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Preparing for Missenden


GWMark

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It's less than two weeks to go before the Missenden Abbey Spring Railway Modellers weekend. This year, in a break from tradition I am booked on the painting and lining course with Ian Rathbone. My chance to learn to finish my models from probably the best around. Although rather daunting I am looking forward to hopefully gaining some new skills. To this end I thought I should try to finish a few items to the state that I can try to paint them at Missenden, time allowing.

 

My Black Hawthorn was already finished, or so I thought until I decided to clean it up ready for primer. It was then I notice I had failed to add the two T handle from the valves on the dome. So I drilled through the cab front and added these out of some bits of 0.45 brass wire.

 

Next on my list was the Neilson, that I knew needed some more work to complete the cab detail, break gear and under frame. So I spent the last evening or so working on the cab detailing, I decided the under frame could wait, it was the body the I was more interested in painting. I believe that I now have the Neilson complete above the footplate. It needs the brake gear to the rear to be added, the clack valves below the footplate and some taps on the cylinder fronts.

 

blogentry-7152-0-50322600-1487723831_thumb.jpg

 

Next on my list of items to add those finishing touches to are my NuCast steam rail motor and the Duke.

 

The steam rail motor needs some steps made up to replace the broken, and frankly not very convincing white metal ones. The real thing had complex folding steps on the passenger doorways to allow passengers on and off at locations without platforms. The white metal versions in the kit, which have since broken, where very simple and not a good representation of the original. There were also steps on the buffer beams to allow the crew to change the lamps etc. The kit makes no provision for these, but I am hoping I can adapt some etches intended for guards vans to represent these. The roof needs fair bit of cleaning up, but this could be done later, since the main body could be painted without the roof.

 

The Duke needs a top feed, clack boxes, smokebox dart, lamp irons, cab interior fittings, whistles and handrails. The later being a bit of a pain since there are no handrail knobs positions marked on the kit. I also need to replace the middle step tread on the rear tender steps, sadly I was attaching it with the RSU and sneezed, the result was that the delicate half etched tread pretty much vaporised. Something I will have to learn to avoid in the future.

 

Hopefully I will have time to get all these things sorted before Missenden. Then I need to think about priming all or some of them so that I can apply top coat at Missenden. Perhaps I should have started my preparations somewhat earlier!

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Have you thought of the Dart Castings etch for the folding steps?  Their kit DK1 is intended for the old Airfix trailer but doubtless has other applications.

 

Chris 

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Thanks Chris

Have you thought of the Dart Castings etch for the folding steps?  Their kit DK1 is intended for the old Airfix trailer but doubtless has other applications.

 

Chris 

I shall take a look at that.

 

Mark

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Hi All,

 

Chris beat me to it with the Dart Castlings kit suggestion! I will second that though, I have 3 of them, one used on a Comet Hawksworth kit, one use in its natural environment on an old Airfix version and another to be used on my etched version of No. 92! Usual disclaimer recommendation from me.

 

Nice Modelling by the way!

 

All the best,

 

Castle

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We'll miss you in the 4mm loco building group...

 

Has Ian sent out any pre-course material or requirements?  From what I recall from dropping into his room on several previous weekends is he has you preparing practice panels for the first part of the course, to ensure you are confident in smoothly and evenly applying a base coat of paint to a flat surface.

 

It's only later on you're let loose on a real live model. 

 

Cheers

Flymo

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We'll miss you in the 4mm loco building group...

 

Has Ian sent out any pre-course material or requirements?  From what I recall from dropping into his room on several previous weekends is he has you preparing practice panels for the first part of the course, to ensure you are confident in smoothly and evenly applying a base coat of paint to a flat surface.

 

It's only later on you're let loose on a real live model. 

 

Cheers

Flymo

Thanks Flymo,

 

I'll be there in part at least, Daniel is still doing 4mm loco building, so he will make his presence felt and I will no doubt be dropping in.

 

Yes, Ian has sent out notes and plain panels do figure. I suspect I am possibly trying to hard to get as many things "finished" as possible, but it's good to get things done and I would rather have too many things than waste the opportunity.

 

It's surprising how much you can get done when you have a deadline! All those projects you put aside thinking, "that's almost done, I'll just spend an hour sometime to finish it". When you get it back out again, like I am now, it takes days to finish it off, my Duke being a case in point.

 

See you next Friday

Mark

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