Leaderboard

With the layout up, I have been able to assess and make a series of repairs required after its prolonged period in storage. First up was to fix and rectify all of the point mechanisms and prove the wiring such that I could get trains to run from one end to the other and back into the up and down yards. There's still a lit of errant ballast to deal with but I'm happy with progress. Most of the turnout droppers' soldered joints had failed and it took a while to sort out. I also fixed down some scenic sections which had come loose, reinforced the back of the layout where the road runs behind the hedge and dealt with the chasms which had formed at board joints, inserting new ply former pieces, applying filler and squeezing boards back together, with a sheet of cling film inserted to maintain the break. Scenics have been retrospectively applied and there's still a bit more to do.Photos show works in progress. The entire layout was then turned around so I could fix the fascia to the front. Filler has been liberally applied and it is currently primed, awaiting painting and scenery tweaks. This afternoon, I dragged the two 5ft fiddle yard turntables out of their hiding place and duly unwrapped them. These are Tim Horn products and came ready assembled. They're rather nice too. I couldn't resist putting some flexi track on the top to gauge how many roads I might be able to accommodate. At least 6 I reckon. They've been given a coat of Danish oil to seal the tops and I'll treat the underside in a similar manner. Once the fascia is done, the plan is to mate up the first and last board to their respective fiddle yard boards and finish the run off track work. Cheddar is going to the Railwells show in August as a work in progress, but I'd like to be able to run trains from one end to the other, if only to appease my sense of pride!

Dave the welder has run out of big bits to weld..... We are now at the stage of where we now have lots and lots and lots of fiddly small parts that need to be sorted out, and if you watch something like car SOS this is where the time gets eaten up..... The drivers side window getting much attention after more rot was found in the corner, the lower window frame and shelf have been replaced with metal. Another view of the shelf, some quite complex fabrication was required to recreate this. towards the side the shelf has to curve in correctly Awaiting final cutting the whole area of new metal is etched primed to protect it from corrosion. There have also been significant issues found with the door frames and at no1 end the corrosion was so bad it would have prevented proper fitment of the doors, so it has been cut away and replaced with fresh steel. The steel here is 6mm thick so it can be tapped to hold the hinge bolts for the cab doors. Similarly on the other side the door frame was completely rotten its and the cab grab rail recess have been replaced with new steel. below that the door threshold has been replaced and this will form part of the outer skin of the locomotive. this is prior to having the side skirt fitted. on the other side the side skirt has been bent to shape and fitted giving an idea of how things are being achieved, towards the front original side skirt deemed suitable for re-use has been re-attached, it awaits final welding to close up the join, you cant weld too much too quickly as during welding the metal expands and distorts. the cab grabrail recess base awaits cutting and replacing. the drivers side getting the same treatment, as you can see, if you don't protect the steel with primer...it very very quickly starts to rust. At no2 end the cab desk refurbishment is underway we see the absolute rats nest of pipe work below the desk, the cab desk has been removed as the Formica is life expired, and needs replacing. the Formica has been removed (it didn't take much effort) and this leaves behind the contact adhesive we can see the aluminium desk is pretty badly butchered with years of modifications evident. a solvent has been applied to "clean" the old glue off. the desk has been re-covered with tufnol, which is similar to formica but a lot cheaper and less brittle, the only problem is, that its more susceptible to scratches, and isn't as hard wearing as Formica, the desk is being trial fitted, to determine its correct position. the desk in its final position with the fittings attached, the instrument panel will be thoroughly cleaned, and the gauges given a good clean as well after years of dirt ingress, the gauges themselves were comprehensively overhauled, by a group member many years ago and as a result need no attention and are in perfect working order. The brass plunger behind the locomotive air brake is the brake overcharge valve, as 26s had a yellow band FV4 (valve on the left) they didn't overcharge the brake valve in the release position. Back to the exterior....the part we have been really dreading is the front skirts...they are an extremely complicated part of the bodywork and many discussions have been had with other 26 owners on ways to fabricate these correctly.... the one problem we do have is none of us have legible original drawings....so we are going to have to compromise. the skirt itself is a is a curve on 3 planes....and this is something a skilled panel beater could probably achieve with an incredible amount of time....on an English wheel, but the labour costs quoted would be in the region of 5 to 6k per end. Another way of creating it would be with press, but we would need to create the tooling....which for such a limited amount of panels required wouldn't be viable. the way you see above is actually the way BRCW created them individual sections profiled to create the curve along the base and the front to the middle.....but since we don't have the drawings...and neither do the NRM...we will have to use our gut.....and go with what we think looks right from photos....but every other 26 has the same issue....none of them are the original front skirt....they were all repaired and bodged over the years. above we have the plates tack welded into place...to do some trial and error....fitting after we were happy with the result....they were finally welded.... the welds ground and primed... the process completed for the other side..... and finally the front.....is complete.... the windows have been cut to roughly the correct shape, no doubt some work will be required when the screens go back in, there is also some remedial work needed to the "eyebrows" as well. only 15% of the steel in the whole front end of the locomotive is original steel! the original front end.....nice paint....but its hiding a lot of issues.... the July gala approaches......time is of the essence.. and an old friend is coming back....and there's only one thing better than one 26..........

In a comment on my previous post @Mikkel wrote “I never know what's next on your blog Mike”. Actually, I feel much the same – I never know where a whim will take me next! A week ago, the thought of a Bristol and Exeter Railway (B&ER) engine was nowhere in my mind and then @Annie posted some splendid photos of Pearson’s magnificent 4-2-4 Broad Gauge tank engines. B&ER No.42 4-2-4T designed by James Pearson It wouldn’t be true to say these engines have never crossed my mind but they were always rapidly consigned to the ‘too difficult’ box. Now, having built a few of Brunel’s so-called ‘freaks’, I have learned a lot more about 3D design and the capabilities of 3D printing. So – time to have a go ? … Back issues of the Broad Gauge Society (BGS) journal ‘Broadsheet’ provide a wealth of information, including both drawings and photographs of several versions of these engines. There is also a lengthy biography of James Pearson in ‘Broadsheet’ No.78 (Autumn 2017) which, in addition to providing useful career information, also busts a few myths. Before his appointment as Locomotive Superintendent, at age 34, on the B&ER, Pearson had a spell as the engineer responsible for operations of Brunel’s ill-fated atmospheric system on the South Devon Railway. That system has been the subject of another of the many deviations followed by my Blog. Almost all references to Pearson suggest that he was a Quaker which was supposedly the reason behind his adoption of black as the colour for his locomotives. The BGS biography found no evidence to support that assumption and reports that Pearson was Christened at his local Parish Church in Blackburn. It seems more like that the livery arose from the well-known concern for economy, which characterised much of the B&ER operations. There are also many stories of his 4-2-4 engines that do not stand up to close examination. According to an article in ‘Broadsheet’ No. 48 (Autumn 2002), they were originally ordered specifically for duty on the Yeovil branch and not, as often reported, for the Exeter expresses. Clement Stretton in his book ‘The Development of the Locomotive 1803 to 1896’ (published 1896) stated that he remembered a 9 foot single tank running smoothly at 60 mph and that “Mr Pearson many years ago informed the writer that his engines had been officially tested at 81 mph,” Sadly, many of Stretton’s claims have subsequently been shown to be inaccurate, so these statements should be treated with caution. Towards a Model I have commented before that making a model is a very good way of learning how the original engine was constructed. In this particular case, even a cursory examination shows that this engine had several very unusual features. For example the boiler carried a ‘yoke’ to which suspension rods from the driving wheels were attached. There were other brackets between the boiler and the very light frames, which only extended from the back of the smokebox to the front of the firebox. Thus, the boiler itself had to bear many of the forces associated with a locomotive engine – a practice that would not be approved now! I had to start somewhere and, with so many peculiarities, it was hard to choose. As a ‘gentle introduction’, I decided to start with the two bogies, which were attached to the rest of the engine by central ball and socket joints – no side-play allowed! I found some old frame drawings reproduced in ‘Broadsheet’ No.49 (Spring 2003) so, following my usual practice, I loaded these as a ‘canvas’ into ‘Fusion 360’. The collection of drawings included a plan view of the bogie and elevations of some of the main members. I started by tracing over one of the diagonal members and creating a solid ‘body’ in ‘Fusion 360’. I then made a sketch of the profile of the central pivot mounting and used the ‘Revolve’ tool to create a socket to receive the ball suspended below the engine itself. The next step was to align the diagonal members and the central bearing over the plan view, included in the drawings, as shown below: 1. Tracing the Bogie components 2 Arranged over Plan Drawing The rest of the frame comprised a very lightly built rectangular arrangement of plates, with the horn blocks attached at the four corners. I traced and extruded these components into the structure shown below: Bogie Assembly extruded over the ‘Canvas’ in Fusion 360 I have made plenty of 4-foot diameter wheels before, so it was a straight-forward task to create these and fit them into the horn-blocks for a rendered portrait of the complete bogie in ‘Fusion 360’. According to Ahrons, in a lengthy description of these engines in his book ‘The British Steam Locomotive 1825-1925’, each bogie wheel had an independent india rubber spring. My 3D model of one of the two bogies That’s one small step* – or, perhaps, two, since there will be similar bogies at each end of the engine! It seems that I am now committed to working out how to fit together all those brackets and levers that hold together the complete engine. Mike * or one bite of the elephant as @Mikkel once described it

In Part One , I wrote that “this engine had several very unusual features” and, in regard to building a model, “I had to start somewhere and, with so many peculiarities, it was hard to choose. As a ‘gentle introduction’, I decided to start with the two bogies.” I intend to continue, as far as possible, to follow a line of ‘least resistance’ but before going any further, I collected as much potentially useful information , photos, and drawings as I could. In his book ‘The British Steam Locomotive 1825 – 1925’ p.106, Ahrons noted that “no description of them, beyond the meagre details in Colburn's " Locomotive Engineering," page 73, has ever been given, and the following account of their constructional details may therefore be of interest.” He continued with quite an extensive article, providing many key dimensions and descriptions of the rubber suspension system. This suspension anticipated Alex Moulton’s work for the Austin Mini by more than a century! Ahron’s also referenced an article in ‘The Engineer’ supplement, 16 Dec 1910 , which provided various sectional views of the engine from which I could make a start. Using these drawings, I started by creating some of those major components for which I had already gained experience in modelling other engines. Ahrons gave the boiler dimensions as 10ft. 9in. long by 4ft. 0½ in. inside diameter, so I created a tube of length 43 mm, inside dia. 16 mm, with 1 mm wall thickness, which provided a good match to an ‘The Engineer’ drawing. I then added firebox and smokebox by tracing over the drawing and extruding as required, to create solid ‘bodies’ in ‘Fusion 360’. The results were as shown below: 3D model of Boiler Assy. Referenced from an illustration in ‘The Engineer’. The next ‘familiar’ item on the agenda was a pair of driving wheels. although these are a little larger than usual, at 36 mm diameter, and flangeless. The stages of my usual method are shown below: My steps in 3D modelling the Driving Wheels It always surprises me how rapidly something resembling an engine emerges, especially once the platform, chimney and safety valve housing have been added. The chimney and safety valve cover were created by my usual method of tracing the profile and then using the ‘Revolve’ tool to create the cylindrical ‘bodies’. The platform was a simple rectangular extrusion from the plan drawing, with the exception that small ‘humps’ had to be raised over each of the bogie wheels. Those early designers did nothing to make life easier for the workmen having to fabricate these shapes by hand! First impression of my evolving model That has completed most of the straightforward parts of this engine and it is now time to start tackling its (many) peculiarities! Outside ‘Frame’ According to Ahrons “The inside bearings were only 5in. long, and therefore additional outside bearings, 9in. long, were provided, the hornblocks of which were riveted to the triangular queen truss " frame," shown outside the driving wheel”. This ‘frame’ was my next subject for modelling. I created the truss and the outside rim of the splasher as a single ‘body’ in ‘Fusion 360’ by extruding from a drawing, as shown below: My sketch of the outside frame supporting the driving axle Most of the sketch was made by using the ‘three point arc’ tool in ‘Fusion 360’ and then I extruded the area coloured blue to form the frame. Next, I extruded the rectangle representing the axlebox, to house the outside bearing. I used another useful tool – the ‘offset’ tool – to create an outer rim around the frame and then ‘pushed’ the annulus (coloured yellow) backwards, to surround the driving wheel as the splasher. Yoke and Boiler Support Plates Now it was time to address two more peculiarities – the yoke across the top of the boiler and the curvaceous plates that supported the boiler from the platform. I created both these features by sketching over one of the front-elevation illustrations from ‘The Engineer’. Again, the most useful sketching tool was the ‘three point arc’ and I then extruded the outlined area to form plates of 0.5 mm thickness, as shown below: There were two identical ‘yoke’ plates in tandem (blue in my sketch) straddling the top of the boiler, with pivoted brackets between them, to carry the vertical suspension rods above the riving wheels. Two curved support plates (green) were placed, one on either side of the boiler, immediately ahead of the driving wheel splashers. Tracing the shapes of the Curved Plates around the Boiler I then move and rotate the parts I have made and align them against my reference 'canvas'. I have hidden the rest of the model for clarity: After producing models of these plates, I moved on to the suspension units for the driving axle. These were illustrated and described by Ahrons. I created my models of the suspension units by sketching the profile over the drawing from ‘The Engineer’ and then using the ‘Revolve’ tool in ‘Fusion 360’ to create the cylindrical rods and the brass pots that contain the india rubber ‘springs, as shown below: My extrusion of a suspension arm alongside ‘The Engineer’ Drawing Motion Plate The motion plate was, again, unusual in that its outer edges were shaped to follow similar curves to those of the boiler support plates. For details of their appearance, I had to turn to another drawing, shown in the Broad Gauge Society (BGS) journal ‘Broadsheet’ No.49 (Spring 2003). The original is one of those ‘split’ drawings, with halves of two different cross sections shown together. To help my visualisation of the engine, I 'mirrored' each half to provide two separate complete cross sections, although I cannot guarantee that all the details on the two sides were perfectly matched. Two cross-sections created from drawings in BGS ‘Broadsheet’ No.49 In my drawing ‘B’, I have shaded the split motion plate, which has square apertures for the connecting rods to pass through. I copied the outlines of these motion plates, as for the other boiler support plates, and extruded them to 0.5 mm thickness. The valves were placed between the cylinders and the valve rods are shown with supporting slide bars. There are many other unusual features in these drawings that I shall return to later, including the well tank suspended below the boiler on brackets from the motion plate. Cylinders The cylinders themselves were too long to fit within the very short smokebox, so they extended for about 1 foot forwards of the smokebox. They were connected across the width of the engine by a box, which enclosed most of the front end of the valve gear, although there were two tail rods protruding from the front face of this box. A photograph of the front end of No.42 also shows a small steam cock on the centre of his cover I constructed this box and the cylinder ends as a separate ‘body’, which I then fixed to the front of the smokebox. My model of the cylinder ‘front end’ That has completed all the main components needed for a ‘top-side’ view of the engine. I have added buffer beams, copied from a different Broad Gauge engine, and extruded the outer sides of the coke bunker. Although simple in external appearance, this bunker has many unusual internal features but I shall come to these later. In the meantime, my 3D model in ‘Fusion 360’ now looks as shown below: I think this model is beginning to capture something of the ‘presence’ that the original engines must had. I still have a lot of work to do on the underpinnings – especially the attachment points for the bogies and the well tanks but right now I feel it’s time to pause for the Easter break! Mike

'Hello. Welcome and Good Evening' as a well known TV presenter who once lived in Raunds, Northamptonshire might have said. Sat on my workbench for a number of years have been two partially completed Dapol/Airfix Prestwin wagon kits. These kits stem from Airfix, being released in 1964. However, Rosebud/Kitmaster originating from Raunds had been taken over by Airfix in the early 1960's. From memory the current incarnation of this kit from Dapol has soft recycled plastic. Thankfully they still go together nicely. Originally, I was batch building four of these kits. Two were for good friends and were completed. With a recent week off work I decided to clear out a number of outstanding wagon projects including the two remaining Prestwin's. Both kits had Alan Gibson wheels fitted. In addition to this Mr.Franks finest Lanarkshire Model Supplies (LMS) cast buffers and coupling hooks were fitted. Sprayed with Halfords grey plastic primer Revell and Valejo acrylics were brush applied. Once dry a light coat of Halfords Satin Varnish was applied. Transfers are from Fox and sealed with Johnson's Kleer. Once more a light dusting Halfords Satin sealed everything. Weathering and couplings await. These old Dapol/Airfix kits build up nicely, and once more show a cost effective means of acquiring new wagons. What with the Kitmaster and the Sir David Frost connection, as well as the shoe factory famous for the 'Kinky Boots' musical, Raunds should certainly be on the map. Cheers, Mark

I ended Part Three with the prospect of modelling the many rods and brackets on the underside looming over me. I had intended to write more at that time but found myself struggling to understand how various parts of the engine fitted together. I think all the ‘easy’ bits have now been done, so I could no longer avoid the complex underpinnings. To gain an overview, I ‘mirrored’ one half of the split plan-view from ‘The Engineer’ and then colour-coded various elements – blue for frames, orange for crankshafts, green for valve gear, and red for wheel bearings. I made a couple of ‘corrections’ to the ‘mirror’ process by moving the cranks on one side to represent ‘quartering’. I have repeated this plan as a ‘header’ to this entry. following its use in Part Three . My 3D model overlaid on ‘The Engineer’ plan view I was pleased to find more information, which helped me interpret the various drawings, in an article from ‘Engineering’, 11th Feb.1870 (reproduced in the Broad Gauge Society (BGS) journal ‘Broadsheet’ No.27, Spring 1992). Although the article refers to the ‘rebuilds’, some of the information appears to apply to the original engines as well. I quote: “…. There is also a centre stay for the crank axle fitted with adjustable wedges; this stay is bolted to transverse plate in front of the firebox which ties the frames and assists in supporting the stay; The eccentric sheaves are of cast iron, as are also their respective straps, these latter having cast on the half that receives the rod two ears which with a pin inserted vertically and eye in the eccentric rod make a lateral joint. The valve gear is of that class known as Gooch‘s stationary link. ... The valve spindles are. guided by a cast-iron bracket bolted to the plates which carry the bogie pin and unite the boiler barrel with the smoke-box tube plate; these brackets have each a flat bar of iron or steel fitted for the spindle crossheads to slide on; these crossheads being similar to the piston crossheads. The reversing shaft is carried by two brackets bolted to the bottom slide bars.” Gooch ‘Stationary Link’ Valve gear I then found a lot more useful information in articles by Douglas S Johnson, published in two issues of ‘Broadsheet’, Nos. 83 and 84 (2020), in which he described constructing a model the ‘hard way’, using nickel silver and brass. While very helpful, these articles also provoked great sighs of relief that I was using 3D computer modelling, rather than facing the problems raised by real model engineering. Modelling the ‘Motion’ As before, I have tried to follow a ‘line of least resistance’, so decided that the moving parts of the motion were the easiest components to understand and place in their appropriate locations. My hope was that the locations of the various supporting brackets would become more obvious once I had the moving parts in place. One of the great things about 3D modelling in a computer is that individual parts will stay where they are placed, as though on ‘sky hooks’! Sketch of Motion over ‘The Engineer’ Drawing I started with the main drive-shafts between the cylinders and the driving wheel cranks. The rods are simply cylinders, produced by extruding their cross-section drawings. I have simplified the cross head by extruding from a plan view and then set in place two slide bars, above and below the cross head. I show these parts above the ‘canvas’ which provided me with the overall dimensions. My representation of the main drive components These parts will form a static representation of the motion – fully working motion would need metal bars and bearings, which are not on my agenda at present. Because of their prominent locations, they are needed for completing the external appearance of my model. Side view of the Motion in place on my model I followed up by using similar methods to create the various components of the valve gear. I made the profile of the Gooch stationary link by tracing over the above sketch of the valve gear and then created the various rods by simple extrusions from sketches. After creating the various components individually, I moved them into their appropriate locations on one side of the engine and then ‘mirrored’ the whole lot to the other side. My layout of Valve gear components Next, I put the components into the context of the rest of the model (minus boiler and smokebox), to help me to determine where the various supporting structures need to be placed. Setting the Motion in the context of my Model Before I could get much further, I needed to develop a better understanding of how this engine ‘worked’. Overall Engine Structure In most engines, the driving wheels transmit the force needed to pull the train, through a pair of strong plate frames running the full length on each side of the engine. These are linked at the back to a strong drag bar running across the width of the engine and carrying the couplings to following vehicles. In this Pearson engine, the strong plate frames are notably absent. The design has been likened to a road-going Traction Engine but, although there are similarities, they are not the same. In a Traction Engine, the driving wheels are near the back and transmit their forces through a strong frame at the rear end, which carries the necessary draw gear. The boiler in such an engine is a forward extension from the ‘pulling part’ of the engine, carried at its forward end by the steerable front wheels. A different analogy can be found in Brunel’s design for his Chepstow Bridge, in which he took advantage of the considerable strength of an iron tube to transmit both compression and tension forces. In Pearson’s engine, it is the boiler that provides this key structural component, being connected to the central driving axle through the yoke spanning the top of the boiler. As a tank engine, the design was intended to work in both directions. When running forwards the boiler transmitted the driving force in turn to the firebox, through a transverse frame member, and then to the rectangular tank underneath the coal bunker. The rear coupling hook was bolted directly to the back of this tank, which acted as a box girder. For running backwards the forces were carried by two plates riveted to the lower sides of the boiler, which transmitted the forces to the cylinder casting and then by a short shaft to the front coupling. I should point out that the above is my own interpretation after spending several days looking at drawings. If those with more engineering expertise see it differently then I shall be pleased to be corrected. This method of conveying the main driving forces through the boiler would not be permitted now. The fact that even substantial plate frames were subject to cracking under stress, suggests what could happen to a pressurised boiler in similar circumstances. Modelling the Structure It took a lot of head-scratching and poring over drawings before, largely by trial and error, I worked out how everything fitted together. The drawings show a plethora of riveted plates, which took me some time before I could understand their functions and how they fitted within the overall context of the engine as a working vehicle. I’m not sure that I can now recall all the steps that I made (and an account would be very tedious anyway) but the outcome of all my deliberations is shown below. I started with the basic rectangular frame, described Ahrons as “only 8in. deep for the greater part of its length except at the driving hornblocks. An arrangement of angle plates, 2ft. deep, was fastened to the side of the fire-box and to the front of the well tank. From this point to the back buffer beam there was no frame at all.” Next, I had to understand the curved plate that can be seen in ‘The Engineer’ side elevation, extending from the back of the smokebox and riveted along the lower sides of the boiler. I determined that there were actually two of these plates attached on either side of the casting that carries the front bogie mount. Their purpose was, apparently, to transfer tractive forces from the boiler to the front coupling on the engine. I placed them on my model as shown below: Modelling the Front-end Boiler Brackets I could now place the ‘motion’ I described earlier into the context of these brackets and the rectangular frame, as shown below: Setting the motion within the inside frame I could now work out the arrangements for the centre bearing of the crank axle and its fore and aft attachments to the firebox and front well tank. Centre-bearing for Crank Axle (outer bearings not shown) It all looks so simple now – it’s hard to take in how long it took me to figure all this out from the drawings I have 🙂 Actually, when I put it all together, perhaps it doesn’t look quite so simple! Quite a step up from my previous modelling methods: My model of the ‘Works’ It’s rather a pity that almost all of this becomes invisible once the boiler and outer frames are in place 😒 I also find myself wondering how the real engine was erected, with so many ‘inter-dependent’ parts. My 3D model in ‘photographic grey’ There’s not even much to see from underneath because it’s hidden by the well tank. My 3D model viewed from below After rendering in ‘Fusion 360’ my model looks like this: My 3D model rendered in ‘Fusion 360’ You’d have to look at this rather carefully to spot any visible differences from my earlier renderings! Now that I’ve teased out most of the internal features, which has been an ‘interesting’ mental exercise, I shall have to return to considering the ‘cosmetic’ appearance. There’s still a lot to be done on the details, such as rivets, boiler bands, and so on … and on. Oh, and brake gear on the rear bogie. Enough for now Mike

Before moving northward I picked up a bargain couple of kits from John Dutfield in Chelmsford. The subject of this blog is the Ratio toad kit bought for £3. It is showing its age and 'requires' some uplifting procedures. I was inspired by Geoff Kent's upgrade of this kit in his 3rd book on the 4mm wagon. The kit has a nice shape to it but the handrails along the body side aare moulded and are fairly thick. Again, this is a matter for taste and their is little value in critiquing what I assume is a 40 odd year old kit. As ever, all handrails are scraped away using the scalpel. I am not very knowledgable about diagrams etc etc but Geoff points us in the right direction to what needs changing. The vertical L section on the sides of the cabin stop short for the type of vehicle being modelled. It is not a fault of the kit. These were extended with pladtikard. The end windows have sloping upper and lower cills so were scraped away and replaced with shaped plastikard. The footboard brackets are replaced with .8mm brass rod at the ends and .5mm brass for the central bits. On closer inspection of the prototype I think these might be made for L section. The new handrails are made from .45mm rod mounted on L section brackets made from brass section. The L section is drilled with a .5mm bit and the protusion length marked with pen. Then I fettled the piece to be mounted into the body with a mini cutting disc. The veranda doors or gates are not right and to model them open you need to build your own. This was made from .5mm plastikard cut into the frame shape of rectangle with diagonal brace (see the door on the far siee above) this was laminated with plastikard scribed with planks and .33mm wire used for the handrail. A new step was also built from plastikard. Inside the veranda a new brake handle, sander lever and bench were made. Underneath, sanding pipes were made from .8mm and .45mm rod. Brake gear was partially represented in .45mm rod and staples shaped to form the safety loops. Lanarkshire buffers finish things off nicely as usual and brass tube chimney re-sited on the roof. This will be painted unfitted grey and will join the Caia Road roster. Cheers for now. David

I recently finished the ratio Toad kit. The whole thing was sprayed halfords white primer then humbrol 64 light grey. The solebar and below are revell matt black and handrails etc painted white. I wanted to have the van allocated to Croesnewydd although I have no photos of a BR era van with this legend. The areas for black were masked and sprayed. As @Mikkel suggested I used an HMRS sheet to construct the croesnewydd but only had the general wagon sheet so the Y was cut from HYBAR! I weathered with a black enamel was and sprayed the solebar and beneath with a mix of revell black and brown. Lamps and spratt and winkles to follow.

By the end of Part Two , I had modelled all the most visible parts of the engine and felt tempted to stop there but many of the peculiarities of these engines were below the platform, so I had to keep going ‘down there’. Photo by Snell of B&ER 4-2-4T No.42 Although I have collected quite a number of drawings and photos, there are still some difficulties in determining the layout of all the parts, especially since some drawings omit features and others show some profiles, without indicating their locations in three dimensions. Well Tanks I decided to start with the two well tanks, once below the boiler and the other below the coke bunker, since these are well displayed in the three-view illustrations from ‘The Engineer’ supplement, 1910, which I showed in Part Two. I sketched the profiles by using the ‘Rectangle’ tool in ‘Fusion 360’ to trace over the end elevation illustrations. I then extruded the profiles to the lengths indicated on the side elevations. These steps are shown below: Locating model well tanks against ‘The Engineer’ illustrations The above drawings show the internal bracing struts inside the tank under the bunker, which served to reinforce the mounting for the ball on which the rear bogie was pivoted. While I have not modelled these completely concealed structures, they provided me with useful guidance on the placement of similar-looking braces at the font-end of the engine. The drawings show that there were two upward extensions from the tank under the bunker, leading up to the filler caps. These structures also served to separate the crew footplate from the coke bunker itself, behind them. A tool box and brake handle were also placed above the footplate. According to Ahrons: “An arrangement of angle plates, 2ft. deep, was fastened to the side of the fire-box and to the front of the well tank. From this point to the back buffer beam there was no frame at all.” I sketched the outlines of the tank extensions and the toolbox by tracing over the plan view from ‘The Engineer’ and extruded upwards from the sketches to match the illustration of the elevation. The results are shown below: Coke Bunker with Toolbox and Tank Fillers Front Bogie Mountings Having secured the rear bogie on its ball and socket joint, it was time to turn to the front end. According to Ahrons: “The ball of the leading bogie was secured to the underside of the cylinders by means of a casting with wings, to which two horizontal tie rods were fastened ; the other ends of the latter were secured to the bogie side frames, and prevented the bogies from slewing round across the track.” I attempted to identify these features from the front-end elevation shown in ‘The Engineer’ illustrations. Front Elevation from ‘The Engineer’ I assume that the casting for the ball is the part I have coloured blue, while the ‘wings’ are the parts coloured orange. The tie-rods to the bogie frame can be seen extending outwards from pivots on these ‘wings’. Where, though, is the brace coloured red to be placed? It is shown crossing in front of the tie rods so, perhaps, as at the rear end, there were two braces – fore and aft of the tie rods. I have enhanced the relevant area from the photo of No.42 above: Detail from Snell’s photo of No.42 The photo clearly shows a reinforcing bracket on the bogie side fame and what looks like the end of a tie-rod just above the frame. It appears that there were bracing plates either side of the tie-rod, which may be what is represented on the front-elevation drawing. Unless anyone has any more information or I find another drawing, I have to go with this assumption. I created the following support structure by first tracing the profile of the ball and the casting immediately above it, followed by using the ‘Revolve’ tool to create a cylindrical ‘body’. Then I sketched ‘wings’ either side of the central body. For the bracket, I traced the front-elevation profile and extruded it, initially with a rectangular profile. I then used the ‘Cut’ tool across the extruded width to create the sloping sides seen in the photo above and the central slot through which the tie-bars pass. My result is shown below, with the component parts coloured as in the illustration above. I also show the completed model, assembled above the front bogie: My interpretation of the front bogie support frame With the well tanks and bogie attachments in place, the underside of my model now looks like this: My model underside with well tanks in place As an aside, I think this underside view demonstrates why Dean failed in his attempt to create a narrow (standard) gauge version of a 4-2-4 tank engine. There was no room for the large well tanks so he had to resort to large side tanks, which were a source of severe instability. I have previously modelled Dean’s experimental No.9, as described in my Pre-Grouping blog. There’s a lot more detail still to be added to the underside. To gain an overview, I ‘mirrored’ one half of the split plan-view from ‘The Engineer’ and then colour-coded various elements – blue for frames, orange for crankshafts, green for valve gear, and red for wheel bearings. I made a couple of ‘corrections’ to the ‘mirror’ process by moving the cranks on one side to represent ‘quartering’: My Colour-coded plan view, derived from ‘The Engineer’ illustration As I began to examine this underside view in conjunction with the various elevations, I realised that the complex array of brackets and plates was not going to be easy to unravel! On this engine, the motion is very visible in side views, so I cannot escape modelling its main features. It has become clear that it’s going to take me some time to work out how all these parts fitted together in three dimensions, so I’ve decided to take a break before starting on modelling the motion and various underpinnings. This will a new area for me, since I have neglected any detailed representation of the motion on the engines I have designed previously. Mike

Some folk may be aware that I recently bought two whitemetal kit panniers from @Tony Wright, which he was selling on behalf of the builder and previous owner, Peter Lawson. I understand that the ex-GW locos listed on Tony's thread are only a small selection from a much larger collection, most of which (if not all?) I gather are to be sold, due to the unfortunate ill health of the owner. Anyway, the two panniers arrived here at Kernow Towers a few weeks ago and were posed on the layout: I understand that the right-hand loco was built from a K's kit, albeit with more a more modern etched chassis, a decent (open frame Anchorage) motor and Gibson wheels. The left-hand pannier was built from a NuCast kit (which was probably derived from the original K's moulds, I think) and also has an etched and compensated chassis, Romford wheels and another Anchorage motor. Both locos were numbered as examples of panniers that were allocated to South Wales sheds at the time that Bethesda is set in, so I decided to renumber them. The K's one was to become 9629, allocated to Oswestry for a while (Pannier Papers) and the NuCast one will become 9741, allocated for a short time to Shrewsbury (Pannier Papers). I have also decided to add a small amount of extra detail, such as lamp irons, sand pipes and injector overflow pipes, which were not originally featured on either loco. Both locos were also single manned at the time they arrived here, both with a fireman, clearly awaiting the driver to turn up from the mess room, so a driver from the ModelU agency has also taken up duty on the footplate. Both locos are extremely well built and run well. Peter Lawson certainly knows how to build a loco kit properly. It is my intention, however, not to alter Peter's work any more that I need to and importantly, to retain the original character of the locos. So far, I have worked on the K's one, which has now become 9269. I am extremely pleased with the result and the loco is now officially listed on the roster for Bethesda Sidings. I've also uploaded a short piece of footage of 9629 working in Bethesda yard today: These locos are probably around 50 years old and whilst it is true to say that they don't have quite the level of detail that their more modern RTR counterparts have, I do think they still stand up very well. What they certainly have is a definite presence (they are heavy when compared to a Bachmann one, especially one of my Bachmann bodied panniers with an etched chassis) and loads of character.

I decided to have a think about making track. I have a number of reference photos, including the excellent one of Corsican track kindly uploaded by 5&9 models earlier in the blog. So, timber sleepers, medium weight flat bottom rail held down with track screws. Firstly sleepers. These are cut from some old mahogany, pretty hard but it saws well. A scale 2.1 m long which seems like a reasonable average from the info I can find. Track screws next. Sometimes called rail screws or screwed spikes. These are still manufactured by several companies so I was able to get dimensioned drawings. Some experiments later I came up with the idea of using a peco track pin with a 0.5 mm cube of styrene glued to the head. This is the first batch with a coat of primer. Some rejects but enough to play with. Peco trackpins are 0.4 mm dia. There is no chance of them going through mahogany that tough without a pilot hole. However using any sort of hand held drill is a recipe for snapping drill bits at a rate. So I made a drill machine consisting of a linear ball slide mechanism from the bits box with a flexible mini drill drive clamped to it. Here it is sat on the sleeper drilling jig which makes sure that one inner hole is accurately drilled as a reference point. I painted a bit of scrap 10 mm ply as a test bed. First sleeper fixed with a track screw on the inside. The rail is peco code 83. Intended for HO that represents a fairly heavy flat bottom rail, but at 1/50 scale it comes in very close to the drawing I have of typical metre gauge track. The drill can then make the outer hole and a track screw inserted. The curve is 1 m radius marked out using the bit of string tied to a pencil method. With the inner rail fixed roller gauges are use to position the outer rail for drilling. Some pictures of the test track. I have tried a bit of ballasting and rail painting at the lh end. Not particularly happy about those, but I will do tests with other ballasts a few sleepers at a time till I find one I like. Overall I feel that was a worthwhile test. The track looks right to my eye and the wood sleepers have a more natural variation than plastic ones. Similarly the slight positional variation of the track screws adds to the realism. Price wise it isn’t much more than standard OO track, certainly cheaper than O gauge.

After dissecting the workings of the extraordinary 9ft. Pearson 4-2-4T engines in my previous four posts , I was interested to examine how these engines compared with William Dean’s later attempt to create something similar for the standard gauge. To make the comparison on as level a playing field as possible, I looked up information on the slightly later Pearson engines fitted with smaller 7’ 6” driving wheels – similar to those on Dean’s standard gauge engine. I have previously modelled the Dean engine, as described in my Pre-Grouping blog . Thee were eight of the original Pearson 4-2-4T design, with 9 ft. driving wheels, all built by Rothwell & Co. and delivered in 1853-4. There must have been difficulties arising from their novel features, as they were all rebuilt, with the usual form of inside frames and conventional springs, in 1868-70. In between these batches, two more 4-2-4T engines were built for the Bristol & Exeter Railway (B&ER) in Bristol. These were similar to the 9 ft. engines but with smaller driving wheels of 7’ 6” diameter. No. 29 was delivered in September, 1859 and No. 12 in April, 1862. These engines survived into GWR ownership and, as GWR No. 2005, the former No.12 remained in its original condition until broken up in about 1887. Ahrons, in “Locomotive and Train Working in the Latter Part of the Nineteenth Century”,Vol. Four, 1953, reports seeing No. 2005 frequently at Swindon and Bristol sheds. GWR No.2005 formerly B&ER No.12, built 1862 and broken up 1887 Taken together, these facts suggest that there may have been a closer relationship than has been recognised previously between Dean’s standard gauge 4-2-4T and the Pearson broad gauge 7’ 6”, GWR No.2005. Since I have already created a model of the Dean engine , I wanted to see how it compared with No.2005, by placing two models ‘side by side’. Creating a Model of B&ER No.12 (GWR No.2005) No.12 has been described as being similar to the earlier 9 ft. singles, although many of the ‘exotic’ features of the earlier engines had already been abandoned by then, even before the original engines were re-built. I found a fairly detailed description of the smaller engines, including an outline drawing, in ‘The Locomotive Magazine’, Vol . III. No. 36. Dec.1898 According to ‘The Locomotive Magazine’: “Their driving wheels were only 7ft. 6in. Diameter…. The diameter of the bogie wheels was 4ft, and the total wheel base was 25ft. 2in, the leading bogie having a base of 5ft. 6in., whilst that of the trailing bogie was 5ft. 9in., the driving wheels were 9ft. 4in. behind the leading bogie centre, and 10ft. 3in. in advance of the trailing. The boiler was 9ft. 9in. long, its maximum external diameter being 4ft. 2in., and the height of its centre line above the rail level 6ft. 11in.” This information was adequate for me to create a 3D model, which I based on my existing model of one of the 9 ft. engines. It was actually an easier modelling task, since these engines had conventional inside frames. Some peculiar featured remained, however, such as the water tank underneath the ashpan! Following my usual method, I created the boiler-smokebox-firebox assembly by reference to the above drawing, imported into ‘Fusion 360’ as a ‘canvas’. In addition to the driving wheels being smaller, the boiler was 1 ft. shorter than on the earlier engines. I used the ‘Move’ tool in ‘Fusion 360’ to modify faces of the original models of the 9 ft. engines, so as to match the profiles taken from the drawing. Creating 3D Boiler Assy with reference to Drawing I had to make new driving wheels, by my usual method, but re-used the bogie wheels and then assembled all the wheels around a new pair of full-length inside frames Creating 3D Chassis with reference to Drawing I took advantage of the way in which objects can pass through one another in the virtual world, by creating the two cylinders as complete ‘bodies’ that were then largely enclosed within the smokebox with parts of the sides protruding. The coke bunker only needed slight modification and the chimney and safety valve cover had to be re-profiled. One item which I have not modelled before was the curved handrail, which is such a prominent feature as it loops above the driving wheel splasher. This feature is easy to create in ‘Fusion 360’ by using the ‘Sweep’ tool. The path to be taken by the handrail is first created as a sketch, using the ‘arc’ and ‘line’ tools. Next the circular profile of the rail has to be created in a perpendicular plane. The ‘Sweep’ tool then causes the ‘profile’ to be extruded along the ‘path’, as illustrated below. Using the ‘Sweep’ tool to create a curved handrail in ‘Fusion 360’ So, it needed surprisingly little re-work before I had another model, representing the smaller-wheeled version of Pearson’s 4-2-4 tanks. My 3D model of Pearson’s 7’ 6” version of his 4-2-4T in GWR livery There’s a lot more detailing that could be added but I think this gives a good impression of the overall appearance of the real locomotive. Comparison with Dean’s standard-gauge version In parallel with developing this 3D model, I have also re-modelled the Dean standard gauge 4-2-4T in ‘Fusion 360’, so that I could place both versions together, to make some direct visual comparisons: I describe creating my 3D standard gauge model in in my Pre-Grouping blog. Pearson (broad gauge) and Dean (standard gauge) 4-2-4T Engines compared Looking at these two together, I think it is fairly obvious why the Dean engine had difficulty in staying on the track! With Dean’s inflexible bogie design and the excessive overall length, the lateral forces on any slight curvature must have been considerable, not helped by the large masses of water sloshing about in the long side tanks. It is possible that the two engines did actually come together at Swindon, since No.2005 was still around when No.9 was built and, according to Ahrons, a frequent visitor to Swindon. Dean 4-2-4T meets Pearson 4-2-4T Mike

Almost 10 years ago, I wrote a post about Dean’s experimental 4-2-4 tank engine , which made a brief appearance in 1882 before being hurriedly rebuilt as a more conventional 2-2-2 tender engine. Very little information has survived about the original engine, except that it had a chronic inability to stay on the track. With so little prototype information available – and even less that could be considered reliable – I felt justified in taking considerable liberties in the design of my model. The most glaring divergence from received opinion is my arrangement of the bogies, with the longer one at the back. I arrived at this decision after considering the layout of the rebuilt 2-2-2 version, which indicated that the outside Stephenson valve gear could not fit, if the longer bogie were at the front. I illustrate this point in the following diagram: Bogie arrangements compared to photo of Rebuilt No.9 Other aspects of my model that are entirely fanciful are the extended cab roof and the decorative ‘fake’ wheel arch. So the following photo is my own interpretation, which may or may not have some similarity to Dean’s prototype. My representation of Dean’s 4-2-4T at North Leigh Station More information about the construction of my model, which was built by traditional methods, using brass sheet, and was powered by a Tenshodo SPUD motor in the rear bogie, was given in my original post . Coming to more recent times, the extraordinary 4-2-4 tanks that were designed by Pearson for the Bristol and Exeter Railway have entered my sphere of interest. I have modelled these recently, as described in my Broad Gauge blog . One fact that has emerged is that two examples of a version of the Pearson engines, with smaller 7’ 6” diameter driving wheels, survived into GWR ownership, when they were numbered 2005 and 2006. GWR No. 2005, which was built at Bristol in 1862, remained in its original condition until broken up in about 1887. The point here is that this date is after Dean designed his standard gauge version! Furthermore, Ahrons, in “Locomotive and Train Working in the Latter Part of the Nineteenth Century”, vol.4, reports seeing number 2005 frequently at Swindon and Bristol shed. Taken together, these facts suggest that there may have been a closer relationship between Dean’s 4-2-4T and the Pearson 7’ 6” GWR No.2005 than has been recognised previously. In order to examine this relationship further, I decided to create 3D models of both No,2005 (broad gauge) and No.9 (standard gauge), so that I could place them side-by-side and consider the similarities and differences. In this blog, I shall describe my creation of a 3D model of No.9, while I shall tackle the other engine in my Broad Gauge blog. Creating a 3D Model of No.9 As I mentioned above, my existing model of No.9 was built by traditional methods, using brass sheet that I cut out by hand over paper templates. I still have the drawings, made using ‘Autosketch’ software, so I started by importing these drawings, as a ‘canvas’, into ‘Fusion 360’. I then followed my usual process of extruding the various components – boiler, firebox, frames, etc - from the drawings, to create 3D structures. I have previously described my methods in a blog post about creating a 3D model of a GWR ‘Sir Daniel’ class engine. For my current model, the initial layout of the components looked as shown below: Outlines of my Model Components over ‘Canvas’ in Fusion 360’ I added various details such as the outside Stephenson valve gear and the bogie side frames, to bring the 3D model up to a similar stage of detail as my brass model and then rendered the computer model in appropriate colours. After taking a screen shot of the 3D model, I added some more livery details in 'Photoshop' to give ‘character’ to the result. Remember that most of this comes from my own imagination, as we know very little about how the prototype was finished. I have tried to make it look like a ‘prestige’ express engine, which was apparently the original intention. My 3D model of No.9, rendered in ‘Fusion 360’ If the prototype really looked anything like this, I can understand why David Joy recorded in his diary, following a visit to Swindon in 1882 “I saw all about a mighty 'single' tank engine Dean and Charlton were building—8 ft-single and double 4 ft. - wheel bogies at each end. I saw drawings and all, and she looked a beauty. She was intended to do Paddington to Swindon in 2 min. under time," Comparison with Pearson Broad Gauge 4-2-4T I have described my 3D modelling of Pearson's engine in my Broad Gauge blog. Pearson (broad gauge) and Dean (standard gauge) 4-2-4T Engines compared Looking at these two together, I think it is fairly obvious why the Dean engine had difficulty in staying on the track! With Dean’s inflexible bogie design and the excessive overall length, the lateral forces on any slight curvature must have been considerable, not helped by the large masses of water sloshing about in the long side tanks. Dean was faced with several problems. He wanted to emulate the boiler capacity of Gooch’s 8 ft. ‘singles’, which would soon have to be replaced, so he had to increase the length to compensate for loss of width possible on a broad gauge engine. According to the RCTS booklet Part Two, “The domeless boiler was itself a. phenomenon, for it was one of the first in this country to be made in two rings and withal had a barrel length of 11ft. 6in.. not destined to be repeated for another ten years.”. The firebox also had to be lengthened, to maintain a grate area comparable with the wide firebox that was possible on the broad gauge. Another problem was how to accommodate large diameter cylinders, like those used on the broad gauge, together with their associated valves and steam chests within the narrower space between the frames. He tried placing the valves above the cylinder, operating them through rocking shafts from outside Stephenson valve gear. Most authorities agree that this engine was a complete disaster and must have been a considerable embarrassment to Dean - it’s not surprising that he didn’t want it talked about too much!. But he got over it and eventually came up with his own ‘singles’, which moved the valves below the cylinders in the ‘Stroudley’ arrangement and provided a much improved design of front bogie (after a pair of leading wheels proved insufficient) to keep the machine on the track. The long side tanks had to go and greater water capacity was obtained from a lengthened 6-wheel tender It is possible that the two engines did actually come together at Swindon, since No.2005 was still around and, according to Ahrons, a frequent visitor to Swindon. Dean 4-2-4T meets Pearson 4-2-4T Mike

Recently Hornby have released their 6 wheeled Sentinel in the guise of L81 which represents the first of three Sentinel's acquired second hand to replace the venerable LT Pannier tanks. Unfortunately with the prototypes their wheelbase was insufficient to operate track circuits on the main line. To address this a tender was attached fitted with a trip cock. The tenders were manufactured from 'Q' stock bogies. The tender and Sentinel carried conventional coupling gear as well as Ward-Lock couplings. This allowed the shunting of other Underground stock. Difficulties in fitting the Ward-Lock couplings made fitting of normal buffers to the Sentinel's problematic. To address this wooden buffers we're fitted to the Sentinel's front end with a Ward-Lock coupling. The tenders were able to accommodate Ward-Lock couplings as well as standard hinged oval buffers. CDC Kits have come to the rescue with a 3D printed tender. A choice of buffer positions are available. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/225753447991?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=0CsmXNqgQWK&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=MNMqJGNPSxi&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY I chose the buffers down version. On arrival other than paint and couplings the kit is ready to go. Unless... If you look at prototype pictures of these tenders coupled to the Sentinel's you will see tender runs at the same height as the Sentinel's buffer beam. The CDC kit is supplied running on 12mm Dapol wagon wheels. This then gives a stepped appearance between tender/Sentinel. To address this holes were drilled out for brass axle bearings. Then Gibson 10mm Lowmac were fitted which lowers the ride height of the tender correcting it. In using tension lock couplings, lowering the tender then ensures coupling height is the same as the representation of the Ward-Lock coupling housings on the tender. As you can see from the photo below markings have been set out for drilling holes for Bachmann NEM fitting tension locks. Finer handrails will be soldered up for the tender as well to match the Sentinel. Livery wise on the prototype the tender was finished in black with a red buffer beam, white handrails and collector shoes. More soon once I've fired up the soldering iron. Cheers, Mark

This is the new page for my County loco build. This blog will describe the build of a Great Western County 4-4-2 tank loco. The chassis is by SE Finecast which will sit under a body from a Dean Sidings / Phoenix kit - the latter being a Resin based model. The instructions suggest you use the chassis from a Hornby 4-4-0 County loco, but by going for the SE Finecast option, I am hoping for a better loco. As an aside the Hornby County 4-4-0 loco is going for something like £70 on eBay - of course it needs to be the loco driven model, not the tender drive. The prototype: These locos were built around 1904-1912 in 3 batches, with only 30 built in total. They were built around the same time as the County 4-4-0 tender locos. Both had driving wheels of 6ft 8 1/2" and were reputedly rough riders. This is from the site: http://www.gwr.org.uk/no4-coup-tanks.html its about 3/4 way down the page. Swindon 2221 Class Built between 1905 and 1912 with Standard No 2 boilers, these were tank versions of the 4-4-0 Counties, and were therefore known as the 'County tanks'. They were built to work the growing number of faster suburban services from Paddington. The first two batches had square dropdown frames at the front, the third (and last) batch having the later curved style, and cylinders set lower. They were fitted with bi-directional water scoops. The initial shape of the brake hangers on the driving wheels was curved, following closely the perimeter of the wheel, but was soon changed for a 'straight down' style as seen in the pictures here. The class was an early recipient of ATC, the first locos being fitted in 1908, with most of the rest of the class in 1915–1916. (At that time, the equipment was still known by its original name of 'Audible Cab Signalling', a term remaining in use, and latterly supplemented by 'Automatic Train Control', well into the 1920s.) The last loco was withdrawn in 1934 This photo is from the Russell vol 1 loco book and shews 4-4-2T no 2237 at Reading in the 1920's. This loco was based at this time at Reading and regularly worked the branch to Henley-on-Thames. There is a new build project for a full size 4-4-0 tender loco: https://www.churchwardcounty.org.uk The loco is being built at Tysley and will be based at the Gloucester, Warwickshire Railway when finished. Why build this kit? It will be something different to the usual Collett standard GWR locos and will be another case of stretching my skills. This will be the second loco I have built. The loco build: These are the etches for the frames, with the resin body behind: At this stage, it's a case of reading the instructions and identifying the parts. (There is a lot of surplus etch here, as the spacers are also for EM and P4). When cutting the parts from the etch, do not cut on your trusty cutting mat. Instead use a piece of plywood. As can be seen, my ply, also has holes drilled through the wood. In the photo above, you can see the frames and the holes cut out for the axles. These need to be opened out a little to get the bearings to fit. The tool in the foreground is a 5 sided broach reamer (Squires sell them as a set of 5) I thought I would only use them once, for my Metro loco build.... when in fact I use them all the time. Place the required hole on the plywood and over one of the drilled holes (in the ply) and gradually work the reamer round until the axle bearing fits. Note: Please do not file or drill these holes - you will possibly end up with a distorted hole. Only use the broach reamer. I now use this method when making up my bogies for my carriages and it is making a huge difference to the way they run. ________________ The black art of Soldering: Practice makes perfect.... I use a 25w iron, nothing fancy... together with DCC concepts solder and DCC concepts flux. I have soldered seemingly for ages and connecting wires together hasn't really been an issue. But soldering up a Brass carriage can take a lot of practice. I still have my first carriage kit (from about 30 years ago) where I struggled to heat the brass, piling more solder onl which became an unsightly mess. The only solution at that time was to get someone to make it for me, which is what happened. The jury is still out with regards to the "Poppy's jig" in the photo below. During the Metro build, I found it a bit of a nuisance and couldn't initially get the frames square. However, the first frame spacer that was soldered in for the County tank was the spacer that sits under the front running plate. (The screw-in spacers were already in position). At that point the loco was put into the jig. (For this loco, the front spacer brings the frames together, almost into a bow shape, like a boat!) With the frames in the jig, I could solder up all the various spacers with relative ease. I started work around 1:30pm and put the loco aside about 5pm or so and couldn't resist putting the wheels on. The next step will be getting the wheels to run freely and for this, they will be placed on a section of track which gets lifted at one end, whereupon the chassis should easily run down the elevated track. Day 2 build - 21st December 2023: With the chassis complete, I needed to ream one axle position only. Note: In order to have consistency, from this point on, keep all the wheels together, only remove one side and mark the wheels up so they always go back into the same axle. (When working on the loco, I always keep it in the same direction as the instructions.) The front wheels spin nicely, the rear wheels didn't, so need to be reamed. This is the reaming tool in action. It didn't need much to get both sets of wheels spinning nicely. They were then tested on a short length of track, which was supported at one end by a pair of pliers - they happily free-wheeled down the track. Its not a great photo, but you can see that the incline is minimal: Next I made up the bogie - I've got pin-point wheels in at the moment - the correct wheels were out of stock at Wizard models. The whitemetal sides were superglued to the metal frame - however, with the fixing bolt and spring in place (The spring is a bit tight), it's going to be very difficult to get the nut onto the thread.... I think for the time being, I will force a piece of plastic sleeving onto it. At least that way when I am working on the chassis, it wont keep dropping out! This is what it looked like at the end of the day - it felt as if there wasn't much to show and progress was slow. edit: Friday 22nd December 2023: Today I have been working on the cylinder parts - the photos are self explanatory: The Brass items still need fettling before they can fitted: Final shot for today shows the loco loosely placed onto the chassis. It needs fitting at the back properly. I now need to retrace my steps and continue working on the chassis, setting the cylinder details aside for the time being. However, I will do the modification with the bogie fixing that discussed in the comments below. I will then move onto the gearbox assembly (Roadrunner Plus) and also look at the rear fixings and the fixing of the rear radial truck. Continued Thursday 28th December 2023: A quick 5 minute job today 😄 It was going to be very easy and straightforward.... Re: Brake rigging The County etch is set up with brakes at the rear of the wheels.... which seems to be the way the County 4-4-0 tender locos were set up. The County 4-4-2T always had the brake blocks on the front face of the wheels. In trying to check the details; it was obvious the tank locos always had their brake rigging on the inside of the frames, with the County tender locos having a mix of brake gear on the inside and outside. (Its seemed to change at will.) Out came the TD set and with the aid of the dividers, I marked up the points to drill. On the drawings for the kit, the two sets of brake gears are shown as having a different height... but this is now looking wrong on the model. I need to check it again before carrying on. Friday 29th December 2023 Progress has been slow over Christmas and no doubt will continue to be slow over the New Year period as well. I marked out the brake rigging (for the brakes to be in front of the wheels) and drilled 4 holes in the correct place - it later turned out that, 2 were not in the correct place. 😠 But sometimes, that is just the way it is - its only 2 holes in the wrong place and no-one will know 😎 This is the chassis being marked out for the brake rigging, using the existing holes as a guide: It turns out that the pilot holes for the brakes on the front wheels are set lower than those on the rear drivers. I faithfully copied the holes on the frames and put them into the new position.... I then trawled through all the photos I could find of both County tank locos and County tender locos and can not see any that have a differing height for the brakes. Whilst brakes changed position during the respective locos life, they were always in the same plane. Not to worry, I just need to drill 2 fresh holes. I then turned my attention to the coupling rods: These were adjusted by use of the 5 side reamer broach until they ran smoothly. At each stage, they were checked on my elevated piece of track to see if they moved of their own accord. It's a fiddly process, but worth taking time over. For this test, I used a piece of track that was higher on the left than the right - It was longer for this test, so the elevation was gentler. The other side of the loco was done, until eventually I was happy with the movement. I will put together a short video shortly to show this working. Checking how the loco looks: Inevitably in a project like this you want to see how its coming along, I can never resist the temptation to put the body on the chassis. In checking it over with the drawings I am working from, I reckon its about 1mm too high... (Looking at the photos, it also seems to be higher at the front). I've recently been looking at the pony truck at the rear and need to do a side-by-side comparison. The one that comes with the kit is a whitemetal item - whereas Wizard do a lovely etched brass kit: https://www.wizardmodels.ltd/shop/locomotive/ls2/ It will come down to the mounting point and the space that I have. (I decided against as the white metal will have a bit more weight.) By the end of the day, I had made good progress - but something still bothered me. Namely parts no A13 (see drawing below) - I couldn't work out how they fitted onto part B6. A13 should be the sides of the firebox, with a gap inside for the power pick-ups..... I have soldered B6 into the frames as per the diagram - however - What I have now realised is that B6 shouldn't go where I have got it, it needs to go to the bottom of the frames. Unfortunately the way the lines are drawn, it looks as if they need to go into the top aperture, but clearly they don't! I will therefore fettle up a piece to go at the bottom of the frames to solder in the firebox and the pick-ups. Then at the same time, I am going to fettle up a piece to fix the pony truck into. I then need to fettle up the brake rodding in it's new position..... Happy New Year Wednesday 3rd Jan 2024 update: Yesterday the brake rigging was finally drilled into the correct position... meaning a few extra holes were drilled in the frames - check before drilling etc. The old holes have been filled to avoid confusion when everything gets sprayed. Work then moved onto setting up the cylinders and slidebars, with the last job being soldering the connecting rod together. Issues: 1. In folding up the cylinder block to go onto the frames, the instructions say don't solder - why? It's all held together with slots in the frames that then slot into the cylinder block. The sliderbar supports, also slot into slots in the frames - likewise surely they should be soldered.... The last section supports the vacuum pump and is always falling off! - so that is definitely going to be soldered. (The pump itself has a rod going through to the crosshead and that will need to be superglued as its small whitemetal casting.) 2. In fitting the slidebars on, obviously they don't get painted, so need to be masked when spraying - but that means the area behind them on the frames wont get sprayed. In typing this, I realise that I will probably need to finish off as much as the chassis as possible. Then once that is done, I need to bring the chassis into the lounge for a couple of days to warm up, then give it a couple of coats of primer, then black. Then re-assemble and paint the body as a separate entity.... 3. Or start work on the body, so that can also be sprayed. Thursday 4th January 2024. Work has continued on a few fronts today - I have soldered the cylinder etch / box square - but not soldered it to the frames yet. The sliderbar support has been soldered to the frames though, plus, I have soldered up the gearbox. At the same time, I soldered onto the frames the support for the vacuum pump.... only to find that it fouls the body and in fact you cant see it in any of the photos I have! (It has been removed). Saturday 6th Jan 2024 I have moved the position of the motor, originally, I set it from the front driving wheels, with the motor projecting into the boiler: Unfortunately, this put the weight onto the front bogie, lifting slightly the rear drivers. Eventually this will be cured with extra weight. By deciding to change the motor round, I had to move the angle / position of the gearbox: The advantage of using the Roadrunner plus gearbox is that you can set it at (almost) any angle you want. Essentially by changing it round, whilst changing the weight distribution, I was able to set it in such a way as I avoided a cross-bracing section on the underframe: With this change, I powered the motor up to 12v DC and reassembled the wheels and valve gear and for the first time, we have a running model: The wheels rotate nicely at all power levels. This is how the motor sits - the right way round! At this stage, in testing the wheels etc. everything is held on by the use of small plastic bits of tubing. Hence the white ends! Saturday 13th January 2024: It's been a bit quiet with the County 4-4-2T project over the last week or so. That changed this afternoon as I started work on more of the body detailing items. Whitemetal items, together with the handrails were all applied: The smokebox dart is from Comet models. The front steps are being glued to the front running plate and at the same time I have found a couple of buffers in the spares box. the ones with the kit are correct for the Dean loco, but one of the heads is smaller than the rest. I have seen photos of the larger buffers on County locos. Next to it is the backhead - recently @MAP66 has been working on a backhead for his 48xx project at Tyteford Halt. You wont be able to see this detail, but we will all know it's there! The detail will be picked out once its had primer applied. Wednesday 17th January 2024: It's coming together nicely.... electrical pick-ups have been added today. The wires were as supplied in the chassis kit. These have been soldered to a PCB, which in turn has been soldered to the frames. The loco was then tested on 12v DC and it successfully ran up and down on a metre of track. The remaining items have been added to the body; which has included forming the handrail round the smokebox. It's not perfect, but it's not bad. Lamp irons have also been fitted (I've forgotten to put the lamp irons on for the spare lamps - tomorrow!). The front running plate has not been fixed in place yet. Tomorrow, I will solder in the rest of the electrics and sort out the DCC decoder and stay-alive. (edit 16/2/24 I have just found this video on the Missenden page about forming handrails: https://www.missendenrailwaymodellers.org.uk/index.php/virtual-missenden-bending-gwr-handrails/ Thursday 18th January 2024 - a minor setback ☹️ Today see's a minor setback... that is a nuisance! Yesterday in running the loco, one of the pins holding the valve gear in place caught on the motion bracket and everything stopped for a while. Unfortunately, the two halves of the Roadrunner plus gearbox came apart and have been glued overnight. With the motor removed, the two gears in the above photo should rotate freely - they don't. Individually they are fine, rotating freely. At first I thought I might have bent the rod on the topmost gear, hence the larger rod pin there at the moment. It's not that, it makes no difference. Although that top gear in the photo looks a bit wonky - but thats not it as I have poked and prodded them, they don't want to move :-( I have emailed Highlevel kits to see of they can suggest anything. I might have to remove the glue between the two parts and see if that makes any difference. (27th March - at this point, I still have not had a reply.) To be continued..... On the positive side: I have now fixed the running plate back to the main loco body. There is a small piece of brass folded in 90 degrees under the plate, that goes up behind the cylinders. Currently all being glued together.... It's a new impact adhesive that allows movement for 3 minutes and cures completely in 24 hours. There is a small piece of electrical tape underneath to (hopefully) avoid it also setting to the chassis! It was a b*$*$r to get together and it looks like I have moved the handrail again! The backhead has had a paint - yesterday it had a coat of white primer - today it's black. Then obviously onto detailing Brass; Copper; White and Red in hopefully the right places. When it's in the loco, it seems to be set so far back from the cab doors, you wont see any of it.... (27/3/24 - it's now had to come out to get more weight into the loco!) Saturday 27th January 2024 update: Today, we start with how we finished last Thursday - with the backhead - now with the pipework picked out. Plus the first wheel with painted rim, all of the wheels will be done before the loco is finished. I have had a few issues with the gearbox..... to cut a long story short it turned out one of the gears had got some superglue on it - not recommended. It's all fixed now and I am pleased to say the gearbox and motor are working very well now. Seen here under test with a screwdriver playing the part of an axle! Compare this set-up with how it was originally done - its all reversed, which puts the weight of the motor over the driven wheel. Seen here in place - more testing - more fettling and finally we get the gearbox and motor in the chassis. Finally - it's getting there! It has taken a lot to get it to this stage in trying to get the chassis to fit into the loco body, then the addition of the front running plate to try and get that right. At this stage the loco isn't wired.... the pickups are done and the motor is wired up, but at the moment they aren't connected as I am waiting until I spray the chassis and I will then wire in the decoder. I had it happily running up and down on the layout, holding onto a 9v battery! There is a short video of the testing phases of the loco build on Youtube: Testing process for the loco: Running the chassis up and down on track set to a slight incline. Checking weight distribution - in this case, it was obvious that the motor was lifting the rear drivers. Only slightly, but enough to be an issue. The combined chassis and loco body are still very light (@150 grams) so will need a lot of extra weight packing inside. I will try to cram as much weight into the void within the chassis around the area of the drivers. I am hoping to get it up to 200grams or so. Run for a while on the rolling road, testing the slower speed steps. The complete loco was then tested on the layout using a 9v battery. At this stage it is not wired up for DCC. The completed loco will have a Zimo decoder and 10,000 uf Stay-alive. The McKinley video is here: Tuesday 13th February 2024: The loco has had a spray of black inside, together with the chassis etc. Previously it had all had 2 coats of white primer. Sunday 18th Feb 2024: The loco had it's first coat of Railmatch green yesterday: This afternoon it has had it's second coat. The reveal: Friday 23rd February 2024: Whilst work has been progressing on the body, the chassis is being put back together. The motor and gearbox are now back in; the wheels have had their rims painted (primer & two coats of black): Transfers have now been applied to the loco. The buffer beams needed another coat of red and will have their numbers applied tomorrow. The Great Western is from Fox, with the plates being Railtec. Update mid-March 2024: The County tank and SRM are seen together at Henley-on-Thames and then today the loco is posed outside the signal box at Henley-on-Thames: edit: end of March 2024. The loco is running, but still struggles to pull its own weight. I am trying to increase the weight inside the loco to push it down onto the track. I have other stuff going on at the moment, so its been a bit sidelined - I will get back to it soon... To be continued!

It's too easy, isn't it? Still, I find it fascinating; a smooth, quiet running Dapol Class 50 was a pre-owned bargain and another piece of luck enabled a body-swap to pre-TOPS Blue, just like I remember tearing past the swings and slides at our Rec'. I'm now in the habit of using Digitrains sound files, but they didn't have a Zimo Next18 small enough at the time. I nearly went with Legomanbiffo as his projects are sublime, but didn't want to confuse myself with ESU and Zimo protocols! Luckily Youchoos had the hardware and Digitrains did a reblow. And here it is on speed step 4 with volume at 40/255, turn the volume up and enjoy.

Our planned house move is now likely to happen in the Summer. With more time to get ready, an Easter update makes sense. There's a new challenge to report on, as well as some modelling progress. I'll start with loose ends being tidied up: Loose Ends: Left over from my American HO project last year was my incomplete Walthers' Grain Elevator Kit. I've been keen to build this for a good while, so even though my plans have changed it was nice to get it finished. First task was to weather the head house and loading / unloading shelters. As I use brush weathering, it made sense to do this before assembly: I added some styrene card strengtheners to the head house when I assembled it, and a false floor at the elevator end to hide the curve of the silos: The finished model is as impressive as I'd hoped, even if it would still be small by prototype standards: (Some of these images also appear in my Narrow Gauge HOn30 thread) Question is, what to do with this now? We're having a big clearout, as our new home will have less storage space. The Narrow Gauge mini-layout I built in 2021 has been passed on through our local 009 Society Group, and I have thrown out some of the building kits I assembled a while back but now have no use for (I really didn't need a dozen railway stations!). I wasn't sure what to do with these three American HO building kits though - all personal favourites but also now surplus: All three being Walthers meant they were designed to complement each other, with selective compression carefully managed to help them go together. When I compared them to a part-built Craftsman Kit of a single store however, the illusion was broken. All of a sudden, the Walthers buildings look smaller than they probably should, although all are 1:87: (Images above have also appeared in my HO Union Station Diorama thread) After this test, it was a much easier decision to part with the three plastic buildings, donated to the local Model Railway Club for use or onward sale through their Club Shop. This has created a bit of space on the workbench: The Craftsman Store Kit is being kept for possible use in my HOn30 project, but progress is slow. Each window has delicately cut separate upper and lower sashes. As the frames (and shutters) have 'peel and stick' backings, they aren't difficult to assemble, it's just one of those jobs I find best tackled in small stages: When completed, the model will appear in my Narrow Gauge Modelling Thread. Last Orders: My previous blog entry talked about the impact of Hatton's Model Railways closing. Largely out of sentiment, I made a last minute purchase just before the website closed, buying a heavily discounted Continental Signal Box (Stellenwerk): (also pictured on the ‘Hattons to close’ thread) But 'Last Orders' applies to some modelling too. Our current, Victorian house has a single-storey outhouse at the back which I've been able to use for spray painting and as a baseboard factory. With a couple of larger kits in my stash, it makes sense to spray the larger components now, even if I don't tackle the actual kits before we move. It's no coincidence I have two models using the same components, as I bought the Post Office as a substitute when I couldn't find an affordable kit of the station (I'd noticed the Postamt is modelled on an end part of the station): Key parts of the Post Office were sprayed first. This is now all dried and back in the box (not the box pictured): Just getting a photo of the pieces for the station proved a challenge: the box is not only large but 4" deep. In the end I took advantage of the floorspace created by ditching a bed that used to be in this room but had become surplus too: These are just the walls, having been painted and left to dry in the outhouse before coming back in. It's big: I think the photo on the box shows the station as it appeared in an earlier era, matching the postcard shared by @Mikkel below my previous blog entry, here. Over time I think it has been repainted in a lighter colour, which I prefer and which explains my choice of colour for the walls. The current version of the kit is lighter in colour. I also brush painted the impressive entrance piece for colour matching: With the baseboard factory also closing, it'd be good to place a final order (with myself) before we move. At the moment it's all just tidied up for house showings: But this brings me to: The Fresh Challenge: In previous posts for this blog, I've been refining my modelling aims and project list. But I've now run into: 'the problem.' Our new home is more modern and will be much better for us in many ways, both as a family and as my wife and I work out of the home office. But we're losing spare space and storage - not just the outhouse. As we make progress with our much needed downsizing clearout it's become possible to see how life will work after we move, and we've realised the plan we had to accommodate my modelling and layout interests isn't going to work - at all! Long-suffering readers of my contributions to RMweb over the past four years will be familiar with the regular changes our family needs have imposed upon my ideas for space to use. Now I'm having to think about modelling with no space at all. Let me explain: I'll be able to set up a workbench in a spare bedroom when the family aren't staying, but the lingering smell of paint and glue means it needs to be in a room where others aren't waiting to use the space (we won't have a garage, a cellar or a large shed in the garden either). I can look at ideas for portable layouts, but have to think about a question I was first asked about portable layouts by @AndyB in August 2020: "Where will you keep the layout?" It's a rather good question for a property without storage space: I have been here before: the first layout I ever had (but didn't finish) was a very compact N-Gauge Branch Terminus to Continuous Run that could easily have come from an early Cyril Freezer plan book (3'8" x 2'2", with 9" min. radius curves and points): I wrote about it in the Layout and Track Design Forum back in 2021 (here). When not in use, it actually went into my wardrobe! But I wasn't trying to include a station that will be 3' long or run mainline trains (or have three layouts)! If I'm going to build some new baseboards before we move, I need to get my thinking cap on again. Despite all the lessons I've learned, I've never really considered the prospect of having no dedicated space. I've always assumed I'd have a railway room one day (when the kids grew up), and never imagined I wouldn't one day be building the kind of layouts I dream about. I'd like to see trains like this running on my own layout: This was a test run to see if a six coach train looks OK for mainline running in H0 (I decided it was): But a 6' x 3' table top isn't what I'm aiming for! I know lots of dedicated modellers face this challenge, and have often posted on the Boxfiles, Micro layouts and Dioramas Forum (and back in the day contributed to Carl Arendt's Micro-Layout website). It's just not what I'd been working towards. I've plenty of modelling to keep me busy (not everything has been shown in this post), but whatever happens next may - once again - look a little different. Until then, thanks for reading, Keith.

It would be January 2021 when Bachmann introduced their 94xx models. I bought the basic version. It had a lovely copper cap to its chimney and it ran perfectly without any trace of a wobble. Three years later and I have just purchased a sound fitted version. Bachmann 9479 – 32-27SF I have titled this Post ‘The Long Haul’ in recognition of the time that I have spent in recent weeks changing CVs to enable the engine to run on analogue. It would help if I knew what I was doing! The 94xx has a coreless motor which is super efficient. As a result the engine needs a whole different range of CV values to the ones I would usually apply. I would say it is still a work in progress. However I would say work is sufficiently advanced that I would give the engine a run around the layout. Hornby Bow Ended Colletts What carriages might be suitable? I had rake of Hornby Bow Ended Colletts parked up in a siding. These arrived on the layout in June 2021, so not long after the Bachmann 94xx. Why were they parked up? Ah well a quick trip around the layout reminded me that one of the coaches had a tendency to leave the track. After exiting a section of curved track the leading bogie was reluctant to rotate and would jump the track. The offending Bow Ended Brake Coach These Hornby coaches are super detailed models. Perhaps a little light weight. I have close coupled my set using Roco 40270 couplers. Now why don’t they stay on track? Hornby Coupling Mechanism Exposed! Removing the suspect coach from the track confirmed that the offending bogie did not always rotate smoothly. With the coach upside down on the kitchen table the bogie could be popped out of its housing with the blade of small screw driver. To fully investigate the close coupling mechanism it is then necessary to remove the keeper plate which is held in place with two screws. Bogie and Keeper Plate How straight is your Keeper Plate? On first inspection my keeper plate was bent in the middle and rubbing against the underlying close coupling mechanism. A quick massage to straighten the plastic and ‘all sorted’ – so I thought. Well it was nearly very good, especially after I had smeared it all with Vaseline. Sadly a little later and the leading coach was still leaving the track. The coach and the Close Coupling Mechanism was given a further closer inspection. Studying the mechanism at the opposite end of the coach suggested a possible cause. Stepped Close Coupling Cam Operation of the close coupling mechanism relies on a ‘Cam’. I have retrofitted such a mechanism to a Mainline Buffet car and simply cut a Cam shaped opening in the coach floor. Home Made ‘Cam’ for Mainline RB Hornby however have made a stepped cam to accommodate the protruding ‘tooth’ which is used to hold the mechanism up against the coach floor. Hornby Mechanism with tooth. Comparing the two mechanisms from opposite ends of the coach showed that the faulty mechanism had a much larger tooth which was presumably interfering with the smooth rotation of the bogie. A few quick cuts with a craft knife to shorten the ‘tooth’ and the issue was sorted. Now how does the 94xx perform with its rake of Bow Ended Colletts on analogue? I would say rather well!

Last weekend we held another FREMO meeting in our habitual venue -- should you have seen my posts on earlier meetings tehn you may recognise the various doodads that are usually found on the walls of school gyms in many of the photos. But that doesn't detract from some really good modelling. We agreed it was a good weekend. As a newish group and because we're quite isolated from the more expert groups in mainland Europe, we're putting a lot of effort into getting the planning right since it is only possible to operate things in a satisfying way if many potential questions already have answers. FREMO meetings are essentially railway modelling combined with a sort of role playing game. I can't photograph the role playing part since it has no physical expression, but here are some photos I took. As usual they're a bit pointilliste. Smartphone cameras are wonderful things, working close up in relatively low light and smoothing away the awkward details and the 12 inch to the foot background... I confess these photos are a bit biased towards my station (Wasserbach) which I was running all weekend. Showing photos publicly, like bringing out the models for the meeting, is an incentive to sort out some of the details that give away the fact these are not pictures of anything full size! Ben

My intended period for the model will eventually be March to July 1959.This will allow the majority of locomotives seen on shed to be steam but also allow me to run a few of the early Diesel shunters and Hydraulics. This made me wonder about how they would have refuelled the diesels. Penzance didn't receive its first allocation of diesels until Sept 1958 when they allocated three Class 08s for training. In November of the same year, they reallocated two of the three, leaving one (D3514) which remained at Penzance until June 1968. The first Laira based Hydraulics started to appear at Penzance in 1958. My understanding is that D600 and D800 Warships carried a fuel capacity of 800 gallons. If this is correct, they would not have needed refuelling at Penzance for the return working. The Class 08 would still need to be refuelled. This would seem to indicate that Penzance’s diesel facilities may have been very basic in 1959. All photographs I’ve seen for the 1959 period do not show any diesel refuelling points. So have to assume that refuelling was very rudimentary, either direct from 50 gallon barrels or direct from rail or road born tanks. Further information I've gathered from Diesel Depots, The Early Years by Irwell Press indicates that shed staff initially treated the first allocations of diesel locomotives with a modicum of disdain. The Class 08s being stored on sidings away from the main running shed roads. In taking a look at my track plan, I realised that there was no such siding to accommodate locos away from the main running shed roads. I wanted to include some sort of diesel refuelling, so added a very short siding at the front. There will be room for some barrels of diesel fuel between this siding and the running shed. Track plan v.4 (including siding for Class 08 storage) In adding this siding along with some slight overall modifications, I’ve managed to increase the scenic area to within the last square inch of the 2711.52sq ins. Scenic area 2710.5 sq. inches I have purchased and cut the baseboard tops to the new dimensions. The next task is to decide on how much plywood from version one of Rospeath Lane can be used in the baseboard construction. I believe slow progress is better than none…

It’s that time of year for the annual visit to the York Model Railway Show, which is the local show to visit. The show was ok, but personally disappointing at the lack of BR sector period layout representation. The most interesting layout was O gauge set in the BR blue period. However there was two key forthcoming products of interest in the Bachmann Class 31 and Realtrack Class 142. Bachmann Class 31 Bachmann had their stand and I was particularly interested to see the Class 31. My initial impression is there is something just not quite right about the cab front. It’s feels a bit flat or slab like. Maybe the side pillars don’t have enough curvature in profile, thus making the front feel slab sided? I’m not sure but just doesn’t feel right. I’ve not seen the Accurascale Class 31 close up yet, so the jury is still out for me. Although personally I don’t see a lot wrong with the Hornby Class 31, it’s dimensionally accurate (except the roof fan) and I do like the opening cab doors - a controversial view point. As the price of models march ever higher, while wages aren’t keeping pace it makes a me quite careful as to what I spend my disposable income on. I’m sure many are in the same place. These are some more photos. Realtrack Class 142 The other model of interest is the Realtrack Class 142. A key model for my period of interest and my interest in second generation DMUs. I could potentially buy many of these. Although it still surprises me why Bachmann or Accurascale didn’t pick off the Class 142, especially considering the popularity of the EFE Rail Class 143 and 144 (I’m still looking for the weathered Regional Railways 144 with the very suitable York - Leeds destinations). That said Accurascale haven’t produced a DMU yet as far as I’m aware. From my experience with the Realtrack Class 144, which I’ve one set where the circuit board has failed in the dummy car and detailing parts have been lost, but aren’t available to replace, I’m a little anxious to spending nearly £300 per set on a Realtrack 142, if it’s a similar experience to the 144. At this price point my expectations is for good spares support and availability, much like Bachmann provide via the spares web site. Anyway here are some photos of the latest samples. They do look good, wish the Skipper destination was St Ives / St Erith because I remember riding these when brand new on the Carbis Bay Branch in 1985. Note the GMPTE livery example has the body from a 142/1! Bachmann Class 69 Although out of period for me, the Class 69 has a passing interest because of its Class 56 heritage. Here are a few photos of the EP sample Interesting N Gauge Tower Light Thought these might work well as tower lights on a future N gauge project I have in mind Finally a few photos of an O gauge layout I particularly liked

The 1870 horsebox is now painted and in service. Once primed I liked the overall level of detail, the top hinges and the dog box end show a slight bowing out but not severe enough to merit a substantial alteration. I think it would be in plain coach brown by the 1900s, compartment interior off white and a simple bench seat added. Lettering is from the HMRS sheet. Some light weathering to bring out the details. A couple of posed pictures. The start of a racing day special perhaps. The new horsebox is followed by a CR Dia 73, built 1907 and a LNWR Dia 436 from the late 1890s. Just about plausible then. I’m still a bit unsure about resin printing. The model has worked out reasonably but I am concerned about the brittle nature of things like buffers and steps. My preference would be etched brass steps and sprung metal buffers, though I appreciate that would increase costs and might not be viable for low manufacturing volumes. Perhaps too printing a model in a number of smaller sections would result in a greater accuracy ?

I’ve finally completed painting my pair of six wheel coaches which have been languishing on the work bench for far too long! Readers of this blog will know that coaches are definitely my nemesis, they always seem to take me forever to complete and these two have been no different! I’m taking Sherton to the York exhibition at the end of the month and that provided the enthusiasm to get them finished🙂 Diag V8 Passenger Brake Van Diag U14 Ist & 2nd Class composite carriage I like the variation in roof heights and styles which seem to typify a branch line train in the Edwardian era. Branch train comprising of 2021 class saddle tank number 2112, D14 brake 3rd, U14 1st & 2nd Composite, Diag C10 all 3rd and Diag V8 Passenger brake van They really shouldn’t have taken me 3 years to complete, but hopefully readers will think they were worth the wait!😁 I’m thoroughly looking forward to exhibiting at the York show, it’ll be the furthest North that Sherton has been, well and truly out of G.W.R. territory! Best wishes Dave

I’ve eventually been able to get my new hobby room organised. I have eventually organised my new hobby room, transforming it from a storage room, filled with furniture and boxes, to a space where I can begin building a layout. First task was to take a proper look at the original Rospeath Lane baseboards. The damage was not as bad as I originally thought… Hmm…it would have been an excellent layout with potential for expansion in the future. Despite building it in two baseboards, it would be very large and difficult to transport to exhibitions. The two baseboards were more for movability during construction and also in case a house move. Even though it has moved house, with now what seems to be minor damage, I’m sticking with my decision to replace it with a more manageable size layout. Last view of version one before being dismantled Today has been the day I embarked on dismantling v1 baseboards. The intention is to repurpose as much of the plywood as possible for version 2. The baseboards had been designed to accommodate tortoise motors so had a frame a depth of 110mm. Version 2 will not require a frame with the same depth as I’m proposing to use Makeit Miniature’s turnout actuator. This will mean I can tidy up the cross members to a uniform size. It's now just a pile of plywood None of the baseboard tops seem suitable for the new layout. This gives me a choice deciding to go with 6mm plywood as the baseboards tops or going with 5mm FoamX Board. Before I dismantled the baseboards, I salvaged all the sleepers and rail. With the plywood tidied away in a corner of the room for sorting later, I made a start on cleaning up all recovered wooden sleepers.

Some while back as part of the work on the Winchester Railway Modellers Redbridge Wharf layout we decided to add smoke and steam effects to a model of a TID tug. After a bit of research we harked upon cheapo piezo electric mister units as used in humidifiers. These can be obtained in various sizes and with various control boards from all the normal sources. The unit we settled on was a 16mm disc connected to a control board that takes a 5v input. This was rigged in in an old plastic bottle, fed by a wick and supported by a 3D printed contraption underneath the baseboard. Fed with 5 volts from the layout and set on it's random setting it gives a quite pleasing effect and certainly catches the attention at exhibitions. Of course it was never going to stop there! Would it be possible to do something in a loco? Others have done it so it had to be done. I happened to be respraying a model of the A4 Mallard to create a model of Sir Nigel Gresley as running in 1967. An obvious candidate for running on a model of the ex-LSWR mainline to Weymouth! Quite a lot of space in the smoke box of an A4 so with a bit 3D printing a mounting and water tank was produced and all I had to do was figure out the electrickery bits. It's currently very much a prototype but it seems to work... The loco is fitted with an ESU loksound micro decoder but that isn't man enough to drive the mister circuit which needs 150+ mA. To get round that I've rigged up a rectifier and voltage regulator to provide enough 5volt oomph. That feeds the supplied control board but with a slight twist. Giles of this parish produced a chuffing narrow gauge radio controlled loco and poked around in the control board mechanism. He found that in order to get the mister to chuff reliably you need to trickle 2 volts or so to it all the time then when you give it a squirt of 5 volts it responds immediately. Very very useful info. In my case I have a solid state relay controlled by Aux 1 on the DCC decoder. This function output is turned on by function 4 and is defined to trigger on every sound chuff. The relay effectively switches the power supply to the mister control board from 2 volts to 5 volts. The problem at the moment is that all the control gear takes up rather a lot of space... I have my work cutout to miniaturise all this. Cheers Dave

A horse-drawn furniture removal van has appeared at Farthing. The kit is a reborn Gem product, marketed under the John Day Models label alongside other re-introduced whitemetal ranges. It’s all run by Daryle Toney who is very helpful (no connection). The main parts are a fair fit. As usual I used Loctite Gel to stick it together. Unlike most superglues it does not require a perfect join to bond well. Some parts did require fettling. This is the front of the van. I filed the sides a bit and shortened the supporting bracket. Coming together. It’s quite a beast. If Wikipedia is to be trusted, Pantechnicons ranged from 12-18 ft in length. That’s 49-72 mms in 1:76 scale. The kit is 67 mms long. It’s also quite tall, more so than the common types seen in photos. For some reason the parts for the end section get in the way of each other, so required a bit of work. First the brackets on the end panels were shortened, using the “Salami method”. The lower floor casting doesn’t line up with the end panels. The instructions suggest shortening the panels, but after consulting prototype photos I chose instead to saw off bits of the floor casting itself. This allowed everything to line up nicely, with a section of styrene employed as gap filler. I then entombed the ghost of Mrs X in the van. Mother of a childhood classmate, she once tore into me for spilling cocoa on her sofa. It wasn’t my fault, her son pushed me, but she wouldn’t listen. I hereby condemn her to travel forever in this empty furniture van, with not even a pillow to sit on. Two padlocks seal her fate. Goodbye Mrs X, nobody messes with a railway modeller. I couldn’t find room to fit the rear springs properly, so cut a notch in them for the axle. You can’t see the dodge once the wheels are on. I would have preferred slimmer wheels but couldn’t find appropriate replacements. Filing the spokes rarely leads to good results, so I’ll live with it. A simple piece of plastikard prevents the fore-carriage from dropping off, while still being free to rotate. The driver’s seat was filed to a more discrete size. Judging by preserved Pantechnicons, it was actually more common for the driver to sit on the roof, but I did find one or two photos with a lower seat. Bits of 0.45mm wire were added for arm rests and supports. The foot-rest was raised a bit to match the driver. Forgot to scribe it but managed it later. The shafts are fitted with bits of wire, which plug into holes in the fore-carriage. The horse is included in the kit. The driver is a seated passenger from Andrew Stadden’s range. At this point I was confronted by a delegation from United British Draught-horses for Liberty and Equine Defence (UNBRIDLED). They informed me in no uncertain neighs that a large Pantechnicon requires at least two horses. So I hastily fashioned a two-horse drawbar... ...and ordered a couple of Shire horses from Dart Castings. Fearing further industrial action, I added some steps and grab handles for the driver. Then primed the whole thing. Next, the livery. The prototypes were often extensively lettered. And colourful. I normally go for subdued colours, but it’s been a dreary winter and I felt like a bit of Rock & Roll, so took inspiration from this striking example. I spent some time drawing up various designs in Microsoft Word, which has more options for sizing and spacing text than is at first apparent. The curves were made to fit by importing a photo of the model into Inkscape, drawing the appropriate curves and then copying the shapes back into Word. I printed selected designs on paper, sprayed them with matt primer to protect the colours, and cut them with a fresh blade. Paper is of course a bit crude compared to DIY transfers, but it’s straightforward and you can test designs directly on the model. @kirtleypete has even used it for locos. The van was painted yellow and black, and the paper then mounted with a thin layer of lightly diluted PVA. Final details included a driver’s handwheel for the brakes, plus tarps, rope and other rooftop clutter. I added some chains from Cambrian Models and finished off with MIG weathering powders. The odd-looking loading flap is prototypical, if rather chunky. I also fitted chains to the Shire horses, mounted with a wire loop drilled into the harness. Looks like the Oryx wants in on their gig, probably an agent from DISRUPT (Dissident Ruminants for Progressive Transport). As usual, there are no reins. My layouts are set up and dismantled all the time, so the normal solutions – e.g. fuse wire - are just not practical. What I need is something thin yet robust enough to fit quickly with a pair of tweezers. Ideas welcome. As you can see, Bailey & Sons’ strategy was to locate their offices at railheads along the Berks & Hants line. This worked well and the company grew to become one of the major removal firms in the area. Yet for Mr Bailey, Senior - lover of all things yellow – it was a source of constant irritation that his horses didn’t match his vans. Eventually Mr Bailey proposed to dye the horses yellow. But his sons - brought up in a sickening sea of yellow - finally rebelled and said no, father, enough now.

The latest kit from True Line Models represents a horse box built by Metropolitan in 1870 for the CR. This is a different method for TLM being a resin print. I have used 3d printed parts but this is my first go at a complete 3d printed wagon. Removing the body from the supports taught me just how brittle resin prints can be. Since I want a practical layout vehicle I decided to reinforce the steps and springs with 0.3 brass wire. Wheels are on MJT internal compensation irons soldered to a copperclad sub chassis. A view of the underside showing the brass wires. Simple brake from bits of scrap etch. I think that by 1900s it would be piped but possibly not fully braked. A general view. I’m a bit unsure about the top edge. A coat of primer may push me towards paring the top hinges off and replacing them with brass strip. I’m also a bit worried by the fragile resin buffers, time will tell. The three roof sections made from laminated styrene. The oil lamp is I think MJT. Primer next, might show up all sorts of faults.

Just a few more photos of progress on the station buildings. The roof will have to be removable to allow for track cleaning and dealing with derailments etc. Amongst other things I have added 10mm wide horizontal beams for the roof to sit on - not prototypical but necessary, I think, for the rigidity of the model. There's a bit of a gap to fill in yet between the roof and the underlying superstructure. I have tried to make the facilities at the station fairly basic, rather than a grand terminus. Work still to do on detailing the two external buildings though, which look very plain at the moment. The station will largely be open, despite the overall roof. The road side, shown below will allow lorries to draw up to the platform for loading and unloading parcels etc. Main passenger facilities will be in the single storey block on the right of the photo below.

These two carriages are at an earlier stage of build than my other recent overlay projects so I hope to be able to show more of the process involved. 3rd class corridor carriage C69 Brake 3rd diagram D120: The photos above shew what I am hoping to achieve. C69 corridor Third: This photo shews the Comet models side against the donor Airfix carriage. Using my normal manner of removing the majority of the side, this is the progress a week later once the primer has been applied: Seen here, well on the way to being completed. D120 Brake Third carriage: The Airfix donor carriage is seen being dismantled! There is a lot of plastic to remove - its not a job for the feint hearted.... Then having had a coat of primer: Then both carriages together having had transfers applied. The full scope of these type of builds is as follows: Remove sufficient plastic from the donor sides. Remove all the roof fittings. Remove all underframe fittings. Glue the sides to the plastic body, using a epoxy glue (not an instant grab glue). Fill any areas that need attention. Mark out the roof and drill for the new roof ventilators; handrails and make up new toilet tanks. Fit all required underframe fittings: Battery boxes; dynamo; brake vacuum cylinders. Make up new interior to suit the particular model. Change end details as required with steps; corridor connectors; pipework etc. Spray primer Fill any areas that need attention - after spraying you will always find something else. Spray cream; chocolate; grey (desired roof colour). At least two coats of each. Apply transfers Spray matt varnish to seal the transfers. (Again two coats). Glaze the vehicles. Add door furniture as required. Then you can stand back and admire your work. Having taken these carriages from the fiddle yard and placed them onto the layout to take the photos below, I realised that I havent finished adding the door handles! D120 Brake 3rd C69 all Third: It would have been nice to add a Composite Brake vehicle, but at 6 carriages it is already quite a heavy train and fills the Henley-on-Thames platforms nicely. The door handles etc. will be added to these carriages and then the project will be finished.

Here I am again, with the freelanced locomotives on the Broad Gauge. Starting from the beginning how I came to this point, I'd have to tell you about @Annie's 4-2-4T freelance which started it all, and I'm glad for that because it just looked really good that I wanted to build something like it. Seeing how good it looked and it also being in a wheel arrangement I really like, I just had to build something like it. But when I did so, the results were quite... bad? mediocre? I don't know either. Maybe it was my lack of modelling experience at the time, because this was months ago. Looking back on it embarrasses me because of the many things I did incorrect. Or maybe because I just didn't put much effort in it as what I came up with was basically indistinguishable in my opinion. My first mention of it was in this blog post of my freelance designs "Kenstec" Having "improved a lot" looking back on this model just makes me laugh, to list the things wrong with the model, the side tanks are too wide, very wide sander yet no pipework, quite a modern smokebox, also a really wide door. In short, this model is basically old and looks off. Time-skip to today, neglecting and procrastinating all my school assignments due to asynchronous classes, I saw that @MikeOxon posted about his progress with building the Small Pearson Tank in the end bits of the post, he added in his 3d model of Dean's experimental single tank, which I've always found unique and beautiful in how it looked. Too bad it was a huge failure! Having reminisced on my old model, I decided that it was due for a new one. "Great Western" Featuring "Great Western" a new WIP project of mine that basically acts as Dean's single tank but on broad rails. Many parts of this freelance can be seen in real life locomotives such as the 517, Dean Single, Armstrong Class, and some other I forgot about. The process was just me loading in the old file and removing everything except for the wheels, which I turned into real ones instead of just cylinders with colors. Bunch of searching for references later and I think I've almost reached completion since as of now I think I only have to do the brakes, coal bunker and buffers left, maybe some other small details too. Really proud of how this looks like! Definitely a huge improvement if I say so myself.

At the outset, the primary concern of mine was fitting Rospeath Lane v.2 in my car. Rule 1d of the Scalefour Jubilee Challenge stipulates "The layout has to be portable and capable of being transported by a single car or similar size vehicle and exhibited by two people". I'm surprised it dosen't state that both operators have to be transported in the same car as the layout. As a cost saving exercise for exhibition managers, I feel it would be prudent for both operators to travel with the layout. The problem I face is Tredethy Wharf fills my car including the passenger seat. I've been relying on help at exhibitions from friends having their own transport. Also Rospeath Lane's footprint is larger than Tredethy Wharf which means there is more to fit in the car. This is why I've been worried about how I might adhere to Rule 1d. Since committing to the Scalefour Jubilee Challenge, I've almost exhausted the grey cells in working out how to fit Rospeath Lane into the car. I have measured the car boot space and all other nooks and crannies that could be utilised. Then, I spent a lot of time thinking about how to reduce the important clutter around the scenic section of the layout. In this I mean the support structure, lighting frame, control panel, cassette boards with blanking/information panels and tool box along with the all important operators stool for thous quiet moments. The diagrams below hope to show how I visualise it all fitting in the car, including a couple of small overnight bags for multiple day shows. Hope you can make sense of the drawings... One way I'll be saving space is to use the storage box tops for the lighting frame. This, along with the back screen, will help to create an enclosed space to minimise external light flooding the layout. I'm also planning to include the control panel within Baseboard 2. The current support structure for Tredethy Wharf has improved the stability at the expense of taking up more space in the car. My concern has been how to create a rigid support structure while reducing it's mass. I may have a solution in two trestles supporting and U girders, the proof being after it's constructed.

It was only when I looked at the photograph of "City of Truro", which I took yesterday, that I noticed that the nameplate was missing! About half of my track is in tunnel, so there was an evens chance that it had dropped off in the tunnel. Fortunately, I have a 'search and rescue' procedure. Some time ago, I became interested in the idea of shooting video from the footplates of my model locomotive. I found that there was a miniature video camera, popular with aircraft RC enthusisats, which was both very small and gave good quality results, recording HD video onto a micro-SD card.. The camera I bought is known as an '808 #11' and it is packaged within a car key-fob, as a rather dodgy-looking spy-cam. There is now a slightly larger, but conventionally packaged version, called the 'Mobius Actioncam'. You can read loads of information about all these cameras at: http://www.chucklohr.com/808/index.shtml In addition to having fun running the camera around my layout, I also mounted it on a wagon, together with a small LED torch, so that I could view inside the tunnels on my railway. I was surprised to see several bit of debris, fallen off passing trains, and was able to recover these through the various hand-holes that I provided in the baseboard. The small torch lights the track ahead and reveals any debris, as shown below: While on the subject of video, and since there are very few moving trains on these pages, here is a tiny movie that I call, with great originality, "Arrival of a Train". It shows my Stella-class 2-4-0, rebuilt from a Mainline Dean Goods, arriving at my station with a local train of four-wheelers. An original Mainline Dean Goods is waiting in the passing loop. (sorry it's so small - I was keeping within the 1MB limit) Mike

I found a nice building on the bay-of-e that was eminently suitable for the Rectory for the church. There's one problem, its only got one door, and if you orient the building in what I believe to be The Correct Way Round, then the door opens on the side of the building opposite the church, meaning that the poor Vicar will have to walk round his house every time he Goes To Work. I had a quick check; as we know the platforms on the layout are aligned north-south, and the altar in a Church is supposed to be on the East side (so you face the rising sun as you pray), could I actually move the church round, but nope, the church's position is fixed, its the correct way around (and so we know that the rear of the layout is "East"!). So I was left with only one option, to add a door to the rectory. Luckily I have spare doors. I've got spare everythings. The rectory was also clearly chimney-less, so a cocktail stick was employed. The slice to make the door-fit isn't visible once its painted. Trust me. Fence posts for the porch-sides, spare bit of something for the roof, piece of paper for the capping. Application of some paint to the door and porch. I also painted the timber-framing black to match that of the church closer. I painted the front-door to match :) In position (although with only a few trees for effect; we'll actually have a fairly large wooded area Around The Rectory/Behind The Church

I think I may have started one of these before, but I can't find the original entry. I've got a very healthy (or unhealthy depending on your viewpoint) pile of part made and unmade kits and projects which have been sitting around for the best part of a decade. A visit to the Festival of railway modelling at Doncaster last month provided a much needed boots to the modelling motivation, so in recent weeks have cracked on with a couple of projects. Firstly go round to painting the Chivers OTA kits which have been built for a while now. Purchased the Ten Commandments loads at Doncaster. Need to add transfers (now have I or haven't I bought them already - can't seem to find them in the drawer), then add loads, straps and a coat of matt varnish.

These 70ft carriages were built in 1923/4 for Great Western services to South Wales, they soon moved from these services throughout the GWR system. I doubt whether they would have made it to Henley-on-Thames, but they will add variety to my train composition . The aim of this blog is to run through the build of the carriages and hope to inspire others to pick up a Comet kit and build it yourself. Firstly, I would suggest that this Comet instruction manual is a good place to start: It’s here: https://www.wizardmodels.ltd/shop/carriage/bctcw/ I have also downloaded the loco construction book (again from Comet) since building my last carriage. The change I’ve made is to ream out the holes for the bearings, where previously I had filed them out. The wheels ran ok - maybe with a bit of fettling, but I’m hoping these will run just like RTR stock!. At this point I should explain…. Reaming vs Filing….. A round file will extend the hole …. Potentially in different directions, which could mean that the holes for the bushes are off centre. Whereas a reamer, will cut more even evenly…. We are talking about a 5 sided reaming broach - don’t worry about the term, it cuts more evenly. Plus, I am countersinking the bearing slightly. This photo (below) and the lined one above have been taken from the Wizard models / Comet website - This is what the carriages will look like. The build process: The bogie was cut out and folded up after the bearing holes etc. were reamed. The etch above and below also shows the underframe as I start to remove the parts. In the photo below, I am opening out the hole for the Bogie bolt. Reaming is done by leaning on a piece of plywood - I have a hole cut in it to support the holes being reamed. Similarly, when cutting the etch, it is cut on the plywood to give maximum support. (I used to cut on the cutting board, but again got this tip from the loco building manual). Underframe in progress: Having reamed out the required holes, its a simple case of folding / cutting out the various parts of the etch. Unusually, this carriage has a cross support, which is making the truss frame a lot more rigid. The sole bar is soldered into holes on the underframe using posts. Note: These posts needed filing off a bit to ensure they go in without leaving any gaps. The truss frame is soldered to the sole bars - this time round, I have not removed the end parts of the truss road, simple soldering it to the rear of the sole bar. I am very pleased with the standard of soldering - since my first carriage all those years ago, my soldering has improved leaps and bounds. Then onto the carriage body and I opened up the door handle holes etc. Note: Throughout, I read the instructions! - I know, it's a novel concept, but essential if these are going to be my best ever kit built carriages. The body was soldered together and I had forgotten how difficult it is to solder them together - wall to end, then repeat... I need more hands and more gadgets to hold it all square. And thats it... (almost) looking finished 🤣 There is a lot more work to do yet. But thats enough for a pause on this carriage and move onto the next one. Certainly when it comes to a few carriages it's easier to do the same build together and most definitely when I am spraying. The time it takes to prep one carriage, II could do 4 together! Remaining work to be done: Cut the roof to length; fix it to the sides and ends; fit roof ventilators; fit interior detail (seats & corridor partitions); fit underframe details; then it will be onto the finishing straight of rubbing down (keying for the primer), then spray (3 coats plus varnish); then add the door handles etc. This mornings bogie construction for the E112 70ft Carriage. The contents of the 9ft Bogie pack (it doesn't included bearings or wheels): The bogie is reamed; drilled etc. whilst on the etch: and then cut up into the constituent parts: and the folded up: Soldering uses any gadgets that are to hand.... sometimes including your fingers (momentarily) - Yes! You get burnt. Wire is then threaded through the holes in the cross brace and soldered: After soldering 1 After soldering 2 - on the track: Continuing on the E112 Composite carriage: This is the basic carriage etch, as supplied: The solebars are cut off, together with the V hangers; truss frames and cross frame: When you are building a carriage - you always need more hands! I've got 2 "helping hands" crocodile type clips on stands and I use these for soldering as well as spraying, but sometimes they are just not sufficient. This is the end panel. The instructions state that the fixing point needs to be soldered 1 x etch width from the bottom. So I have a section of etch underneath as the end is held upright by the Square. It looks crude, but it worked. The box at the bottom will be used to bolt the carriage body to the floor. The sides are soldered up to the ends and placed on the underframe and placed on the track, complete with the roof which still needs to be cut to size. This morning, the first job was to cut both roofs to size: The two carriages seen side-by-side - The left one has 12mm wheels as I don't have the correct 14mm in stock. (I have now ordered some!) Next job was to solder in all the end steps - inside and out! - My soldering has improved so much over the years: The final workbench image for today - with both carriages resting on their rooves as the white metal bits are added in: Monday 6th November 2023: Time for the interior partitions, given the position of the corridor windows, I need to add the toilet partition which needs to go up to the corridor connector. Part of the toilet partition is fixed to the end wall to clear the fixing for the body and underframe. I then carried on through the carriage - cutting two of the corridor etchs to show compartment doors open. These will be tied up with open windows when they get added later in the build. The (almost) complete carriage - it just needs the toilet made up on the First class end on the left. Wednesday 8th November update: The remainder of the partitions have now been fitted. Then tedium set in! - Drilling all the holes for the roof ventilators. Each compartment has two ventilators - which the photos and diagrams show. At some point this changed and there was only 1 ventilator per compartment - I have no idea when this changed. Anyway, it wasn't too long before all the holes were drilled and then the ventilators fitted. This is the E111, the E112 will be next - compartments and ventilators. Thursday 16th November 2023: Today saw the E112 having its roof ventilators added, together with end detailing etc. and both carriages on the railway: Both carriages roofs have now been glued onto the sides using impact superglue. Remaining jobs to do: Fix couplings x3 (i bogie already has a coupling) Change the 12mm wheels soon 1 carriage for 14mm Prepare for painting. (Note: this stage is critical, to wash off any flux residue.) Spray paint primer (two coats at least) Spray top coats (two or three coats - masking as I go) Fix glazing & droplights (some of which will be open) I am going to try to replicate an open toilet window - which are hinged at the bottom. (I am still not sure which way round these carriages will run. Usually my carriages have a display side, with the other side not lined etc. Add transfers and 2 coats of matt varnish. Then they will be finished 😎 By which time, there will be another 2 x 70ft carriages to join the rake and the build cycle starts all over again.... February 2024 update: Both carriages have now been sprayed with white primer. The interiors for both carriages have also been sprayed (Vallejo Air Mahogany) and the seats painted: The carriages are now drying, having had their first spray of cream, following two coats of primer. Sunday 18th February 2024: Another coat of Railmatch cream and the carriages are getting there, they have had their final coat today. The next colours will be the chocolate, which again will be Railmatch paints. One of the interiors has been fitted onto the underframe. Friday 23rd February 2024: The carriages have now had two coats of primer; two coats of cream, with the body masked up for two coats of Chocolate. Today they have both had two coats of Vallejo 70.836 London Grey on the roofs: I find it easier to spray everything with the cream all over - that way when masking tape is applied there is less of a chance of it pulling the paint off. Saturday 24th February 2024: The masking tape has come off the e111 composite and as is sometimes the way, a section of cream came off at the same time☹️ Obviously the primer hadn't taken properly, so a small section of primer has been applied by hand. The unfortunate thing is that its on the corridor side and that is the side that I was going to have on view. Other than that, the carriage looks very good. The ends on both carriages have been sprayed black as well. This carriage will retain its London Grey roof. Unfortunately the e112 had a slight overspray of black onto the roof, so is being finished in Railmatch roof dirt. I have two more 70ft carriages to build - I will try and remember to do one in London Grey and the other in Roof dirt! There's a big difference between a 70ft carriage and a 57ft one - 280mm vs 228mm Wednesday 6th March 2025: Both The e112 and e111 have had their transfers applied and the e112 is seen here after it’s first coat of Matt varnish. Fri 15th March. Both carriages have now received their final spray of Matt varnish. Previously the section of cream that had pulled off when the masking tape was taken off had been repaired. Coat of primer and two coats of cream, unless you know where to look, you can’t see the join! Thursday 21st March 2024: The first carriage to be glazed and door furniture added is the e111 on one side only at the moment: 23rd March and both carriages are glazed and have their door furniture.

Once again, my website is unavailable, but this time it is thanks to facebook. I don't fully understand this but facebook is indexing my website over and over again (it's a known thing) and has consumed all of my bandwidth for March (and it's only the 13th!) The hosting company wants me to go to a dedicated server which is like using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut. The cost of running it would triple from $18 to $48 per month (and that's just the starter offer). I can't afford that and I can't expect donations to cover that either. So, I have added some code to try and kick facebook straight off my pages but I still have consumed all my bandwidth so I cannot see brdatabase being available again until April. I am re-writing the website (it'll make it mobile friendly) and I am hoping to deploy to AWS where I may have more control over things. In the meantime, I am sorry for the incovenience. If you have any urgent queries, drop me a line and I'll look on my local copy for the relevant data.

I have long been fascinated by colonial and other offshore railways like the Jersey Eastern and British-run companies in Latin America. This will be a small, experimental project, a bit of fun, to model something of the happy-go-lucky style of the more eccentric type, free from the attentions of the British Board of Trade and its successors. You have to imagine a pier with trains and trams. The train part will be loosely based on the trackplan of Shrewsbury Abbey station, formerly part of the Shropshire & Montgomeryshire Railway. The main difference is that the left-hand goods siding becomes a line to the dockside. I have added a tramway with a loop, which also leads to the docks, shown here on the plan below. Above the railway in this plan will be a sea wall. To the left bottom, the tramway and the railway combine for the short distance to the dockside, off-scene. To the right, both the tramway and the railway pass through a ceremonial arch into the fiddle yard, something like this... ...though the railway arch will have to be modified to allow trains to pass through. The tramway will pass through the central arch, along with a road. Before finalising the trackplan. I am building an overall roof for the station - necessary to shade passengers and trains from the intense sunshine and add a unique character to the scene. This will enable me to judge better how far apart the tracks should be, platform width etc. I am combining four Ratio station train shed roofs to make this. I am strengthening the structure by adding extra crossbeams along the full width of the structure. The next step on this roof is to add more crossbeams and detailed girders. I have also started work on fabricating a station building. I shall give a more detailed description of both in another blog entry, in due course.

Background Almost 10 years ago, I made a model of a lime kiln as a ‘scenic accessory’ on my North Leigh layout. For some reason, I never wrote a blog post about its construction but did write a short article for ‘Railway Modeller’, published in November 2015. I have, however, described how my model was based on the kiln at Fawler that originally had a siding from the Oxford Worcester & Wolverhampton Railway. Fawler is close to the real North Leigh, on which my pre-grouping layout is based My starting point for the kiln was the ‘Wills’ ref.8838 kit of a cattle creep, which provided suitable arches set into walls of stone blocks. To make my model, I placed the two arches from the kit side by side and set them into a hillside, behind my railway, as part of the back-scene. Model Lime Kiln on my North Leigh layout West Drayton Coke Ovens Now, I have realised that kilns (or ovens) for a different purpose but of a generally similar design played a significant role in the early development of railways. Because of Parliamentary Acts that required locomotive engines to ‘consume their own smoke’, the early engines burned coke as a ‘smokeless’ fuel. It wasn’t until the adoption of the brick-arch in the firebox, around 1860, that coal could be used as a fuel, without emitting large amounts of soot from the chimney. MacDermot, in his ‘History of the GWR’*, states that the principal railway companies made their own coke and, for this purpose, the Great Western established coke ovens at West Drayton. Whishaw, writing in 1842, reported that “the coke-ovens are situate at West Drayton, about half a mile to the east of the station ; and are very similar to those of the north of England and Scotland, being without a lofty chimney, which adds so greatly to the cost. They are conveniently placed on the level of the railway, which saves much labour in filling the wagons.” *NB MacDermot Vol.1 is now available as a PDF Download from the ‘Internet Archive’ https://archive.org/details/historyofgreatwe0001etma I found a little more information in an article by the Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society , which states that there were fourteen coke ovens, built in 1839-40, which produced 440 cwt of coke per day, using coal brought along the Grand Junction Canal from Brentford. Initially, a daily coke train ran from West Drayton to Paddington. Once the GWR main line reached Bristol, however, forty coke ovens were built there, so that by 1850 the West Drayton coke ovens were discontinued. The site is clearly marked on the 25 inch OS map, which can be viewed on the National Library of Scotland website , although the ovens must have been out of use by the time the map was made. I show an extract below: West Drayton coke ovens – OS 25” second edition Operation of Coke Ovens I found it difficult to determine how the site actually appeared when operational but found illustrations of various sites in the North of England, which are said to have been similar. The coke was produced in a ‘coke battery’ comprising rows of ovens into which coal was loaded. The coking process involved heating coking coal to around 1000-1100ºC in the absence of oxygen, to drive off the volatile compounds. The process took from 12-36 hours in the coke ovens. The coal charge did not fill the oven. Space was left above the charge in which the gas liberated from the coal was burned. At first, no attempt was made to recover any of the gas, tar or other by-products, which were driven off from the coal when it was heated. In later designs, the gas was led through openings in the upper part of the walls into flues where it could be burned out of contact with coal and add its heat to the charge through the oven wall. There are two paintings by Wheldon, dated 1845, which show coke ovens associated with a colliery in North-East England. They include two views, apparently from opposite sides of a row of coke ovens in process of being fired. I have extracted the sections that show the coke ovens. Two Extracts from oil paintings by W.Wheldon of a NE Colliery and Coke Kilns In these paintings, there appear to be two rows of ‘beehive’-shaped ovens, with access doors arranged in a line alongside a railway track. There is a raised platform at the top for charging the ovens, or kilns, with coal. The second painting appears to show a person pushing a wagon along a track above the kilns, presumably carrying coal to be fed into the tops of the kilns. The first painting also depicts a ‘Hackworth’ type of locomotive in the foreground Taken together, I feel that these illustrations provide a fair idea of what once existed on the West Drayton site. The map suggests that there was probably a single row of 14 kilns, with the discharge doors adjacent to the railway, while coal was supplied to the kilns from a wharf on the Grand Union Canal. Designing a Model Although I couldn’t find much detailed information about coke ovens in Britain, I found plenty about similar beehive kilns that were used in the early 19th century around Birmingham, Alabama. There is a chapter in Peele’s ‘Mining Engineers Handbook’ Published 1918 that contains diagrams and detailed description of the operation of ‘beehive’ kilns Dimensioned Sketch from Peele’s ‘Mining Engineers Handbook’ There have even been HO-scale railway models distributed by ‘Walthers’ (US) but I didn’t find anything that is currently available US models of Beehive Coke Ovens Nevertheless, these resources provided me with plenty of guidance on how to design a plausible model. From the map of West Drayton, the complete ‘battery’ of kilns extended for 675 feet – a little over 200 m – but the complete array seems to be divided into five individual groups, so I decided to start by modelling a single oven, which could be extended into ‘batteries’ depending on the space available. Brickwork Since the ovens were close to the clay pits and brick works that were scattered around the West Drayton area, it seems most likely that the ovens were constructed from bricks, rather than stone as in my previous model of the Fawler lime kiln. Of course, I could have used pre-printed sheets of brick-effect card but I decided to experiment with creating my own brickwork, by means of 3D printing. I soon found it was easy enough to produce a wall of ‘stretcher bond’ by drawing a single brick and then using the ‘rectangular pattern’ tool in ‘Fusion 360’ to produce a regular array of bricks. A photo of a surviving battery of ovens in the North East, said to be similar to those at West Drayton, showed that the facing was laid in ‘English Bond’ with alternating rows of ‘headers’ and ‘stretchers’. Remains of the last working beehive coke ovens in the country. Built in 1861 and worked until 1958 So, as often happens in railway modelling, when additional skills are needed, I had to give myself a crash course in the art of brick-laying. I found a very helpful YouTube video that got me started – thank you Rodian. I started by creating a row of four ‘stretcher’ bricks, leaving suitable gaps for mortar. I then created a row of nine ‘header’ bricks, which needed to be carefully aligned so that the joints fell neatly between those in the row of ‘stretchers’. Once I had two rows, I could use the ‘rectangular pattern’ tool in ‘Fusion 360’ to repeat the initial pair of layers, to create a wall. There is one twist, which I learned from my course on brick-laying, and that is the use of ‘queen closers’ to produce a straight end to the wall. I decided to create three sections of wall, one cut square at both ends, so that several panels could be joined together to make a longer wall, and two others with left and right ‘queen closures’, as shown below: Steps in creating English Bond Brick Wall The symmetrical ‘centre’ section can be extended as necessary to create longer walls: Multiples of ‘centre’ wall section. I created the mortar (or ‘muck’ as the professionals call it) by extruding a rectangle from the back of the wall to a suitable depth below the front face. I then used the ‘Combine’ tool in ‘Fusion 360’ to make each section of wall into a single body. Creating the Doorway Arch I made the door and its arched frame as a separate body, creating the pattern of the arch from a single brick, followed by use of the ‘pattern on path’ tool in ‘Fusion 360’. The ‘lessons learned’ from creating the brick wall proved very useful and I found this to be an easier task than I had expected. I added a second inner ring of bricks as a door frame and then extruded a flat panel from the back to create the door. I used the 'Combine' tool in ‘Fusion 360’ to bind together all the bricks and the door into a single body. As before I show the series of steps in a group of screen-shots from ‘Fusion 360’: Steps in creating the arched door One useful aspect of working in the ‘virtual’ world is that solid bodies can slide through one another, so I could set the door into the brick wall without having to cut an aperture in the wall. Creating the Dome Having solved that first construction exercise, I turned my attention to the domed top of the oven, which was also made from brick-work, as shown in another photo of the Gateshead ovens. Top domes of the last working beehive coke ovens in the country. Built in 1861 and worked until 1958 My approach to creating this structure in ‘Fusion 360’ was to start from a profile view of the dome. I then created notches in the slope of this profile to represent the gaps between the brick courses. I also create the aperture in the top, for products of combustion to escape and be burned off. Once I had a domed top, with rings for brick courses, I sketched a narrow rectangle to extrude a gap between bricks in each course. I then used the ‘circular pattern’ tool in ‘Fusion 360’ to create a ring of bricks around the central axis of the dome. I repeated this process for each ring of bricks, varying the numbers in the patterns as appropriate for the longer courses, lower down on the dome. My procedure is illustrated below: Steps in creating brickwork dome Printing the Components The front face, with the arched doorway and the domed top of the oven are the only parts needing specialised design. I assembled these around a simple box structure, to show the overall layout of a single oven, rendered in ‘Fusion 360’ My 3D-model of a ‘beehive’ coke oven All that remained was to transfer the design files to my ‘Cura’ slicer software and then to my 3D printer. I had been a little apprehensive as to whether the mortar courses would be discernible in the prints but need not have worried. Surface indentations usually print more reliably than small raised features, such as rivet heads, which easily disappear if the limits of the FDM printer are exceeded This is the dome, still on the printer bed, with no fettling having been applied. The time to print was 24 minutes. My 3D-printed oven dome, still on Printer bed The brick courses have also printed cleanly on the central panel of the front of the Coke Oven: My 3D-printed arched door, still on Printer bed Both these prints were made from Gcode files prepared by ‘Cura’ software when using its ‘Fine’ resolution setting. For detailed finishes, such as these bricks that are only a few millimetres long in 4mm scale, there is a significant advantage over the ‘Normal’ resolution, with a small penalty in terms of print time, using my Geeetech E180 printer. Detail Comparison between prints made at ‘normal’ and ‘fine’ resolution settings The following print times are those estimated by the ‘Cura’ software for : normal 1h 13m fine 1h 40m extra fine 3h 24m I have not tested the ‘Extra Fine’ setting but, for this model, I felt the time penalty was excessive and that the ‘Fine’ resolution print is adequate. I’ve enjoyed making something ‘different’ with my 3D printer. Now I need to create an embankment, into which I can insert a row on ovens, once I have designed a layout 🙂 Mike

I have just finished making an LNWR 4-plank open, to diagram 84. This was meant to be a "quickie", as a relaxing diversion following the complexities of the horsebox and before getting my teeth into a brake van. However, it has taken three months - partly due to a lack of modelling time recently, and partly because it turned out to be a bit more involved than I had expected. The starting point was the ABS whitemetal kit. My first impression was - it's enormous. The prototype was 18 feet over headstocks, and for a moment when getting the kit out of the box I thought I might have got a 1 Gauge version by mistake... The kit is, as is generally the case with ABS, excellent - the castings are clean, detailed and precise. It would be perfectly possible to build the kit as intended, and have a very nice model at the end of it. Inevitably, though, I made some changes, adding compensation, a few missing details, backdating features to suit my 1908 period, and of course adding the LNWR wagon sheet. The build started by making some modifications to accommodate the Ambis compensation units. The axleguards are supplied as separate castings, and these were cut off below the springs and soldered in place with low-melt: The back was then filed flat to remove the remaining axleguard behind the spring, and provide clearance for the etched axleguard: Once cleaned up I had good-looking springs attached to the solebars: Buffers were fitted - in this case, not the supplied ones, as the early examples of diagram 84 wagons had the older type of LNWR buffers, with 3 bolts. Luckily the old ABS parts were still available from David Parkins. The buffer guides were drilled out to take a set of Peco sprung heads; I find it easier to ensure the drill is going in straight with the guides attached to the wagon ends, but before assembling the wagon. I soldered the sides and ends together - it's worth putting in the time to make sure the four corners fit together well, as this is a slight weakness of the kit. A bit of fettling though will get the corner square in all planes. A plasticard floor gave me something to fix things to, though of course no detailing was needed as the inside was to be hidden by the sheet. The Ambis axleguard units were made up, after chemically blackening the visible parts to help the paint cover, and to reduce the chance of missing bits and getting glints of metal. The Ambis etch includes a 'spine' that spaces the axleguards to give the required wheelbase. However, the D84s had an unusual wheelbase of 9'9", so I had to do a 'cut and shut' to get the correct spacing: The fold-up parts at either end position and hold the axleguard assemblies, with one rocking on a pivot rod, and the other fixed. A trial assembly revealed there was quite a gap between the back of the springs and the axleguards. This was partly due to the solebars being very slightly too far apart, and the springs not being thick enough. I increased the spring thickness with 20 thou plasticard cut out roughly after tracing the shape: I glued them on the back of the springs, and then trimmed the excess with a sharp scalpel blade: Pieces of plasticard glued to the floor ensured accurate positioning of the axleguard assembly, which itself was glued on once I was happy everything was positioned correctly. The hole in the headstocks for the coupling hook was too large for the Peco couplings I wanted to use, so I filed of the cast detailing and glued on some etched replacements: The two holes in this picture in the headstock between the end stanchions and the the buffers are for the rings used to tie off the sheet. The rings were made from fine fuse wire wrapped around the shank of a suitably-sized drill. I try to plan out details like this and drill the holes early in the build, but only fit the details later, when there is less chance they will get damaged. It is always a nice moment when you get the wagon 'on its feet' - it feels like real progress. You can also see in this picture I have replaced the cast horse hook with brass wire. I filled some very slight gaps where the ends and sides meet, though as the corners are almost completely concealed by the sheet, I needn't have bothered. I often replace cast or plastic vee hangers with etched items, but in this case I used the ones provided in the kit. The are finely cast, with chamfered back edges to hide the thickness of the material. The double vee hanger arrangement lends strength, and this was supposed to be a quick build, after all... Also in this picture you can see I added a pair of L-brackets to the solebar below where the side knees are. They were made from plastic strip. Also visible is the tie-off point next to the door spring, made from wire. I struggled to find a clear photo of these, but they appear to be L-shaped, coming down from the underside of the curb rail and turning back towards the solebar, but not quite meeting it. There are five each side. The brake gear made use of the kit castings, packed up with plasticard to get the shoes aligned with the wheel centres. I used a piece of brass tube to make the cross-shaft, as this makes attaching the brake lever easy later on - a piece of wire can be soldered through a hole in the end of lever, and slid into the tube at the final assembly stage. The axleboxes were a change from the kit ones, to be the correct type for early D84s; they again came from David Parkins. The wagon was physically complete at this point, apart from brake levers and guards, and the buffers and couplings which I always do after painting: The brake levers and guards were from Ambis parts (I didn't take a picture of the levers): A coat of etch primer reveals just how good the castings are: The top coat was a 50/50 mix of black and white Vallejo acrylic paint, brushed on. Only the underframe and bottom of the body needed painting, as the rest would be hidden by the sheet. The tare number on the solebar and the end numbers came from a sheet of LMS Pressfix transfers from the HMRS, as I didn't have the official LNWR ones in stock. They seem to be passable to my GWR-trained eye! The wagon sheet The sheet was made using my usual method, described in previous blog posts. The artwork is printed onto paper, which is then backed with adhesive aluminium tape. For the LNWR sheet, however, I needed to create my own artwork, and there doesn't seem to be a single authoritative source of information on the design - rather, there are fragments of information, which sometimes conflicts. I have put some references and links at the end of this post for those who are interested. Based on what I could find, I created the artwork in Affinity Designer. This software enabled me to use an existing font for the letters and numbers, and then convert the font outlines into 'paths' which can then be edited. I could therefore use fonts that were close to what was required, but then modify the letter and number forms to get as close as possible to what I could see in photos. I have made the artwork available for anyone who wants to use it: Here is a trial print of the incomplete artwork, to see how it fits onto the wagon: Part of the challenge of fitting the sheet is that the wagon is 18 feet long, and in my 1908 period, LNWR sheets were a non-standard 19'6" X 15'5". This left only a scale 9" overhang at each end, but enough at the sides to hang right down to the curb rails: The problem with the sheet hanging down so far is that it isn't possible to tension it properly with the ties along the long edges attaching to the tie-off points under the curb rail. I suspect the LNWR changed the sheet size from 1910 for exactly these reasons - with the increasing numbers of 18' long wagons, the old size of sheet was no longer suitable. I decided to place the sheet on the wagon with a slight offset. On one side the sheet hangs down less far, and can be tied off in the usual way. On the other side, the sheet is tucked up, held in place by ties attached to the triangular flaps that were sewn into the first seam (sheets were generally made from five strips of fabric sewn together). I made the flaps from triangles of paper, glued in place. You can see them here just above the "381" number and below the line of the "LNWR" letters: As I was modelling the sheet covering a (presumed) load below the height of the wagon sides, I wanted it to dip in the centre. To keep the sheet in the required shape, I made a former in plasticard, to run as a spine along the centre of the wagon: I glued this under the sheet before attaching it to the wagon: You can also see here the ties, made from EZ Line (a very thin elastic thread), glued to the back of the sheet and fed through holes where the prototype's eyelets would be. I attached the sheet onto the wagon, starting by gluing it to the top edges of the sides and ends. Then the overhangs at the sides and ends could be glued into place, teasing the sheet into shape with the aim of making it look like a flexible material hanging under its own weight. I had already done some initial weathering of the wagon, using weathering powders and water-soluble artist's oil paints. One problem I had which I have not experienced with this technique for making the sheets before was the separation of the foil backing from the paper top surface around the sheet edges. I suspect this was down to the amount of handling of the sheet, trying to manipulate it into shape, as well as the short overhangs at the ends. The short overhangs means the sheet is being bent through 90 degrees very close to its edge, and this may have put too much stress on the aluminium tape's adhesive. After replenishing the swear box a few times, and trying both UHU and cyanoacrylate glues, I managed to get the sheet into shape and fix the separation of the sheet layers. I followed this by retouching the paint on the sheet. I alway paint over the black print, as the laser printer print looks too much like what it is. However, with the amount of handling the sheet gets when fixing it, there is always quite a lot of touching up to do. Once the sheet was fettled, the ties were wrapped around the tie-off points and held in place with a touch of thin CA glue applied with the end of a bit of wire. I added number plates printed on ordinary paper with a laser printer and cut out. The artwork was based on that provided by Stephen Lea: And that was pretty much it - final assembly of the brake lever and guard, and the buffers and couplings, a last touch up of paint and weathering, and the wagon was ready for a photo session. The lettering on the sheet is best seen from a modeller's-eye view: And a brutal close-up of the sheet artwork: To make the point about the size of these wagons, here it is alongside a GWR 2-plank: Acknowledgements Thank you to all those who have helped me as I learned about LNWR wagons, particularly those who contributed to the following threads: References and links regarding LNWR wagon sheets There is a drawing of the LNWR sheet design, although it shows the sheet number painted on the ends as well as the sides of the sheet, which I have not seen in photos: http://igg.org.uk/rail/9-loads/9-tarps.htm Sheets were discussed in some detail here, but the images have been lost which makes it hard to follow some of the discussion now, unfortunately: Further discussion took place in the D299 thread: LNWR number plate artwork: You can find my artwork here: Nick.

Major milestones this month. For the first time since I started building Cheddar, some 11 years ago now, I’ve finally been able to put all of the 8 scenic boards up together. Cheddar is going to be making its exhibition debut at RailWells this August as a work in progress and with under 6 months to go I needed to take stock of just how much left there is to do before it gets there! The layout has been in various unheated garages for the last few years and it’s almost 6 years since anything last moved on it, way before ballasting and track painting started. So needless to say I wasn’t expecting a great deal especially as on retrieving the panel I noticed the din sockets were corroded and the box itself showing signs of mould! So first things first, the trestles and supporting rails were erected in the dining room, fitting with about half an inch to spare. Yes I did check when I bought the house but don’t tell anyone! After that the boards were brought out one by one and erected on top and the panel plugged in and an engine plonked on. Power applied. Nothing, nada, no sausages at all. No surprises there really. Then I tried all the turnouts. Plenty of encouraging noises from the tortoise motors but nothing moving. well at least the point feeds were getting to the layout. So I started cleaning the track. It had tarnished heavily and had a crust that needed serious attention from abrasive pads. No wonder nothing had moved. After a while though, I got the furthest (Wells end) board clean enough. A bit of power and the engine moved! After a hearty hurrah and a little jig of delight, I then worked my way up towards the other end (Axbridge) cleaning and testing. By the end of the week I’d got to the other end (yes it was that dirty), and confirmed that all track sections had supplied power to the rails and that both cab controllers worked to each section. DCC is a pipe dream… There’s still a long way to go though. Next step is to get each and every turnout working again, which will be a combination of cleaning out all the crud and scraping away the ballast which has welded everything solid. A couple of track joins require attention at baseboard ends as steps are now evident, I guess due to the plywood plates at the edges swelling over the years. Curiously, the scenery sections have opened up considerably across baseboard joints. These are on a mixture of extruded foam and paper-mache so I’m going to need to redress that, or blag that Cheddar gorge is a bit closer to the station… But onwards! I can start my snagging list now and carry on knowing that power is restored. It’s a case of deciding what has to be done by August and what can be left for later. One thing I will need is the fiddle yards, so maybe that’ll be next. Attached photos and I even took a few videos to cheer myself up. In the longer term, Cheddar will be exhibited (when it’s fully ready) and I hope that it will have a permanent home in a temperature controlled room where I can avoid the problems caused by its storage. The other highlight of the week came from a very helpful chap at Bristol Water who sent me the original 1920 drawings of the Water Works that was served by a private siding. But that’s another story.

If we follow a modelling idea for many years, can we change our minds and vote for something else? In my last blog I presented my nod to Cragside house based on a plastic kit from Faller. It made me look again at the other buildings I have made from Metcalfe kits; the Faller kits "relief" in the stonework and roof tiles was very impressive. The second point I noticed was that the buildings I had chosen did not have the look and consistency I had hoped for. When I first started building Metcalfe kits they were always intended to be temporary as stated in my blog at the time and they were certainly fun to build and improved my knowledge of card building. However, now the track was down and I started placing the buildings that I have onto the layout it just looked wrong to me. So, I have now resurrected the idea of 3D printing my buildings i.e. making my own plastic kits. I know many people successfully build with other materials but I enjoy 3D CAD (computer aided design) and having worked with this most of my life I find it straightforward to use. It may surprise some of you that in my case I started using CAD back in the 1980's, at that time we worked in a dark room, the screen was black with only the lines drawn being in white and we used a mouse with a cross hair window to select functions from a drawing board/tablet affair. Remember we did not have MS Windows at that time; I only came across that at the end of the 80’s. Now we have an abundance of choice regarding software, for most things I use SolidWorks which I taught for many years and therefore feel very comfortable with, but one thing I learnt in my career was to be flexible and use whichever software was best for the task in hand. I dabbled with “3DS Max”, for more organic shapes and “Poser” for people and animals. A favourite was also “Vue” for landscapes/environments – amazing stuff (I’ve sneaked in a tiny clip I made back in the day of a pterodactyl flying over mountains as a test clip) I hope no one minds. Back to the railway: I have picked up where I left off, that is with the modelling of Northumberton Station which is closely, but not exactly, based on Acklington station. One thing I missed with Metcalfe kits is the lack of any necessary research as this is all done for you, I do enjoy tracking down details to incorporate into my models and have made many trips to Acklington station in order to get the style of the building correct. Below are some images showing my progress over the past couple of weeks – the cold and a couple of storms have kept me out of the garage so I have welcomed some time inside working on my PC. The building will be printed in 5 parts starting with the small living area on the far left - this will enable me to do a final check on the details such as stonework and roof tiles i.e. making sure the relief detail shows up when printed - I will test paint part of this to see how the gaps fill making sure the detail doesn't disappear. The doors shown will be printed separately and fitted from behind. The window bars and glazing panels will be laser cut and the bars will be pre-painted before fitting. The rear of the station has been simplified as it will rarely be seen, Acklington has another annexe and what was once a toilet block and an entrance porch - these could be added later if the building is ever re-used in a new location. So a new direction with the buildings, it will be a while before I can judge this a success or not but I'm looking forward to giving it a try. I have also started modelling with craft foam to create some tunnel portals - first time for me, I'll share some pictures next time. Bye for now!

I wanted to convert some of my Vitrains models to those that work on test trains today. So, I've had a go at a few: 37025 37610/612 37099 Trial printed: ...and mock fitted:

As I mentioned in my last blog the next bit of workshop machinery I fancied trying to reproduce was a pillar drill. This proved to be quite a tricky bit of modeling just because there were so many features. I'd taken a photograph of this drill in the shed at Thelkeld. It looked to me as if the drill was originally belt driven with a 'new' electric motor powering the original drive wheel at the bottom. There then seems to be a belt which takes the drive to the top of the drill via a choice of three pairs of pulleys depending on the speed you require. I could also see the interesting hand wheel which raises and lowers the platform on the pillar. I'm not really sure exactly what all the rest of the gubbins on the top of the drill is for. Perhaps someone can enlighten me. It looked to me as if there was a handle to pull down the drill head but it looks as if this can be reconfigured to give some kind of automatic geared lowering? It looks like you could set the machine up and leave it to drill down at a preset speed? Anyway, it had lots of interesting shapes and, while I've not exactly modeled it all precisely I hope I've captured the feel of the prototype. The main pillar was divided into two and the table and bottom drive wheels printed as separate parts. Also separate are the hand wheel to lift the table and the quadrant handle. The parts took just over 4 hours to print at .04mm layer height on the Anycubic Photon. The parts took a little cleaning up but I was blown away by the detail which came out. The toothed rack behind the drill head and the teeth of the gears came out remarkable well, even the lift rod on the table has a thread on it (albeit with a rather coarse pitch than the prototype). Please bear in mind that this part is only 35mm from front to back. I intend to make some drive belts out of paper in a bit. I found a rather nice Bachmann 16mm fireman and together with workbench you can get a sense of scale. The sharp eyed amongst you will have noticed that there is a section of wall behind the workbench rather that piece of MDF and I'd like your opinion on this. I've never been any good at trying to scribe random stone so I thought I'd try a rolling pin I downloaded from the thingiverse. This printed out on my Ender 5 and looks, well frankly, a bit weird. The roller is 86mm tall and ~25mm diameter so gives a repeat in the pattern at ~80mm. I laid down a 6mm thick of layer of Sculptamold and let it go off for about 30 minutes until it was firm but still 'green'. The roller was rolled into the surface and it took the pattern well. I then made the pattern slightly less patio and more wall by adding in some extra horizontal joints in the stonework. I also found I could smooth in a little extra Sculptamold to fill in some of the joints to make the pattern so it didn't repeat so obviously. Finally I found that a coarse old paint brush could be used to apply a little more texture and strata markings to individual rocks. Do you think this will work as the inside walls of the shed? Ultimately I want something which looks like old white-washed stone. Please let me know what you think. David

A few more printing projects over the last week. I found some nice pictures on the internet of the same sort of tortoise stove I'd seen at Thelkeld. The hardest bit to model up was the 'Celtic rope' design around the top, mind you I'm not sure drawing tortoises is my strong suite. The text around the top is tiny, the letters are .8mm tall and are have .25mm of relief. That they are visible once printed is nothing short of miraculous. I couldn't actually make out the text on the raw print and it only really became visible after painting and dry brushing. Owing to my stupidity with the support structure the flue didn't come out but I can add it with a piece of Plastruct tube. I'll probably have another go. Still, the occupants of my shed will now be able to keep warm and make some tea. For reference this stove is 36mm tall by 20mm in diameter. At the same time I printed a machinist vice for the pillar drill. While on the printer I also made a load of G-Clamps, as you know you can never have too many G-Clamps. I modeled one and adjusted the size by 10% up and down to give some different sizes. You can't quite make out the 'Made in England' legend but you can just make out there is something there. Finally I got a bit silly with the hand tools. The planes were based on a page from a Stanley catalogue I found online, the adze from a picture from my friend Alan who will be getting a few more tools in the post. The planes vary from 12 to 16mm (scale 9" to 12"). The adze has a scale 3' long handle. The garage has got too cold for printing now, the resin going extremely gloopy at low temperatures. Fortunately I was able to set the printer up inside and I tried the technology outlet's Premium Low Odour resin. I guess 'Low Odour' is a relative term but at least it didn't stink the house out. I've got some sculptamold on the Stour valley castle mount now. It looks ok but doesn't photograph too well in its white state. I'll post some pictures once it gets some brown undercoat on it. David

I have been working on a couple of Autos for Caia Road. This has included a comet BR(w) auto, an uplifted airfix and a Bachmann example. I have been doing a bit of weathering and have given the airfix one a spray of muck. The roof remains loose as I need to finish some details inside. The sides were kept relatively clean on the airfix coach I made a bit of a mess (not in the intended way) of the Bachmann example but have tried to correct this. I have gone quite heavy but don't have pictures as yet.

My GWR E37 tri-compo is ready for painting, built from the Slater’s kit. Earlier I did a blow-by-blow account of the C19 build from the same range, so this post will focus on new experiences and things that were different. There was more flash around the windows than in the C19 kit, especially at the bottom. The window edges are quite thin and hard to distinguish from the flash, and therefore easily damaged when the flash is removed. Inspecting the sides from behind helped. This time I remembered to drill out the holes for the door furniture before assembling the sides. A drawing of the interior layout can be found on the excellent GWR Coaches website. The E37s had two lavatories at the center, accessed from the neighbouring First Class compartments. The kit does not provide for this, so I rebuilt the arrangements to indicate it. No arm rests though, or loos in the lavs! I fitted the seats with a slight gap each side. I find it easier to fit the glazing that way. The bogies in these kits are designed for inside bearings, but I prefer ordinary pinpoint bearings. So as in the C19 build, I applied a bit of freestyling (thanks again @Darwinian for the idea). I used Wizard waisted bearings (ref no. 40002), with the tip filed down to accommodate the axle boxes as can be seen on the r/h bearing here. The axles boxes themselves also had to be opened up inside to fit over the bearings, done with a round file as shown. The brake shoes were a very tight fit against the wheels and tended to jam. I know others have had the same problem. I found that it helps to bend the folded brass tabs that hold the brakes backwards, then gently bend the brake shoe itself forwards to align with the wheel. The E37 kit has Dean 6’4 Bogies (left) while the C10 kit has 8’6 bogies (right). Selecting coaches with different bogies is a nice touch by Slaters. The two types of Dean bogie in direct comparison. On top is the Dean 8´6 wheelbase bogie, which actually has a shorter overall frame and springs than the 6’4 wheelbase bogie below it. Queen posts also positioned differently. The queen posts have to be cut to allow the bogie to swivel. Trial fit of the bogies. I then fitted the underframe details. A slight problem here: If fitted as per the instructions, the vacuum cylinders collide with one of the bogies. So I moved the cylinders a little to one side. Next, the footboards. There was a factory error with one of the long footboards and one of the solebars, both oddly divided at one end. So I built up new end parts from styrene… …which wasn’t too noticeable when fitted. The lower footboards were then fitted to the bogies. I used my own spacers (in the box) to adjust the ride height of the bogies. I find the etched ones that come with the kit a bit fickle. Once I’d found a good ride height for the bogies (i.e. the minimum required to let them swing freely), the center footboard sat too high. The brackets for the offending footboard only have one fixed position - so I resorted to a crude fix, using pliers to first straighten and then gently re-bend the brackets at a lower position, as seen here. The kit provides for sprung buffers, but I went for fixed ones. A great drama ensued. One buffer ram got stuck in the housing too far out, locked solid by Loctite. I raged at the injustice, the Universe darkened, planets imploded. Eventually I managed to remove the buffer beam, carve out the buffer housing, cut off the buffer ram, shorten it, and butt-solder it back on the guide. Given my soldering skills, that was a miracle. The rest of that day I was Alexander the Great, conqueror of worlds. Modelling involves epic battles every day, who needs TV 🙂 The gas lamptops and piping were fitted using handrail wire from 51L. The lamp tops for the toilets add a bit of character. I did the piping for these with microstrip (later filed neat). It strikes me that toilet lamp tops are poorly covered in the literature. Can’t think why. They are rarely seen in photos, but I assume that’s what we see in this Paddington shot, on the second coach in platform 5? As built the coach weighed in at 87 grams. That felt a bit light. I believe Iain Rice said 25 grams per axle. I like my stock a bit heavy so went for 110 grams total. The extra weight was added using Liquid Gravity from Deluxe Models, stuck down with thinned Card Glue from the same outfit. I’ve been monitoring that combo on other stock for 10+ years, so far all is well. So that’s where I’m at. Didn’t have a coin to indicate size, so grabbed an Oryx. Very disorienting, scale is an interesting thing. Door handles, vacuum pipes, couplings etc will be fitted after painting. I’m pondering the livery. The plan was to go for the full pre-1908 chocolate & cream as per my normal modelling period and illustrated on the box. But the 1908-12 all-brown is growing on me. Decisions, decisions.

I have tonight ckmpleted decals on the Presflo kit. The wagon was primed with Halfords red oxide and then I droped the whole thing on the floor. Some detail was losr and a couple of cracks needed to be sorted. The project was very close to being binned! But.... I persisted and I am rather happy with the decals. The colour is mixed from Mr Hobby brownds which I have never used before and , although not righyt provide a base for an interesting weathering project. I need to pock some bits out in white but am ready to call it finished and will park it on the "to be heavily weathered'road.

I am of the habit to start a project enthusiastically and then to gradually abandon half completed projects. This time I am determined to complete and have powered on to complete the construction side of things... The side pipe was attached (on the wrong side initially as is the custom) and handle attached to the hatches. The catwalk located holes were filled ready for a scratchbuilt replacement. The side pipe is .8mm brass rod. It is linked to the gauge using fuse wire. Barely visable but fun all the same. I was unsure of the look of the catwalk as I have no clear pictures of the roof of the prototype. So I went for a best guess based on photos I do jave the original kit parts and the Ellis Clarke O gauge model. It is built up using styrene. Fiddly, but worth it.

Some months ago I came across a fantastic website - www.britishsteelbilston.com - about the Bilston Steel works in Wolverhampton, West Midlands. This has been put together by Mr Andrew Simpson who worked there and is well worth a visit - there are some fantastic photos including a section on the Work's locomotives. In fact, I contacted Andrew and he put me in touch with a Mr Roger Deans, a chief fitter at Bilston, who has provided me with information and a lot of stories about his time there. I was so taken with Bilston itself, and is a place I clearly remember from my childhood cycling adventures down the canals, that I decided to recreate a small shunting layout based on a typical British steelworks. Bilston in its early 70s heyday - a clear shot of how close you could get to a Blast Furnace from the canals in those pre H&S days! The furnace was called Elisabeth (with an s not a z) in honour of the owner's daughter and not the Queen as often suggested. She was first lit in 1954 and closed down in 1977. Her weekly output was about 5000 tons. Canal boats would often float past even on the most busiest of days at the Steelworks. My take on part of a steelworks. Note the mirror underneath the building at the end of the canal. Like all micro layout creators I am obsessed with successful scenic breaks! Apart from the obvious join line across the canal I think the trick works rather well. The Engineering Shop at Bilston. Notice the uneven buckling of the corrugated panels - that is how they actually look in real life on all industrial buildings. I'd like to claim that I have successfully emulated this in my own model but can't as it was entirely accidental. I guess when you use the correct thickness of foil you get the same effect! The colour match is also a lucky guess and came from a discarded paint can found at my local tip. The above picture is actually from Shelton Bar Steelworks in Stoke on Trent. I was so taken with the scene that I wanted to recreate it on the layout. May take on the Shelton Bar building over the canal. I love these wagons from Golden Valley Hobbies. They are being hauled by a freelance version of a Hunslet 0-4-0. Based on the cheap Hornby mechanism I have used bits and pieces from an old Dapol Shunter kit and a second hand Bagnell. The Dapol 16T mineral is permanently attached and its wheels have been given extra pickups that feed the Hornby motor via small connect wires - whilst not a brilliant crawl type runner it works really well on the layout. Plan view of the layout - it has a fiddle yard to the right and is connected via a link to my Floodgate Street layout to the Left. I've done this for space considerations and also to allow FGS to share the new fiddle yard. More pics to follow about construction etc.

When you do the amount of bodywork we are doing, you almost go back through a locomotives history, like rings on a tree....and its interesting when the casual observer thinks something is a lot better than it really is. 043 on the turntable at minehead, everything you have seen....looks alright doesn't it...doesn't seem to show anything untoward with the bodywork.....everything you have seen....is there....everything your about to see.....is there....waiting to be discovered... We saw in the last blog the crash pillar removed, it was badly corroded and the crib plates were missing, when you take apart a loco in this manner you can easily get an idea of its history, and the reason for the corrosion is actually quite simple....at some point the loco has suffered sideswipe damage on this side, and this is evidenced by the patches on the grill uprights for the radiators and the cut in the handrail recess, the problem then becomes when these repairs are sub standard, because the depot needs to get the loco out as soon as possible....and if it was a "hush hush" job hide the locomotive from the sight of management! Particularly when the accident was due to someone being "under the influence". The new crib-plate and side plate have been fitted and welded. Here we see the original pillar (can just make out the lamp bracket at the front) we see at the base a old repair going up we see a large chunk removed by gas axe and again several attempts to fix the grab handle we also see plug welds (which are not original) indicating a replacement to the side skin at some point. The front steel has Anti asbestos paint on it indicating this was original steel, the paint was applied to seal residual asbestos fibres when the locomotive was stripped of asbestos during one of its works visits. After the second-mans side is complete the centre has now been cleaned and fully welded to the correct profile of the front, in the previous blog you saw heavy corrosion as a result of fibreglass matting which has a remarkable water retention capability, coupled with the fresh brand of paint that BR used...the rot present was inevitable. The air pipes to and from the drivers brake valve have been cleaned and undercoated and trial fitted to make sure we don't weld up something we shouldn't. Moving to the drivers side we see the removal of the crib plate and the extensive corrosion to the cable ducting this will all need to be tidied up and new conduit installed before the locomotive re-enters traffic, you can clearly see the 1/2" rivets that hold the crib plates waiting to be hammered out the underframe so new bolts can hold the new plates firmly in place. Also evident is significant crash damage, like no1 end this corner of the buffer beam has at some point been cut off and rewelded into place (likely after the chassis has been jacked up to straighten it, note the wooden spacer behind the buffer being "unique" to suit the dent behind it...this is 3/4" steel plate, a significant impact would be required to deform it in this manner! the secondmans desk had to be removed as it was found the brake pedestal in the centre of the picture was only held in by the pipes, the sideswipe collision had ripped it from its mountings these are being straightened and firmly attached to the floorplate. Drivers side crib now welded in place and a repair section made to the drivers side crash pillar. Final side plate removed and surface prep underway for the final plate at the floor level. The final plate in the process of being welded and secured in place. Unfortunately BR spend years customising the loco to fit its rather bodged metal work, and now we are fixing that...things start to well, not fit....as a result the lower section of front skin now protrudes over an inch further forward than the lower framework......you can see further up a depression where the metal work goes in and then out again... to correct this cuts have been made which allow us to reshape the front, this will allow us to have completely level plate work when the new steel is welded to the front. Further cuts to the side indicate that the framework will need to be complete renewed all the steel inwards of the crash pillar will be cut away and replaced with new angle iron, significant. issues are present in the upright pillar corner. nasty.....again note the complete lack of paint! fully refurbished secondmans desk fitted to No2 end