The class 22 is in the paint shop (scary) so something new has taken its place on the workbench - an Ultima kit for a Hawksworth full brake.
These coaches survived well into the 1970s in rail blue, so this will fit neatly into my chosen period. I also happen to think that the Hawksworth coaches are some of the finest looking coaches ever built, so I don't need much of an excuse to build one. I'm planning to make life difficult for myself by painting it maroon and using my new Bob Moore linin
I haven't had much to say on here for a few weeks, not because I haven't been modelling but rather because it has been one of those periods where I'm doing stuff that is not particularly new, so there isn't a huge amount to say. In particular, I've been trying to trim my gloat box a little in anticipation of some re-stocking when some new kits arrive from Mr Higgs. The results are now ready for the paint shop when the outside temperature warms up enough for it to reopen.
The first one is an
I thought it was about time we had another Hydraulic on this blog, so here goes...
St Ruth is set in 1965 so by rights it should be overwhelmingly populated with Warships. No problem there, we have Cockade, Hermes, Druid and Zest of various ages, plus Cossack too of course. The snag is that in 1965 they should really be green. Maroon is a bit of a stretch - the first maroon repaints appearing in September 65 so we really need some green ones.
The first Farish Warship I acquired was a blu
As we all know, the Earth is anything but flat but a flat earth is quite a common sight on our models. Now it's pretty obvious that Hayle North Quay has some high ground at the back and a quay edge at the front, but is that the whole story? Well, no...
A couple of examples from my visit in 2010 (the place has been completely rebuilt since then to provide flood defences).
I'm not sure what this building used to be, possibly stables for the Steam Packet hotel or possibly so
A former member of the Midland area group recently donated his box of unfinished projects and other bits and bobs so that the group members could make use of them. I picked out a part built Gresley BG which looked like a nice model which was crying out for someone to finish it. I have a bit of a soft spot for parcels stock.
Some photos and words about progress to date...
The coach as retrieved - basically two sides, two ends and a floor
I don't know much about its origin - this is
In the previous installment the etches for the D600 bogies had just arrived in the post leaving me wondering whether I could actually build a bogie from them...
Thankfully it turns out that I can
Some of you will have seen the partially completed bogie at the AGM on Saturday (and a jolly good day it was too). I had hoped to have two bogies built, painted and on the loco before Saturday, but the etches arrived rather later than I had planned so it was too big an ask. Instead D604 had to
After a somewhat late night yesterday evening getting them finally assembled, the two chlorine tanks are now finished.
Here are a couple of photos.
Overall I am really pleased with the way these have turned out. They have taken a lot of effort to build, mainly in the initial etch design and the painting and final assembly stages because they are such complex vehicles. I have also discovered a few tolerance adjustments that will be included in any future builds.
As Association
In this post I actually start to build the kit...
Folding the Body
The one job that was worrying me most of all (and probably delaying me starting work) was bending up the single etching that makes the loco sides and roof. Logically this semed like the place to start construction, so at least I would get what seemed to be the worst job over and done with very early in the build.
I'd built up some confidence (and tools) with the two wagon kits that I built as 'practice'. In particular
D6309 is pretty much finished now and is ready to earn its keep on South Yard and St Ruth. It even went on holiday (with South Yard) to its native Cornwall a couple of weeks ago.
The trip through the paint shop was fairly long and painful, the lowest point being when I sprayed it with Humbrol matt varnish to protect the transfers only to find that this left a horrid translucent effect over the whole loco. I rescued this with an wash of thinned Precison green applied by brush. Thankfully
Not quite 'finished', but at least back in one piece (at the last minute) in a presentable state for Railex.
On the whole it's far from perfect (and very shiny just now) but I am very pleased with the result.
I'll say more later. For now, here are a couple of slightly iffy photos (dull and rainy day light available today)
Off to load up St Ruth for Railex now.
A few words on recent progress hereabouts...
The second bogie for D604 is now complete and looks much like the first one, so no need for any photos there. There are a couple of small jobs remaining before the new underframe bits get painted and then it should be 'job done'.
We've been away in Wales for the past week sampling the Garretts on the Welsh Highland. Definitely a good way to see Snowdonia but take a coat because this narrow gauge stuff has no heating... especially if you want t
Fancying a break from slaving over a hot soldering iron I thought I’d have a go at a job that I’ve been failing to ‘get around to’ for a long time – making some loads for my mineral wagons.
Naturally I thought this would be easy, but maybe I was wrong.
The first bit is very straightforward - cut some rectangles of black card to fit inside the wagons and glue some lumps of foamboard and card underneath them to hold them at a sensible height. Then (assuming a fairly level load) coat the to
More steamy goings on from my workbench. Now that I'm not frantically trying to make South Yard look less unfinished I've got back to some of the other items that have been in progress for a while. The main build effort amongst these is the David Eveleigh chassis for the Dapol 45xx. The various bits of this have been liberated from their paint shop boxes and put together in hopefully something resembling the right order.
Under the hood is a Nigel Lawton motor coupled to the worm via a U
This is a catch up installment on D604... and quite a long one. I was quite keen to get it into a presentable state so that I could use it at TINGS, so that meant no mucking about on RMWeb for a little while.
In the last installment the basic shape of the bodyshell was completed but the detail was yet to go on. There is a lot less to add to the class 41 than the class 22, but there was still some work to do.
The roof has most of the right things in the right places. Unlike the 22 there i
Having been temporarily chucked back together for AbRail, the Hall is just back from an extended spell in the paint shop having its paint job generally finished off and some weathering applied... just in time for St Ruth to go to Macclesfield this weekend.
My plan for the 'paint job' was to wash over the Dapol GWR green (or it it US Army WW2 geep green?) with thinned Precision BR Green, doing my best to avoid the lining. It's kind of worked, but it took a few more coats than I had hoped
There have been one or two models that have had an extended stay in the paint shop over the winter. Since we have the Epsom and Ewell show coming up later this month, I have knuckled down and managed to get everything out of their various paint boxes and back together into something resembling models. There are still a few finishing touches to do here and there, but here is the latest crop.
Just back together today is the second of the Stephen Harris 35T tank kits. A class A version this tim
...ing cars
The Met Camm SLC is the first of the four coaches built during the cold season to escape from the paint shop and take its place between its two friends.
The build is almost identical to the other two. There are a few minor improvements because I now know more about the real things (and have of course now found mistakes on the other two). I also had a go at doing the roof overhang at the ends which is most definitely absent from the other two. This was done by adding a lip of
Some further experiments based on the 'ask the audience' responses from last time with those mineral wagons.
First the 'house coal' sized stuff.
The outer two have heaps added using Das clay to look something like the grab loaded wagons visible in photos of Kingswear (which were probably destined for Torquay gasworks, but never mind). The coal is stuck on using Jerry's tip of mixing black acrylic with the PVA which seems to cover up the whiteness of the Das quite nicely.
Left to righ
After being on the back burner for a while to make way for the completion of D604 and work on the next signal for St Ruth, I finally got round to doing some more on the Ultima Hawksworth BCK that I started in October.
The coach is now ready for the paint shop (I just corrected a typo there - 'pain shop' - quite appropriate really). Although the coach is ready, I don't think it will be going near any paint for a little while - it's too flippin' cold and dark out there.
For the most part,
A quick update photo from the paint shop of the body with all of its main paint colours applied residing in its custom Ferrero Rocher anti-dust cabinet.
There is still a lot to do - the lower bodyside stripes are next followed by tidying up of all of the messy and oversprayed areas (especially where it is yellow and shouldn't be), transfers, varnish and weathering to a very work-worn 1969 condition.
Not everything has gone completely to plan - the worst problem being that the green
A quick update on the Manor...
The crossheads and conn rods are now fitted... and remarkably the loco still runs well.
This doesn't look like a vast amount of progress, but there was some tricky work involved... especially for someone who has never built a steam loco before.
I found assembling the crossheads pretty tricky, largely because their final 'I' shape means that there is no obvious place to apply the soldering iron to get a good 'flow' when you get to the last stage. I
Hmm.. July 2015... apparently that's when I started on this particular project
http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/100931-riveted-oil-tanks-in-2mm-scale
I've not said anything more about it on here since then... mainly because until a few days back I had no idea whether or not it was going to succeed or fail.
Rather than theorising further about whether this would or would not work as a 3d print I decided to take a punt and had it printed when Shapeways had a free posta
I tried to convince these folks of the merits of Easitrac or even soldered PCB construction, but they seemed happy with their own way of doing things
http://youtu.be/0jFZReHQTTE
Still, they managed to lay about 12 feet of track in under 5 minutes, so maybe it's not a bad approach.
Their next move was to rip it all up again, which sounds a lot like what some people write about on RMWeb, so I think that there's hope for them yet.
A second installment of the D604 build...
In the previous episode the body was just starting to go together but was still short of quite a few important external panels.
Next step was to fit the nose ends. Unlike the class 22, these are far from flat so they had to be bent to the correct curve. This was tricky for a couple of reasons. Firstly there is no good reference to use to find the 'correct' curve, so I had to judge this by studying photos.
The NBL factory photos showed that th
