Wild Boar Fell

Apologies for the lack of updates recently, I hope everyone is well. I decided to take a break from the projects I was working on after losing motivation on them. I'll get back to them, but in the meantime I've been trying to get the hang of a different 3D printer. In order to do something vaguely useful for Bank Quay, I've had a go at printing some Tope hoppers. Being vacuum braked these were pretty much culled during the layout's era. I believe until a few years ago the final wagon survived in an overgrown siding (Bolton way?). I've still got a lot of work to do on them, most notic

A very quick and crude test print of the original CAD file, please note that I am aware of quite a few issues with the print, which I hope to steadily resolve. Post printing I have not cleaned up the support marks and it has had a quick blast of primer and black. Therefore this is not representative of a finalised tender print. Kind Regards, Wild Boar Fell

As it happens in the last few days decided to try and return to 3D printing with a new machine. I have tried the first few print on it today and have included the above tender body in the test prints. I will aim to post a photo tomorrow of the result, it needs some optimisation (it wasn't designed for this technology) but shows some promise. I can't say at this stage whether I'll go into production or not when finished. Kind Regards, Wild Boar Fell

Not a proper update, but '412 is currently in for weathering. The loco still needs new plates, lamp irons and warning flashes, but rather please with how it has turned out so far. The weathering is based on photos of the loco from 1999/2000. Horrible close ups... Wild Boar Fell

POS was Pullman Open Smoking. There are still the partitions but not the doors from what I remember. Seem to recall the TOE had similar at the loco end of the saloon. Data panels do match the Evesholt website, I have photos of each panel type somewhere.

That TOE is looking sharp, looking at the end detail, I would say as shown there was for a vehicle post Wi-Fi fitment but pre 67/ Wales conversion.

I believe both changes were made about the time of the Mallard refurbs, from memory some time between 2001 -2003. Happy to be corrected

Looking forward to the new Mk4s, typically I have my ones nearly ready for painting. Will be interesting to see if the tooling allows for any differences on the welsh ones, the TOE having the most obvious difference on the outer end. Admitted the intermediate coaches you'd have to know where to look to see the differences (loss of the end baffles on one side only).

The odd thing being that they could do a much closer representation of a RLO using there Mk2F tooling but haven't. 1/2 of the RLOs have smooth sides like a RFB but the other half just have the windows blanked.

Certainly is WBQ, I've got to build that in OO at some point soon. The that span is the old Crosfield siding, it's a different span as far as I can tell and no longer used as far as I know.

No train, but a railway photo. The CLC in the snow at Woolston. 28th December 2020. Rather fitting I thought. Happy New Year, Wild Boar Fell

Hopefully I'll post a summary in the next few days, but just wanted to take the opportunity to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Peaceful 2021. Matthew

One will be, Test Car 2 will be in the Serco red and grey colours that it carried until the impressive restoration by the Quorn Wagon Group last year (?). My understanding is that TC2 regularly came upto Bank Quay when undertaking slip testing. The dual era build will be of Test Car 3 MENTOR (Mobile Electrical Network Testing, Observation & Recording), mainly because I've seen it in the yard plenty of times and it looks an interesting (read difficult) challenge. My MENTOR will go into Railtrack yellow as Railtec fortunately do transfers for this livery.

Looks like Bank Quay's fleet of Test Cars is set to increase with the latest 2 donor vehicles. One will be a simultaneous build with DCP who will also be building its current form. The other was a regular visitor to Bank Quay. The question is, which are they?

As mentioned, some work has also been going on with the HST fleet, to try and give a bit of variety a few have been renumbered/ re-named. To give the impression of a bigger fleet, 3 power cars have different identities on each side. There were chosen to be a mix of named and unnamed examples. They have all been given a light weathering, as the photos from the era mostly showed these to be relatively clean. 43155 City of Aberdeen has been given the earlier XC branding, based on a photo of the prototype at WBQ on Flickr. All others have the more familiar revised livery