There has been quite a lot of activity chez mois in preparation for St Ruth's forthcoming appearance at Nottingham, mainly on the buildings front as those watching the St Ruth blog will have seen. This has meant something of a hiatus in areas like locos and rolling stock because once I get started on these the buildings won't get a look in.
Those who saw St Ruth at the Oxford Expo in 2010 may have noticed a lack of many things including (but not limited to) coaches. This show came at an awkw
I thought I would introduce South Yard by concentrating on what it is for so here is a picture of South Yard set up in the holiday cottage that we rented last week for our half-term holiday on the North York Moors.
I don't claim any originality in any of South Yard's ideas (or the title of this posting) - the main inspiration came from David Mallott's 'Chapel Wharf', particularly his idea of having a layout that could easily be taken on holiday to provide entertainment in case of inclem
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
The full brake is ready for the paint shop, all bar a few bits of fettling.
I don't intend to write a blow by blow account here - after all the kit comes with instructions, so I'll stick to the main places where I have gone 'off piste'.
Unlike David 71's build, I opted for using solder for all of the brass to brass joints. I stuck to cored electrical solder plus Carrs Green Label flux because I find this stronger and less messy than using lower melting point solder pastes.
Footboards
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
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
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
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
Progress continues on the class 22, albeit rather more slowly now that the days are longer and I'm often out and about enjoying the nice weather for more of the evening.
This posting is rather an interim update to say that "I'm still here" rather than a blow by blow account of particular bits of the model, mainly because I don't think that I've done much that is really 'finished' since last time. No photos either, because the appearance really hasn't changed noticeably.
Attention has now
The body gains its buffer beams, valences and roof panels.
... and I promise to write about something else one day
Buffer Beams
As far as I can tell the method of assembly intended by the Worsley Works kit involves two false cab floors to be soldered to the main body and a separate chassis built around a floor unit with two cutouts, presumably for motor bogies. The floor unit and the cab floors have etched holes, so I guess that the idea is that they should be bolted together. The si
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
It Lives!
This is a quick update with some good news about my class 22 - this afternoon postman brought me an Atlas MP15DC that will provide the chassis for the class 22.
It had taken about 5 weeks to arrive from New Jersey. I was rather beginning to think that it was never going to arrive and wishing that I'd just found a nice Farish class 20 like everybody else does.
Naturally, being a patient sort of chap, after a fairly cursory test to make sure that it wasn't dead, the body was
The roof detail goes on...
Choice of Prototype
So far I hadn't really done anything that had limited the choice of loco that I could build, but on reaching the roof that was about to change because this is one place where there were lots of variations.
The pilot scheme locos D6300-6305 were ruled out because they had a different layout for the louvres and doors on the sides and would need a different body etch. They also had a much simpler roof layout than the production series locos
Fitting the Cabs
To recap from the previous installment... I think that the cab sides need to taper slightly inwards from the doors to the nose, but the kit seems to assume that this doesn't happen.
I took some dividers and marked 0.5mm in from the widest part of the nose ends. I filed down to these marks and then continued the filing down to the buffer beam level, checking with a square that the edge was truly vertical. The photo below shows a modified end compared with the original sti
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
Look at a few photos of trains in Devon and Cornwall in the 1960s and the chances are that you will see class 22s cropping up quite often. Although they were regarded as probably the least successful of the WR diesel hydraulics, they were a key part of the scene in the South West and I needed at least one of them if my stock was going to be representative of my chosen location and period.
That’s easy to say but the problem was how to create a model of a class 22 – the number of louvres o
Another quick update on the progress with this build.
As you might have seen in my holiday post, a second tank wagon seems to have sprung into being, the idea being that it's not much more effort to paint two of these than it is to paint one... well, that's the theory anyway.
Rather than yet another progress photo of a wagon slightly less incomplete than last time, I thought I'd look at another little conundrum.
Having finally got two wagons ready for painting (somehow there always s
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
