Johndc120

Carrying on for painting of the cattle dock today. the brick red is on and the first bits weathering applied to the floor. The bullnose stones have been painted into blue as well. It’s nice to see some bits starting to get towards being finished

I’m currently modelling a cattle dock based in the 1950s, while still in sporadic use I am really struggling to find decent photo to show how to weather. I know that lime wash was prohibited a long time earlier. My question is about weathering and how much staining you would find still left of the lime. has anyone got any decent photos or advice from what they have modelled many thanks John

Progress on the platforms, the brickwork for all of the platform faces is all now painted, we have now done the mortar and lime staining on the brickwork for the cattle dock, the bricks will be painted in the same way as the platform faces so it’ll only be the mortar which will have the remaining line stains

Beautiful layout, I came back to see it a few times. The way you run it kept it busy too which was more than could be said for some of the massive layouts there really great modelling and the highlight of the show for me John

Thank you Graham, the rodding stools are by modelu and the rods are 0,4mm nickel silver wire. the cranks were my own design and prints taken from the BR drawings, since doing this I’ve helped modelu out to release his own cranks so they are available that way. The concrete legs which the cranks sit on are again my own prints but I’m not sure if these are available yet

Ground frame finished and stuck down in place. the last photo shows the connections to the A end with the FPL

Elmore station Ground frame getting a lick of paint, the cupboard for the annetts key machine is yet to be finished but they were usually white. I will be painting the hinges roof and the concrete supports over the next few days the levers are from a spring side signal box interior kit as they are beautifully cast

I’ve always had a thing for them and actually providing it’s done nicely a what if can be a good point of interest

I guess our platforms are a bit closer than yours then, everything else gets through okay and I’ve now just adjusted this to fit now. as standard this is the measurement, clearly well over the 9’ maximum! the answer has been to cut a section out of the middle to allow them to be squeezed inward and glued, I’ve taken them down to 37.4 which is about the same as the new Hornby prairie (still over sized! But fits) as the running board is also over wide at 35.2 so if I take them to the correct 8’11 then they won’t stick out at all which would look wrong having done this a bit of surgery has been required to get the body to go down and fill a gap that was left in the top of the cylinders the last thing designed today has been a frame extension to sit under the buffer beam and above the bogie. It’s a simple design but it should block some of the visible gap and also hold the loco straighter and therefore the front coupling which I want to mount to the body. I can get away with this because we have a 6’ minimum radius on the layout

I’ll let you know if I do any 3D printed details and send you some. I will definitely be doing some sort of frame extensions to go under the buffer beam to hide the horrible gap above the bogie, also to keep the loco a bit straighter my biggest headache at the moment is the over size cylinders as they strike the platforms 🤬…. Not sure reprinting cylinders was on my wish list!!! I also regret not cutting out the coal before painting it as it’s very full (a hang over from tender drive I suspect

some lovely shots of Shwt and the other fantastic layouts at SWAG on Sunday, thank you Callum for producing this these are a couple of my own shots taken when I could

A bit of an unusual work bench project for this week, it’s a Hornby railroad GWR county class which happens to be one of my favourite locos (don’t ask!! 🤣) anyway 1955 is a bit late for the county class but not one for facts getting in the way of a nice project this is my repaint! I am still waiting for the name and number plates

Shwt has seen the light of day again last night, we spent half hour digging it out of stores. for anyone who doesn’t know what’s involved in exhibiting, this is most of the stuff which is needed to Exhibit Shwt, what is not included is a laptop and router, the stock and tools. All these will go in the night before

Well just a few days to SWAG, we’ll be getting ready and packed tomorrow. it’s always great to see what other people see in the layout so if you take any nice pictures, please feel free to post them here. This one was by Richard street in Alton febex

Thank you Andy, The resin printer is an anycubic photon mono 4K. It’s been brilliant to fair to it. Hardly any fussing with it required

More layout testing and operator practice. Today’s visit to Elmore was a regular B-set, this time with a cattle van for the loading dock once arrived at Elmore the loco in couples, picks up the rotank wagon from the siding and puts the cattle wagon on the dock before departing in the foreground more layout work can be seen as the platform faces are now being painted

This is the other option for the full train, I’ve converted and fitted couplings for the vans either end. I’ve also added a bogie bolster, this was sometimes used to help the return of the pollen wagons and they were loaded on top once they were empty, I think this way it makes a more interesting train I will need a pair of spare bolsters though to fit on when the girder is removed

Thanks Paul, yes exactly right, they were coupled with a solid bar to link them together, the bar was often left on one of the ends when not in use so to not use it which can be seen in this picture https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/gwrgirdwagpollen/h1608dcb5 I have designed this feature in so eventually I’ll probably do a second set but empty and connected together to represent the return working john

The end is in sight for this project These are a pair of pollen E wagons, completely designed by myself and 3D printed in resin. It’s taken several attempts but after purchasing a 72xx I thought I’d better finish the train it’s supposed to be pulling The girder is just a temporary one made using wills varigirder kit. I’ll try and do something a bit better looking it’s nice just seeing the wheels through the gaps on the wheel boxes. I’ve tried to get this to work for OO gauge as well but it really doesn’t look as good as the wheel boxes have to be much bigger reducing the gap between

Hi Andy, you are right Helston is definitely a 6T This is my design of it using diagrams from the Great western journal and pictures of one still in existence

It certainly is, it’s my own design and print, I’ve done a batch of them, just got to build them up, I’ll try and remember you wanted one are you sure Yeltsin was a 6T? The 3 T looks very similar which I have done for Chris Nevard’s build of Hemyock

Working on wagons tonight. firstly the complete set of conflats for they layout, these will be mixed in with the freight for the yard but also they are ideal as tail loads for small B-set passengers. The tail loads are an operators choice, for operators without much knowledge of the layout you can go without. whereas the more competent ones can arrive with a tail load, drop it off in the yard, pick a different one up if they want or just shunt the original to the back of the train before heading off down the branch Chains to be added Secondly a very iffy numbered Hornby lowmac, the number really doesn’t make sense on this vehicle and I believe that’s because it’s an eastern number which Hornby have just put a W infront to make it western region… hmmm!! Some weathering and it’s be fine I guess!! anyway the crate it came with looked bad so a good Oxford die cast tractor later and some chains and it looks okay, just to weather it down now

I’ve had to lift these from Shwt’s Facebook which seems to be my photo cloud mainly I use the same sleeper grime colour I use to paint the sleepers. It’s the German camo black brown. although this is mixed in with oil black for oil stains and a few other more detail bits like grease on the pointwork this is the unweathered ballast just gone in, all very uniform This is new weathered with the black brown, for track where a train is not normally stopped I just weather along under the rails, for sections where the train stops I give a much heavier weathering to the the whole track bed Finally grass can then be introduced if felt the area needs it, shwt being a 1960s partyly disused line it’s got quite a lot john

Yeah so as you weather the ballast, you tend to dull off the rust colours so you have to go a little heavy with the rust and once the ballast is done the rest will blend back in correctly

Sure thing, just got to remember which photos they were So start to finish this is the primer, it’s Vallejo grey primer which looks very light. The key is to clean the top of the rail between coats the next stage is to spray the whole thing in German camo black brown this has had 2 coats following this is rust layers, using the paint colours ‘dark fleshtone’ and ‘filthy brown’ Lastly the concrete colour for the concrete pots and rodding parts was touched in using Vallejo ‘stone grey’