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About this blog

A blog of the various locomotive and rolling stock projects that will be seen running on my South Brent layout, covering the Great Western in 1947

Entries in this blog

DCC Troubles

This evenings modelling session was mostly focused around getting some locos fitted with decoders, starting with the locos which I am usually using for testing the layout.   Having found a handful of Lenz Gold and 1025 decoders liberated from sold diesels, it was time to get to work.   First up was to be King Henry VIII, this should have been an easy job (as per the earlier work on Nunney Castle), but for some reason it refused to work. I tried the decoder in Nunney and it worked fine, yet

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The Fatadder

Nunney Castle Renumbering the Hornby Castle

A while back I started a project to use the Hornby GWR Castles Tintagel and Wellington to convert to Berkeley and Nunney Castles.   Berkeley Castle has been covered previously, while Nunney Castle has sat waiting for me to work out how I would deal with the new design of nameplate Hornby have been using.     I started by snapping the glue connection between body and splasher, to remove the existing name plate. After slightly distressing the brass beading around the edge of the Hornby plat

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The Fatadder

King Henry VIII: Hornby renumbering Pt1

I finally managed an hour of modelling late this evening after the baby finally went to sleep, (so much for making it to the Chipping Sodbury Club as planned...) Anyway, with the weather as cold as it is, I didnt fancy a trip to the garage which means it was not possible to do the remaining work on the H26.   That left a choice between starting the A20 Large Window All First (and having to finally form that tumblehome), or renumbering my second Hornby King. Given the title of this blog post

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The Fatadder

Comet GWR H26 12 wheel diner part5

After finally getting the baby to bed at half 11 last night there wasn't much time to work on the coach, with the corridor ends, roof detail and buffers now added. I did find the castings a little poor quality, lots of flash and requiring a lot of straightening on the corridor connection.   It looks like the coach body isn't quite sitting square on the chassis yet, so that is the next task planned. Then it's a choice of sorting the interior or cutting those gas tanks to size  

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The Fatadder

Comet H26 12 wheel restaurant part 4: fixing the height

As previously discussed, I made quite an error on this coaches ends soldering the brackets too low.   Fortunately I hadn't got round to soldering the bracket to the sides so there was just the one joint to break. Once unsoldered and then cleaned up I flipped them upside down, clamped with some hair clips and soldered in place. Spacers will be used to get the floor to the correct height (although the headstocks are doing a good job on their own.   The headstocks also needed unsoldering and

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The Fatadder

A wartime Grange 6829

One of the key requirements of modelling the post war GWR is to ensure the loco fleet contains plenty of stock still in the wartime black livery. Now ideally I would have access to documents listing the last visit to the works for the GWR fleet from which I could determine if a loco had visited the works after the war or not.   Sadly I don't have anything like this, so I'm left with a combination of antidotal evidence (the black pannier), photographic evidence (Kingsbridge no. 2 BSet) and

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The Fatadder

H26 part 3 and Monster

The H26 is progressing nicely, with the chassis now almost finished and bogies fitted. Just need to adjust the 6 tanks now all of which are too long.   I also posed the h/6 against one of its Hawksworth running mates to see if I could live with the height error on a "layout coach", I can't stand the huge solebar, so I will now set to removing the brackets and rebuilding the ends using a set from my large window first.   While waiting on the glue to dry I had a play with a Kirk Monster, th

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The Fatadder

Comet H26 part 2

Tonight saw the basics of the chassis formed, everything went together well but the solebar looks very deep compared to photos.   This is made worse by an error I've made on the body, after not reading the instructions properly I've soldered the base plate flush with the bottom of the ends ?and used a shed load of solder). As such the chassis sits below the body and the solebars are even deeper still.   I'm going to have to hold the bogies tomorrow and see how it looks coupled to a Hawks

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The Fatadder

Comet H26 part 1

For a long time I have been planing to get on with the missing coaches for my down Cornish Riviera Express formation, so now I have a Comet A20 and H26 awaiting building, just requiring a C73 composite (and the purchase of a Hornby Hawksworth third) to complete the rake.   The A20 is an older kit from eBay which does not have the tumblehome formed, so this can wait until after the H26. Instead I've made a start on the H26 while I pluck up the courage to form it. I have long had a fascination i

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The Fatadder

Kingsbridge Branch No.1

The Kingsbridge Branch had two dedicated B Sets, originally E145s but changed to E140s by my period.   The basis of the Model is the old Airfix E140, recently released by Hornby in post war Hawksworth livery. Now I have no evidence as to what livery Kingsbridge No.1 should be modelled in for 1947, however there is a photo in the Model Railway Constructor showing Kingsbridge No.2 in Austerity brown. This will be the next coach project to finish off once I pick up a can of Triumph Russett Brown

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The Fatadder

Rebranding Hall, King, 72xx and WD pt2

Onto the second stage of the renumberinf project, as previously mentioned shifting the original logos was a lot harder than expected. Some varnish and weathering will be needed to finish it off.   With the original logos removed it was time to replace with HMRS transfers for the new logos. At this point I realised I had forgotten to remove the buffer beam numbers (so out with the Microsol again... While I was at it I also remembered the crest is in a different place on a Great crest Western

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The Fatadder

A start at renunbering: King, Hall, 72xx and WD

I have ran out of parts to work on the layout, so it's time to get on with some more loco work. Foolishly I have strayed from my usual approach of only buying Shirtbutton locos to rebrand to 1940s liveries, and bought a handful of Great xx Western locos.   The first two are recent Hornby releases, the King and 72xx. In both cases the microsol took longer than usual to shift, and has left a fair bit of ghosting of the old logo (much worse in the case of the 72xx.). Of course this is compoun

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The Fatadder

4292 respray pt1

A long time back I picked up a pre production Hornby 42xx l which was missing a few parts (and hadn't been painted). The original plan was to add a brassmasters chassis and convert to a Severn tunnel junction 52xx with outside steam pipes which would somehow be used on Kites Croft.   Now it's finally at the top of the pile for a conversion to a St Blazey based loco for use on Brent. The idea is that it will run on a freight working on its way to Newton Abbot works for an overhaul. (I'm temp

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The Fatadder

Slaters Toplight Third

Modelling the right mix of different coach diagrams is key to modelling the GWR, as such I have long planned to add some Toplight coaches to the fleet.   The demise of the Slatters range put something of a spanner in the works, compounded by the high cost they go for on eBay (I have already been stung by a second hand Slatters clestory kit that came with badly warped parts)   Fortunately at Wells last weekend Coopercraft had some parts available, including a pair of sides and ends and corrid

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The Fatadder

West Country Renumbering - Tavistock

Third time lucky typing this.....   One of the more unusual workings on the South Devon mainline were the route familiar trips enabling Southern drivers to maintain their route knowledge in case of diversion. A search of the internet has come across two photos of West Country class locomotives on a Plymouth Exeter stopping service hauling GWR stock on these workings (https://mikemorant.s...ves/i-5j6kmMb/A).   As ever RMWeb comes up trumps with the details (although they are somewhat lost

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The Fatadder

Detailing Hornby LMS Diner

One of the key requirements in my attempts to model enough coaches to allow the modelling of the Great Western Mainline in 1947, is the inter regional services I have touched on previously.   As such amongst my initial plans is a Plymouth - Liverpool service which was comprised of half GWR and half LMS (with the dining provision alternating between the two companies). Given that there are a few other formations which also have the alternating LMS diner, this seemed a good starting point. An

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The Fatadder

LMS diag 138 pt 2

Attention and now moved to the roof, first the rain strips and raised detail around the lamp recesses was removed with a chisel blade. I then added inserts of scrap 20 thou plastic and profiled to shape, before smoothing off with some squadron white filler.   Once sanded back, the roof vents were glued on followed by a replacement rain strip added from evergreen strip.   The second job was the interior, ratio supply the corridor and partition walls but don't give you any seats. Fortunate

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The Fatadder

Ratio LMS diag 138 CK

One of the planned formations for the layout is a Plymouth - Crew inter-regional set, this will be comprised of GW BCK (Sunshine Stock) GW CK (sunshine), GW BTK (collet bow ended) LMS BTK (period 3), LMS CK (LNWR diag 138) and LMS TK (Bachmann). The formation could also run with a restaurant (for which I should have a choice of a H33, a planned H16 70ft, and an LMS 70ft. See http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/101805-lmsgwr-inter-regional-workings/for more info   The idea is

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The Fatadder

Window Vents

With all the centenary sides in place, I've turned my attention to the Airfix break and composite's window frames.   Each composite needs 10 ventilators (of 3 different sizes) while the break needs 5, in other words a lot...   My first attempt uses 20 thou evergreen strip, a template was roughly drawn on the workbench showing where each bar should be fixed. Plastic weld was applied to the strip and then pressed into place. It sort of worked, but didn't give a good bond along the length o

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The Fatadder

Centenarys pt4

On to the corridor side, This is a bit more difficult due to the closeness of the outer windows to be he doors.   The process for the third was the same as for the compartment side, only this time I added a little extra reinforcement in the centre.   Onto the break, again the first job was to chop out the door. If I was doing this again, I would have chopped out both doors at once and swapped over (making the windows align better ) Again I started with the compartment end, followed

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The Fatadder

Centenarys pt3

the first job today was adding the final section of the break. After filling down the end to take the wider Airfix doors into account, it was glued and clamped.   This was followed by adding the compartment side to the other TK, which was a fairly smooth process which was complicated by my not paying full attention and removing the wrong side of the line. I only noticed after I glued the side on, and the plastic overhangs the window by a couple of mm. This is going to be a pain to fix!  

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The Fatadder

Centenary conversions pt2

So onto the conversions, The first step was to remove the glazing, the trick her was to glue the bits which hold the chassis in place first before breaking off the remaining window strip. Next a 12inch steel ruler was used to score along the edge of the gutter (to remove any paint and get a clean edge.) The new side was placed against the coach, with the new windows marked on. I started with the compartment side as the corridor has windows very close to the end of the side (making the side s

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The Fatadder

Centenary Conversions

Ever since I bought an Airfix Centenary break from a second hand trader at the Calne model ex as a child, I've always had a bit of a thing about Centenary coaches (and the Cornish Riviera Limited)   Whilst the Limited was formed of different coaches in my period (and gives justification to a handful of Hornby Hawksworths), the Centenary coaches were used on the London to Western services. A little selective compression based on the 1946 Maurice Earley photo, gives me a formation comprised of

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The Fatadder

Kirk Monster

Its been a few months since I last managed any modelling, but after finishing early yesterday afternoon I've managed to get a couple of hours sat out side with TMS on the radio and a beer in hand.   First up was some painting, I am determined to get my D95 breaks finished before the new Hornby model comes out (otherwise the temptation to just buy the better Hornby model and avoid the painting will be too much…) So out with a can of Games Workshop “Skull White” primer, and I now have 2 breaks,

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The Fatadder

2220 Finney build part3

Not a lot of progress over the past few days.   First up I double checked the instructions and the cab front was assembled correctly. I still agree it was a bit of a strange way of doing it though…   Unfortunately as I want to fix the boiler to the firebox before attaching to the loco (as per the instructions), I'm very limited as to what I can do now until I get the rolling bars. (I think I am right in saying the next show with GW Models in attendance is not until Expo EM in May.)   So

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The Fatadder


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