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The LSWR was the biggest of the GWR's neighbours at Farthing, so I thought I'd better make myself some stock from that company for my 1900s goods depot. Last night I finished my LSWR sliding door van, to SR diagram 1410, built from the David Geen whitemetal kit. Above is the kit assembled as it comes. Having done that, I realized that a couple of details didn’t match the photos and drawings in my newly acquired “Illustrated History of Southern Wagons, Vol 1”. The kit has the door rail below the roof, while all photos I have seen show it in front of the roof. Likewise, the kit has the vent covers below the roof, while most (though not all) photos show them flush with the roof top. It's possible that the kit is correct for some vans at some point in time. Nevertheless, I decided to lightly modify it to match the photos I had available. I filed back the roof and original door rail, and added a new rail from scrap brass. The vent covers were extended to the roof top with a sliver of plasticard. After a first light coat of primer, Archer’s rivets were added to the door rail – 12 little devils each side. For all its bad reputation, rivet counting can actually be quite fun! Can you tell I was in a hurry when I did the priming? I was confused about the brake gear. A sketch in the instructions show that for a single lever arrangement, the arms should be fitted left over right. So that’s how I initially fitted them, but it seemed wrong: The only photo I can find of a 1410 van with single-lever, one-side brakes has them right over left, and so do other single-lever LSWR (and GWR) vans and wagons. So eventually I re-fitted them right over left. Did I get it right though? Except for the primer, I prefer to brush paint my models. I like the flexibility of it. For this van I decided to experiment a bit. I first added a basecoat that was deliberately a little darker than the ideal colour. On top of this, I semi-dry brushed a lighter shade. By “semi” I mean that the brush was more loaded than you would normally do in dry-brushing. I like the resulting “depth” of the colour. Due to a mix-up with my mail orders, I found myself with not one but two LSWR lettering sheets: One from HMRS (left) and one from Fox (right). This allowed for a bit of comparison. The two sheets are almost identical when it comes to the actual wording/styles provided. The HMRS sheet has lettering for all the main SR constituents, and a little more variety in the LSWR lettering styles. I personally like the HMRS Pressfix method which I have gotten used to over the years. The Fox transfers only have LSWR lettering, and water-slide transfers are not my favourite - but significantly, the smaller letters and numbers are a good deal finer than the HMRS ones. I ended up using a bit of both. By using the HMRS tare numbers for the tare, I could use the finer Fox tare numbers for the paint date on the solebar. The latter is a little overscale I think, but I thought it would be fun to include. Incidentally, January 22 1901 was the day Queen Victoria died, and thus the beginning of the Edwardian era. It does date the van, so I'll be in trouble if I decide to model a later period! For the number/builders plate I initially fashioned one in photoshop (bottom of picture), and printed it to the correct scale. But when fitted to the wagon it looked like… a paper printout! So I used a non-descript builders plate from a Mainly Trains etch instead. I went for a lightly weathered look, but not too much. I find it hard to get that faded look to the lettering that I have seen on some models. Any advice would be much appreciated. Today was a nice day here in Denmark, so I took the goods depot outside to get a few photos of the new van and assess general progress. I recently managed to crush the mezzanine floor, and am slowly rebuilding it. That's the second disaster I've had with this little layout, the other was when the roof structure got smashed. No wonder my son calls me Homer Simpson! Views like this make me happy though. Comparison between the LSWR van and the contemporary GWR iron mink shows two different approaches to the standard goods van of the late 19th century. The LSWR van was introduced in 1885, and seems fairly large for the time with its 18ft over headstocks. The GWR Iron minks were introduced the year after in 1886. With a 16 ft (later 16’6) length it stuck to a more modest size but experimented instead with iron for body construction. I wonder which of the two designs was more economical in the long run? One day I'd like to try building a lightbox, but for the time being I'm content with that big old lightbox in the sky.

I found a set of photos I took when building an 08 chassis a few years ago. These predate the 2mm Scale Association kit for the 08 shunter and the chassis is now sitting under an original Farish body, with all its inaccuracies. My aim was to see how a triple stage high reduction chassis might turn out. Quite well as it happens. This isn't a complete build sequence but hopefully 2mm people might find the photos informative. The starting point was a set of 9mm loco wheels which had failed QC checks for having inaccurately drilled crankpin holes. As I was going to convert them to outside frames, this was of no issue and the price was right... ;-). The wheels were mounted in my lathe and the centres drilled to make the axles hollow, to accept a set of cranks made from pins and parts of the Association etch of replacement coupling rods. The cranks were set in place by means of a simple spacer Here's an assembled wheelset A set of frames from 0.5mm nickel-silver were set out for axles & gears, cut out and spacers made. The frames were fitted with shear pins to line up on the spacers before being finally screwed into place. There was a touch too much sideplay in the axles, so I soldered some thin shims in place to take this up. They were made from phosphor-bronze pickup strip. One small but key detail is an end-bearing for the motor shaft. This keeps the worm firmly in mesh These photos show the gear train. The middle step-down is very close to the centre axle muff but there's just enough clearance. Once assembled, the chassis block looks a lot tidier Here's a close up of the motor shaft bearing. It also helps locate the motor in position And the other end is fixed by a bracket So there's a few ideas for chassis construction. I'm not sure that the complication of the triple reduction was entirely justified but the loco does have an appropriate top speed. It's a reliable performer and is very controllable. However so is the end result from the 2mm Association kit and that has a reduction around 40:1, albeit with a coreless motor. Mark

No real progress on the 850 recently, but I have a few part finished (as always) projects. First up is an Iron Mink. This is the ABS whitemetal kit. There are a few things I've changed though. I wanted to model one of the earlier built ones with grease axleboxes rather than the oil ones fitted to the kit. This presented a slight problem in that the w-irons and axleboxes were integral to each other. In the end I removed all of it and fitted Comet etched w-irons and MJT axleboxes. Everything was then painted the proper colour; red. As supplied the roof is plain plasticard. I'm leaning towards the MRD etched rood but I haven't completely decided yet. I need to order transfers as well, unlettered wagons are piling up... While perusing a private owner wagon book I came across an adorable wagon belonging to the London & South Wales Coal Company. Built in 1874, it is very short with only an end door. Dumb buffers at one end and sprung buffers at the other. Definitely the sort of thing I like. Then Duncan came across a drawing of it in a second book, which pretty much sealed my fate. Although it is hard to tell from the pictures, the planking is scribed onto the sides. I need to fit all the strapping still and the w-irons need adjusting, they are sitting too high, the axleboxes won't fit. Finally we come to some layout work. On Empire Mills (http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/1534-the-empire-project/) we have a new loading dock: This is a perfect place to recreate a scene that I'm fond of. China clay was shipped in wooden casks until part way through World War 1 when it switched to bags. I've come across this picture a couple of times and it needed to be modeled... So I got some bits and decided to have a go. Everything came from Dart Castings.

Never enough time, never enough space ............ Since moving in December I've not done much on the planned big layout Castell Mawr. It's too big to work on more than one board at a time, frequently needing 2 or 3 joined together to visualise what I want ..... and work out how to do it !! The recent few rain free days have had me getting some work done, before we're away to the holiday caravan by the coast. Firstly 3 boards were put together, interesting that the bungalow is on a steep slope & allows high 'helicopter' views. Then as can be seen my cutting is fully grassed by the operating desk. Limited progress, but at least it is progress ....... at this rate it'll take 2 more years ? Note the small wild animal paths up the cutting sides, these are all over the countryside if you look. Dad-1

Last week I managed to complete the second traintable for Modbury (the Exeter end one). Over the last couple of days I have painted the baseboards so that I am now in a position to actually start laying the track (although that will have to wait for a few days as I want to get my third 4 wheel coach complete ready for the 2mm Association event at Kidderminster on the 21st. Below are a few images of the progress to date - I have placed the templet plan on the baseboards and positioned some stock to give a better idea of scale (the train tables are each 20" diameter, and the scenic portion of the layout is 6'0" long. Overall View : Exeter End Traintable : Looking towards Exeter : Plymouth End Traintable : Looking towards Plymouth : View across the Platforms and Yard : Ian

With the house move still hanging in the air, it seems pointless to do any more work on the layout. Hopefully soon I will be taking it apart to go to its new home. So my attentions have turned to rolling stock. This entry deals with two old Triang clerestories. The livery is plain, poor and wrong. The actual model is freelance too, but we'll overlook that. I bought the coaches to be part of a workman's train, so I decided to backdate them and distress them. Rather than spray prime them with Halfords grey primer which would have covered over the windows, I sprayed some primer in a yoghurt pot and started to paint it on. Disaster! The pot melted! Beware!!! So I ended up using thinned grey enamel. Between 1912 and 1922 the GWR painted it's coaches a rather fetching "Lake" , not unlike the Midland Crimson Lake. Coaches were normally painted every 7 to 10 years. My layout is mid to late 30's, so really there shouldn't have been any Lake livery around past about 1930/32. But railway modelling is all a compromise and I like to stretch the truth a little too. So what if an old pair of coaches were overlooked and left to languish on workmen's trains on a secondary line and branch? They would be pretty knackered by then. So....... A trip to Railex in Aylesbury yielded a pot of Phoenix GWR Lake and an Iwata Neo airbrush and compressor. Time to play. But I still had the problem of the windows. Enter Humbrol Maskol. What a wonderful product! It is a latex which you can paint on to mask areas and later peel off. So I painted the windows and white parts of the roofs with Maskol. I then sprayed the thinned Lake and hey presto... When I painted the Maskol at first, I painted too much and it went behind the coach sides. It also stuck to the sides of the window reveals. When I pulled it off, it took some paint, plus was a pig to get out from behind the coach sides! After touching up and adding a coat of Humbrol glosscote They looked the part. Decals from HMRS finished them off. The glosscote allowed the decals to stick better. It was tempting to leave them in that state, but that just bent history too far - even for me. So a coat of acrylic matt varnish, Lifecolor Frame Dirt over the underframe and Roof Dirt over the roof. I am happy with the Frame Dirt, but not the roof. I had a vague recollection of painting side to side to look rain stained. Clearly it's not a good idea to do that with the airbrush. I had to do a saving job with Humbrol soot weathering powder. I'm still not happy with the roofs, but don't know what else to do. I added Dark Earth and Rust powders to the sides and underframe and do feel they look fairly old and Knackered. So, they are just about possible, in their knackered condition, but more importantly they add a bit of difference to the layout. Rich.

I'm quite pleased with how this model has turned out: I found that I had some small difficulty with the floor and the sides having warped slightly, however the majority of this eased back out once I had started building (I think there is a crack along the joint between the body and the solebars which is a result of this, but that's not exactly visible unless you go looking for it). The whole model was pretty much built as-per the instructions; I swapped out the kit bogies for Bachmann Thompson ones and added a false floor to build the interior of off, but that was about as far as I took any alteration to the kit. I would have liked (in an ideal world) to add toplight windows and a wire truss frame (making this one of the Great Northern-built examples) but this appeared to me at the time to be too intricate (if I get another, who knows?). The teak effect took a bit of work to get right but was definitely worth it. My eventual solution was to use matt brown undercoats, a thin gloss brown topcoat, gloss varnish and then satin varnish. I've now gone out and bought a couple of tins of satin and gloss brown paints of varying hues and tones to hopefully make this an easier job in the future. Lining out was done with a lining pen and gloss yellow, and transfers as usual are from the HMRS range. Now to get on with the rest of the five-car rake it will eventually be a part of...

Today the painting has started. The silver grey and yellow are spray cans, the black is brush painted to save on masking !

Hi all! As mentioned in a previous post I replaced my 14 Vac point motor control for 12 Vdc and purchased a new controller to replace the old Piko start kit. This meant that the 14V transformer became available to power the new controller. Since, as can be seen from the enclosed images, the transformer is relatively large and was previously mounted on the baseboard, I decided that I did not want either the transformer or the controller to be permanently attached to the baseboard. So, I installed two sockets under the baseboard for the main track and the programming track I have also installed. This latter can be seen on a shelf alongside the main track. The transformer and controller rest on an auxiliary table. Some tidying-up is still to be done but, at least now, trains can run. Also, space has been left for additional scenic material.

Well I have made a start on the Kings cross end of the railway. I have managed to. Get my hands on 8 sections of Hornby's platform 9 3/4 arches, as released in the R8204 & R8240 station packs, and these have been glued together. Pics will follow. I'm planning on moulding another unit to double it's current length and then the construction of the baseboard for that module can begin.