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It's been a very long time since my last post (which I think was a 4mm scale chair!) but I've nearly completed my latest build: Canterbury & Whitstable Railway, Taylor 0-6-0 goods loco, no.121, c1847. The bulk of it was constructed whilst convalescing with a broken left metatarsal. What a tragedy to be signed off work and have to sit there day after day with my foot up, drinking tea and model making, life can be so cruel! A friend offered some Portescap motor/gearboxes in exchange for kits so one of these formed the basis for this engine. The gearbox had to be dismantled and reversed so the driving axle sat under the motor and the wheels were some old Romford ones from the scrap box. One of the biggest challenges was the haycock firebox with it's brass beading around the corners. The box itself was build up from two strips of scribed 10thou brass bent into an 'n', cut and soldered together, then the brass corners cut from 5thou, bent and beaten into submission around the curves, a horrible job and much learned in the process but it doesn't look too bad. It hasn't put me off doing another one anyway. The tender was rest was gradually scratch built using good old fashioned measure, bend and cut techniques, as was the rest of the loco, a refreshingly 3D print free zone! It still requires some water feed pipes under the footplate and there is an annoying little short every time it goes left which I must sort out. Of course some crew will be required before it moves 'off shed' but they can wait. The photographs leave a bit to be desired, I find the low sun at this time of year a bit tricky, our house faces due south and not casting a shadow over the photo at midday requires some degree of contortion. Hopefully they will do for now, next up is an 1845 Bodmer Single but as usual it will take me ages! Thanks for looking and please feel free to ask if you need to know more.

One of my long standing 'round tuit' projects has been a Triang bogie luggage van that was given to me by the late Bob Haskins. As is the way, I was looking for something else in the modelling room when I came across a box containing a number of wagons he'd given me, some years ago now. I knew I'd picked up a detailing conversion pack for it from Roxey Mouldings at a bring and buy so I thought why not? I guess Bob had this coach from the early seventies and the Roxey kit was also in a suitably decrepit box but as you know I do like these resurrection projects. The instructions were comprehensive and luckily I already had the Gould book from Oakwood Press to provide background information. First step was to remove the green paint (I guess Bob applied) using Modelstrip. I decided not to reuse the existing doors. New ones were made from Evergreen planking sheets and straps added from strip with rivet detail added from cubes of 5mm square section. Handrails were added from 0.35mm wire. The under frame was made up on a base of copper clad, allowing it to be soldered together before bolting to the underside of the body. The bogies are sprung, using the Bill Bedford 8ft variants and the white metal side frames glued on. I used MJT LSWR/SR pattern ventilators as the ones in the Roxey kit had a little too much flash for my liking. Once the detailing had been complete, the coach was sprayed with Halfords plastic primer, Precision carmine airbrushed on and a light weathering coat added. The roof has a coat of Lifecolour roof dirt. I've attached a few photos including the finished article on Cheddar. My plan is to run it as a parcels/strawberry van. I've absolutely no idea if these vans ever ran on the Cheddar Valley line, but I don't care. I think Bob would have liked the end result and that's all that matters!

If you've ever thought of incorporating a curved viaduct to your layout, I describe how I went about adapting the standard Metcalfe Viaduct kit (PO240) to create such a viaduct on a progressive curve with a gradient.

Thanks to some encouragement from one of my friends this week I got around to trying to layer some additional grass textures on the cutting sides. I used Peco Scene Layering Spray which worked pretty well, it doesn't seem to colour the existing grass but holds the next layer of static grass securely. Getting different lengths and colours of grass fibres makes quite a difference to the overall look. The pickup goods approaches the overbridge on its way from Clare to Cavendish. Cambridge bound Cravens DMU crosses over into the loop and heads over the small girder bridge. The same train pictured from the overbridge, I think the cutting sides look a lot better now we have some additional layers of static grass. I also managed to get some work done on the coal siding, adding some coal pens and sacks of coal (3d printed from the thingyverse). I need to make some coal scales and a suitable shed. David

I've done more work on the Infinity JSA. This past week was washes & beginning the highlights. The tutorial I'm following suggested color-keyed washes, but I couldn't make much use of them. Everything was washed black instead. I am following the recommendations for highlights, though. I don't know where to start, color-wise, with the woman in the kimono. I am trying to emulate the studio scheme for the models. Corvus Belli painted the kimono in a sort of mint color. I really don't know where to start. The tutorial offers no guidance on the matter, either. Sunday was another of my gunpla club's build days. I began work on a new kit, the Master Grade 1/100 Grey Zeta. Naturally, the thing is orange. Interesting build so far. Which isn't very far. The Zeta is a transforming model, either a robot or a sort-of cross of a F-117 & an F-22. Like the past few gunpla, I'll likely only work on this at the build days. I have too many other projects to devote bench space to this. We'll see where I get with the Infinity next week.

A minor update on my E1 class - see earlier entries this summer - with the main body colour on: Initially I sprayed the model with black, then brush painted the olive green. I've had good results with that approach in the past, finding that a good sprayed base coat can provide a basis for a very nice brush-finished top coat, but in this case it was apparent that the quality of the finish wasn't heading in the direction I wanted. Unfortunately the black had gone on with a gritty texture in places, probably because I was trying to eek out the last few squirts from the bottom of the can. So, out with the stripper. Recently I've found this stuff to be excellent for this purpose: It can be applied very easily with a cotton bud or similar and is much easier to work into fiddly areas than the thicker type of plastic-compatible stripper I've used in the past. It also works very quickly, enabling a model to be stripped and repainted in hours rather than needing an overnight treatment. In this case the body is metal, so (presumably) any paint stripper would have been OK, but I've used this stuff on plastic as well without problems. With the main mass of paint removed, the body was immersed in an ultrasonic bath just to loosen the last few bits and then cleaned and re-primed with Citadel Black. Once it had dried, I then airbrushed the main colour, which is Railmatch light olive. More by luck than judgement, this is the Ashford shade of olive so correct for the SE&CR. However, honesty compels me to admit that it's just the shade I happened to have in stock. The green went on well but came out too matte, which I think is due to it being over-thinned, so once I was happy with the colour density I then sprayed a top coat of varnish on, to act as a base for the subsequent lining. Hopefully that'll be the next step. Cheers!

Not a lot more to report. first up the bogie has been almost finished, the frame needed to be lowered by about a mm vs the sub frame. It does still need a tidy up of the inner end of the frames which are not square at the joint between the front frames and the deep part. I have now given it a final coat of etch primer to seal in the rivets (as an aside I am very impressed with the Archers product So the model has gone from this to this It’s a shame it’s far too cold to airbrush or I would get it painted. Of course if it was to be painted black it would be a lot easier as I find I can spray Halfords satin black a lot colder than I can airbrush... I have found this photo on the internet showing the loco at withdrawal (I think). So is it green or black? I suspect the former (but hope for the latter). http://trainphotos.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/edd/2015/05/3449-Nightingale-GWR-Bird-Class-Copyright-1560x975.png

A bit of history The earliest record of a tenant in The Greyhound public house was a Mary Stiff in 1822. The Upper Grange Road (now Dunton Road) Bermondsey was likely a relatively quiet lane leading off the Kent Road before the arrival of the Bricklayers Arms Extension Railway in 1843/4. At first it was suggested that the railway should cross the road on the level, but the contractors Grissell & Peto constructed a bridge to carry the road over the four running lines. The inconvenience to the occupants of the Greyhound and the neighbouring houses in Greyhound Place is well recorded in the Committee Minutes of the BAER held in the National Archives at Kew. Significant amounts of compensation was paid out for the inconvenience of having a large brick structure right outside the front of the dwellings. The owner of the Greyhound, William Rolls received £2310, a huge sum in 1844. The tenant at this time was William James Peirse and his four daughters. The Greyhound itself was significantly altered as a result of the rising road in front of it and the public rooms were moved up to the first floor on a level with the new road. Thankfully one photograph exists taken at the end of the 19th century which just about shows this unusual arrangement. Access to the six houses further along was via a walkway underneath the frontage. The model The basic shell of the building is in 3mm perspex which I find very robust and resistant to warping over time. Brickwork is embossed styrene, windows in clear styrene with fine strips of styrene overlaid to produce the window frame. The sash windows at the back actually work, a completely unnecessary indulgence! It is not known what the back yard looked like. An aerial photograph taken in the 1930s gives a rough idea but it is so indistinct as to be of no real help. I added a stable block which is rather unlikely but in studying the history of the Greyhound and it's tenant W. J. Peirse, who left the tenancy in his will "to my four dear daughters", I grew rather fond of him and thought he deserved such a luxury. The figures are from scratch, perhaps William's eldest daughter Martha is telling the potman just how queer the rocking motion of the carriages on the new railway made her feel on her recent trip to Croydon. The yard surface is decorating filler with the cobbles scratched in. There are further buildings to come, particularly those of Greyhound Place, and of course the Upper Grange Road Bridge itself which is in the process of construction.

Once the children were safely tucked up in bed and with an unexpected hour to spare and not really fancying tackling anything big, I decided to make a chair. Scrap brass for the seat, a bit of wire, some solder and a lick of paint.

London & Greenwich Railway No.1 Royal William - Pt.5 This is the last part of the series on Royal William for now until I make the Stephenson tender to go with it. It's all done, an interesting project and a good opportunity to try out a few ideas on the cheap! So the lessons learned are as follows: Sprung plunger pick-ups on such a tiny engine were more trouble than they were worth. In the end I simply fitted some tee shaped wiper pick-ups between the wheels. Easy, simple and effective. The use of a coarse worm and pinion with such a low ratio gearbox has created what I can only describe as a fine stutter as it moves. It runs beautifully slowly but the click, click of each pinion tooth engaging with the worm just shows. As it speeds up that disappears but it's a useful lesson. A finer worm and pinion and higher ratio box would be a better balance. I'm sure this is quite obvious to those who build engines more often than me! The casting of the main chunks in white metal has worked very well. Anything lighter and I'm sure it just wouldn't have the weight to pull itself along. As it is, it will pull a short train of third class carriages at distinctly third class speed. Good enough for me! I haven't yet fitted the nameplates. They're only small but the name Royal William is quite long and rather fills the boiler side. I might fit them with a spot of PVA so they can be picked off again without trace if I decide they look too daft. I hope this blog has inspired somebody to have a play with those odd motors and gears and wheels that gather in the bits box! Go for it!

Decal time! Hmmm, more microset needed... And after applying a liberal amount of microset and some weathering I ended up with this: Underside with Bachmann Nem shafts fitted: Not too bad I think.. Epilogue: Ready for shipment. Fits inside a Bachmann 7 plank plastic insert like a glove And on the layout of it's (proud?) owner... Coming next, an improved Hornby 9 plank wagon.

Having been a bit too active in the Wheeltappers section of this forum, I decided that I should show my rather humble modelling efforts here and I feel that the blog format is the best way for me to do that since at present I have a number of rather small and disparate projects on the go which makes conventional threads a bit untidy. I aspire to have a P4 layout of a London terminus vaguely similar trackplan to Minories because I have a very soft spot for late 1980s BR especially around the Southern Region, Paddington and Euston. Why am I choosing P4? I don't plan to have absolutely everything perfectly spot on but having had a OO layout ( well just track on baseboard ) I discovered that the wheels on RTR were not consistent and some derailed on Peco track even out of the box, also kits seldom comes with wheels so I realised that one needs to standardise on the wheels to ensure that there is consistency between track and wheels. Having looked at OO and EM, I couldn't see any standardisation ie anyone could decide on what make of wheels to use and stick to it - fine if one make covers all your needs but that doesn't always happen! My mate has built P4 locos and stock ( though not a layout!! ) and I was very impressed with the appearance of the wheels. I quickly discovered that whatever make of P4 wheel one buys, there will be consistent dimensions between them unlike for OO and EM wheels. Also I don't like RTR OO turnouts and track so would need to make my own track. So if I need to re-wheel half my locos and stock to fit onto home built OO track then why not go the whole hog and use P4? Before I commit myself to P4, I am building a test track consisting of a B6 turnout with 300mm of straight approach and exit tracks and a branching curve of 1000mm radius. This curve is my ruling radius for my proposed layout and it will be used to test any loco and stock I convert. I will update when I have made some progress and I will have to fit my modelling in with my piano practice! See you next time!