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
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
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
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
Yesterday I took all of my various Hayle related bits and pieces to the Supermeet/Skills day at Chelford. It was a great day but it's fair to say that I was ready for some sleep by the time I got home again.
I got a bunch of my research photos printed by one of the online companies. I hadn't actually realised just how many I'd managed to hoover up while researching Hayle. The ones that fitted into the display hangers were probably less than half of the ones printed... and there were sti
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
Regular readers may have observed a certain 'theme' to some of my wagon building over the past few years and perhaps even wondered about the reason behind my seemingly incessant fixation with tank wagons.
It's not a huge secret that I've been intending to do something based on what most people in our community will know as 'Hayle Wharf', so here, finally is the start of it.
There are actually several wharves at Hayle, so I've decided to use the more specific name 'Hayle North Quay' as th
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.
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 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
... 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
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
Oh dear!
It looks like my Hymek won't be appearing at Warley.
The Hymek developed an issue a few months back with one of its wormwheels skipping on the worm. I think it had been happening for a while before I figured the problem out. The upshot is that the wormwheel teeth have been rounded off making the problem worse. I'd temporarily solved it prior to Kidderminster by swapping the bogies end to end, the intention being to keep it going while I got hold of a spare gear. Unfortunately no
Some considerable time ago I invested in a couple of Chris Higgs' Maunsell coach kits. It was a bit of an impulse buy - I've always fancied having a north Cornwall 'P' set even though it doesn't fit with my usual core themes. Having languished in the gloat box ever since, I decided that South Yard's appearance at the upcoming (err... tomorrow) Supermeet at Tutbury was a good prompt to actually get them built.
As with all things, time ran short so they are not exactly 'finished'. They still l
...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
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
