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A couple of the coaches I’m restoring had buckled or sagging rooves, so I’ve been rolling and detailing some new ones from Plastikard. It’s one of those pleasing tasks where you get the satisfaction of making something from scratch without things getting too stressful - although with brass rooves it can of course be a bit more tricky. Here's a brief illustration of what I've been doing. “So tell me dear, should I be worried?“ In retrospect, I can see why my wife was slightly concerned! But what we have here is of course just the Plastikard roof cut to shape and rolled tight around a tube. This particular tube is 3.1 cm across, and is in fact a bit of plumbing from a sink. The tube immersed in a tub of boiling hot water, left for 10 minutes and then cooled down quickly under the tap. The resulting curve works out right for the single-arc roof profile on these coaches. The Plastikard is 0.5 mm which I think is the thinnest I can get away with while still keeping it relatively sturdy. Gas piping from Alan Gibson straight brass wire (should it have been a smidgen thinner?) and lamp tops from IKB. The rainstrips are plastic strips from Evergreen. I’ve been ambivalent about grab rails on coach ends (life is hard for the railway modeller!). Partly because it can sometimes look too obtrusive on models: If you look at a real coach, it is not really something that captures the eye. And partly because I like to have my rooves removeable, and the rails gets in the way of that. So some of my coaches only have the grab rails indicated. But now I’ve decided I want it there in full, so the rooves will just have to be fixed in place. A trial fit and things look OK. But it seems I’ve gone and squashed the lamp brackets – hope I can get them straightened out! Glueing down the roof on a V2 that I finished some time ago. I kept the original roof on this one. The coach is on a flat surface with bits and pieces stuck in below to get just the right tension on the elastic bands - enough to keep it tight but not so much as to bend/damage the roof. I realize that plastic rooves are not as good as brass ones, and they require good internal support. But so far I haven't had problems with other rooves I've done in the past, so it seems to work. Go to part 4

Hello One thing that I have is tenacity. I find it very hard to give up on something, especially when that thing is a challenge. Sometimes it works against me so much that I end up getting very frustrated with it and I will admit, loosing my temper. My poor Peckett has been a victim of this, some of you know that the chassis has been rebuilt as a result of it bouncing off a door after a flight across my living room. Fortunately the chassis was salvageable afterwards and was rebuilt to working order. I use the word working order lightly as me being me I wasn't happy with the way it was working, some might be happy with the results but not me. The rear wheels were not concentric and the result was the engine had a slight wobble to it when it traveled along the track. This meant that I have now spent a full weekend on the chassis to try and correct it, the end result is what you see below... I have found that the problem lies with the 3D printed wheels. I dont know though, if its a result of the printing or the way I am assembling them but right now I have managed to get 2 wheels out of 6 I am happy with. As you can see from the photo there are a few which just did not survive the numerous assemblies and disassemblies which happened over the weekend but I am now looking to get some more wheels printed to try and get 4 that I am happy with. This does raise a few questions though... 1. Is the fault with the way I am assembling them? If so then how can I change or things to solve that problem or tweak the design to aid assembly. 2. Are the wheel rims workable with the printed rims? 3. Is 3D printing in FUD upto the quality to print the wheel centers yet? 4. Would it be better to print the wheels without a central hole and add one after fitting the rims? I do know though that it is possible to produce a working wheel using 3D printed centers, though its just not as reliable as I would have liked though right now. Having to scrap 4 to get 2 good wheels to me isnt really good enough. One thing for sure though is I am not giving up on this little engine but until I get some more FUD wheels from Shapeways through the post, its going to one side, something I would not normally do... Missy

I have been trying to answer three niggling questions: How can I fix the Bachmann chassis into the brass kit body? How can I fill the gap between the chassis and the front of the loco (see left)? Can I refit any of the little details from the original brass chassis to the Bachmann one (sand boxes and the lubricator arm)? As most of my time in this hobby is spent thinking about how to solve such problems (rather than actually doing anything) I decided, in the mean time, to see if I could deconstruct the old chassis. The old brass chassis I knew I wanted to retrieve the lubricator arm assembly and maybe the brake rigging from the old brass chassis, but I had foolishly soldered all the parts (including the axle bolts) into place. I also wanted to see if I could get the wheels off intact (for use in the future). After a bit of soldering-iron wrestling, I managed to get all the wheels, gears and motor away from the chassis. I could now strip the brass chassis back to bare metal. Paint stripping I have a range of chemicals (normally used for other household or DIY applications) that I use for paint stripping. For metals and brass, there is a chemical I use that can remove paint in a matter of minutes…Nitromors! ‘All Purpose Nitromors’ is a paint and varnish remover which I bought from Homebase or B&Q. This is one of those chemicals where you heed the warnings on the tin! This is vicious stuff! On my first trial with Nitromors (stripping white metal figures) the chemical ate through my rubber gloves and burnt my hands! It will eat plastic, so if you have any plastic detail on a model, it is very important to remove it. It will also eat any glue joints, so unless you have soldered your model together, expect it to fall apart too (such qualities can also be quite useful). I have a small metal pie-tin than I fill with Nitromors and then drop my models in (I think plastic containers are too risky). As expected, after a few scrubs with a toothbrush, the brass chassis was back to bare metal. After a good rinse and scrub with soda crystals I dropped the chassis into my sonic cleaner, which removed any remaining residue. I noticed after this step that the solder joints had become quite brittle, which makes me wonder whether the sonic cleaner was the cause (I hope not). Bachmann Chassis As the chassis appeared a bit more fragile after the ‘purge’, I decided to cut off the brake rigging (deciding that I wasn’t that precious about including it on the new chassis). I then noticed that the Bachmann chassis was actually thin enough to sit inside part of the old brass chassis frame. I decided to cut the front end of the brass chassis off and change the position of the spacers, which miraculously allowed me to refit the front end of the brass chassis around the Bachmann one, thus: filling the annoying gap at the front of the engine; creating a front mounting for the chassis; and retaining the front-end chassis detail Result! Granted, the rear section will not be quite as simple, but I will tackle this next. See my blog for further projects: GrasslandsModels.wordpress.com

I thought I would give a background to the terminus of my new build, which is based on, and called,Thurso- furthest north station in the UK. Using an actual name is of course a hostage to fortune, and some alterations to the layout have been made, but I have endeavoured to retain a degree of fidelity, albeit in the usual,for me, cramped site. The track layout is as it was in steam days, with the exception of the engine shed, which has been placed 180o to the original,and is a two road shed, as opposed to the single prototype. A photo of the model will show the general set up- the goods sidings have been reduced in length to try and keep a sense of proportion and to make shunting more practical. Some of the historical reasons for the station- a mix of actual and 4mm I'm afraid..... I have supposed that the construction of the line north of Helmsdale took a different route from reality, and carried on up the coast to Wick, providing a service to the scattered coastal communities- the interior of Caithness and Sutherland being either farmland or empty, to all practical purposes. From there it proceeded to Thurso along the actual route, with a station at Georgemas or nearby- Hoy maybe, to serve Halkirk, the only village along the way apart from Watten, also a mile or so from the railway. Once at Thurso, and over the years, a branch was put in, as was planned, to Scrabster, a port two miles from the town, and very important during the wars. This is still, on the model, rail served and a daily shunt is carried out there. There were also proposals for a line to Gills Bay, an historical crossing point to Orkney, which would have probably struggled to justify its existence, but an airfield was built at Castletown, a village that had large flagstone works, during the war, and it is interesting to imagine that this was retained as a civil aerodrome post-war, for Thurso, giving an excuse for a passenger service and scope for freight as well. The other option is to look west, to Melvich, some dozen miles away and head of the Strath that has Forsinard half way down-where large sheep sales take place each August, and once an important traffic for the railways, and the subject of a planned branch from Forsinard .As, in my world, the railway didn't venture through the emptiness of Sutherland, it would have been logical to put a line from Thurso along the north coast, where there are some small settlements, to Melvich, which could have become the mart site and a railhead for transportation of sale beasts. The building of Dounreay in the fifties along side a Fleet Air Arm airfield could also be a source of rail traffic, so with a stretch of the imagination, there is a lot of operating potential here. I have roughly sketched out where these lines would have gone here. As Thurso outgrew Wick, and generated far more traffic, I am planning having main line trains departing the station with Black Fives and a half train of coaches- to join up at Wick, along the lines of what happened at Georgemas Junction,rather than have the branch engine do the connection as actually happened, with the "proposed" branch passenger work in the hands of older engines, such as a Caley 0-4-4T or a Stanier 2-6-2T, both of which were in service at Thurso over the years. In this part of the world some Highland stock lingered on later than reality, so Small Ben's and Barney 0-6-0's can be seen, alongside some of their Caley replacements such as Pickersgill 4-4-0's and 812 class 0-6-0's. The shed at Thurso would look after their engines on a day to day basis, but Wick would remain as, historically, the larger shed with more facilities and attend to coaling and most engine servicing.The sparse main line passenger services will be added to with some local Thurso/Wick workings, with some of the 4-4-0's as motive power.Rather more intensive workings than the real thing, but IMMR after all! (and I have far too much stock....) Edit The layout thread was so compromised by the forum image loss that I closed it and might do something about it if I find the time, but a parallel thread was posted on Your Model Railway, with the same details as here, so the whole story can be found there, if in an attenuated form. Also on Western Thunder from about seven years past, again from now and again. with the same titles.

Had a couple of GWR ground signals turn up from an outstanding order a few months back so I thought I'd do a bit more work on Cheslyn. Also started installing some Spratt and Winkle couplings on some more coach stock. One day I was playing with a Vi Trains class 37 whilst working on the couplings at the same time - never a good idea. After the session I picked up the 37 and found a dirty great superglue blemish and a bit of finger tip hanging off the bodywork. This was quite a shock and I didn't know quite what to do at first, but out came the glass fibre pen. Unfortunately this fetched the original paint off right down to the white plastic shell. The situation was quickly getting dire. So out came the paint brushes and some rail blue acrylic. Unfortunately, the paint and body shell colour didn't match so out came some watered down black acrylic in a vain attempt to use a bit of weathering to hide the repair. After many hours messing about I decided to consult fellow Rmweb member Sandhill's magnificent blog and his easy to understand weathering method. The result is a follows and I'm quite pleased with the result. So a big thanks to Sandhill's. http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/42150-a-diorama-or-two-by-sandhills/ Other traction which are RTR. Note the Heljan 33 - you might ask what this is doing on a GWR branchline - but it is my favorite model and it's my trainset after all! I'm not happy now with the Vi Trains windows on the 37 and I don't have the confidence to put in a Shawplan's etched window front - any ideas out there on what I can do to improve the look without too much hacking about with the model? Suggestions will be gratefully received.

What a treat, Mike. I really like the weathering on the 37, and the loco actually looks quite in place on Cheslyn. I laughed out loud at the "bit of fingertip hanging off the bodywork" - well sorry, but it sounded funny. And of course only the modeller would think of saving the model first and the finger later :-) I'm off to browse your gallery images now.

The loco has now been painted. First several coats of dark grey (not black) paint and a red buffer beam. The Vallejo red paint covered incredibly well - two coats were enough to get decent coverage. The loco is modelled on a photo in the Bradford Barton album on Wainwright locos showing it in Southern livery, but recently renumbered with it's BR number which is still pretty clean. I added the HMRS southern lettering before doing any weathering to get this effect. The light colour streaks (Limescale?) were then added. Then several coats of thinned matt varnish, tinted with various combinations of grey and leather to give a dirty effect. I'm not sure if the area around the new numbers was repainted or just cleaned - I masked it off and painted it black. And then applied the numbers. The renumbering on the real thing must have been a rush job - the lack of symmetry is copied from the photo, and they didn't bother to give the loco a thorough clean first. Coal was added to the bunker - before varnishing so the matt varnish removes the unrealistic shiny glitter effect that you get with small lumps of coal. I'm still using a tub of crushed coal that my late Grandfather crushed and sorted. The custard tin has a best before date of 1978. And this is the loco ready for varnishing, with crew (Bachmann Scenecraft), fire irons, headcode disks and a few spare lamps. The plastic driver will be less shiny after a coat of varnish. He's staring in to space, mentally composing a letter to his ASLEF rep about his cab being full of motor.

Not my scale, not my period and not my chosen geographic area... But I love it!! When you spend such time and care to restore someone else's work, it's no surprise that your own stuff is so wonderfully evocative.

Glad to know that my blog is useful to someone . Feel free to message me or ask any questions if you need any thoughts on how to proceed.

In between the showers there has been time to make up some of those excellent Cooper Craft GWR seats: Those of you familiar with the kits will know that Cooper Craft provide a choice of end frames, the original Edwardian frame with entwined GWR crest and the more modern roundel or target version of the crest from the 1930s. The notes provided with the kits suggest one 'target' seat to two 'entwined crests'. The painting instructions that are provided suggest all over brown ‘although the crests were often seen picked out in cream'. I needed to research seat colours for the 1950/60s. As usual my starting point was that wonderful encyclopedia 'A Pictorial History of Great Western Architecture' by A Vaughan. Page 408 details the Platform Seat with Edwardian 'monogram' and polished pinewood backrests. Although only a black and white illustration it is clear that the cast iron end frames are all over dark (chocolate) brown. The wood grain is clearly visible on the seat and back rest and seems to me to be reminiscent of the deep orange brown colour of a 'pitch pine' stair case that I stripped and polished when we bought our first house in Scotland many years ago. But what colour were the seats in the British Rail era? Illustrations of Charlbury (p64) attributed to British Rail and dated 1952 show the letter 'W' picked out in cream. Castle Cary (p59) photographed by the Author in 1973 also shows the '˜W's still picked out in cream. The picture of Savernake (p133) attributed to C Maggs from 1962 is interesting because it seems to show one seat with a 'roundel' picked out in cream and another seat with 'monogram' all over 'brown'. With my railway modelling I am attempting to recreate snap shots from my childhood past. I am not tied by a particular location or time and I decided to paint 'monogram' frames with dark chocolate and 'target' frames brown with cream roundels. For the varnished wood finished seats and back rests I mixed one part GWR engine green and six parts orange lining - simply because these colours were spare and available. Waste not want not - with so many spare end frames left over from the kit I just had to make up some extra cardboard planks: The planks are all 10ft (40mm) long, the two for the back rest being 1.5 and 2mm wide, whilst the seat was scribed to represent two 2.5mm planks (5mm wide in total). I was pleasantly surprised to discover how easy it was to join the card seats with the plastic frames using MEK / Butanone. This was the first occasion that I have mixed materials and it is a technique that I will be using again in the future.

Following on from extending the board and laying the extra siding it has been necessary to add a couple of additional switches to the control panel - bottom right: The panels are made from 3mm thick high density fibre board, hardboard as I used to know it. After drawing the line of the new siding on the front of the panel the next task was to drill two pilot holes where the new switches were to be located. These initial pilot holes were gradually opened out using ever bigger sizes of drill bit, up to 7mm as required for the push button switches. Having positioned the switches it was then necessary to work on the underside of the panel and to connect up the AC supply to each switch: I used to be a civil engineer not an electronics engineer. I do like things to be tidy. All my panels are constructed around three feeds made from the copper conductors stripped out of 30amp (2.5mm) power cable used for ring mains. I then use small diameter wire with a single core so that it can be bent to shape to fit between the main conductor and the switch. I use the brown and blue conductors to supply the two feeds to single pole double throw centre off Section Switches for 'cab control'. I use the uninsulated copper earth to feed the push button switches for the point motors. This is perhaps seen more clearly in the view below which shows the underside of the completed panel with the two new switches at the top right finally connected up to the blue and white wires at the top of the picture that go off to feed the point motor. This panel is 'special' because it incorporates the Section Switches for one of the reversing loops. These switches have to be double pole double throw type switches and as well as feeds from the two cabs, there has to be a feed from the 'common return' which I have sheathed here in red. Just to add to the confusion one of the 'cabs' for the reversing loops comes from another panel - hence the black covered copper connector.

After reading this post Sasquatch was compound to tip out the contence of both scrap boxes and build the free seats for Dunster. Used srips of planking and punched the bolts thru from the rear ! Great!!

This is awsome! Hard wired to boot!! Puts my wiring jobs to shame. (To quote SWMBOsquatch). When I get the railway building built, fancy a working holiday?

Eh? I assume we are talking about brake vans? (I googled "luxury toad" and got a recipe for toad in the hole!). Looking forward to seeing that, Will :-) Couldn't agree more PR. Some of it deserves getting binned of course, but some of it deserves a second chance. Plus, it's environmentally friendly. Oh, and quick ;-) Hi Mark. I hope so. I finished the first batch some time ago so they have been running on "The bay" for a while. I had to sell them recently to finance something else, but the new batch should look good on a special train of some kind. Jim with the work you are doing in plastics of various kind I can only imagine that both rooves and coaches will look fantastic. The neatness of your carriage shed is amazing.

If it works and you're happy with the result I cannot see how your approach can be half-baked. Interestingly you say that these coaches are brass and have been glued together - many would say that's a half-baked approach but as they're still in one piece after many years of use it just shows that soldering isn't always the only way to join two pieces of metal. (If anyone wants me I'll be in the corner wearing a tin hat!) Paul.

My layout is thought to be situated on the US eastern shore in the vicinity of Maine. It is a shortline with it´s major traffic generated through the Harbour and the Car float operation. I had already made the Car float apron so now I "only" had to make a Car float . Initially I had actually wanted to use the Walthers float, but the scarcity of it and the very high prices on it made me plan a build of my own instead. As I had some plans from Sylvan scale, and a lot of pictures from the Web, it made it easy to make some plans for a Car float that would suit my needs. I like the appearance of the "Station-floats" (the ones with two tracks and a center platform), So that was what I was aiming at. I started with two big Balsa planks (it´s good to be a model airplane builder as well...), I glued them together and sawed them to shape with my band saw. And primed it with some sanding sealer before I sanded down the grain. I glued the rails to it and made the deck from 1,5 mm balsa sheet that I scribed planks in with a pencil. To make the hull plates, I used Aluminum tape and applied at all over the metal areas. I glued some mahogany strips as rubbing strakes on the hull sides. I painted the hull black and stained the deck with India Ink. I weathered the hull very heavily as it is prototypical for the timeframe. I made the railings from brass wire and the platform from wood strips. It really makes the place in the scene I think. To pull the Car float I needed a Tugboat as well. And again was the available kits very expensive... As luck would have it, I already had a Lindbergh diesel tug that I got really cheap on a sale a few years back. It is in 1:90 scale, but that doesn´t really make a difference to me. This is how it looks in original: Here is the BEDT Tug Invincible that I used as an inspiration: I sawed off the bottom of the hull to make it into a waterline model, and I replaced the bridge with a new built from styrene. I made a new chimney from brass to backdate it to steam powered. It is more like the RR tugs of the Eastern shore now. I painted it to represent a Tug that had been around for a while but not too beaten up. That concludes the ship building for this layout B), in the next installment I will concentrate on the city.