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I acquired some Modelmaster etched plates a while ago with a view to renumbering and renaming some of my GWR and WR locomotives, but as always I didn't really do my homework beforehand. My intention had been to rename my Hornby model of 7029 Clun Castle as Barry Castle, but as soon as I got the plates and took down my copy of Holden & Leech's book on the Castles, it seemed that this wasn't a good decision. My model of Clun Castle was double-chimneyed, and (as far as I can tell - it's a minefield!) Barry Castle never got a double chimney. On the other hand, I did have Hornby's model of 5068 Beverston Castle and this was a single chimney model with the right type of cylinder casing and the mechanical lubricator in the right position. It did have the shorter type of superheater cover on the smokebox, though, whereas the photo of 7012 in Holden & Leech shows it with the longer superheater cover. Since I wasn't sure about replacing the superheater cover, I let the plates rest for the time being. At last week's Manchester show, though, I found a nice set of white metal castings for GWR superheater castings, including the long type. Job on! It turns out that the Hornby superheater moulding pops off very easily, leaving just a pair of locating mouldings which can be filed down and addressed fairly easily - I didn't have to hack the whole thing off with a knife, as I'd feared. As far as I can tell, by the way, if there's a long superheater on the driver's side, there shouldn't be any visible part on the fireman's side - can anyone confirm? Changing the name proved to be a bit more of a pain than I'd realised. I began to hack away at the name above the splasher on the Hornby model, thinking it would be plastic, before sussing that the whole name, mounting and front splasher is all one sturdy etched metal part. Eventually I removed the entire part (not easy in itself), then trimmed off the name and its mounting plate and then filed the splasher back to a clean curve, before fixing the new name and mounting in place. All in all a bit more work than I'd anticipated, and the splasher mounting still needed to be painted and lined. I'd call this as one of Hornby's occasionally odd design decisions, since it does make the work of renaming quite a bit trickier than one might like. To compound matters, my HMRS lining wasn't a good fit to the Fox etching. You can't just fix the Modelmaster plates over the old, either, since there's a bit of a dimensional disagreement between the two. Since I want to renumber all my Castles, for variety, I'll have to see if there's an easier way to do it. I wanted Barry Castle to look like a working locomotive, so Oonce I'd sorted out the nameplates, I weathered 7012 using various brush-applied weathering products, before removing anything I didn't want with wet and dry cotton buds. Personally I quite enjoy not using an airbrush as it means I can get a loco up and running in an hour of easy work, whereas the airbrush needs a lot of preparation and fiddling. And then I always end up adding extra weathering layers anyway, since I find a pure airbrushed finish, at least under my hands, doesn't quite get close to the grimy/oily look I like. I wouldn't dream of weathering a diesel this way, though. It might seem an odd thing to do, by the way, but for steam locomotive boilers I like to add a layer of "kerosene" to the final finish which to my eye imparts the merest blueish tint, suggesting a combination of oil and the reflection of the sky. I don't know what you'd called this level of dirt - it's obviously not ex-works, but it isn't truly filthy either. The lining is still visible and the base coat is still obviously green rather than some obscure shade of mucky brown. Maybe a loco that's being pressed into hard service during the summer months, half way between overhauls? cheers, and thanks for reading.

Finally got water fall finished in new mountain. Looks OK I think. Took advantage of roof repairs and got my son to take a few overal photos.

I have mentioned before in this blog that my layout includes an 009 narrow-gauge section. Most of this section does not need changing in order to fit in with my revised 19th-century timeframe but, a long time ago (1980), I built a 'Centre Models' kit of a Leek & Manifold 2-6-4T, of which the prototypes appeared in 1904. Whilst not quite fitting my new era, it is a handsome locomotive that I had never got to run well, so I decided to re-build the chassis. A body kit is still available from Meridian Models The original kit included a fret of nickel-silver valve gear, which was extremely fiddly to construct and get working. Alas, all my efforts were soon undone by the unsatisfactory white-metal chassis supplied in the kit. This soon warped and, in the process, destroyed the valve gear, which I could not face re-constructing at that time. More recently I saw a small 'Roco' engine being sold fairly cheaply, which had working outside gear. I had read that this chassis is not considered to be very reliable in heavy use but, nevertheless, I decided to see if I could use under the L&M body. My method is to take photos of the parts I wish to fit together over a sheet of graph paper, as a scale reference. I have the camera fixed on a tripod, so that all the photos are at the same scale. I then overlay the images in a photo-editor (I use 'Photoshop Elements') to check clearances and to see where any parts need to be modified. I find this method of creating a 'visual impression' of how the parts will fit suits me better than trying to make detailed drawings. It was clear that, with a little trimming of the underframe, the 'Roco' chassis could be fitted and give a reasonable impression of the original loco. I even found that there were suitable attachment points for the existing pony wheels and trailing truck. I adapted the motor mount, by fitting a flex grip from a British 13A plug across the side mounting points, and re-wired, omitting the DCC adapter board. (My layout is DC only) It all went together surprisingly easily and proved to run very smoothly at nice low speeds. Now, it must join the queue for re-painting, once I have got the hang of my new airbrush. It probably won't find a home on my current layout but I do enjoy watching the outside valve gear working, as in the following animation. Mike

It's finished! All detailing added and I've even risked my own hands with an airbrush to give it a basic weathering ahead of the Peterborough BRM show Here's a few snaps Pretty pleased, just got to clean the wheels and sort out the chuff frequency on the sound chip. Note cut down Bachmann coupling to allow for the vac pipe on the front buffer beam. The original 93000 will be prepared for sale at the show (or after). I will be including a copy of the Hornby mag that it appeared in and a copy of the original weight drawing along with the loco, so if anyone fancies a complete one off for their BR Standards collection, come and see me on Summat Colliery at the show. Offers around £200.

Spent a little session on the Hunslet this morning fitting the DCC decoder and wiring up the speakers. I had already fitted the speakers into the tanks and the chip went in the bunker. I am only going to wire up one speaker, the other is there as a spare as although it would be possible to get to them it would not be easy. The only thing that won't fit in the bunker is the capacitor which I have put up in the top of the fire box. I have run the wires below the foot plate inside some black heat shrink so although not invisible they will hardly be noticeable from normal viewing angles. Only real frustration now though is that I intend to keep it as DC until it is properly run in as I have found it is all too easy to blow up a chip with the usual teething problems of a new mechanism.

A little more progress with the Metro Tank. I have now made some of the boiler fittings (Dome and Safety Valve cover). Unfortunately, I do not possess or have access to a lathe so these have been turned up in an electric drill using needle files. To produce the parts, I used an electric drill, a vice (big enough to hold the drill), various needle files, wet and dry emery paper, and a vernier caliper. The material used is 1/4" round bar, chosen because the widest point on the Dome (the larger of the two parts) was about 1/4" diameter in 2mm scale. I mounted the electric drill in a vice and made sure that it was stable and wouldn't move. A short length of brass bar (about 2") was mounted in the chuck and the whole piece blackened with a permanent marker - this allowed me to mark the top and bottom of the part to be turned up (I also marked the extent of the narrowed portions so that I didn't take off too much material). The drill mounted in the vice, the turning of the dome is well underway. Illustration of how I held the file so that if it snagged in anyway there was no danger of the handle of the file from going into my hand or wrist. You should also ensure that you have no loose fitting clothes or hair that could get caught in the spinning drill too!!! After the parts have been turned to shape, they were separated from the bar, then the flat bottom of the parts were filed and sanded to shape so that they would sit comfortably on the eventual boiler - to complete this, a piece of emery was wrapped around a boiler diameter sized piece of brass tube and the base of the part rubbed back and forth until a satisfactory fit was achieved. The parts were offered up to a piece of boiler sized tube on a regular basis to ensure that they would sit vertical and snuggly. The completed parts along with the mandatory coin to illustrate the finished articles (the top hat shaped piece will eventually form the vacuum cylinder below one of Richard Brummitt's GWR Siphon kits. Ian

Took a few snaps last night of my new 93001 next to the original one I built six years ago. Thought they would be of interest Shows how short 93000 was with the Stanier boiler rather than the BR3 from the 73xxx

By popular request (well, one person anyway), I will occasionally post an article describing one of my earlier projects. This one is about my bubble car and its trailer. If you think that this is to fill in when I don't have much to say about active projects, then I couldn't possibly comment… The bubble car is the mainstay of the passenger service to South Yard (there isn't room on the layout for anything more). The model is 'based on' a BH Enterprises kit and a Kato chassis that I picked up from MG Sharp at the Warley show a few years ago. I picked the Gloucester class 122 variant (without headcode boxes) for my model. There are some photos by John Vaughan of 55016 on the Looe branch on railcar.co.uk, so it's a reasonable match for my chosen period. This was a fortunate choice because Dapol have gone for the class 121, so at least my bubble car doesn't look the same as the off-the-shelf model. As far as I can tell, the trailer cars were nowhere near Devon or Cornwall by 1970, but the trailer was part of the kit so I modelled a Pressed Steel one that would have frequented the branches West of London. BHE have continued the range of kits previously produced by Fleetline and MTK before them. At the time I bought it, I didn't know of any other DMU kits and the Dapol bubble car was probably not even a gleam in anybody's eye. I'd built several of these kits in the past, so I knew their strengths and weaknesses. The kits provide an opaque plastic floor, roof and clear plastic sides. There are etched overlays for the sides, moulded plastic bogies and whitemetal ends and underframe details. The kit provides no real help with fitting any kind of drive unit. The whitemetal castings were hopeless in MTK days and they were still hopeless when I bought my kit, so they went in the bin without further ado. Most of the rest of the kit is quite reasonable, although the accuracy of the BHE floor mouldings was pretty poor on my example and needed remedial work by shaving with a chisel (the old MTK/Fleetline ones were better). Having binned the end castings, I had given myself quite a lot of work to create some new cabs. These were made up from a solid multi-layer sandwich of 40 thou plasticard which was then drilled, filed and carved until the right shape was achieved. Quite a lot of work, but I was pretty happy with the end result. I also tried fabricating an end using some thinner plasticard and a sort of composite plasticard structure behind it to create the right shape. This turned out OK as well, so I used it on the trailer car. Since then I've discovered that Worsley Works sell etched DMU ends that would have saved me a bunch of effort. Such is life. The Kato chassis was intended for some sort of Japanese railcar, so it had a nice low profile and partial mouldings of seats on top too, which was useful. I had to chop a few mill from each end to make it fit lengthways. Widthways I think I needed to shave some thickness from the back of the sides and I probably also cheated a little by setting the bottoms a little further apart than they should really be. The chassis uses a split axle design with pinpoint bearings. If memory serves, it also had traction tyres which meant that it wasn't a good candidate for the 2mm Association wheel turning service, so I had to improvise. My re-wheeling solution involved the use of some very old 2mm Association coach wheels on 1mm axles. These have brass backs for most of their diameter with an insulating boss around the axle. I hammered some 5 amp fuse wire flat (and very thin) and soldered this to the back of the wheel. I then poked the end of it into the axle hole, pushed the axle in and then assembled these onto the Kato gear muffs. The result is not perfectly true, but it does the job. The detail on the Kato chassis was filed away and representations of class 122 underframe equipment from plasticard were added instead. Likewise, the Japanese bogie detail was filed off and plasticard overlays added to produce something resembling a British DMU bogie. Test running showed that the chassis was a little 'skittish' but could be calmed down nicely by adding some weight. The snag was that there wasn't anywhere to hide the weight so I wound up having to put a piece of lead sheet it in the roof space. This means that the centre of gravity is rather higher than I would like so the ride is probably a bit rock and roll. One final bit of pain was attaching the etched sides. This is done after everything is painted, but from past experience I've struggled to find an adhesive that will fix brass to MTK or BHE clear plastic and is both neat and permanent. For the bubble car I used 24 hour epoxy. This has held so far, but judging the right amount proved very difficult. On one side of the trailer car I used too much and it oozed out onto the paintwork before setting. I have no idea how to rectify this so the trailer car now always presents the same side to the audience to hide my mistake. The cab windows were flush glazed by cutting clear plastic sheet and gradually filing it to fit. This takes a lot of time but I don't know of any way to get better results. The trailer cab is still awaiting glazing and grab rails. I'll get around to it one day. I couldn't find anything suitable for the 2 digit headcodes - these use a different (taller, thinner) font from the 4 character ones so I got hold of a free font editing tool on the Internet and created my own font by tracing around some scanned photos. This was then printed to the right size, sprayed with clear lacquer and stuck to the DMU with a frame made from 5 thou plasticard stuck on top. So now I have a bubble car to run the passenger services to South Yard as well as occasional trips to the seaside on the branch service at St Ruth. It's quite easy to pick faults with it (there are plenty), but I'll gloss over that. It will probably be mistaken for an RTR model by some observers, but at least I know that it took a lot more time and care than that.