Leaderboard

The kitchen fitters have been and gone and the lounge is more or less done apart from the delivery of two 2-seater sofas. Think the kids have been playing with the TV channel, could have sworn I was watching Top Gear .... The gas fire is in and connected to it's chimney. Just waiting for the decorators to arrive and paint the interior of the coach walls then some tasteful artwork can be hung

Gwrrob asked to see my photo's from last weeks trip to the Severn Valley Railway. So I've decided to start a new blog and post photo's from my various visits to Heritage sites. I usually visit at least two a year. Last weeks visit was my first to the SVR and I was very, very impressed. Absolutely everything was done to the highest standard. I cannot recommend a visit more. We'll start with the motive power for the day. GWR 0-6-2T 5643, seen here going to take on coal at Bridgenorth. GWR 2-6-2T Small Praire 4566 simmers away at Kidderminster. GWR Churchward 2-8-0 2857, passing at Hampton Loade. There was plenty of other motive power to spare. Just in case..... I was very impressed with the Engine House visitor centre at Highley. If only more heritage lines has places like this. The view from the Engine House restaurant balcony was rather nice. Highley Station Hampton Loade Station. I was quite taken by the Great Northern coach set.

I mentioned I bought a wagon from Dragon Models. Well decided to give it a go, and have a little break from the locos. This wagon was bought to go with some other wagons I have. And others I want to get. My idea is to build up a farm moving train. I have the machinery wagons, a horsebox to these I want to add a few more, which will include a box van and some cattle wagons. These would also be able to be used individually too. This is what you get in the box (well poly bag). First impression is that the castings are clean and the etches are tidy. Following the instructions I make the platform first. This went together very well, all seems to fit nicely. The details on the end I have left off the roping eyes until after painting. Here I have fitted what I think are called buffer gaurds. I decided as this model is for me, I added some rivets on the bottom flange on the sides and the buffer beam brackets. After what seemed an eternity I have one side plate ready for fixing to the floor. I thought a wagon that was just a bent floor on to frames would be quick to build. How wrong can you be. Just need to repeat this on the second side. As an edit I added this picture of the brake lever. The final part today was just to rest the two parts together to see what it will look like in the future. It is actually longer than I expected.

Hi, We managed to fit in an evening working session last week and after finishing off the front fascia's it was time to profile them so that they followed the scenery on the front of the layout. We set about marking the terrain profile on the inside of the fascia boards, then removed them and carefully cut the profile with a jigsaw using a very fine blade so that we wouldn't splinter the ply. Once we had re-attached the fascia's to the boards, we packed out any gaps between the scenery and the ply with 'blue roll', then covered with some strips of modroc which was laid over the top of the profiled ply. As the weather has been so dry and warm, this set almost before we'd got it smoothed down and in place. I was a little concerned it wouldn't bond very well to the ply but all seemed to be fine and the end result looked very promising. We have another work evening scheduled for Wednesday this week and we hope to be able to finish off the other two boards completing the basic scenery closest to the viewing public. We can then start working on the other side of the lines and start putting together the laser cut retaining wall and embankments. Cheers, Mark.

This project is throwing up a few things that even a much experienced (which I am not!), railway modeller might find new and unusual. OK a military modeller might not but be put out by such things as sand bags, shells and barbed wire but even then I need them in far greater quantities than a 12 inch square diorama would need. I have found a few articles on making sandbags on the net but they tend to recommend using Miliput. Now Miliput is something I have a bit of a hate - hate relationship with - I do use it because I haven't found anything else but really don't like it! Anyway, with the quantities of sandbags I need it would be prohibitively expensive. So, I have been having a go with DAS. And here are the results. They are sat on the cardboard moulds I made which I rolled a rough sausage covered in clingfilm into to make a sort of rectangular strip. I then cut them to length with the back of an old blade to squidge it a bit then pinched up the end to represent the tie. One unexpected result of the two layers of card I used was to produce a seam along the middle which, although it looks like a moulding mark which should be removed is in the exact place that the seam would be on a real bag. I do like the squidginess of the bags which means you can make them flop into position in a very realistic fashion. After the wall had dried and all the bags fell apart I did realise that a spot of PVA is needed while building them up. This is still a pretty slow way of doing things though so am going to try to make some cookie cutter type things out of brass to get the lengths the same or even to cut out in one piece from a large rolled sheet. I am also wondering about the possibilities of my daughters PlayDo Ice cream machine! I have now painted them and are looking rather good but not got around to a picture yet. Am still not completely happy with the dimensions though so not going to get too carried away just yet. We are off to Holland and Belgium in a few weeks and I have managed to negotiate a couple of days around Yypres so should be able to get a few pointers there.

So the fitting out of the coach begins, thanks to Keefer for supplying loads of info on MkI interiors etc - so we now have somewhere to bathe and the "1st class" sleeping compartment has a bed. The plan is to have bunk beds in the remaining two sleeping compartments with room for storage etc. Kitchen fitters have yet to turn up and fit the bespoke oak topped units

I managed to get a couple of sessions in this weekend and with the warm weather, the PVA dried off quickly and we have the basic landform done. Couldn't resist a few wide angle shots in the back garden today with my new phone Can't put of that ballasting for much longer!

Made a start today on the camping coach for 4gig. I'd already donated a section of the interior of a Lima mkI, so I set about the remainder with a razor saw. The remaining compartments will be a bathroom and 3 bedrooms, so the seating had to go. I then filed the remains of the seating from the compartment sides taking e molded taper away at the same time. You can see one compartment to go in the pic - showing the amount of material removed. Next steps will to be to fabricate a new floor and compartment walls from card. I have ordered some quarter scale dolls house furniture from America to fill the spaces Scalescenes interior textures have been downloaded for wooden floors, rugs etc Should be a fairly quick makeover (he says)