The latest of the coaches that made it to Railex but weren't quite finished is now done… barring the usual few bits waiting for some crud coloured paint.
To recap for those just joining the story, this is a Fleetline kit bought in the 1980s which has languished in my gloat box ever since. The kit has been assembled mostly 'as intended' except for discarding every whitemetal part (including the coach ends) and replacing with Plastikard.
I suspect that some readers may have been expecting me
With a little less time pressure, I thought I'd take the time to write a catch-up installment of the account of Grenville's build.
We left things with the windscreen frames and most of the front end ironwork fitted but with a remaining question mark over the access panels on the cab sides.
To finish off the ends, the lower lamp brackets were sliced off and used as a guide to drill 0.5mm holes. Into these holes were pushed some brackets cut from 5 thou N/S strip… these are probably a lot eas
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.
In a scandalous misuse of the limited time remaining before Railex, Jackie and I took the Cheltenham Flyer from Tyseley to Paddington and Back with 'Castle' class 'Earl of Mount Edgcumbe'.
The run was superb - a storming ascent of Sapperton and some fast running in both directions on the main line. 40 minutes early into Paddington and then an hour early back to Gloucester. A shame that NR couldn't find us an earlier path back to Brum so we all had to sit in Gloucester for an extra hour forlo
...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
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
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
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
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
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
A little project that I've been working on for the past few weeks...
This is an Ixion manor bought on Ebay and now sporting a partly completed Nigel Ashton milled brass 2FS chassis.
This evening was its first proper test run. South Yard is a bit too short for this sort of activity so after a few initial runs there to make sure the thing could actually move it was up to the loft to try it on the rehomed (and not very scenic) Taw Bridge where there is at least 6 feet or so of clear ru
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,
D604 is now ready for traffic. I'd like to say 'finished' but I suspect that some further attention to the chassis paintwork may still be needed.
There was one body detail issue that needed to be sorted - I was not too happy with the empty rectangular vent openings in the roof. After trying to find prototype photos to figure out how to make them more realistic I noticed that they were only visible as openings in early photos of D600 and D601. Later roof photos of these and roof photos of D60
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
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
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
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
The story so far... as regular readers may remember, we are at a point where we just about have enough locos to run the schedule at St Ruth. Recent additions from my direction prior to the Nottingham show earlier this year were a Farish Warship and a much modified Western, both in maroon.
A long time ago I promised myself that I would not be building a class 41 Warship - these were the very first WR hydraulics and were rather outside the WR's hydraulic concept, being the result of a politic
Thought it was time for some first hand research regarding what's so great about the railways of the south west...
We're in coach A
Films are by other peeps...
Wrong sea wall for St Ruth but just to show that other sea walls are available...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc5ox1tZ6sI
Signal checks on the return journey at Goodrington, Newton Abbott and Exeter meant that Britannia was putting in some serious effort by the time we got to Cowley Bridge Junction... and me wit
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
My workbench sits in a bay window that gets the full sun in the afternoon. I had a bit of modelling time on Friday but it was just too hot to be spending time sat at the workbench. Sometimes I set up in the back garden with something fairly self contained like assembling some bogie kits, but I already have several bogies assembled and waiting for coaches to make use of them.
I've been buying and building a lot of coaches recently to run on St Ruth. I've enjoyed doing this but it's always a b
I thought it was time for a few words and pictures to update folks about the latest happenings chez moi. Things have settled down to a more err... leisurely... pace since Nottingham and I've been trying to get some of those half finished projects completed and reduce the level of overcrowding in the gloat box (this never works, I know).
One item that didn't quite make Nottingham was one of two Association CCT kits. I've now finished painting it. Fetching it out for a photo reminds me that I
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.
I noticed during the first of our St Ruth test days before Nottingham that we were having to do rather a lot more loco swapping and sharing between trains than I was comfortable with. This prompted me into a re-evaluation of my gloat box to see if I could scrape together some more motive power... pronto. The first thing to make it out was a Farish warship - Hermes. This was a really minimalist conversion - wheels turned down by the Association's wheel turning service (the warship has a smaller g
