit the bill, no major jobs, just lots of finishin
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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
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72xx Paint Application and reassembly

Having now applied another coat of the Lifecolor acrylic loco green to my 72xx and brush painting the buffer beams and safety valve/whistles, I couldn't resist putting it back together to see how it looked.     The black is Halfords Matt black car spray, the green is Lifecolor as already mentioned, the buffer beams Phoenix Precission enamel, the safety value/whistles are Humbrol enamel. All on a base of two coats of precision etch primer. So quite a mix of paints on this one.   There are
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Railbus returns

In the last few days I have returned to a stalled project, my Dapol Railbus. The interior has been painted, and some passenger have been painted and added.     I have also painted the lining on the doors and the kick plates. Glazing has been added and the Railbus put back together in the hope I might get to run it at the club open day tomorrow. Unfortunately I have yet to find a crew that will fit in the rather confined cabs, so it has host drivers at the moment. Also I need to add windscre
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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
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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
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Have workbench, will travel

Last weekend saw the Autumn railway modellers weekend at Missenden Abbey, this also coincided with Daniel's 15th birthday a few days before, therefore we both got the weekend of modelling as a birthday present for Daniel and an early Christmas present for me. So the workbench was relocated from the kitchen table to a seminar room in Missenden Abbey. This is the 5th time of going to these events for me, and the 3rd for Daniel, the chance to have a complete weekend, Friday evening until Sunday aft
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Prolonged absence - the two Highlevel kits

I noticed it had been a very long time since I wrote anything here, March of last year. I didn't even do my customary write-up following the Missenden Abbey weekends last Autumn and this Spring. This does not mean nothing has been happening, just that I have written nothing about it.   Both Daniel and i went to Missenden in October and then again this March, in fact the March weekend may be the last for a while with both of us going as Daniel is about to depart for University life - although t
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XpressNet Interface

Tonight's little triumph on the work bench was to finally work out what I got wrong with my XpressNet computer interface I was building. The result a fully functional interface between an ageing laptop and my low-end DCC kit (a Lenz Compact), however this gives me access to do things over Xpressnet, and if I every do get around to upgrading the compact I will be able to control lots more.   The immediate gratification came in setting up WiThrottle and driving a sound equipped loco from my Andr
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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
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It's been a while.... Servos, signals & points

In talking with St. Simon on Wednesday at the HWDMRS club night I realised it has been a while since I put anything on my workbench thread - checking back here I find it has been more than a year - how time flies!   So, the latest thing I have been playing with is RC servos. This came about because we are looking at building a new club layout and need about 100 slow acting point motors - now that's a lot of motors and a lot of money for the likes of Cobalts etc. So I looked into servo - I used
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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
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High Level Black Hawthorn - ready for paint

I completed most of my Black Hawthorn at Missenden Abbey, however there were a few bits to finish off that I thought I would do at home, pipe runs, stays etc. Of course I didn't get around to it until today, needless to say those "little" jobs took a long time, very fiddly in places those pipes. However here it is, I think it is now ready for painting, after a bit of cleaning up.     I added some lead shot in the smokebox before putting the door on and also in the base of the bunkers on eit
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Absent but not idle

I realised it had been a long time since I last did an update when Daniel asked me if I was planning to post about our recent weekend at Missenden Abbey. I decided that before doing that I really should do an update on the things that I have been up to between the spring Missenden Weekend and the Autumn weekend.   At the spring weekend I took a break from my usual locomotive construction topic and spent the weekend with Ian Rathbone in the painting and lining room. This is not a subject I am g
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Resprayed Neath & Brecon Saddle Tank

Some time ago I made a Dean Sidings Neath and Brecon Tank loco, which I managed to mess up the spraying of. I finally took the plunge and stripped the resin body, using Phoenix Paint Super Strip. My initial concern was what it might do to the resin, but I need not have worried - it was fine. The only casualty of the stripping was one lamp iron that was easily replaced.   The loco now sports a respray - using aerosol cans this time, Phoenix GWR Green and Halfords Matt black. The result is much
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Arduino's, DCC, Servos, Stepper Motors & Cranes

For some time now I have been thinking about ways to make things other than the locomotives move on my layouts. Radio Control servos have become an accepted way to control the points and semaphore signals, but we could use them for more if we had a good way to integrate the proportional control of them into our control systems. So instead of just having something move between two positions we could make it move to any point we wanted.   It was with this idea in mind that I started playing arou
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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
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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
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Desperately Trying to Finish Things

As I said in my previous post I am now less than a week away from my next Missenden weekend, this time I am down to do painting and lining with Ian Rathbone, so my plan is to try to get as many of my current projects ready to be painted, at least in some state. So I have spent much of the weekend, and last week, doing those last little jobs, you know, all those things you have been putting off because they are fiddly. In my mind at east none of them would take long, but of course I was deluding
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Missenden - Another day in paradise..

...or at least that is the battle cry when the day starts.   This autumn's Missenden Railway Modellers weekend has come and gone again, all to quickly as usual. After some organisational changes the team did splendid job of organisation so that it was seamless to those of us that attend, a big thank you to them.   My project this autumn was the continuation of a High Level 12" Neilson Mineral loco that I started a couple of session ago. Although there were some problems, well only really on
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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
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Hot Spots & Speedos

Continuing in my catch up of things I have done in the last 12 months… I am a bit of a sucker for gadgets, so when I came across a chip that offered simple and cheap WiFi I started to think about using it for model railway purposes. I found on ebay a little board that had the WiFi chip on it, along with all the circuitry needed to make the thing work, the ESP-01 board. It was available for about £4 from the UK or about £1 direct from China - I had to have a play. The chip in question, an ESP826
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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
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