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About this blog

My various attempts at modeling and building bits for layouts

Entries in this blog

Mallard Duke - some stolen time and a little progress

Despite having a long list of other things that I really should have been doing I stole a little time this afternoon and evening to work on the Duke - at least this time I know I will have done something on it between Missenden weekends!     Not much has been done to the locomotive itself, I have added two overlays below the footplate that run the length of the valances and provides a row of rivets. Also some back-head detail has been done. The next major job is to do the springs, but I did
GWMark

GWMark

1

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
GWMark

GWMark

3

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
GWMark

GWMark

5

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
GWMark

GWMark

2

Out with the airbrush - how brave do I feel?

After a small interlude to try my hand at building pointwork it is back to the long term project of the 72xx. More track work will follow, but that will have to wait until after Doncaster now - I'll pick up some more C&L components there.   My PDK 72xx has moved on a bit, the lamp refuge and the lance cock have been added, it was given two coats of etch primer, from a spray can and the footplate and smokebox have been spray with Halfords matt black. So the project for Sunday was to spray t
GWMark

GWMark

2

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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GWMark

5

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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GWMark

2

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
GWMark

GWMark

1

Wet weekend in Bucks

Well, it was forecast to be a wet weekend, at least on the Sunday, and with the looming return to school this week Daniel and I decided to make Sunday a modelling day. The idea was to setup on Saturday evening and then spend the entire day on Sunday making progress with our various projects.   My aims being to get my 72xx to a state in which it could be painted, to get the GT3 to the same point, the finish the interior of my Railbus and maybe to drop my 802 in boiling water and sort out the wa
GWMark

GWMark

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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
GWMark

GWMark

5

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
GWMark

GWMark

3

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
GWMark

GWMark

6

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
GWMark

GWMark

1

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
GWMark

GWMark

5

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
GWMark

GWMark

2

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
GWMark

GWMark

1

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.
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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
GWMark

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4

A few small steps forwards

Well, the 72XX has taken a few small steps forward. Now we have the next problem, the motion bracket has been laminated from three thicknesses and now doesn't fit over the slide bars. I think I will ned to look at that when I am feeling more awake. But for now this is were I am. The cab roof and the slide bar are just laid in place, everything else is firmly attached.       I really do like this loco and can see it getting ever closer to being finished, or at least to be ready to be paint
GWMark

GWMark

1

PDK 72XX Slow Progress

Well, I finally got around to doing some modelling tonight, so much for a long weekend of doing what I want. Following on from a few hours spent during the evenings, the 72XX is progressing slowly. The handrails have started to go on, on one side, I have added the rivet strip around the base of the tanks, the lips on the cab roof and soldered up the cylinders and added the drain cocks. It's also now a 2-8-2 rather than the 0-8-0 it has been up until now. The chimney has just been rested in place
GWMark

GWMark

2

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
GWMark

GWMark

4

The things we do, can it really be counted as railway modeling?

When someone asks me about hobbies, I always say I am a railway modeller, but actually, in casting around for anything to put in my blog I begin to wonder what I have done in the past few weeks that could be counted as "modelling railways". Apart from layout operating at Wycrail and Warley the closest I have got to anything that might be seen as a modelling task is painting some figures and turning a piece of plasticard into an uncoupling ramp, scoring planks and rivets and painting it. The rest
GWMark

GWMark

2

More weathering

I was rightly criticised on two counts by Daniel for my previous post, I didn't include any pictures of his stock and I also said all his stock was all ready to run. So by way of redress here are a couple more pictures from my weathering efforts on his stock.     The 4MT is a Bachmann model, Daniel has added the crew, lamps, detail parts and a real coal load. I made an attempt to weather it. This loco is due to haul a rack of coaching stock bunker first, so hence the ugly tension lock coupl
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0

Hawthorn Leslie - Catchup on Daniel's latest project

This post is a bit of a cheat, since it is not my work I am showing. In my post yesterday I showed the stock I weathered, including Daniel's (my son) first loco build at the age of 11. Eight years later he is still going and here is his latest project, as promised.     The loco is a High Level kit of a Hawthorn Leslie, he has been working on it over successive Missenden weekends under the tutorship of Tony Gee (t-b-g). It's now really at a stage of a few final tweaks before painting, a job
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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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GWMark

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