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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.

Here’s an update on Farthing’s main station building, modelled on the 1910 prototype at Newbury (see this post for details). This post summarizes work on the walls and gables. There have been other developments, will update on those later. Although the structure at Newbury is still with us there have been numerous detail changes over the years. Above is a selection of those I have spotted. Most changes appear to have been made after the station was built, so I’m going with the original GWR drawing. The GWR drawing was imported and re-drawn in Inkscape, allowing me to cut the brick sheets in my Silhouette cutting machine. The Silhouette can’t cut styrene deeper than 10 thou, so it essentially scribes the outline on the back of the brick sheet (not the front, too bumpy) and I then cut through with a scalpel. The brick sheets are SEF. They aren’t ideal for the Newbury brickwork, I had planned to use Slater’s, but the first batch of Slater’s crumbled in my hands and the next batch didn’t cut well in the Silhouette. The outer “skin” for the sides were then ready. A first inner layer was added, using 1mm Foamex from Green Stuff World. The Silhouette cuts this well but again only partly through, so more scalpel work followed. The first layer of Foamex fitted behind the brick skin. I gave up replicating the prototype’s bullnose bricks and subtle profile around the window edges. I did try, using good advice from RMwebbers, but couldn’t achieve a convincing look. Instead, the brick edges around the windows were simply indicated by indenting the foam with a suitable tool from a scribing set. It’s the biggest compromise on the model but I can live with it. The basic sides and ends, a DIY kit of sorts. I then set about adding the Bath stone embellishments. Here, different types of styrene rod have been joined to represent the profile of the lintel bands. The lintels were cut on my Silhouette, with decorative parts fashioned from triangular rod and small “V’s” cut from Evergreen sheet. 3D prints would have been more accurate, but I enjoy piecing things together on my own – despite the compromises. The prototype stone sills had an overhanging lip, replicated with laminated strips of styrene. Try not to get too excited by these riveting photos :-) The parts were sprayed with Plasti-kote primer, and later painted Dark Sand (Vallejo 70.847). The walls were painted using a new approach I hadn’t tried before. Will post separately on that. Next the roof bands were stuck on. Then the lintel- and sill bands were fitted (or is it “string courses”, my vocabulary fails me here). The plinth, with the blue bricks that were such a distinctive feature on 20th century GWR structures. And finally the lintels were stuck in place. I cheated as they should be flush with the brickwork, but that would have entailed some very tricky cutting of the SEF sheets which I think wouldn't have looked neat. The vertical ornaments help conceal the dodge. I then set about decorating the gables. Won’t take long, I thought. But there followed much faffing about with bits of styrene, combining various shapes to compose the ornamentation. The faux gables including raised brick courses above the lintels, and the ornamentation coming together. The decorative “pinnacles” (what's the word?) were tricky, being hexagonal yet slim. I first fitted strips of brick sheet on a hexagonal Plastruct rod, but the thickness of the SEF sheets made them overscale. So instead I just scribed the hex rod directly to indicate mortar courses, as seen here. Far from perfect, but it blends in OK. Decorative balls were made from pinheads, stolen at night from my wife’s sewing table. She knows, but pretends not to. There were two gables, so it took a while. If deconstructed each gable would consist of 101 separate bits. Probably not unusual for a scratchbuild, it’s just that normally we don’t count! An overview of all the brick sides. My camera exaggerates the colours. A few final details (downpipes etc) will be added later. The Bath stone was looking a bit plain (bottom), so was lightly weathered (top), though the camera doesn't show it well. I want the structure to look new, i.e. within a few years of construction. [Note to self: Vallejo Pigments Natural Sienna 73.105 + MIG Panzer Grey Fading P035]. At 83 cms this is the longest structure I have built. After years of happily snapping small layouts, I’m struggling with the photographic challenges of such a long structure. First passengers have arrived! (click image for larger size). I had planned to divide the structure into 2-3 separate sections for easy storage but am now thinking it’s easier to just build it as one whole unit. A dry run with all sides in place. The windows are almost ready to fit, and parts are being cut for the interior carcass. More on that later.

Back in June I had some work to do in London. I live in Copenhagen, so a devious plan was hatched to extend the work trip with some time off for railways and family. I even managed to do a bit of research for the Farthing layouts. I went by rail to London. It was 16 hours on 5 trains, but I enjoyed the views and got most of a day’s work done on the laptop. Early departure from Copenhagen Central at 5.44. No rush to the airport hours before, no security checks, no queues, no boarding hassles. Loved it. We crossed the belts from Zealand to Funen and then to Jutland. Part of me misses the old ferry crossings with the coaches on board, but the bridges are certainly faster. I got off at Fredericia, an important Danish junction. While waiting for my connection I watched the trains divide for different destinations in Jutland. A lengthy car train had come up from Germany. Quite a fortune here. Modern day shunter at work. Then on to Germany and Hamburg. I’d chosen an itinerary that gave me 45-90 minutes at each interchange. It avoids the stress of small delays and allows time for a quick bite or drink. That proved a good idea. In Hamburg the schedules are tight and platform space limited. There was a 15 minute delay and we went through a series of “platform hopping” exercises. I watched a tired and rather sarcastic train manager on the platform: Passenger: “What platform for the train to Bremen?” Train manager: “It has just been announced” Passenger: “Yes but we couldn’t hear it” Train manager: “Then you must listen better”. Next was Cologne, with its light airy feel and the iconic advert for “Echt Kölnisch Wasser” on the end wall. There’s a lovely vibe to these big German stations in summertime. But for some it’s just work of course! Then on to Bruxelles Midi (French), a.k.a. Brussel Zuid (Flemish). I liked the large destination board, no tiny screens here! Next the Eurostar, my first trip. TBH I was a bit disappointed, a dull interior and the Chunnel completely dark. No starched uniforms, no silverware, no sips of champagne. Oh well. St Pancras made up for it though, sleek and modern yet carrying history forward. Outside St Pancras, the old Midland hotel beckoned. Fat chance on my budget! I headed for my drab little hotel nearby, with a tiny basement room where you could hear the Tube rumbling by. At least it felt real. Next morning I had a few hours before work began, so took a walk and paid my respects to the other termini in the area. King’s Cross first. I liked the architecture here, those arches mix aesthetics and function so well. Good looking trains too. I’m a steam type but can appreciate modern stock, and Kings Cross was full of it this morning. The booking hall also works well, I think. Then, er, Euston. Good idea. But I enjoyed the outside seating area. I understand there was quite a commotion when the old station was demolished. No wonder. The stone lodges are among the last remains of the old Euston. The station names are a nice touch. It's now a pub, but sadly too early for beer. After a week of work I had a weekend + two days off, and duly headed for Paddington. They say that time travel is impossible. But sometimes if you pause and squint a little… … it is not so difficult. (Source: Getty Images). Nice trains too. When at Paddington I have a tradition: A Cornish pasty and a mag from Smiths. After a long absence it was nice to repeat it - though I doubt that the Kernow fraternity on here would approve of mass-produced pasty! I headed West, stopping first at Reading to see if anything remained of the old goods yards there. I was especially interested in Vastern Road Yard, photos of which I have often pored over. The tree-lined perimeters provided inspiration for the goods yards at Farthing. (Source: Britain from Above). Well, there are still trees. The rest is a shopping center and car park. Such dazzling ingenuity. I looked for the site of an atmospheric photo that appears in the excellent GWRJ articles on Reading goods workings by Chris Turner and John Copsey (Nos 81 and 82). The view today. Ho-hum. Further down the road, the old King’s Meadow Goods Yard is now an office/ industrial estate. But the bridge that carried the GWR over the connecting line to the SECR remains. A Google Earth view of the bridge. Seemingly the connecting line to the SECR is still there. I couldn't spot the track from the ground though, has it been recently lifted/re-arranged? Anyway, here’s one for @Compound2632, who has an interest in the Huntley & Palmer’s biscuit factory. If I’m not mistaken this is the “Biscuit Tunnel” through which the factory sidings connected to the GWR yards. The tunnel can be seen from the other side here, in 1928. Huntley and Palmer’s at the front, with the outer reaches of King’s Meadow yard top left. (Source: Britain from Above). And then it was Newbury. I started my model of Newbury's main station building during the pandemic, so it was quite an occasion to finally arrive here. We pulled into the old Didcot bay and I alighted from our set of clerestory coaches. Oh sorry, wrong century. Here we are in 2023. Same bay platform, though the footbridge disappeared recently to make way for the OLE. Newbury station was rebuilt to this condition during 1908-1910, with through lines in the center and loop lines along the platforms. The core of the layout is still there, as are the main station buildings and original canopies. I spent a pleasant couple of hours photographing the station for my model. The station buildings have been through major refurbishment recently, and the approach is still being developed. The canopy is a standard design used elsewhere on the GWR. The supports can be found in the Ratio GWR canopy kit, seen kit-bashed here at Farthing. The buildings may look intact but have seen multiple detail changes over the years. This, for example, is the front of the old tea rooms, next to the refreshment rooms. The window on the right has been blanked out, the other windows are modern, and until very recently there was no door here. I took many nerdy photos. Let me know if anyone wants the rest. My build has benefited greatly from photos shared by others, thanks again gents! I walked up the embankment. These are the Lambourne and Winchester bays (left and right) in their heyday. (Source: LVR website). The view today. Both bays gone. At least the biodiversity benefits! The old GWR spear railings still linger. Note nonconformist pattern top right. A replacement? Model that! I said goodbye with a coffee and cake from the café, still housed in the old 1910 refreshment rooms. One hundred and thirteen years of munching and slurping, right here. I then met up with mum. She turned 90 this year and I invited her on a trip to Cornwall. After visiting old friends Up North she joined me on the GWR to Penzance. Along the way we enjoyed the breathtaking views and glorious blue skies, enhanced by the spotlessly clean carriage windows. Then reached the fabled Penzance, bang on time. The next three days were spent exploring the delights of Cornwall, staying in some wonderful B&Bs. Everyone knows how Land's End looks, so here's a shot of the fish & chips at Sullivan's, just across from Penzance station. Luckily mum enjoys a scenic train ride, so St Erth-St Ives was a must. The semaphores at St Erth were a complete surprise to me. I had no idea that they were still operational. Great stuff . The box at St Erth, built 1899. We also visited the Helston Railway. I was intrigued by the forest environment at Prospidnick where the line starts, a lovely atmosphere. This is, I think, BR Mk1 suburban brake No. E43147. Hauling power was 0-6-0 No. 2000. Class 127 coach No. 51616 at Truthall Halt. The line ends here, but extension to Helston is planned. As always, I’m full of admiration for the preservation movement. Changing the lamps for the return trip. I’ll end the tale here too. It was a great journey, though time was short. Isn't it always.

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.

Here are some illustrated notes from experiments with brick- and mortar-colouring for my 4mm scale station building. Please note that these are just my own bumbling exercises. There are no silver bullets here. Method 1: Flood & Wait So far, my standard method has been the well-known "flooding" method. I paint the brick sheets dark red (Vallejo 70.814 Burnt Red)… … then when dry flood the sheet with a milky white wash (Vallejo 70.918 Ivory). This is then left to dry. Sometimes I’m happy with the result, as on my stable block above. But at other times it comes out messy, like here. These are SEF brick sheets. I find that the method works best with Slaters sheets which have more sharply defined mortar courses. But my Silhouette cutter doesn’t like them, so I'm stuck with the SEF sheets. Method 2: Wipe & Go Looking for more control of the results, I tried another time-honoured method - i.e. painting a brick sheet, then wiping off the paint with a finger. This leaves paint in the mortar courses. Not a bad result for a quick effort, though it only adds colour, not texture. Another attempt with the same method, using a darker paint for a different look. I know most people use a cloth or sponge to do the wiping, but in my view nothing beats the subtleness of a finger. Lovely mess! I’ve always liked Phil Parker’s credit to “painty hands” in his blog tagline. I agree, it makes you feel alive 🙂 Method 3: Polyfilla Pointing Turning to another method, I looked at @GWR57xx's lovely 7mm coaling stage, where the mortar is done with filler, using the technique described by @47606odin in this useful video: I have only seen the filler method used on 7mm scale laser cut structures, but decided to try them on 4mm embossed plastic sheets. I first tried rubbing lightweight Polyfilla directly onto an unpainted SEF sheet. Decent result, though the Polyfilla fills up the mortar courses almost too efficiently. I then tried it on painted test pieces. Here the Polyfilla absorbed some of the paint, turning pink. The paint had dried for 24 hours, maybe longer is needed. And I see that @GWR57xx used Halfords spray paint, which I think is enamel. I used Vallejo Acrylics, maybe that’s the problem. I also had challenges with the Polyfilla acting as a kind of abrasive when I wiped it on, removing the base colour (right). But these could just be teething problems, I may revisit this method later. Method 4: Paint & Pigment The Polyfilla method gave me an idea for an alternative approach. I painted a piece of SEF brick sheet… …and immediately stippled on MIG modelling pigment (Sinai Dust ref A. MIG-3023) while the paint was still wet. I then quickly brushed most of it off again with a brush. The remaining pigment sticks to the wet paint. Finally I used a damp (not wet) finger to remove the pigment on top of the bricks. I found that a “prodding” motion worked best, along with an occasional diagonal wipe. The things we learn! I like the matt texture and slightly uneven look left by the pigment. The mortar courses are overscale, but that seems to be the case on most brick sheets. Here is the Paint & Pigment method used on Slater's brick sheets. Incidentally, comparing this photo to the previous one highlights the differences between Slater's and SEF sheets (different bonds notwithstanding). The Slater's bricks are more sharply defined. The surplus pigment is not wasted, I worked on a newspaper so most of it was re-used. The method does have issues. The pigment transforms the shade of paint, so I had to experiment carefully with different colours first, as above. The outcome is also affected by the thickness of the paint, the relative mix of paint and pigment, and how quickly the pigment is brushed off! The type of pigment used also matters, e.g. Humbrol powders didn’t work. So I had to go through a good deal of trial and error with this method. On larger surfaces like those above I found that I had to work quickly, or the paint would dry before the pigment came on. I liked the results though, and eventually ended up using it on my station building, as seen here. I’m modelling my station in newly built condition so I assume the bricks and mortar should be fairly clean. Although I’m not quite sure what happens to the colour of mortar as it ages? In any case, a bit of weathering may be in order. I’m currently experimenting with that. I revisited the old trick of rubbing a colouring pencil diagonally across the sheet. A very soft pencil seems to be vital, or it will rub off the paint. I got better results with very careful dry-brushing using a dark brown colour. I think I’ll try a bit of that on my station building. So that’s where I am at currently. The “paint and pigment” approach has worked out OK on my station building, but it involves various variables that can go wrong. I’d like to find a method with fewer risks and more control. Or maybe what I really need is a therapist 😊

Here's a short video to round off 2023. I won’t forget this year anytime soon, it’s been an emotional rollercoaster. Our first grandchild was born, my brother got married, our daughter turned 30, mum turned 90, and then in September dad died. This christmas I want mostly to do simple and uncomplicated things while pondering it all. So here’s a little project that began in our attic. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!

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.

I’ve long been entertained and intrigued by depictions of early railways of the 1830s and ‘40s. The period was marked by significant political and social change, the technology of the new iron roads symbolised these changes more than anything and the railway companies knew it. From the opening of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway onwards, artists such as Isaac Shaw, John Cooke Bourne, Thomas Talbot Bury and many others recorded what they saw, creating images that sought to commemorate and impress. From these illustrations lithographic prints were produced and distributed in quantity, in a way a form of propaganda, promoting the grandeur and unprecedented architectural and engineering achievements of the railways whilst at the same time demonstrating how harmoniously they would sit within the landscape, showing just how marvellous (and safe) it would be to travel by train. The detail and accuracy of many images is praiseworthy, Shaw was a skilled engraver, Bourne a talented artist and Bury a noted architect however, some images must be taken with a full chip shop’s worth of salt, and a few would not look out of place hanging in a gallery of work by Salvador Dali. Therefore, one must never rely on such pictures as a clear window into the past but in the absence of photographs or files full of detailed and fully dimensioned drawings, they are all we have. Fig. 1. Detail of ‘The entrance to the tunnel at Watford’ by T. T. Bury, engraved by N. Fielding, published by Ackermann, London, 1837. The subject of this article is an oddity I noticed many years ago in a charming painting by T. T. Bury showing an impressive cutting on the London & Birmingham Railway. The little engine processes gaily towards the Watford tunnel entrance blissfully unaware that it is on the wrong line pulling eight open carriages, little more than trucks with seats, four enclosed second- and first-class carriages bringing up the rear. Sandwiched between these is one carriage which appears to be another open third but with raised full-height ends. Not only that, two passengers, apparently a couple, stand at seat back height looking forward down the train to the locomotive and the approaching tunnel. Trains in this period seldom reached speeds in excess of 25mph or so, but even at this pace standing on the end of the carriage would seem to be an extremely hazardous thing to do. Momentary loss of footing could result in serious injury, even death. Surely a flight of fancy on the part of the usually reliable artist I thought - but no. Buried in the London & Birmingham Railway minute books held at the National Archives is a short sentence that goes a long way to confirm that Thomas Talbot Bury was not pulling our legs. Dated 17th April 1837, minute 81 reads ‘Ordered - that Mr Bagster be authorised to give additional height to the ends of one or more of the third class carriages.’ It seems that this instruction was indeed carried out and remarkably Bury recorded one of these rare vehicles. Those familiar with my modelling will know that this is all the evidence I need to produce a model and it proved to be more straightforward that one might think. After the opening of the London & Birmingham Railway, the board were left with a significant number of open carriages used initially to show-off the line but really only suitable for a third-class fare. Given that they had no intention of carrying third-class passengers something useful had to be done with them. Thankfully, they were sturdy enough to be converted into covered second-class carriages with the addition of brakes, full height ends and roofs whilst others formed the basis for entirely enclosed carriages. Our curious carriage would appear to be a half-way house for the daredevil traveller. In my quest for a good variety of London & Birmingham carriages I had already produced a cast white metal ‘kit’ for the open carriage based on drawings published by Samuel Brees in his ‘Railway Practice’ of 1842. Fig.2. The raw castings for the London & Birmingham open third awaiting cleaning and assembly. The basic carriage was put together in the usual way, soldered construction with etched details and a set of resin cast seats which simply slot in place. Once completed, the carriage was thoroughly cleaned and given a coat of primer. The end extensions were then fabricated from styrene sheet and strip, and carefully glued in place. I decided that Bury’s suggestion that the two passengers were standing at the height of the seat back must be slightly incorrect. To do this would have required a substantial shelf at this height which would then prevent anyone from actually sitting on the end seats (unless the shelf folded up) and in fact standing on the seat itself would be sufficient to see over the carriage end and satisfy any burning desire to have one’s top hat blown off. Fig.3. The assembled carriage in black undercoat with the end extensions made from black styrene. The building of this curiosity took a few evenings work but the novelty of the finished carriage together with the point that it brings to life an otherwise forgotten or even unbelievable detail from the early days of railway travel was well worth it. As always, I am very grateful to Tom Nicholls for finding this little gem of information in the archives and providing the excuse I needed. Figs.4 The completed and painted carriage just requiring a couple of standing passengers with a ‘Devil-may-care’ attitude towards personal safety.

We, start where finished last.... The top second-mans side window has now been fabricated and welded into place as well as the internal steelwork in this area, the cabling has also been encased in copex to protect it, these are the cables for the second mans switch panel and the brake indicator panel. More steel has been removed further up due to distortion that was being hidden by filler. Also as can be seen a steel plate has been welded on the second mans side. Another view of the steel plate welded to the secondmans side. The dome portion that was removed has been fully repaired and strengthened as well as the corner splayed outwards, although it will be some time before its re-fitted, it has been filled and flatted and finished in blue undercoat. Back inside the cab the secondmans desk is in an extremely poor state and will be removed as its beyond salvaging, you can see that the entire front of the desk has lost almost an inch of metal from corrosion, likely caused by leaking windscreen seal. the holes are for the wiper control and windscreen washer button, the second mans panel has long been removed for repainting and repairs. The pipe unions on the left supply the horns from the secondmans desk. A new desk has been fabricated from fresh steel and this will be fitted in due course. Back to the front the buffer beam has been rubbed down and given a coat of primer and the first bit of new steel is attached, at this point tack welded. going back to the side of the loco the second-mans panel has been primed and new steel welded in place for the lower portion of the second-mans window, the secondmans door awaits removal for attention to the frame, as this was a poorly fitting door the water ingress and corrosion is substantial in this area, around the door pillars, this will need to be corrected before the new doors are fitted. to keep welds to a minimum and try to avoid distortion of the metal the next sheet was ordered specifically to size and is seen here in the process of being fitted and awaiting welding. the sheet is now welded into position and welded also to the new internal braces. The original panel has had the tail light removed and awaits the circular recess to be cut out, as this would be very complicated to reproduce correctly, one it has been cut off it will go for shotblasting and be welded in to the sheet we have just attached above, in the marked area. Once removed this steel like all the steel cut from 043 will go for recycling. The final sections of steel are welded into place now virtually completing the lower front of the locomotive, attention (after the corners are welded will turn to above the drivers side panel which has suffered quite severely with rust jacking, this will be cut to the line with the 22 on the underlying issues with water ingress resolved and replaced with fresh steel. The drivers windscreen will then be removed in order to resolve the issues alone the bottom of the seal. A view of the completed front from the other side. the second-mans side corner is now welded in place And finally the whole area is given a coat of primer, steam loco 3850 (sporting its freshly overhauled and recently delivered boiler can be seen in the background) At this point we ran out of welding wire so that has curtailed welding until after Christmas. elsewhere work continues in No2 cab refitting the panels and painting the pipe and refitting in this case the heaters, along with brand new conduit as most of the original conduit was life expired and new conduit has to be made here we have a simple piece waiting to be sprayed in the correct orange. Thats it for this side of christmas, work will carry on, on the 27th. Merry christmas all.

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.

Another year passes. At a first glance it might seem progress at Kelvinbank has been slow, a few wagons made and an old loco refurbished. However from the perspective of me enjoying the layout the major step forward has been the building of a lever frame and sorting out the signalling system. So some pictures on that theme. 1 class No. 2 heads east towards Kelvinbank. The home is off if a correct route is set out of the storage yard and the section switches are set properly. The distant is cleared if the signal protecting the crossover at Kelvinbank is off. The platform home, No.6 is on as the preceding train is still occupying the next section. A condensing jumbo, No. 283 is held by the signal at Kelvinbank. Looking at photos the condensing pipes were kept well polished. The preceding train has now cleared. ( Actually just correctly stabled in the west sidings) So lever No. 6 can be pulled off. Using the duster of course. No. 283 can then proceed westwards. The signal under the bridge is an odd one. The real Partick Central had a signal at the east end of the platform about 20 yards the other side of the bridge. I can’t put one there so I made a Stevens and Sons tunnel signal which the Caley used elsewhere on the underground lines. 29 class No. 203 is held there, The signal is controlled from the lever frame but will not clear until the traverser is properly set and locked. No. 263 heads west with a short goods. The distant is cleared only when the signal into the west storage sidings is clear. Archibald McGregor hopes it is going to be clear all the way . Building and installing the lever frame has increased my enjoyment of operating the layout considerably. It is something I have been swithering about for a long time, but all the available solutions were either too small and fiddly or too large and would be visually overpowering in that location. Of course none were cheap. I think the decision to scratchbuild was the right one, the frame just feels to be the right size and the action is smooth and positive. My compliments of the season to everyone, I hope you get some solid modelmaking time.

Brunel’s great arched roof is to many people the epitome of Paddington Station but this was not built until 1854. The passengers who first travelled on the line from Paddington to Maidenhead, which opened on 4th June 1838, started their journey from a far less imposing structure – little more than a collection of wooden sheds. A London terminus for the GWR was needed in a hurry, after negotiations with the London & Birmingham Railway for a joint terminus at Euston broke down. With the line to Maidenhead almost ready, the GWR Directors desperately needed to start generating passenger revenue and, since authorisation for a route into Paddington was only agreed by Parliament on 3rd July 1837, there was no time for grand designs! A quick solution was to build the station offices into the arches of the new Bishop’s Road Bridge and provide simple wooden platforms to the West of this bridge. Goods facilities were established on the other side of the bridge, alongside the Forecourt from where passengers entered the booking office, under one of the arches. The great artist of early railways, J.C.Bourne, produced a lithograph of this façade of the station. I have annotated the locations of the passenger facilities on his illustration, as shown below: Paddington Station 1843 by J.C.Bourne (colourised Mike Flemming) I have not found any early illustrations of the layout of the platforms beyond the bridge but there are several early drawings, mostly in poor condition, that provide plans of the tracks and platforms, as well as details of the platform canopies. A selection of these drawings is available on-line, in the ‘Historical Engineering Collection’ of the Network Rail Corporate Archive (NRCA). 3D Station Drawing I decided, as an experiment, to see whether I could use ‘Fusion 360’ to create an impression of the original station by using the techniques of extruding from drawings, just as I have done for my models of rolling stock. The NRCA drawings include sketches of various alternative proposals, from which I chose the plan view in NRCA161183 as a suitable base from which to create a 3D model. First of all, I had to digitally ‘clean’ the original drawing to create my working version, shown below. My annotated ‘working copy’ from NRCA161183 There are many features of the track-work that seem strange to modern eyes. Note, in particular, the widespread use of wagon turntables and traversers for moving the small carriages and wagons of the time between tracks. Several tracks ended in carriage loading ‘shoots’ at the end of the central carriage road, between the Arrival and Departure platforms. This arrangement is shown in a lithograph of, Slough Station by J.C Bourne, of which I show an extract below: Slough Station (detail) by J.C. Bourne I also found a less detailed re-drawn plan of Paddington Station, which provided the all-important scale, in the book ‘Paddington Station - Its history and architecture’ by Steven Brindle, published by English Heritage 2013. With this additional information, I could import the NRCA plan into ‘Fusion 360’ as a canvas and use the ‘calibrate’ command to adjust it to the correct scale. I decided to work directly in ‘feet’, since these units are used throughout the NRCA elevation drawings. Bishop’s Road Bridge My first 3D extrusion in ‘Fusion 360’was from the plan view of Bishop’s Road Bridge (shaded pink in my annotated version, above). Initially, I extruded the rectangular ‘body’ to a height of 30 feet. I then compared my structure, marked with the locations of the various arches, as indicated on the plan, to check the proportions against the Bourne lithograph. (It is known that Bourne used a ‘camera obscura’ as a drawing-aid, so I was confident that his illustration is accurately proportioned.) Steps in creating my model of Bishop’s Road Bridge Once I had made sketches by tracing over the Bourne canvas, imported into ‘Fusion 360’, I could overlay these sketches onto the face of my rectangular Bridge ‘body’ and extrude the various arches. Platforms Details of the platform canopies are shown in drawing NRCA161326, of which my ‘cleaned up’ version is shown below. This drawing shows the end elevations of the canopies over both the Departure and Arrival platforms, together with details of the cast-iron support pillars. My ‘Working copy’ from NRCA161326 As before, I imported this drawing into ‘Fusion 360’ and sketched the outlines of the roof trusses. I also created a model of a single pillar by drawing over the profile and then using the ‘revolve’ tool to create a cylindrical ‘body’, as shown below: Using ‘Revolve’ in ‘Fusion 360’ to create 3D-model of Pillar Once I had a single model of a pillar, it was simply a matter of using the ‘Pattern on Path’ tool in ‘Fusion 360’ to create the array of pillars shown on the NRCA plan of the platforms. Note that I have raised the platform surfaces and carriage road by 3 feet, above the level of the track bed. My 3D-model of the Arrivals Platform with Pillars and a single roof truss I was very pleased to find that the dimensions derived from the elevation drawings corresponded very closely to those derived from the plan view, indicating that my ‘calibration’ in ‘Fusion 360’ had been successful. After duplicating the trusses as required, again by means of the ‘Pattern on Path’ tool, I added roofs by extruding from the profile set by the trusses at one end of the structure. The end result of this stage of my modelling is shown below: My 3D-model of Paddington platforms viewed from the West Of course, the advantage of having a 3D-model in the computer is that I can choose to view it from whichever direction and in whatever detail I choose, for example: View across my model of Paddington Station from above the Forecourt. The above view demonstrates the sharp angle between the platforms and the approach road, by which passengers arrived at the station. Carriages could proceed through the central arch to reach the carriage dock set between the Arrival and Departure platforms. At that period, wealthy patrons of the railway loaded their carriages and their horses onto trains and, in some cases, chose to travel inside their own carriages, rather that the coaches provided by the railway. Adding other models Once the basic 3-D model was in place, I realised that it was perfectly easy to add some of my existing models into the scene. The ‘Insert Derive’ tool in ‘Fusion 360’ allows model data to be imported into a design from other folders already held in the computer. To demonstrate this procedure, I imported my existing models of Brunel’s Britzka and of a Carriage truck. I realised that these models had been dimensioned in millimetres, as 4mm-scale models. When first imported, they appeared at their small ‘model scale’. I could, however, select these model bodies and use the ‘Scale’ command in ‘Fusion 360’ to increase their dimensions by a factor of 76, so that they conformed to the overall building model. After re-scaling, I could use the ‘Move’ tool to position them as I wished within the Station, as shown in the example below: Loading my model of Brunel’s Britzka onto a Carriage Truck at Paddington Station Taking this idea a little further, I imported some other models, including my Horse Box, a horse, and the locomotive ‘Vulcan’, to create the following scene: Brunel’s carriage and horses being loaded for travel from Paddington Station Conclusion As I wrote at the outset, this is all experimental and I have had a lot of fun exploring the possibilities of scene modelling in ‘Fusion 360’. I realise that I am venturing into the territory of digital ‘Train Simulators’, which @Annie demonstrates in her thread can be very impressive and allow you to drive the trains as well. My own modelling has allowed me to bring to life some long-forgotten scenes and I intend to continue by re-creating some of the other buildings around the old Paddington Station. Apart from the offices within the Bishop’s Road bridge, there was also a remarkable ‘round-house’ engine shed, designed by Daniel Gooch, a Carriage shed and, on the other side of the bridge, the entire Goods Station, with sheds and offices. I think all this can keep me occupied and entertained for some time to come 🙂 Mike

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

A PO wagon with a difference, in two ways: the livery is fictional, and it wasn't built by me, but by my father, Bill. The underframe is Slaters, and the body is scratch-built in plasticard. The lettering is hand-painted using - if I remember correctly - Humbrol enamels. Dad spent most of his career as an airline navigator, flying long-haul, which meant he would often be away for a week or more. In the early days he enjoyed seeing the many places he flew to and socialising with the rest of the air crew, but latterly he took to putting a small kit of paints, brushes, thinners and wagon sides into his flight bag, along with the maps, scale rulers, protractors and other tools of his pre-digital trade. He would sit in his hotel room and letter wagons. Over time he developed a technique of mixing rub-down lettering - made for the graphic design industry by Letraset - with hand painting. The rubdown letters helped set the overall shapes and define the straight lines, while the hand painting ensured a paint-texture finish, and adjusted the subtleties of the letter-shapes to be those of the sign-writer, not the typographer. He always said the letter S was the hardest to get right - "it looks like a meat hook" he would complain, before getting the brushes out for further adjustments. To start with, he worked in OO, and built up a train of 100 coal wagons - mostly PO with a GWR loco coal or two - inspired by the long mineral train at Pendon. Later, he moved to modelling in O gauge, and again PO wagons and their liveries were his great interest. Towards the end of his life, he and my mum downsized into a small flat, and he sold off most of his stock (he never built a layout of his own, preferring to contribute to club layouts at the REC in Farnborough). He kept a few things, though, which have since come to me, including this wagon - his signature piece. That's me - the "& Son". Nick. Postscript I have just a few photos of Dad's other wagons, which I took on black and white film at a time when I was doing my own film processing. Some show the OO wagons, and some O gauge. The OO ones were often made with plywood sides and ends, and strapping made from toothpaste tube - in the days when such tubes were made of a soft metal, ideal for punching bolt heads into and cutting into strips. The O gauge wagons were mostly Slaters kits, sometimes 3H. It's hard for me to be objective, of course, but I think I can fairly say that the lettering on Dad's PO wagons was as good as as any - I have occasionally seen work as good, but never better. They were truly a labour of love on his part.

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!

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.

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.

There is a photograph in Jim Russell's book 'GWR Wagons Appendix' that shows a wagon loaded with long, thin conifer tree-trunks, of the kind referred to as 'Norway poles'. For some time I have wanted to model a similar load. The wagon itself has been described in this blog before, and has a rather chequered history. Amongst other issues, I put washer plates on the inside, corresponding to the attachment points for the sheet supporter mechanism at each end. I was following the RCH drawing for the sheet supporter parts, which was the only information I had at the time; since then, I have seen photos that show the GWR didn't put washer plates on the inside. I therefore wanted to add a load to hide the washer plates I had put in, so this was my opportunity to model the Norway poles. Making the poles has been a slow process - 15 months in fact. They are made from the twigs of a Christmas tree, with the needles stripped off and most of the bark sanded off. I collected all the suitable twigs from our 2022 tree, but there weren't quite enough, so I had to wait until the 2023 tree became available. Each time, I left the twigs for a couple of months to dry out, then stripped the needles and sanded then with coarse sandpaper. The remaining texture gives a reasonable impression of the partly-stripped bark seen in the prototype photo: The bottom layer of poles was glued to a piece of stiff card about two-thirds the length of the wagon. More poles were glued on top, and the final layer left loose, as I wanted to ensure there was no glue visible. The roping follows that shown in the photo, and is made with 0.75mm rigging thread, as used by ship modellers - the same technique I have described in previous blog entries. A small amount of thin cyanoacrylate glue holds the knots in place. And here with a 2-plank wagon as a runner: Nick.

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 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.

The 83 members of the 709 Class 0-6-0 tender engines were built by McIntosh from 1895 onwards. They were the original Jumbos, all Westinghouse fitted for mixed traffic duties. Five members of the class Nos 583 to 587 were fitted with condensing apparatus for working the Glasgow underground lines. The model dates back to the 90s, some of it from a secondhand djh kit, the rest scratchbuilt. Unusually for me it runs on Gibson sprung hornblocks. I noticed that it had developed a squeal when running, time for a bit of an overhaul. Before and after pictures of the chassis. Better tender pickups cured the squeal. Back on the track, a view of the right hand side. Westinghouse pump configured as a brake air compressor in the usual CR manner. A view of the left hand side. This held a second Westinghouse pump configured as a feedwater injector. Hot water in the tanks, or in this case tender, always caused difficulties with steam fed injectors. Perhaps at some point I might try an improved painting and lining job. As we discussed in the last blog these were very unusual. There were oddities such as this, but I can find nothing else in regular use. https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Ramsay_Condensing_Locomotive_Co

In this post I describe the roof and lighting for my diagram N4 GWR horsebox, following previous posts detailing the build process for the underframe and body. Before getting into the nitty-gritty of the construction, I want to say a few things about why I chose to light the interior of the horsebox. My plan is to be able to run Netherport, when it is finally built, in night mode - or, more accurately, dusk mode: the last light in the sky, lamps starting to be lit in buildings, and of course in passenger trains. I have ambitious plans for a theatre-like cyclorama sky, on which sunset can take place. Partly this is inspired by my earlier career as a theatre lighting designer, but even before that, memories of visiting Pendon as a boy in the 1970s, and seeing the Dartmoor scene in its night state, with the lit train crossing the silhouetted viaduct. The horsebox seemed like a good starting point for experimenting with coach lighting - only one compartment to be lit, and planty of space for whatever electronic gubbins is required. Most people use LEDs for this purpose, and it's easy to understand why - they are small, cheap, have a very long life, and use very little power. However, they have one big drawback - colour. Nominally, you can get LEDs in a variety of shades of white, from warm whites (yellow/orangish) to cool (bluish), but the issue is that the spectral output is not that of a naked flame or heated lamp filament. I won't get too technical here, but the upshot is that warm white LEDs are almost always a bit pink or a bit acid yellow/green, not a true warm white. There are two disadvantages to this - firstly, the colour of the light looks wrong, and secondly, there is a risk that colours are not rendered properly. Due, I suspect, to my professional background, I am particularly fussy about light colour, and I am sure many people find LEDs perfectly acceptable. I also think it may be possible to find LEDs that would meet my needs, but I haven't managed to yet. I did some experimenting with small filament lamps, and found that a 12V, 60mA lamp run at half voltage gives both a good colour for the naked flame of an oil lamp (which these horseboxes were equipped with), and the right brightness to light the compartment in subdued room lighting: As an aside, please don't judge the colour of light in these photographs - or, probably, any photograph. There are many steps going from the light in my room to the light that enters your eyes when you look at your screen, and there is no overall control of that process to ensure consistency and accuracy. Having established a light source that would get me the effect I wanted, the next question was control. After a bit of research, I chose the ESU Lokpilot 5 FX as a DCC decoder - the FX version does not include motor control, it just provides control for accessories. A key advantage of this decoder is that you can set it to provide a slight fade in and fade out on the lighting outputs, rather than a snap on and off. This seems better for an oil lamp. Here is the decoder being tested with the lamp and a 100R resistor wired in series to drop the voltage to the required 6V: The test rig has a small circuit board with an 8-pin DCC socket to plug the decoder into, wired into 'choc-block' connectors. The circuit board was a cheap eBay purchase, and very handy. I also used one in the finished horsebox so the decoder can be easily removed if necessary. I added a 'keep alive' to the circuit, using the design given in the ESU documentation, although this seems to make very little if any difference: With the plan for the electronics sorted, I moved on to the roof. The kit includes a brass roof, ready formed to the required profile - though it did need some tweaking. I felt it was important the three sub-assemblies (chassis, body, roof) remained separable, for access to the interior of the grooms compartment in case of dust or parts becoming detached, and to the electronics. I arranged for a length of studding to go vertically in the centre of the horsebox through a hole in the chassis floor, to a nut soldered to the centre of the roof. I soldered a nut to the bottom end of the studding and cut a slot in it to take a screwdriver. tightening the studding clamps the roof down onto the body, and the body onto the chassis, holding everything together. I made the roof with slightly too much curvature, so the sides of the roof are clamped down onto the body first, so avoiding any gaps. To ensure the roof didn't bend in the middle, I soldered a piece of brass channel along the centreline, stiffening the roof lengthways. The nut was soldered into the channel: In the above picture you can see the roof has been sprayed white - this was after covering the top side with model aircraft tissue, glued on with the relevant dope. This gives a nice, subtle texture, which worked well with the weathering later on. The lamp was attached to two lengths of copper wire - stripped out from a bit of 'twin and earth' electrical cable. The idea is these help draw the heat away from the lamp - the lamp runs at about 50mA when at 6V, and that current also flows through the dropper resistor, so that's 0.05A x 12V = 0.6W of power being dissipated. Not huge, but it's a confined space and I would rather get it away from the delicate compartment interior as quickly as possible. And with the copper wire trimmed: At the other end of the roof (the 'kicking' end) I added a small PCB connector on a piece of stripboard, so the roof could be disconnected when required: The final detailing of the roof involved adding rain strips from plastic strip, the oil lamp top and the ventilator. The kit includes a nice cast 'trumpet' ventilator, but by my 1908 period these had been replaced by gas lamp tops. There is no lighting in the horse compartment - the gas lamp tops were used purely as vents. The oil lamp top was a nice casting, with dimples where the holes should be, but the appearance can be improved by drilling these out with a 0.5mm drill. I realised it would be possible to drill up through the centre with a larger drill, and have the small holes meet in the middle. The lamp top of course has the actual lamp directly below, so a little light comes out of the vent holes, which you can just see when it is dark. In reality, this almost certainly wouldn't happen - there are too many baffles controlling the air flow for light to come out - but I couldn't resist this little piece of theatre. The final element of the lighting system is the pickups. These were made with phosphor bronze wire, rubbing on the edge of the flange. For each of the four pickups, I soldered a short length of fine brass tube to a piece of stripboard, and also soldered on a length of flexible electrical wire. These units were glued under the axles, with a piece of plasticard to pack them up so the pickups would clear various obstructions: The phosphor bronze wire was then added, bent into a right angle and fed into the brass tube. A dab of solder fixed the wire to the tube. Doing it this way allowed me to adjust the tension of the pickup wire against the wheel at the moment of soldering. The four wires were routed above the chassis floor, held in place with some plasticard 'cable guides': I tested the pickups with a temporary setup comprising two of the 12V lamps in series, driven by the DCC power, without the decoder. This showed that the pickups work OK as long as the wheels and track are scrupulously clean, though with some occasional and very slight flicker, especially when changing direction. The keep-alive circuit doesn't seem to help much with this - once in use, I will have to see if it is acceptable or not. Plan B would probably be some kind of battery or super-capacitor set-up, constantly topped up by the DCC power. I added another connector, so the chassis can be disconnected from the rest of the electronics: The keep-alive circuit and the PCB with the DCC 8-pin socket were glued to a plasticard construction to stop them falling about inside the body, with the risk of a short circuit. You can't see if very easily here because of all the wires, but hopefully you get a sense of it: A final addition was this plasticard item - a block with a conical hole to guide the length of studding into the nut when putting it all together, glued to the roof: And all this work is so our groom can read his paper after dark: In the gathering gloom, the train slowly makes its way, taking groom and horses towards their destination... Nick.

I've finally finished the station board and have swapped it out so that I can start on the last board, the one nearest Wells or board 8 if you want to be specific. It includes Station Road and its bridge. The last things on the station board were the coal bins on the down mileage sidings and fencing. I've still to do the station chimney pots but that will require a visit to the actual station to take some better photos as these will need to be 3D printed. The roof is going to be fixed down to cure the warp that has developed but that can be done on the workbench. Board 8 was ironically the first one to be constructed, a long time ago and in a galaxy far away. It's going to be fairly simple, mainly scenic with a very big tree, quite a few hedges, at least 4 fields, a council depot and possibly one other building (2 Station Road). This afternoon comprised me trying to interpret all the maps of the area and just how I compressed it when I started all that time back. The bridge was built a while ago using the usual Green Stuff World embossed ABS and is home to a tricky little point operating mechanism as it site on top of the bridge with no room underneath for a Tortoise motor. The actual motor is tucked in the corner and will be hidden behind the curved back scene, or a house, or something... Actual productive work today is a waft of primer for the bridge and the commencement of rail and chair painting ahead of ballasting and point rodding.

The body needed a fair amount of sorting out, a lot of bits fell off when it was being stripped. It isn’t the best paint job, but painting is not my favourite activity. As ever with the CR a lot of awkward brightwork but I have tried to tone it down a little to give a practical in use look. I also simplified the lining a bit. The main reason for the rebuild was to improve running. So a bit of video showing 263 on a trip working. It now seems to run fairly smoothly. The lining for that was from my last sheet of Modelmasters LNER / CR lining and it seems to be out of stock everywhere. The issues with Modelmaster have been discussed elsewhere on rmweb, so I don’t want to go into them here. Suffice to say it seems I’ll have to find an alternative source with sufficient radii to fit CR locos.

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..........

“Towards the end of July 1837 I heard that Mr. Brunel wanted some one to take the post of locomotive engineer on the Great Western Railway, and I at once went to him, on July 20th, preferring that department to railway making.” Thus wrote Daniel Gooch about the event that changed his life when he was just 21 years old. As a result, he left Manchester and went to London, beginning his duties with the Great Western Railway at West Drayton on the 18th August 1837. Because no engines had actually arrived at that time, he recalled that his first work was to prepare plans for the engine-houses at Paddington and Maidenhead, In such circumstances, one might have expected the engine-house designs to be rather perfunctory affairs, something to fill in the time until some ‘real work’ on engines became available, but my investigations into the design of the engine-house showed this to be far from the case. For Paddington, Gooch designed a ‘round house’ shed which, I suspect, was probably the first example of its kind. He was severely constrained in both timescale and costs. The accounts show an extraordinarily low figure of £1,402 for ‘general construction costs’, plus £216 for ‘other items’. An early site plan, probably dating from 1837, shows the engine shed as below: Paddington Site plan, 1837, showing the Engine Shed. At first glance, the octagonal form seemed to match the track plan but I was surprised to see that the locations of the tracks corresponded with the vertices of the octagon, rather than being placed centrally in the sides, as I would have expected. Indeed, an illustration of the interior in ‘Measom’s Guide to the GWR’, dated 1854, appears to show such a layout – a reminder not to trust all those early engravings! Looking more closely at the plans, however, I saw that the vertices were ‘squared off’, with entrance doors, where required, or short segments of wall. Thus, I started my modelling of the shed by copying the above drawing as a ‘canvas’ into ‘Fusion 360’ and tracing the foundations of the perimeter walls. That was the easy bit but where to go from there? I had a couple of sources to draw on for guidance: An early photograph of the demolition of the original station includes a glimpse of the engine shed roof in the background. This gave me a slope of 15 degrees for the main roof. Incidentally, several of the iron columns from the original station can be seen lying amongst the debris in the foreground, while a very tall disk & crossbar signal appears to the right. The sheer-legs appear on early plans of the original station layout. Paddington Demolition works, c 1854-5 The other source was a much better engraving than the one in Measom’s guide. This one shows the clerestory roof over the centre of the shed and a rather bewildering forest of wooden supports for the roof. After studying this illustration for some time, I decided to take a ‘Stonehenge’ approach to the design of my model by concentrating on the locations of the upright pillars and hoping to fill in the rest of the details later! Engine Shed Interior c.1846 (Firefly-class ‘Ganymede’ was new in 1842) From this illustration, I deduced that there were two rows of pillars along the sides of each track between the entrance doors and the clerestory. Taken together, these formed an inner ‘ring’, supporting the edges of the clerestory, and an intermediate ‘ring’ between the perimeter. walls and the clerestory. Creating a 3D Model As I laid out the locations of all the pillars in ‘Fusion 360’, a very ingenious geometric pattern started to emerge, reminiscent of the vaults of a mediaeval cathedral. This seemed to me a far more sophisticated design than I had expected from a young man who had joined the GWR to do work on engines! It was a portent of the illustrious career that lay ahead for young Daniel Gooch. Once I had determined the locations of the bases of the various pillars, I had to adjust their lengths to correspond to a slope of 15 degrees in the roof that they were designed to support. Rather than attempting to describe the process in many words, I have made a series of ‘screen shots’ of each stage, as my construction progressed in ‘Fusion 360’ Steps in my ‘Stonehenge’ approach to Modelling Paddington Engine Shed Now that I’d worked out the overall layout, I decided to go back to the beginning and start again! This time, having worked out the geometric pattern, I used the ‘Pattern on Path’ tool in ‘Fusion 360’ tu ensure that all the pillars and their linking ribs were aligned in a regular, symmetrical pattern around the central axis. Bird’s-eye View showing Symmetrical Design of Shed The various ribs connecting the tops of the pillars, in order to support the roof, were all copied from an initial 3D drawing of a square-section bar. After placing the first pair of ribs, I could use the ‘Pattern on Path’ tool to complete the rest of the pattern around the central axis. Adding details As an initial check on the general validity of my structure, I set up an internal view of my model in ‘Fusion 360’, to compare with the contemporary engraving shown above. I couldn’t match the perspective exactly but it gave me a good idea of what needed to be done to capture the ‘atmosphere’ of the original interior. I started by adding the diagonal ties at the tops of my pillars. This was a fairly easy ‘tweak’ that I could apply to one pillar and then copy around the complete array, again using ‘Pattern on Path’ to maintain the alignment around the central axis. The result at this stage is shown below. I have included my model of ‘Vulcan’ to indicate the overall scale: Interior view of my basic model of Paddington Engine Shed I could find no information about the entrance doors but then I remembered some drawings that Gooch created for Maidenhead depot. These included shed doors (NRCA161482) so I extruded my model from the Maidenhead design and found that these doors were a perfect fit into the doorways of the Paddington shed. An early example of standardisation! My enhanced version of NRCA161482 showing Doors for Maidenhead Depot I didn’t have much to go on for the design of the interior walls, except the engraving shown above, which indicates vertical planking and window openings with vertical bars. I took some further design cues from the Broad Gauge Transfer shed at Didcot Railway Centre, which suggested diagonal cross-bracing on the large panels. I started from a single rectangular panel on which I incised one ‘slot’ to represent a single vertical plank. I then used ‘Pattern on Path’ to complete the planking of the whole panel. Next, I created the various frame pieces and attached these to the inside face of the panel. Finally, I cut the rectangular openings for the windows and added an array of vertical bars within each opening. My model Wooden Planked Wall with Bracing The result looked pleasing and made me loath to add the roof, which would hide all this from view! Nevertheless, the roof was necessary to provide an overall impression of the interior scene. Adding a Roof For the roof, I could again take advantage of the circular symmetry of the structure, to reduce the amount of design work that was needed. I had only to design one triangular roof panel and one rectangular one, which then alternated around the ‘ring’. The clerestory roof is even simpler and only involves triangular panels. I started with what seem the easiest one to draw – the rectangular panel. I checked the lengths of the support ribs with the ‘measure tool’ in ‘Fusion 360’, to ensure that panel would be a correct fit. After that, the detailing followed similar methods to those I used for the sides, with a pattern of rafters as indicated on the contemporary engraving shown above. The triangular panels were rather more difficult. I established the lengths of the sides by again using the ‘measure tool’ and I also checked the angle at the top vertex, remembering that, because of the slope of the roof, this is not simply a fraction of the circle defined in the ground plan. I then added the intermediate supporting battens and finally the numerous cross-battens towards the apex. I wanted to use the ‘Pattern on Path’ tool again but realised that, if I started copying from the bottom edge, the battens would become too long as the roof segment tapered towards the apex. My solution was to create an array of same-length battens, which I then cut by applying the ‘Splitting’ tool to the plane defined by the edges of the panel, as shown below: Applying the 'Splitting' tool in 'Fusion 360' The triangular segments of the clerestory roof followed, by using the same methods, so I now had three different type of roofing panel, as shown below: Three Types of Roof Panel for my Engine Shed Model I should probably have done lots of trigonometry to work out exactly how to place these panels on the roof, sloped at 15°, but I opted for an empirical approach and used the ‘Move’ and ‘Twist’ tools, while checking from different directions until they were seated neatly over the relevant rafters. After that, it was back to the ‘Pattern on Path’ tool to complete the circular symmetrical pattern of the complete roof. The end result is shown below: External View of my model of Paddington Engine Shed 1840 It all looks rather plain from the outside – a bit like a Victorian Gaol – but for a more interesting view, I could use the ‘Camera’ in the ‘Render’ section of ‘Fusion 360’ to look inside. Here is an internal view with ‘Vulcan’ on one of the turntable roads: Internal View of my Model Engine Shed, showing panelled walls and roof I think the overall impression is in reasonable agreement with the contemporary engraving shown above and is probably as good as can be achieved on the surviving information. Another view, which includes the clerestory roof is shown below: View into my Model of Paddington Engine Shed, through open Doors Overview of Paddington Depot c.1840 Finally, I have placed my model within the context of the overall site, as it was laid out in 1840. See my previous post for details of the other models shown. Overview of my Current Collection of Paddington Models There are still several more structures to consider, although with very little information to work from. One item, listed in the accounts, is ‘stables’ but these are not marked on any of the drawings that I have. I am currently thinking that they might be the extension on the side of the Engine Shed. I have not completed this part, except for the outer walls as marked on the overall plan. There would perhaps be a 19th-century logic in grouping together all the available sources of motive power within one overall building. Horses still played an important part in manoeuvring rolling stock between the various small turntables. If anyone has any other suggestions, I shall be interested to receive them. Mike

According to the 1907 wagon census the Caledonian had 1861 pig iron wagons, of which 1300 were to Diagram 16 in various build lots to either 8 or 14 tons. Certainly the CR moved a lot of pig iron from furnaces to steelworks and foundries, but these wagons were used as a sturdy one plank dropside for anything that needed moved. One of those wagons that turned up everywhere and is very useful for forming short rakes on the layout. These two are from the whitemetal 51L kit, they go together easily. Designed for fixed W irons, but I prefer etched W irons on a copperclad chassis, the wheelsets can be left out for painting and it gives somewhere to mount the aj and the buffer springs. A photo of the underside to illustrate that ; Posed for a photo ; A slightly elevated view. The pig iron loads are removable, made from old plastic kit sprue stuck to a bit of styrene. I have various modelling ideas in the pipeline but various things have to be done round the flat first.

It occurred to me yesterday that it had been a while since I visited RMWeb, "Oh, it must be a few weeks now..." I said to myself. However, logging on to view the fascinating, entertaining and sometimes stunningly inspirational projects on show I was utterly shocked to discover that it's been many months and that my last blog entry was before Christmas last year! What the heck have I been doing? Thankfully the answer is quite a lot really and therefore an update on the Bury 0-4-0 is a good place to start. As I may have mentioned before the Bury goods is one of many 'components' that will make up a small exhibition layout of London & Birmingham Railway Coventry station set in 1839. My good friend Tom Nicholls has been hard at work researching until his fingers are numb, and building a website https://coventry1839.org to explain the history of Coventry station thereby creating an opportunity for me to describe all the modelling involved. In fact, that's where all my blogs have been disappearing to so please do visit and catch up on progress. In the meantime the Bury goods has received its coat of green which has made a big difference. The wires poking out the front were to test the motor and gearbox in situ with everything in place and thankfully it runs very sweetly, However, once I connected the finer wires from the pick ups and separate ones from the motor (it will be DCC) it still ran smoothly enough except for an irritating wobble on the left front wheel. I've traced this to a slightly skewed fit of the nylon bush between the hub and the axle. Fixing the wobble will require the whole thing to be dismantled which is not as bad as it sounds as it's designed to be taken to bits if required, and re-set the wheel straight. I might check the distance between crankpins again just to be sure there's nothing weird going on there too. The loco is really small in 4mm scale but weighs in at 95g thanks to stuffing every last gap with tungsten putty which I find a very useful way of adding necessary tractive weight in such tiny locos. No.79's job at Coventry will be to run from one end to the other pulling half a dozen or so small wagons which it should manage quite easily. I have since painted a driver and fireman who will find a semi-permanent home on the footpath once the tender is coupled and the DCC chip plugged in.

With all the running repairs completed for now, I couldn’t resist putting a few items of stock on the layout before putting it away for the time being. I’ve a list of jobs to do before Wells, including finishing off stock items so I’ve filled my display case with items requiring attention, just to remind me. Some just need lamps, crews and coaling. Some need motors! Next up will be the fiddle yards. photos attached The prairie is heavily reworked Lima with Comet chassis The Collett Goods a reworked Replica with High Level chassis 5757 is a Bachman pannier with a High Level chassis 4694 is rewheeled Bachman Pannier The twin rail car a Worsley Works etch on a cut and shut Replica chassis all are detailed in my other tinking table blog.

In my previous blog on this subject I mentioned I'd 3D printed some wheel centres to fit into Alan Gibson 4'10" tyres. I put these into my test chassis and got it working but I was not entirely happy with the result. The issue I believe is that 'Gibson Style' wheels rely on having the centre molded out of a fairly 'grippy' plastic, the hole through the centre is designed to be a good tight fit on an 1/8th inch axle. even so most of us have had a wheel be a bit loose at times and some people resort to pinning the wheels to the axles. Those modelling in OO and EM have the opportunity to use wheels from Romford, now Markits which make use of an axle with a square end which fits into a square hole in the back of the wheel. I thought I'd try and replicate this with my wheel centre print so modified the wheel centre to match the style of a Romford wheel and I purchased some Markits EM axles. Obviously the P4 Back-to-Back is slightly wider than the EM one so my wheels needed a little section in the back to take their thickness out so that when fastened to the EM axles they present a P4 Back-to-Back. The drawing shows the rear of the wheel centre. Printing horizontally does mean that the back of the wheel has all the support structure which needs to be removed but it cleans up alright (photo taken half way through the process). The key is not to interfere with the central boss and just to make the rest of the wheel rear smooth. I've put a touch of black sharpie on the rear of the wheel to better show up the square whole. I had to play about a bit with the model to get the right size central boss. A little bit of trial and error was needed at this point but in the end I fitted all 3 axles to the test chassis and the quartering of the wheels worked from the get-go. Obviously I'll need to make some covers for the axle ends but the result took less effort than using my GW wheel press. I have now assembled the footplate and cab sides and it all fits together quite nicely with the 3D printed boiler though nothing is fastened down at this point. I've borrowed a GW models roller to roll the cab roof (thanks Middlepeak) so that is the next job on the cab. Although I have etched the brake gear I've also produced a 3D printed version of the brake hangers and brake blocks to see how they work and whether they are robust enough. I also need to make up the tender chassis, I've rubbed down the tender sides very slightly to remove a little bit of marking from the printing process. All together I think it is some good progress. David

Recent developments in the hobby have thrown several factors into relief, including the relative cost of new models versus spending power, and the general demographic of modellers as we all age. I've certainly been spending less on my UK outline in the last year or so, although it took a conversation in a model shop - talking about the relative merits and price points of the Accurascale and Bachmann Class 37s - to finally pin-point, to me, the reason why I'm spending less, at least on engines. I've got a number of Class 37s, but other than a revamped Triang-Hornby one from the early 70s, they're all from about 2005 - 2010, when the second wave of Bachmann ones arrived, along with the short-lived but quite acceptable ViTrains ones. I've not been tempted by the newer models simply because, while I can see their obvious merits, the older ones already hit that "good enough" spot for me. Perhaps it's because my modelling tends to be big-picture, more focused on the 3-foot view of trains in the landscape, but these models don't represent enough of a step-change to get me considering a purchase, let alone a wholesale upgrade of the fleet. And taking a long, hard look at my modelling priorities over the last 30-40 years (back to when I was into trains as a teenager) I can't help but feel that "good enough", for me, more or less coincided with the arrival of the improved RTR locos from Mainline, Airfix/GMR (and even Lima) in the late 70s and early 80s. These models didn't necessarily look great out of the box, with shiny wheels, shiny motion awful loco-tender gaps and crude couplings, but they were (generally) more or less the right shape, were painted and finished well, and had a decent amount of separate detail - more than could always be said for the contemporary Hornby models of the period. Where the details weren't quite right, it was within the scope of the modeller to improve them. And the better models from Hornby were coming along as well, so things were generally on the up. At the risk of undermining my thesis, I did buy an Accurascale Manor. I wasn't intending to, but when I saw one in a shop, it looked so good that I had to succumb. And, it's a lovely, smooth-running model that absolutely screams "Manor". But then again, my 20-year old Bachmann one still does it for me - it also couldn't possibly be anything other than a Manor, even though there are subtle and less-so-subtle differences in body shape between the two releases. The Accurascale one has a slightly lower, sportier look, for instance - but that's only really apparent when they're next to each other. My Bachmann one, despite being a split-chassis model, runs superbly on DCC, complete with a decent sound decoder in the tender. Other than converting the chassis to accept a decoder (not too hard with these GWR locos) the only mod I needed was to add additional pickups to the bogie. For me, again, the advantages of the Accurascale one are plain to see, but it's a delta rather than a step-change. For that reason, unless I'm tempted by a livery not represented by my Bachmann examples, I'll likely stick with just the one Accurascale example, beautiful model that it is. In similar vein, I've retained my fleet of GWR moguls, not being tempted by the Dapol examples. When I saw the reviews, I could see negative deltas as well as positive ones - the unrealistic flare on the slide bars, for instance. Again, I'm sure they're basically very nice models, but they weren't quite enough to tempt me, not when I already had a couple of DCC-converted 53XX moguls to keep me happy (again, one with sound) which I knew to be reliable performers with about 20 years of running behind them. I'm not sure if Dapol have done the 93XX variant, but again, my preference was to turn to an older model already in my collection. There's a minor issue with the Bachmann body, though: The front footplate profile is correct for a 53XX but wrong for a 93XX. For the latter type (with the side-window cab) the footplate drop starts further forward, and the bit behind the buffer is correspondingly shorter. In one of his books, Iain Rice describes fixing this via a cut-and-shut conversion, so I thought I'd give it a go. Here, in true Blue Peter fashion, is one I did earlier: In essence three cuts are required, using a razor-saw. Separate the entire front of the footplate, including the drop, by cutting up from below in line with the smokebox saddle. The moulding gives a nice reference for this cut. With the front part then detached, make two additional cuts to remove a section from the flat part just above the pony wheels. This bit is then used to extend the main footplate, pushing the start of the drop out by a couple of mms - more or less in line with the front of the smokebox. I let this bond harden overnight, while simultaneously glueing the buffer beam section to the now-isolated drop, producing a shorter front. Once I was satisfied that these two bits were welded, I joined them together using a crude levelling platform to keep the whole assembly from drooping while it hardened off. Some Humbrol filler and Mr Surfacer was then used to tidy up the joins a bit. I had to fabricate new support rods - not sure why, as the "geometry" shouldn't have changed - but I couldn't get the old ones to fit neatly without distorting the footplate, and they were too stiff to rework. I guess it's a case of tiny variations being enough to throw things out, so it was safer to make new ones from 0.45mm brass. The shortened footplate section gives the loco a much more pugnacious, purposeful look in my view. There's more that can be done. The chimneys would benefit from replacing (but I don't have any suitable at the moment), while the undersized cylinders can also be improved. This is a cheat as it's a 53XX I did earlier, but grafting Comet castings and etchings onto the Bachmann ones isn't too difficult: (Sorry about that front pony!). There's no soldering involved, just a bit of filing, glueing and filler. The same cylinder mod will make a big difference to the 93XXs, too. The Comet GWR 2-cylinder parts can be obtained from Wizard Models at a very reasonable price. So anyway, more of a ramble about personal modelling standards and what's "good enough" than anything earth-shattering, but here we are. I must stress that if I didn't have any GWR moguls (or ones that ran well) I'd have jumped on the Dapol ones, but with a number of legacy models already in my collection, and liking the opportunity to do a bit of hands-on modelling, I'll be sticking with these for the foreseeable. Given that they're all more than 20 years old, there's every chance of them having another 20-odd years of gentle running in them ... at which point they might well see me out! Happy New Year to all readers, if it isn't too late to say so.

Blimey I've not put anything on the blog since August. I must be slacking... There has been a fair amount going on but not much progress to write about. Progress on the Ivatt has been good, however I felt that the original Brassmasters pony truck, a work of art and perfectly good product, was in a different league to the rest of the EasiChas I had been designing. Discussing with the Brassmasters at Scaleforum we decided to try to design an 'EasiPonyTruck' with the aim to making an easy to assemble unit which would better match the rest of the kit. The revised version uses just two main parts together with wire sprung bearings for the axle. The original unit needed lots of tiny etched parts to make up the springs on the front and rear but I decided this could be more simply dealt with by a little 3D print. The complete loco is now running around Clare and looks rather good hauling a goods train. One of the best features of having put a new High Level motor and gearbox in the chassis is that the footplate can be cut away between the frames like the prototype. This gap has a couple of addition bits of bracing which are just visible when the boiler is in place. The J17 project continues with the delivery of the second set of test etches. So far these have gone together well. One of the major design changes has been the decision to split the etches between nickel-silver and brass. There is now quite a difference in price and also some parts, notable the cab roof were a bit tricky to roll in nickel-silver. Also I've decided that rather than produce the tender as a single part, etching the outside frames and buffer beams will make for a stronger model. This also makes the tend much easier to print and clean up. Please note that isn't the tender riding too high the holes in the side frames are to locate the axlebox print and deliberately don't match the centre height of the axles. This version of the boiler has the vacuum brake pipe so this was one of the fitted J17s. I've also modified the 3D model to produce an earlier non-super heater version with a Ramsbottom safety valve rather than Ross Pops. In fact it is fair to say that I am getting quite a collection of J17s now... Other activities have included making a front end for a Wickham DMU at the request of a fellow member of the GERS who want one to go with some etched sides he had. This was a bit tricky with lots of compound curves and difficult shapes. I think I've made a half-decent fist of it and people I have shown it to have at least gone 'ah, a Wickham' so hopefully I'm not too far out. So now I have best part of two weeks off. I hope I can get this J17 build running and get a bit further with the instructions for the Ivatt. And I must put a few more blog entries up... David

Well, it's been a while since the last post... It's not that I haven't been doing any modelling, it's just that this horsebox has been a bit of an epic, as you will see. I'll describe the build in three parts: the underframe the body, including the interior the roof and lighting. It's worth noting that I worked on each of the three sub-assemblies in parallel, so this won't be a completely chronological account of the build, but hopefully it will make the most sense this way. The starting point is the D&S etched brass kit, which is no longer available, but I was able to find one unbuilt on eBay. The kit is quite an old one, based on hand-drawn artwork rather than CAD, and there are a few issues with it. Nevertheless, it's a good starting point. The chassis build starts with the floor, bending up the buffer beams: The kit provides for one axle to be compensated: The holes for the bearings are too large for Slaters ones, and measurement and testing suggested the axleguards would place the bearings too far apart for the Slaters axles, so I added some washers to pack the bearings out (or rather, in): The complicated Dean brake gear, with its outside rigging, means I needed to think carefully about the order of assembly, and when things would be painted. I wanted to paint the wheels to simulate the teak centres, and this would be difficult once they were trapped in the axle guard assemblies, so I painted them first and then protected them with Tamiya masking sheet: The axle guards provided for the fixed end have tabs that look as if they should go into slots in the floor, but there are no slots, and it is unclear how the axle guards should be located. The above picture shows how I made the fixed axle into a separate unit, using spare brass from another etched kit. This was located with a couple of pieces of brass wire acting as locating pins. The pins are soldered to the floor, and the axle guard unit has corresponding holes. The brake gear is designed to be attached to the rocking unit at one end, and the floor at the fixed axle end. I decided to keep these as separate assemblies for as long as possible, so they could be fully painted before putting everything together. I assembled the brake gear on a sheet of squared paper, sellotaped to a piece of glass: Incidentally, one GWR drawing of a horse box refers to the compartment end as the 'groom's end' and the other end as the 'kicking end', so I decided to adopt this rather delightful terminology. The rods for the outside linkages were made up using the wire and etched parts provided in the kit: I used epoxy glue to attach strips of paper to the brake shoes, to ensure no short circuits: Next was the vacuum cylinder and associated parts: A dry assembly tested that everthing would go together. At this stage, everything could still come apart for painting and further work - the rocking axle unit is held in by the pivot rod, which can be slid out, and the fixed axle unit is on its locating pins, which are simply bent over slightly to hold the axle guard assembly in place. Next were the solebars. The kit provides overlays, half etched to provide rivet head detail. There are also raised areas where the spring j-hangers fit, and also for the small triangular brackets that support the body. However, based on the picture of horsebox number 8 in Russell's GWR Coaches part 1, the kit has the brackets in the wrong place. I decided to file the corresponding raised areas flat: The prototype has bulb-section solebars, with a top flange and a rounded thicker section at the bottom. The kit doesn't make any provision to represent this, so I tack soldered brass wire to the edge of the kit fret, and filed it to a half-round section: This was then soldered to the solebar overlays: They cleaned up to give a nice representation of the bulb solebars: And here they are attached to the floor assembly: Another issue with the kit is that on one side the spring stops (etched as part of the solebar) are in the wrong place, and do not align with the centre of the bearing springs. I cut these off and replaced them with a bit of spare etch, in the correct place. The kit includes whitemetal j-hangers, which I felt didn't capture the look of the original, and would be rather fragile. I decided to bend up my own from brass wire: The trick with these is to file the wire to half thickness where the circle has to be formed at the bottom of the hanger. I probably should have made some kind of jig, but with a bit of faffing I managed to make eight that were reasonably similar. The kit has etched steps, but since these stick out a long way they are potentially very vulnerable to damage. I soldered nickel silver wire to the back of the supports and under each step, to add strength. Filed to a rounded profile that is deeper than it is wide, the result is much stronger, while still looking reasonably delicate. Back to the brake gear, and the pull rods. Two rods need to meet and attach to each end of the double crank. I bent one piece of wire to an angle, so the two could be soldered next to each other, before filing back to a vee shape: The pull rods were attached to the cranks: The main chassis component was complete at this stage, with the brake assemblies and axle guard units (complete with wheels) kept as separate parts for painting. One thing remained - the axle boxes. The kit comes with quite nice grease boxes, which are correct for 'as built' condition, but by my period they should be oil boxes. I used some cast whitemetal boxes from ABS, which needed some modification before they could be soldered to the springs: The springs are a little thin, so I ended up gluing the spring/axlebox assemblies to a piece of 10 thou black plasticard using thin CA glue, then cutting round them to beef everything up a bit. This helps ensure the springs sit above the ends of the j-hangers as they should, rather than being recessed behind them. The axleboxes weren't glued on until final assembly, as the springs need to sit above the ends of the j-hangers. The axlebox/spring units had to be be carefully teased into place, as they are also behind the outside brakegear rigging. I realised I had made a mistake at this stage - the strengthened footstep supports clashed with the springs at the groom's end. I ended up cutting the springs into two pieces, with a piece of 10 thou plasticard glued to the back of the two parts to hold them together and to the axle guard. From normal viewing angles, this is pretty much hidden by the steps themselves, but it is just visible if you know what to look for. I replaced the kit buffers with Slaters sprung ones, but I only attached them at the end of the build. They need to be glued on with the rams and springs already assembled, as there is no room behind the buffer beams to screw on the nuts because of the brake gear. Vacuum pipes are ABS (nicer than the kit ones) and steam heating pipes are brass castings from CPL, as are the screw couplings. You'll see the underframe painted and assembled in the final part of this build, but in the meantime, here is a taste of where we are heading: Next time - the body. Nick.

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

There is a photo in “Caledonian Railway Wagons” by Mike Williams of one of these wagons of which it it thought nine were built from 1878 onwards. No drawing but they were known to be 18’ long on a 11’8” wheelbase, enough to reasonably estimate the other dimensions. Construction is from styrene sheet and section. Metal strips on the top of the sides had a series of holes for roping pegs, though I think they may have been threaded for an eyebolt. Perhaps a bar was pegged across the wagon to chock the wheels of the load ? There were also sheet hooks under the curb rails. The little grey dots are masterclub bolt heads. They are tiny, drill a 0.3 mm hole and glue them in. It is the first time I have tried them in 4mm scale so it will be interesting to see whether it is worth the effort. perhaps after painting they might just be a dome and a rivet transfer would have been simpler, we shall see. A view of the other side. The photo in the book shows the side with no brakes. I think I can just see the bottom of a brake block on the far side, so a standard Caley type Scotch brake seems a safe bet. A furniture van wagon needs a furniture van. An approximation of one. Some paint next.

Work continues above the windscreens and the scabby metal has now been cut away and the metal below cleaned up to see what can remain and what needs to be removed, right to the base of the small section of angled steel above the centre windscreen, the screen itself covered to protect it from metal fragments during the cutting. The dome is pretty beaten up from years of pigeon and bird strikes but also previous repairs, you are looking at the original surface of the dome as evidenced by the br green paint towards the centre, the textured surface is from the glass cloth scot rail applied which has now been removed, the dome will need considerable sanding and and fibreglass filler before the metal work can be tended to. The angled clean steel is part of the base of the dome steel supports which is in fair condition. the cut continues above the drivers windscreen, you can just about see the weld lines for the original (pre HGO) windscreen the two large holes are for the wiper control arms, these will be filled with fibreglass cloth and re-drilled, the drivers windscreen will be removed to inspect the condition of the seal edges, and any wasted metal replaced, as water that can get into the seal will damage the windscreen and cause delamination. On the drivers corner pillar after the paint and relatively thin layer of filler has been removed, we see as expected significant corrosion and we will need to establish the cause...if we just put fresh metal in the corrosion will re-occur, also note the bulge above the side window...this too, is abnormal and indicates issues behind the steel in this area....It would appear this is an old repair from impact damage. with that corner removed considerable corrosion is present behind it.....its more than likely this has been caused by a leak in the horn box area likely due to a poorly sealing lid and the water is finding its way down the front corners of the dome....and then running down the crash pillars previous repair attempts to the dome can be seen with the metal removed you can now also see the extent of the bulge. part of the dome will be cut away down the side to determine the condition of the roof supports which also hold 3 very heavy air tanks inside the cab, its possible that they have corroded weakened and started to sag, so if that is the case they will be jacked up and repaired. The dome requires considerable attention also. A rough paper template has been made to start cutting the new steel. No1 end second-mans door has had its hinge recess strip ( a posh name for a 6mm thick bit of steel....well it was 6mm) removed, there was considerable signs that all wasn't well in this area.....and after removing the door....(which will go back to Scotland to live on another loco) and the strip as evidenced by the paint outline....you can see considerable issues...after a good attack from the needle gun.... The corrosion goes all the way to the base... And up to the top...….this is why you make sure not only does the door fit properly.....but its also sealed....if you don't, this happens this isn't structural steel its just a skin, directly behind this is the grab handle recess, this will be replaced with 6mm plate to give the doors something to bolt into Work continues in No2 cab refit Drivers side heater conduit painted the regulation orange and the heater permanently wired up. The second-mans side is a slightly more complicated affair with the heater light switch and DSD holdover switch (allows the second-man to operate the DSD if the driver leaves his seat) The switch box hasn't been fitted, the wiring (about 7 wires in all) has been mostly threaded there are some crimps that need renewing, the heater has been wired up, the light switch box has been fitted it just needs some modification to the lower conduit to accommodate the DSD holdover switch box the white panel at the side of the desk is brand new and the wooden window surround is being renewed where required and refitted. On the drivers side the Fv4 valve has been removed to renew the crimps to the wires going to the valve (more on that later) and to put more screws in to the drivers side panel to stop it rattling, at this point the opportunity was taken to renew the O rings that seal the valve body to the base plate, the thick pipe is actually the locomotives vacuum brake pipe... This is the Fv4 valve itself (otherwise known as the train brake valve) its the largest valve in the cab of an D+M (davies and metcalfe) equipped locomotive for which 20s 25s 26s 45s and 47s were so equipped (56s have a similar valve but its looks it only shares with this valve) this, although it looks a little beaten up is a recently professionally overhauled valve. There are types of valve (non banded...yellow banded and green banded) as you can see this is a yellow banded one.....whats the difference? Non banded Overcharges and speeds up the vacuum exhauster the brake pipe when when release is selected Yellow banded speeds up the exhauster but does NOT overcharge the brake pipe when release is selected Green banded (quite rare) has no exhauster speedup facility The reason 26s have a yellow banded Fv4 is because they have a brake overcharge plunger in the form of a big brass plunger on the drivers desk. The brake overcharge facility is used when you have a long air braked formation and it ensures that the brakes at the rear are released. Overcharge does not affect vacuum operation. The two terminals are shorted when then release position is selected, and this is used to place a resistor in series with the vacuum exhauster motor field, this as a result weakens the field speeding up the motor and creating vacuum faster, which...saves your embarrassment when you have bled off too much vacuum during braking and you don't want to stop....or...it allows a quicker brake release pulling away from a station... a side affect on a non banded Fv4 is you will also overcharge the brake pipe but more on this later.... Another view of the vacuum brake pipe, this bolts to the Fv4 and is operated by that little nipple.... the Fv4 valve now installed and bolted down without the vacuum brake pipe attached, the handle is in the full service position note the notches on the ring and score mark, these give driver a tactile feel in dark conditions about the position of the handle at the right of the white handle there is a small pointed plunger which drops into these notches and allows the driver to feel where the handle is in the dark. The notches correspond to the the following... Running (basically brakes released) initial - brakes rubbing...with a little pressure used to control your speed descending an incline rather than actual braking) from here the brake is stepless to full service full service (maximum brake pressure but applied in a controlled manner) Emergency considerable force is required to put the valve into this position (you cant do it accidently) you don't get any more braking than full service you just get it a lot quicker. shutdown used to seal the vacuum pipe in order to change cabs. NO DIESEL and that includes VAC ONLY diesels (apart from the twins 10000 and 10001) has a vacuum brake...what I hear you all cry...yes you heard me...a diesel does not have a vacuum brake, the only physical influence the driver has is on the emergency portion of the vacuum brake, a conventional diesel locomotive does not have a vacuum cylinder. In simple terms The Fv4 valve simply reduces the ATP (automatic train pipe) which the locomotives air vac relay valve senses and operates a diaphragm to allow air into the vacuum brake pipe, this causes the air to be emitted to the rear of the vacuum brake cylinders on the coaches or wagons on operates them which through linkage operates the brakes on the vehicle....on the locomotive the triple valve compares the value of the vac chamber (a small tank that always has 21" of vacuum as a reference) to the value of the vacuum pipe and applies the locomotive air brakes in proportion. A locomotive with an empty chamber will not apply its locomotive brakes in proportion. This also means that the train (with a higher brake force) will do most of the braking effort...but also means that the carriages (because they are braking more and therefore the locomotive always releases its brakes first will not slam into the back of the loco allowing for smoother braking. When emergency selected the valve mechanically forces this little arm out....which operates the nipple. And here is the vacuum pipe attached with its trapdoor valve in the closed position which seals the vacuum pipe and relies on several valves on the brake frame to ensure that the vacuum pipe operation is within the correct pressures according to demand from the driver, this why the train brake is also sometimes known as the automatic brake, and its governed entirely by the automatic train pipe, which is air, and governs the operation of the train brake. here we have the brake valve in emergency the trapdoor valve has been opened by the arm actuating the little nipple on the trapdoor valve which opens it and instantly vents the vacuum pipe....which drops the vacuum to zero causing the brakes to fully apply on the train.....the locomotive compares the zero vacuum pipe to the chamber and as a result now knows to apply its locomotive brakes fully...ensuring maximum braking effort is available to the locomotive and the train. The Fv4 is probably the most complex valve on the locomotive, its extremely intolerant of wear and as result internally contains a lot of hardened corrosion resistant material, they are also one of the most expensive valves to overhaul (which has to be done by a specialist contractor) and cost close to £1k to overhaul, and that's just one of about 40 different valves on a dual braked locomotive. They also have lot of rubber seats and diaphragms which degrade over time. The operation of the brakes is tested and carefully compared to the BR specification every year, but in addition the driver has to complete and sign a brake test every time the locomotive is used, which consists of a test to ensure that the brakes react as expected before the locomotive enter service every time. finally with the drivers screen removed considerable repairs have been made to the dome ready for welding.

Modelling time has been limited recently due to work, family weddings, uni open days and holidays. I did have a rather splendid weekend at Scaleforum, helping operate my old Wheal Elizabeth layout and it was great to see so many old friends again. Once I’d gotten over the urge to come back and start building another china clay layout thoughts returned to Cheddar. Progress has been limited to the building of 1 Station Road. I wanted to include this as part of the final board and after making a couple of mock ups, decided to build in 3.5 mm/ft as I did with the station master’s house. Nothing particular noteworthy about its construction and I’m just about ready to start painting and bedding it in. I’m planning on having the backscene curving round behind it so haven’t bothered with the back of the house. Some more aerial photos have come to light showing trees between the house and railway anyway which should help the scenic blocker. The tortoise motor is for the turnout on the bridge by the way and operates via wire in tube. and before anyone asks, the telegraph pole is deliberately on the slant as per the prototype and has a couple of stays from EZ Line holding it up!

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.

I was reminded of the rather nice drawing of a set of coal scales in Roy Link's superb Crowsnest Chronicles book and while I can't match his version with lots of beautifully panto-graph milled pieces I thought I'd have a go at modelling it up in CAD to 3D print. As this model is in 16mm:1ft scale it took a while to print (a little over 5 hours) at .03mm layer height on my Phrozen Sonic mini 4K. I printed double of some of the smaller pieces just in case there were issues. The first attempt has actually assembled into something that looks pretty good first time. Sorry for the dust in the photo, I have sanded off the support structure and also lightly add a grain texture to the timber of the trolley. I'm looking forward to painting it now. edit (now painted) David

Afternoon all, Been quiet here of late as I tried to get Wenford Dries ready for it’s debut at the (always) excellent Uckfield MRC 2 day show. Detail had been added including handrails to some of the bays (yep they were pretty twisted bits of metal sagging in places) signage to the doors (not a typo, that is what the sign said for Lorries 🙄) moss to roofs, some shunters ( huge thanks to Mark B 46444) for painting these Modelu figures, the additional shed lean to and finally some white to the buildings and track areas. Also, presentation included a ply track plan showing area modelled, iPad installation showing prototype photos of area modelled and fire retardant black drapes to the front…although they are not as opaque as I would have liked, looking like something from an Ann Summers catalogue 😳 Trust me when I say I had not applied any white to the model until about 3pm, two hours prior to leaving to set up Friday evening 🫣 I had been putting it off and finally tried Talc (didn’t take to card/plastic) White weathering powder (again didn’t adhere) so resorted to good old fashioned dry brushing with white acrylic paint. Was hoping to not overcook it and just give the flavour. Set up the layout Friday night and did a quick test run. Next morning all was ready for the 10am kick off. My thanks to Andy Stroud (Oldshaw, Blueball Summit) for making the trip to help out and give some lunch cover. Likewise to the UMRC member who also did so on Sunday (sorry, we never swapped names!) The layout ran smoothly and I have to say the only real problems encountered we’re getting used to 3 link couplings. Some work first time, some take twenty attempts! I received some very nice comments all weekend and hopefully it demonstrated that a small but interesting 7mm micro can be undertaken. The 08 did most of the weekend as per the prototype however the 37 did stretch it’s legs a few times and pulled over a few extra people who heard the unmistakable sound of a tractor! A very enjoyable weekend and thanks to Adrian and his team who looked after us so well. A few pics of the layout… There was talk of a possible show invite to Camborne although I understand train’s don’t stop there 😅 A very enjoyable weekend and I do like the big stuff! As always, comments welcome… Pete

The furniture van wagon is now painted and in service. Slight weathering to bring out some of the detail. I do think that the masterclub bolt heads are better defined than a transfer rivet though from much more than a few inches away it is hard to see. I added a pair of crossbeams pegged into the holes in the sides to which the van is lashed. The relatively new looking sheet may have had a few more ropes in practice, though that was fiddly enough. A few posed pictures; Passing through Kelvinbank in a mixed goods train. I’m still not absolutely sure about the sheet. It looks right to my eye although I accept that photographic evidence of these wagons in use on the CR is not available. Perhaps in time one will turn up.

This month, I have been mostly gardening. In a scale style obviously. And that's about it really. Road surfaces are the usual Attwood Aggregates dust, greenery is static grass undercoat and postiche top coat, horsehair hedges and an assortment of sprinkles and flocks. It's funny how I'm down at the dregs of various containers as I hit the last board. Another obligatory strawberry patch has appeared inside the railway fence (which is still to do). Still lots to do but I already like the vista of the embankment and station approaches. It'll look good with a couple of signals on it.

Drummond built two of these small 0-4-2 tanks in 1885 for working the Killin branch. The design ran well and formed the basis for the Caley pug. Superseded by 0-4-4 tanks in 1895 they travelled the CR network before settling at Dawsholm shed where they worked the North Clyde industrial lines and the odd passenger working. So my period and location. Last one withdrawn 1947. I made the model mid 1990s I think. Some of the body is the old Jidenco etch made originally for Anchoridge which ended up with Falcon. I bought it in an incomplete state, so much was scratchbuilt, particularly the chassis. Basically I made an 0-4-0 with the rear axle driven and the front pivoting, the trailing wheels were a sort of bogie. That led to crosshead clearance issues and a tendency for it wander badly, the couplings were always off centre. No idea about the origins of the open frame motor and gears, they never meshed well and it was always noisy. It sat for many years until recently when I decided to give it a run. Hmm, time for a rebuild. New chassis made up, correct pattern Gibson wheels. I chose to drive the lead axle with a mashima like motor and a HL gearbox. The centre and trailing axle have a simple beam compensation. Took me two tries, the lhs sandbox was above the footplate. The cylinders are still to be stripped and repainted. Hmm . I had a look at the body. Not happy. A session in the brake fluid and a lot of bits fell off. So a body to rebuild as well.

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

Gosh. Another year has arrived and the layout still isn’t finished! This time of year is always busy with various family birthdays but I have managed to find time to get a bit of modelling done. It doesn’t help that my progress this time isn’t really progress, rather the correction of things I didn’t get right in the first, second or even third case. Ho hum… The camping coach is all but finished, it just needs weathering down slightly and detailing added. Transfers were from Fox and I’m pretty happy with how it’s come together. The steps are made and I’ve a collection of figures to add a little cameo here when it’s all done. Progress with the E116 B set has been glacial at times, but both coaches have been resprayed chocolate and cream and one coach is now flush glazed. Lots of individual pieces of 0.5mm perspex cut and filed to shape before being secured with Klear. Now there’s just the small matter of changing the bogies, since it would appear the set had 9ft fish belly type and not the pressed steel type which I’ve modelled. I’ll have to swap them out and use them for something else. I’ve got some Bristol Division transfers from Railtec for the ends too yet to do. Lastly, having never ever seen a photo of the bridge on Station Road prior to its demolition, two turned up on the local Facebook history page which, yes you’ve guessed it, showed the bridge looked nothing like the first, second and third one I have built. So with suitably sized underwear on, out came the mini drill and circular saw and I did the best I could without destroying everything and bearing in mind there’s a piece of 12mm ply acting as a track base which obviously I can’t do anything about. I think we’ve got there and a little more weathering and maybe a little filler will finish it off. Tonight I’ve been sizing up the signals required for the layout and next I real want to get the whole layout up for some testing, oh and sorting out the fiddle yards.

We start where we left off... Work has started to re-instate the metal strip which attaches the dome to the cab, the dome itself has been filled smoothed and flatted and given an initial coat of grey primer, the rough join will be hidden by aluminium trim....eventually. The strip now extends above the drivers windscreen. Over the past few years we have grown quite attached to rust and we were worried we were running out.....as a result we thought we would have a poke around the drivers cab-side window top to see if we could find some more and we were not disappointed! we see the corrosion has cracked the top steel right through, something is going on here and like everything we need to figure out what it is... After removal of the corner external pillar we get a better idea!!! water has been collecting in the corner and running down the inside of the pillar to the base...where things are pretty damn ugly....in fact the base is not actually attached the body lower so the entire corner was only held on by a small piece of steel at the base....this is evidence of a botched repair the water trail can be seen from the top left of the pillar to the bottom right. a patch has been welded internally to try and strengthen this.... but rather haphazardly....it would appear the windscreen and side window was an inadvertent structural item, before cutting can commence this area will need to be braced to ensure it doesn't collapse. The random screws are what hold in the conduit for the drivers heated windscreen. A closer view of the extent of the corrosion in the base A closer view of the pillar, the path of the water can be clearly seen, oddly although it doesn't look it...this pillar is painted, and the majority of the steel can be salvaged and made good again with a good clean...but the bottom 3rd will be removed.# In the last blog we mentioned we wanted to cut away part of the dome on this side to check a roof support hadn't failed, and as can be seen whilst it was still securely attached...its a less than satisfactory job! this too will need to be addressed! The bottom of the pillar has been removed and a patch welded in, unfortunately a lot of the steel at the front is quite thin so its common to blow a few holes in it during welding, even when you try to be careful, the pillar has been cleaned and reveals quite serviceable metal still and this is suitable for retention. A new section of pillar welded in and securely attached to the cabside. The missing corner from the previous blog has now been added and the pillar primed a new base for welding the upper pillar has now been added. the pillar now ready to accept its outer steel after one more coat of primer. a replacement bit of steel for the upper has been trial fitted. The dodgy repair you saw earlier has been removed and the strut directly welded to the frame, the dome awaits the missing piece to be re-attached. The replacement outer pillar has been bent and cut to shape and trial fitted, it will be riveted in place prior to welding and then the rivets removed, this is to ensure it keeps its shape and doesn't move while its being welded. The dome has been repaired and the repair we saw earlier covered up, the side steel too now awaits fitting, the holes are for plug welding to the inner frame and then it will be riveted to the dome and sealed to prevent water ingress. The side is now completely flat compared to a bulge which can be seen in earlier blogs. on the secondmans side the steel work for the dome has been prepared for the dome to be re-fitted, this starts with giving the dome something to sit on, in this case some aluminium, the dome will be glued and riveted to this with counter sunk rivets. Those rivets you see will be drilled and replaced with countersunk ones too which means they will be invisible when the locomotive is finished. The dome being trialled... the dome is now fitted and the corner added in, as can be seen its still a little rough and its thought the pillar below is too flat. The cuts are sealed with fibreglass paste which will be sanded smooth, and holes are drilled for countersunk rivets. a close up of the filling.... That's why god invented filler :) the dome awaits pushing down so it can be riveted firmly into place. Thanks for reading.

First a bit of nostalgia :) 26043 2 weeks off the production line from BCRW and at the time was on commissioning trials, as 26043 is a series 1 class 26 it never had cab droplights fitted, we see the tablet catcher recess, and its front connecting doors, we also see that like all 26s its boiler fitted. Note it does not yet have the opening window instead it has a boiler filler hatch. 26/1s incorporated a number of weight saving measures, such as the cantrail grills being made out of aluminium instead of steel, a thinner gauge bodyside skin, and the internal radiator ducting being made from fibreglass instead of aluminium, OLEO Buffers and all coil spring suspension. By this time is was already decided that the class 26s were destined for a life in Scotland, so in order to appease the Scottish civil engineer, they needed to shed a few pounds to bring the axle weight down. Note this is probably the only time 26043 has carried the correct pattern series 1 bogies, these have the correct series 1 footsteps fitted and also are missing the link arms required to lift the bogies attached to the locomotive as the series 1 underframe was missing the bracketry required for this. Another fact is the drivers side windows are not the same as what is fitted now, they are mounted on the inside whereas at the last HGR they were changed to an outside mounted frame to try and reduce water ingress into the cab. The location of the photo is unknown its thought to be somewhere up north but not scotland. The cab as built. a lot of people when they look in a class 26 cab see exposed pipework, and think there are panels missing......as you can see...there never was any panelling the cabs were very spartan, and all that protects you from the Scottish wilderness and freezing temperatures is 3mm of steel......not known for its insulating properties! This photo shows a 26/0 as built its vacuum only and has a drop light next to the drivers seat, identifying this as a 26/0. You can clearly see the bellows for the connecting corridor. In a previous blog we saw the drivers side cut away awaiting new steel framework, this has now been applied with a coat of protective primer the lower portion of the grab handle recess has been found to be badly twisted which will affect the fitting of the new doors...this has been cur away to be replaced by a brand new fabricated section. The secondmans windscreen has now been removed to assess the extant of the corrosion above the cab windscreens. We already knew this was a problem area having exposed it a few years ago but ran out of time to be able to affect a repair before the locomotive was due back in service. A good indication of what you can hide with filler.....once again note the complete absence of any paint on the steel work. Looking towards the drivers side the filler has been chipped away to expose the base of the roof dome. The cause of the corrosion is quite simple at some point Scotrail completely fiberglassed over the join between the cab steel and the roof dome (assuming to stave off water ingress). This works as long as the fibreglass stays attached but as the body flexes....it pulls away, this means water can leak from the base of the gutter behind the fibreglass and sit there....which causes the corrosion. Moving down the right hand side of the windscreen towards the connecting doors we see significant corrosion, and also wastage around the extremities of the screen, refurbished class 26s used a clayton-rite windscreen seal, which meant the internal window frame could be removed, a clayton right seal is commonly found on classic cars and is recognised by the filler strip in the centre of the seal to clamp it to the window glass and the frame work, however...its not unusual for water to penetrate and site in the channels and rot the supporting steel ( as a lot of classic car owners will know) the reason for the change is unknown.. but its assumed it was connected with the switching of class 27 type windscreens around the time 26s had a HGR. which would have required the changing of the internal frame, so the cheap option was to the do away with it in its entirety, which left only the steel to support the window which required a different type of seal. the reason for the change of windscreens was an attempt to cut costs by standardising parts accross the fleet. The chipping of the filler and its thickness indicates "further bodgery" is present! this was found to be a 2 inch overlap with the steel above. As a result we decided to cut the entire panel off!!! You can clearly see where the water tended to sit (at the bottom right hand side of the screen). Here we see the front with the panel removed the corrosion around the centre doors extends to the shelf in the cab, it can also be seen that the supporting framework is also missing for the front panel! At the rear of the removed panel we see...what survives of the framework! You can also see that while this is a BR panel its not the original.... And you can see the original light has been gas axed from the original front and welded to the new panel! you can also see the red-oxide primer likely applied during preservation...which means the lower portion of the frame has been absent for a very long time! Work starting to re-instate the frame work first a piece of horizontal steel is inserted and welded below the shelf to the correct front profile. Then a front pieced welded on to strengthen the framework and give a surface to weld new panels to at the top. The curve is quite complex and the next stage is to fabricate the sill, there is no room for error here if the sill is slightly misshapen then windscreen will not fit! You can see the internal window shelf, this is quite badly corroded and will be removed. if we look again at the rear of the removed panel you can see the complex curve at the top and its sill which can be made out (just) by the shadow! The replacement repair panel being "fettled" before being welded in. The panel being fitted! Also being repaired if that unsightly corrosion at the side of the connecting corridor, the welds will be cleaned up shortly. At this stage the curves for the windscreens can be fitted, as can be seen here... And finally the welds cleaned up! A lot more steel will have to be removed to get the correct hole for the screen.

Some progress. The nine levers have been cut from 2mm brass. The other parts are fabricated from tube and section. I used a pair of buffer springs to assist gravity on the stop block to give a positive feel to the action. The frame made up from silhouette cut styrene, 3 ply. It will become stiffer as more is added but tests show that it is heading in the right direction. I chose a spacing of 15 mm for the levers. That gives about 28 mm as a gap for moving a lever; my thumb is 24 mm wide. Feels about right. Microswitches in place, the spacers are actually old meccano nuts, slightly thinned. This is a locking bar. The captive pin arrangement allows them to be removed. Test assembly with the locking in place. It isn’t as comprehensive as a full locking system, but it does prevent the point levers being moved until the signals are properly set. The overlap is such that the microswitches will not trigger until a lever is properly unlocked, I think in practice there would be more, possibly a fpl on the point leading to the sidings since it could be worked both ways. I will also have some electrical locking for the ground signals. Certainly signalling was simpler in the early days, more complications as time went on. A pic of the front. I will add a front sheet and some beading. Next stage, take it to bits and do some painting.

Stourpayne Marshall is no more! Or at least, it's back in its box for the time being. When I switched my layout from GWR mode to S&D mode back at the end of summer 2020, I had no idea that I'd keep the S&D theme for the best part of three years. However, it's been far too much fun running Bulleid pacifics, Fowler locos, Black 5s and so on to want to stop. However, I decided this week that was enough was enough (my GWR locos were feeling neglected) so over the course of an evening or so, the great reversion was achieved. Stourpayne Marshall just before "closure": And the return of King's Hintock: Of course this transformation is greatly simplified by not swapping the signals, which is a bit of a cheat, but works for me. The only major job is reconnecting all the wiring for the lights on King's Hintock, a fiddly hour or so trying to remember wiring "logic" and cursing myself for not labelling things properly. Stourpayne Marshall had no lit buildings, since none of the S&D-themed trains were illuminated either, but a few of my WR ones can run at night so it's worth the trouble. This is by no means the end of Stourpayne Marshall, in case anyone was concerned - it's just going into storage for a bit, until I feel the GWR layout getting a bit samey and want a change. All the interchangeable bits go into a big plastic storage box and can be shoved out of the way with no fear of damage.

I've been working on a chassis and detailing kit for a Bachmann Ivatt class 2 2-6-0 tender loco for several years now with my friends from Brassmasters. Progress has been sporadic but we recently received another set of test etches from PPD and this time we got two copies, one is being build by one of the Brassmasters team using the full Easi-Chas approach using the Bachmann motor and gears and mine is being built using a High Level gearbox and motor. This later option allows you to fill in the front of the Belpaire firebox and move the backhead in the cab forward. The basic 0-6-0 chassis s is fairly straight-forward sprung using the Brassmasters horn blocks and springs. With the fold up design of the side frames and the soldered on rear and front the unit comes out rather nicely. You can see that the front crank pin has been reversed and slimmed down to get the clearance behind the crossheads, a perennial problem in P4, less so in EM. The coupling rods are jointed in the prototypical manner. The motor ends up vertical in the smokebox so the gearbox is not in the correct orientation in the photo. The cylinders are made up with brass tube for the piston and valve rods. Trying to design the etch to form the valve spindle rods/cover was a bit of a strain on the brain. Still I am quite pleased with the result. The slide bars are a fold up etch, one of several deliberately designed with a frame around them to make alignment easier and add additional strength while fettling. There is an alignment hole to aid soldering the unit at the right angle when you get to that stage. The cross-head may look ridiculously complicated but the fold up nature and the support/alignment frame actually make it relatively straight-forward. The parts can be tinned, folded, aligned with a couple of pairs of tweezers and then sweated together. The slidebars, cylinders and cross heads can then be test fitted before you start making the rest of the valve gear. I won't go blow-by-blow through the valve gear. I've been writing the instructions at the same time as building this and have probably gone a bit overboard with detail and photos of each bit of rod. Trying to remember your combination lever from your return crank from you radius rod is designed to exercise the grey matter. But if you go one bit at a time you hopefully end up with something that looks like this. As a bit of light relief I worked on the tender chassis, much less fiddly but also sprung with continuous springy beams. Finally I have the chassis matched with the body, the brake-gear added and a Brassmasters Ivatt pony truck to match. The body is looking a bit mashed about as it has now been used and abused all the way through the design and build process. Also it is totally the wrong colour for Clare, deep in G.E.R. territory. Now I have a working chassis I intend to fit it under a second black Ivatt which will look much more appropriate. So what is still to do before we have something which could be a kit? Well, as usual at this stage we have a little 'snag list' mostly of the 'make this hole a bit bigger/smaller', 'move this slot by .5mm', add parts on the etch for the early/later version of X. But, it is coming along..... David