Leaderboard

First some background information obtained from Edward Grimble : “The company Grimble & Son Ltd is started in 1886 by John Grimble. He was mentioned as a carpenter in the St. James, Northall, Parish register. John Grimble started the company at his address at Orchard Road, where he had a workplace and did carpenters work for the local community. These works could vary from trimming a cart up to making a shed. His company grow out to a building contractors and merchants firm. He opened a warehouse at Anchor Street (now Dock Road) in 1897. Charles Grimble and his brother Frederick took over the firm in 1927. In 1955 his brother Frederick is leaving the firm. Charles son Edward is joining the firm and the firm’s name is from that time on: Grimble & Son Ltd. In 1959 they decided to build a new warehouse to have better access with road goods vehicles. The warehouse at Dock Road is now still in use for storage but will be closed when the new warehouse is totally finished. The company is at present involved by the renovation of Northall’s second war damage.” Model: The building is built in my useable way. Using a picture as a reference and searching for textures on the internet. Creating the textures in Publisher, save them as PDF and printing on the highest quality. Brickwork is from Scalescenes. The warehouse needs absolute some weathering and a roof. I’m considering some metal roofing. Now I have finished all the fronts and having received my missing figure from Dart Casting I can start finishing the interior of the warehouse. I also can go on with finishing the road in front of the warehouses. Regards, Job

It has been a while since the last post. Things have progressed but I have had trouble with mail going to and from the UK so decided not to send anything until The parcels sent were received and some I was due arrived. This means I have missed selling this for Christmas. So progress is slow due to loss of interest. All this also means other projects are delayed through lack of parts. Back yo the gronk. The painting is done the transfers are on. Everything sealed with satin varnish. For a tin box on wheels I think it looks quite good. As you can seethe body is only resting on the footplate, honest it does fit together better. Reassembly has been a nightmare. Things were close before the paint, but afterwards nothing wanted to move. So each wheel, crank, crankpin, coupling rod etc. was fitted, refitted and fitted again before it condesended to move. I just need to detail the cab interior a little then the two halves can become a whole. As you can see I have got the pickups to rub on the tops of the wheels withsuch a lovely large space at the top there is no chance of shorts on the body. I like to do them this way on tank locos too, if I can. It is easier than feeding them through the brakes snd sand pipes. I have done a little more since the photos but I will post that on the next post hopefully the gronk wil be completed.

After doing a quick track test using real wooden sleepers and plastic chairs, I’ve done another quick test track. This time I’ve painted the sleepers and used sand rather than Chinchilla dust to ballast it. I actually mixed some paint in to the PVA and water mixture that I soaked into the sand to glue it down. This coloured the sand slightly to stop it being too “sandy” in colour. There are a few final details to attend to, such as painting the chairs and the rails. I was also a little too generous with the solvent glue, so some of the plastic chairs have melted a little, loosing their definition. Overall, I’m pretty pleased with how it has turned out. In the final picture you can see how it compares with the EasiTrac/FineTrax system (which is in it’s unpainted form). I think that even though my way is a lot more labour intensive and involves more components, the result is actually worth it. Being able to ballast before putting the rails down makes everything a lot easier. The EasiTrac/FineTrax systems actually result in very neat and perfect track, and we know that things aren’t always perfect in real life. By using real wooden sleepers there are natural variations in the sleepers and they aren’t always perfectly in line. This only adds to the realism of the overall look. You can read this and all previous blog posts at blog.murderonthetracks.co.uk

Repainting of my stock after I made the decision to change my modelling period has begun. The first batch of rolling stock to be completed are five Parkside Dundas 7mm vans. The camera has failed to pick up the weathering particularly well. They are dirtier than they appear, the variations in the shades of grey give a hint of which ones are more heavily weathered.

Evening Bit of an update on the Px48 build after spending three days in Cambridge on a course I've had the day off and in between things have managed to make some good progress fitting brass bits I've cut out. Sorry about the photos-they're quick workbench shots taken with my HTC. Here's a front view showing the roof profile: px48 12-12-2013 004 by kettering15b, on Flickr On the loco I've added some thin brass overlays to the top of the cylinder casings and on the lower half of the firebox as per the prototype. I've also tried to thin the front steps down as well and add chequer plate overlays sourced from the Mainly Trains etch. px48 12-12-2013 006 by kettering15b, on Flickr Here's a view of the loco and tender together. You'll notice I've cut away the tender cab roof plastic and just used the brass overlay I made to get that thinness to the edges: px48 12-12-2013 007 by kettering15b, on Flickr The tender needs some new wheels and I'll adjust the ride height slightly to clear the extended cab roof seen below: px48 12-12-2013 009 by kettering15b, on Flickr Here's a front view of the tender showing my dodgy brass cuttings for the doors and the vent above the door. I've added a shelf to the bottom of the tender cab and made up the coal hole from plasticard. px48 12-12-2013 010 by kettering15b, on Flickr The next photo shows where I've put the vertical back in the bunker space and added the water tank filler hatch. To do this I had to remove the rear light which will be moved back slightly. px48 12-12-2013 012 by kettering15b, on Flickr Finally an overview of the rear of the loco: px48 12-12-2013 013 by kettering15b, on Flickr Essentially the main work has been completed. There's a few other bits to add before I give the model a coat of primer. I'll then add the myriad of pipes and handrails and use some Archers rivet transfers before further priming and application of the red, green and black paint. Cheers, Mark

I did a huge amount of research on the track layout using photographs in order to get the track layout ‘right’ within my confines. As part of that I realised that the current Penzance layout has been much simplified and that prior to about 1980 there was a crossover from platform 1 to a head shunt which incorporated single slips on platform 2 and 3 and a double slip on platform 4. At this time I was getting also getting fed up with having to set everything up every time I wanted to run some trains and realised that I could move the whole layout into the roof space of the garage. Doing that also allowed me to add about a metre of space in the middle of the platforms so that I could accommodate a 12 coach train. So up it went. It took me ages of playing about to get the crossover track at the station throat correct without compromising the gentle curve away of the tracks to the mainline. Here’s a photo of the final trackplan at the station throat. It looks like D1022 arriving with a Paddington train, probably the 07.30 SO with 4TSOs and a GUV at the back. I used as underlay some sort of foam flooring underlay that came in sheets and has been ideal for the job and eventually I’ll cut it back to the track profile. Putting this photo’s up encourages me to get on with ballasting which I still haven't gotten around to.

After completing last nights post where I practically convinced myself that I wasn't going to bother with this advert business I realised that would just not do so gave myself a couple of bracing slaps and just got on with it! Didn't actually take me that long as had got further than I thought with the Dubonnet ad. This was the inspiration I opened it in PhotoShop then transformed it to remove the perspective then on separate layers, traced the outline of the letters. I then dragged this over to a new canvas that I had drawn an outline of the building end and scaled it to fit. A blue layer was added and a distressed plaster layer then a bit of a play with the layer blending styles gave me this It was time for bed then, so in a spare moment this afternoon I printed it out on decal paper, bunged it in water and onto the building. A little more distressing when dry gave me this Pretty pleased and will certainly do some more that will be a bit more visible on the finished layout. Now I really must get to grips with that brick colour as this is one job that really would be awkward once the building is stuck down.

After I decided to place Northall as postcode borough W16 in Greater London. I wanted to use also a personalized street name sign, approved by the Northall Council. I found a good article on internet how street name signs have to be used and designed. The most important design advices I have copied below: “Street nameplates shall be of uniform design throughout the Administrative County of London and shall be constructed as follows: (i) Of durable, non-absorbent material. (ii) The name shall be in black letters, not less than 4 inches and not more than 5 inches in height, on a white background. The appropriate postal district shall be indicated in the nameplate in signal red. The name of the local authority may be included in the nameplate at the discretion of that authority and, if included, shall also be in signal red and shall be in upper and lower case letters, the upper case letters being not more than half the height of the letters of the street name. Supplementary lettering (such as “leading to…”), less than 4 inches in height, may be included in the nameplate. Each local authority may adopt its own individual style for lettering, provided a clear and legible style of good design is used. The margin between the lettering of the street name and the edge of the nameplate shall be not less than half the height of the street name letters. Reasonable abbreviations may be used at the discretion of the local authority, e.g., “Rd” and “Gdns”. Issued by the Greater London Council and is a reprint of publication No.3781 (1952) of the London County Council “ In the same article were the sizes mentioned for the design of the signs. I used this picture as a reference. My next diorama, as I mentioned in my entree last week, will be Station Road. Here you can see the result for Station Road designed as a Northall street name sign. The font used is Albertus Medium. This font was mentioned as the most useable font to create a London street name sign. The Northall Council decided that also some streets around Northall Dock should get some new street names and street name signs: Anchor Street is now Dock Road and Canal Street is now Canal Alley. (there is still to do some work on the street, the bollard needs some painting and the building some weathering and small repairing) There is also a nice website where you can create more modern London street name signs: http://www.myfunstudio.com/designs/lss/?source=mfs. Hope this is useful for others. Regards, Job

After yesterdays entry this appeared to be a logical next entry. I gave you all a glimse of my Fruit D yesterday, so here's some more details. I built this last November, most of the construction being done during a couple of days during a weeks holiday. There was one particularly memorable session during which I had the 1980 film The Sea Wolves featuring Gregory Peck, Roger Moore, David Niven, Trevor Howard and Patrick McNee on in the background. Like the Siphon G I didn't complete the painting, transfers and weathering until earlier this month. I like to do painting and weathering in batches where possible. The kit features a modular construction. Two ends, four side panels and six doors being made up individually before being made up into the body. The chassis had full brake gear and three point compensation. The only change I made was to replace the whitemetal vacuum brake pipes with some brass and spring alternatives from Slaters which I had knocking about. This is the later BR version with electric lighting rather than gas. First photo is the completed model before painting: Now in primer. (I ran out of red primer, hence the grey roof) FInally weathered: This really was a joy to build, although I can't help thinking that the JLTRT resin version would have been so much quicker to build!

Evening all, I've been considering starting a blog on here for a while and Wenlock's enthusiasm to see photo's of my Siphon G has propmted me to start. My workbench thread will continue to document my larger builds and this blog I plan to use to show my small and past builds. The Siphon G was pretty simple to put together, just a bit time consuming because the sides are made up from several overlays. The olny change I made to the standard kit was to replace the corridor connectors with those from JLTRT. I just didn't like the folded bits of paper. Firstly in primer: Completed, with the weathering started: FInally lined up next to my WEP Fruit D: Since taking the last photo's I've finished the weathering, so there will probably be another photo in the future.