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D869's own Projects

Entries in this blog

Finescaling a Hall - Part 2

A quick update on this project.   The chassis is now pretty much done barring a few odds and ends like couplings and attention is now turning to the superstructure.   Again there is not much to say about the chassis build - it went together as per Nigel's comprehensive instructions... although I do prefer to get things running and tested at the earliest possible stage whereas the instructions save the installation of the worm until quite late in the day.   One part that did prove niggly th

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D869

Finescaling a Hall

I've been struggling for a while to think up a catchy title for this one. It was originally intended as a Christmas project which would obviously have been 'Deck the Halls' but I didn't actually get around to starting that soon so the moment was lost.   For old times sake, I waited until the loft was again at sub zero temperatures before testing the Hall on Taw Bridge. I wanted to check that the coupled wheels would negotiate crossovers successfully (they did) and that it could pull a train -

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D869

Let it... oh it has!

Unusually we managed to find some real snow on our post Christmas steamy day trip to the GCR at Loughborough today. It's surprising how different conditions can be just 40 miles from home.     The GCR also provides a welcoming refreshment room with a real fire. The all day breakfast went down very well too.     We go to the GCR quite regularly. Somehow we always seem to get this loco     The last train of the day and the gas lamps are lit at Rothley     The loco ready to reti

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D869

Let it... well, you know

A light dusting of snow has fallen on the Plymouth area this morning. The coal men have turned up for work but retreated into the office to keep warm and get a brew going while they wait for the trip freight. Meanwhile D6309 has turned up with a couple of 16 tonners which it is positioning for unloading so they'll need to be venturing out again but it looks like they may be in for more snow before they are done.     Merry Christmas everyone.

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D869

The Little House on The... (Part 2)

... but he hasn't done anything at all!     Well looks can be deceiving. Actually quite a lot of work has happened on the 45xx over the past week or so but the overall appearance is not hugely changed. Let me put it another way... here is how it looked a couple of days ago...     When I stopped work on this project I really wasn't happy with the way it was running. The worst issues had been solved but it still had pretty poor slow running and a nasty tendency to stall. All in all not a

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D869

Octel 1957 Chlorine Tank - Part 4

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

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D869

Logging On In Somerset

Having a little early autumn interlude in Somerset now that number 3 child has departed the nest. Usual recipe... cottage, log burner, kits, books, local ales, walking, cycling, the odd visit to the local steam railway... 'oh, I didn't realise it was that close, fancy that eh?'.   Also trying to see if I can do a blog post from the tablet, so anything might happen...   Kit assembly with suitable surroundings...   Suitable reading material. I've been saving this book for a suitable occasi

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D869

Octel 1957 Chlorine Tank - Part 2

A quick progress update on the Chlorine tank. The end stanchions have now been persuaded to go together and have been attached to the chassis, as has the brakegear.   This of course also means that I can now try the tank in place along with some of the timber packing that goes underneath the tank and at the ends. The tank still needs a good clean out to get rid of the residual wax.     The good thing about 3d printing is that it's a piece of cake to create the domed tank end and then subt

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D869

Octel 1957 Chlorine Tank

So far so good with building the first of the wagons from my recent etch - a 1957 vintage Hurst Nelson Chlorine tank.   I was impatient to try out the experimental version so that's what I'm building. So far it is going together as intended and the centre section of the solebars has achieved the skinny look that I was hoping to get when viewed from the top and the chassis seems very strong because it's got metalwork in all of the places where the real thing has metalwork.       The ext

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Let's Get Physical Part 3

Stretching the same title a little further, some new metalwork arrived with the postie today...     The main items on here are a couple of chassis for Associated Octel 1957 vintage chlorine tanks. The two etches are different from each other because I want to try two different ways to put a tank wagon chassis together. One is (I hope) conservative and steals as many ideas as possible from other people's designs. The other design is intended (if it works at all) to achieve an even more spide

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D869

Let's Get Physical Part 2

...and then there were two!   The second bromine tank has now made it through the ordeal of the paint shop. Now I have a model of the tank that started my interest in Associated Octel, complete with its no nonsense lettering and skull on the tank end... and a further use of virtual modelling to make something real.     Painting and prep... this time I used some IPA on a cotton bud for another round of cleaning the 3d printed tank. The print also needed a rub down with some fine wet &

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D869

Let's Get Physical

No I am not about to enter a phase as an Olivia Newton John fan.   What has been going on hereabouts is quite a lot of time spent staring at a computer screen doing what might be called Virtual Modelling. The intention is that this work will (one day) be turned into actual vehicles but there is still some way to go before then.   Having recently finished a prolonged stint producing decal artwork (somehow these things always appear to be a lot less work at the beginning) I decided to spend a

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Excuses Excuses

Modelling chez moi has been on temporary hold for the past week or so due to a trip to see MinerChris in his new abode in Sudbury (not Suffolk!).   We did manage to get out and about on several occasions and caught a few of the local activities. I'm no expert on these matters so I'm sure that others will know more than me.   This is the view from Chris's local model shop - George's Trains - a mere 237 miles away in Toronto. Nice shop though.   A freight on the CP mainline near Chelmsfo

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D869

Mass Breakout from the Paint Shop

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

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D869

Slightly Less Duff

Owners of Farish class 47s circa 2008-2010 will probably have read lots of words on RMWeb about the shortcomings of some batches of this loco. I am the proud (ahem) owner of one of those models - D1764 in two tone green with full yellow ends. This loco has been on the St Ruth roster since the 2010 Expo in Oxford and has, shall we say, never been a favourite with the operators, it being fiendishly difficult to get all 6 axles reliably on the track and seemingly having a remarkable ability to skip

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D869

The Little House on The...

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

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D869

Nottingham 2014

A few photos from South Yard's day out at Nottingham. A good day out was had by all and it was nice to catch up with some 2mm friends for the day.   The layout worked well all day and I got lots of nice comments.   The new backscene being cut out from its surrounding card. In the end I went back to watercolour because I'm too new to Acrylic and things just weren't going in the right direction.   All packed up and ready to go. Very neat (not!).   The layout on show complete with pai

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A Sense of Place

... or maybe plaice!   It's been bugging me for a while that South Yard has a rather dull backscene. It's also a bit low now that the new lighting rig is in position so I've been thinking about doing something about it.   Now South Yard is a real place in Plymouth (or rather Devonport, Stoke Damerel or 'Dock' depending on how old fashioned you want to be). The name refers to the southern half of the Royal Naval dockyard and my layout is set just outside the dockyard wall. Having done a spot

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Time for a Tidy Up

Those of you on the 2mm_notices mailing list will have seen Edward Sissling's request for micro layouts to appear on the (bigger) Association stand at the Nottingham show next month. I've volunteered South Yard to attend on the Saturday (15th March)... since I pretty much always go to the Nottingham show anyway.   ...all of which means that I need to do a bit of housekeeping in order to get it into a fit state to put on show. Here's a photo of it in its usual surroundings.     As you can

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D869

More New Things

There hasn’t been a huge amount recently that has really justified a blog posting on its own but there has been plenty going on so here is a potted summary of recent developments and the covoluted paths by which they progressed through the works.   Another Stephen Harris tank is now ready for the paint shop. This one is a class ‘A’ tank. I went for one of the early ones with the shoe suspension and without bottom discharge because that’s what the transfer sheet covers. On the whole though I’m

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D869

Lowmek

There hasn't been a great deal to report here recently. It's not that I haven't been doing anything, just that a good deal of it has been kit assembly or repeat builds.   There is one job that I did started shortly after the 2mm Expo that I thought would benefit from a few words here. We were a bit more relaxed at the Expo with mixing and matching locos to different trains. At one point this ad libbing caused us to come unstuck. My Hymek was moved from its usual local passenger turn and put on

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D869

Pure Class (B)

Some prototypes are just too much for we mere mortals to resist, even if we can’t completely justify them…     This is a Stephen Harris 35T GLW class ‘B’ tank that I’ve been working on (very slowly) over the summer. My original plan was to build three class ‘A’s and one class ‘B’. I thought I’d do the class ‘B’ first as a one-off.   While there is plenty of evidence of 35T class ‘A’ Esso tanks in Cornwall, I have not seen any photos of class ‘B’ tanks so had no good reason to splash out o

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Reducing Gloatage 2

We set St Ruth up yesterday to test some recent work and get some photos that we've promised to exhibition managers using the layout's own lighting.   I also took the opportunity to get a move on and finish painting a couple of vehicles that I've been working on.   I mentioned the Thompson BG here a little while ago. This has now been painted in unlined Precision maroon. I didn't make any attempt to lighten the colour on this occasion because colour photos of maroon parcels vans in service o

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D869

Made in Italy

Just back from my summer hols during which we spent a couple of weeks in Italy.   As relaxation was definitely on the agenda I thought it reasonable to take along a few modelling bits just in case the opportunity presented itself. Most days were spent playing with the traffic on the Italian autostradas to tick off the usual Tuscan destinations but I managed to grab a couple of spells on our quieter days while the other members of the family were keeping out of the heat and struggling to find s

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Handle with Care

Fresh off the workbench (as usual, that means almost but not quite finished!) in time for ExpoFest.   These two probably don't quite sit well together... geographically they both carried loads to or from the Hayle Wharf branch but the Esso tanks appear in late 1950s photos and the Bromine tanks around 1970.   The 14T class A tank is a 2mm Association kit with Alclad paint (thanks to Mark 46444 for the tip) and Cambridge Custom Transfers.   The Bromine tank is my own 3d print sat on a Parkw

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