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
The full brake has now been handed over to the operating department.
The painting sent somewhat less than smoothly (this is normal for me). A coat of Halfords primer from a can was followed by an airbrushed coat of precision maroon. This went on very well and I was very happy with the nice smooth satin finish... except... there were a couple of bits of dust that embedded themselves into the finish in quite a prominent place.
I thought the best option would be to remove the offending
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
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
A little 'photo op' that I'd been planning since I found out that St Ruth and St Blazey would both be appearing at last weekend's Swindon show.
The inspiration was a John Chalcraft photo that I bought when I was building D6309. It shows the real D6309 at St Blazey in 1969 in front of what appears to be a duff Duff. The same photo is also the inspiration for the weathering job on my model.
http://railphotoprints.uk/p737470212/h3AAF2938#h3aaf2938
My attempt at something similar. Gettin
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
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
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
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
By popular request (well, one person anyway), I will occasionally post an article describing one of my earlier projects. This one is about my bubble car and its trailer.
If you think that this is to fill in when I don't have much to say about active projects, then I couldn't possibly comment…
The bubble car is the mainstay of the passenger service to South Yard (there isn't room on the layout for anything more). The model is 'based on' a BH Enterprises kit and a Kato chassis that I pic
... 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
It’s been a while since my last posting in which I was having a fairly trying time persuading the Atlas chassis to look like a model of something that has been made in Glasgow rather than the U.S. The news is rather better now, I’ve been gradually ticking things off my list of jobs and the loco is now stripped down and ready to go to the paint shop.
A few more details…
The Bogies
You may remember from my previous posting that I hadn’t been able to get hold of the Wo
...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
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
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
The Tutbury Supermeet has come and gone. I'd like to thank John Aldrick and his helpers for organising a very enjoyable day.
I spent most of it operating South Yard but had plenty of interest all day and by mid-afternoon I started to lose my voice because I'm not used to nattering quite so much. An unsuspecting Anthony Yeates asked if I'd mind him taking some photos and was promptly saddled with minding the layout for a few minutes while I nipped off to the Association shop and had chance to
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
I've been making bits for the shunting tractor for a while now (the one in the video in the previous post is just for testing). For the most part it will be scratchbuilt and it's a bit of a case of making up the plan as I go along... never having built a model of a wheel loader before.
The cab sides and engine cover sides have been cut out from two bits of 5 thou brass soldered together... actually they are not yet fully cut out. Somehow I hope to assemble these into a three dimensional thin
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
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
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
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
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
Progress continues on the class 22, but at a rather slower pace now that I'm working on the detailing of the nose ends. There's a lot to do here (and it still isn't finished) and it's definitely a place at which the Worsley Works scratch-aid kit becomes more scratch than aid.
The Prototype
The nose is another place on the class 22 where a lot of detail variations appear. I won't attempt to cover all of them here. The most obvious is the presence or absence of headcode boxes. These were n
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
