Entry posted by D869
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We set St Ruth up yesterday to test some recent work and get some photos that we've promised to exhibition managers using the layout's own lighting.
I also took the opportunity to get a move on and finish painting a couple of vehicles that I've been working on.
I mentioned the Thompson BG here a little while ago. This has now been painted in unlined Precision maroon. I didn't make any attempt to lighten the colour on this occasion because colour photos of maroon parcels vans in service often shows them looking very dark. I did the painting during the recent hot weather which caused a few problems - even though I'd thinned the paint to the usual consistency the maroon paint looked more like pebbledashing because it was drying before hitting the coach. I was able to rescue things by spraying a coat of thinners to re-wet the paint. Unfortunately while doing so I also managed to make the thing fall over so one side had to be rubbed down and resprayed.
The other vehicle is a Siphon G. This started out as a secondhand Lima model from eBay. These received good reviews when first released - the body is a good representation of the prototype and dimensionally pretty accurate. The snag is that pretty much everything below the bottom of the solebar is hopeless - heavy handed battery boxes and truss rods and bogies that are probably best described as shrunken BR1s - certainly nothing like GW pressed steel bogies. The gangways are also a pretty strange shape. Here's a photo of the Siphon. I'm not quite sure what's going on at road level though.
The solebars themselves are very good so the chassis was rectified by using a piercing saw to remove the entire 'floor' just leaving the solebars and headstocks as an empty rectangular frame. New plastikard floor pieces were then added to mount the bogie pivots, battery boxes etc. The truss rods should have been from Ultima but I managed to order the wrong size so they were scratchbuilt. The bogies are from the 2mm Association but not quite right for the Siphon - they should have shorter springs and small footsteps. I intend to replace them one day and reuse the coach bogies under some Hawksworths. New gangways were fabricated from 15 and 20 thou black plastikard.
I decided it was time for another blue vehicle after the recent run of maroon ones. Transfers for both vehicles are from resurrected Woodhead sheets. I was a bit worried about how the blank sides of the Thompson BG would look - they certainly looked very stark just after painting but I'm quite pleased with the outcome now that the lettering and handrails are in place. Finding lettering for the Siphon was a bit of a challenge and the result is probably best described as a close approximation. Many of them carried the branding 'Siphon G' in the centre of the sides but I didn't have anything suitable. My chosen vehicle (W2800W) did not have this branding by the time of a late 1970s photo, so there is at least some excuse for leaving it off.
Both vehicles will go into St Ruth's mail train. This train is not an accurate representation of the Great Western TPO because two of the necessary types of TPO are not available. Instead it is somewhat closer to the formation of 1M99 which ran later in the day and carried a single TPO (from Plymouth) and lots of vans as well as passenger vehicles. In our reality the train stands in for the Great Western TPO.
Here's a slightly wider view of the front end of our mail train. I don't know whether Thompson BGs were ever used in this way but they certainly look the part.
I also took the opportunity while the layout was set up to photograph the sleeper train in context.
EDIT: Some pictures of the chassis of the Siphon as requested by DonW. I also included the one that I built about 20 years ago. This has the old 2mm Association compensated bogies. I de-compensated mine by soldering strips across each end because that was the only way I could stop the wheels falling out. You can also compare my scratchbuilt sideframes on the old bogies with the etched ones - the older ones have the correct length springs and the smaller footboards as used on parcels stock. The older Siphon is in a sort of indeterminate dark reddish shade - if memory serves it is a mix of crimson and mucky brown but it looks more like maroon... this vehicle must have the record for being the most overdue for some lettering but I had no Siphon branding then and I still have none now.
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