hendie

Hi Ian. I'd say it's going as per normal. I'm in the middle of converting am old 1950's Revell H19 to a Westland Whirlwind HAR10, circa 1972 So far that has involved cutting off the tail to set it at the correct angle, scratch building: the cabin interior, the cockpit, an entirely new nose, the entire front and rear undercarriage, the tail pylon, replacing the kit transparencies, and vacforming a new windscreen and sliding doors. I started this as a "fun" build I still have to scratch a new rotor head and rotor blades, and no doubt a few other bits as well. Oh, and 3d printed the wheels as the kit parts were not even remotely wheel shaped

Thread revival! No mouth to mouth required, just a swift kick and we’re back in business. Just as I was finishing off this marathon build back in, what was it… October of last year? I thought to myself, that it was such a shame I did not keep any souvenirs from the 1:1 build. I know my name, along with others on the team is stamped on one of the shear plates in the vestibule end, but that’s not quite the same. Actually, I did keep some mahogany blocks from the vestibule gangway, but my wife left those back in the UK when we emigrated. Now that the build was complete it would have been so cool to have had some of the 1:1 Pegasus to display beside this model. But that was over 20 years ago now and I am a continent away and no longer in contact with any of that team. Oh well, such is life. Well, in what can only be described as a remarkable series of circumstance and coincidence, the end of my build was not the end of the story. Pull up a chair, throw another log on the fire, grab your Horlicks, and get settled in. Unbeknownst to me, sometime around the middle of 2020, Pegasus incurred some water damage – any guesses where I’m going with this? I’m not sure just how bad the water damage was, but the new owner apparently decided that was the opportunity to do a complete refurbishment of Pegasus. So in October of last year just as I was finishing up the 1:32 build, the 1:1 Pegasus was scheduled to go to the doctors for the refurb, and here’s where fate got involved. A tremendously resourceful fellow named Andrew, who we’ll call Andrew, to protect the innocent, decided to do some research on old Car 310 – and what do you know? He came across my build thread and read through it. Now, not only did he read through my build, but after trying various ways to contact me without success, he also took the time to register with the site so he could contact me personally via PM. That was back in January of ’21. His out of the blue PM blew me away. Simple as that. I can’t explain how excited I was when I read his message. It was fairly straightforward – he informed me that they had just completed the refit on Pegasus and he had saved some items – and would I be interested in having them? WHAT??? I couldn’t believe it. How many planets had to align for all those circumstances to coincide? Off course I jumped at the chance. Over the last 7 or 8 months we’ve been PM’ing back and forth trying to sort things out, but finally last month everything was in place for the shipment to happen. And happen, it did. This week I was away in Chicago on business, and on my first day away, look what arrived… Look - it's full of goodies Sorry, not that type of goodies. This type of goodies What’s in it I hear you ask. Well, there’s this for starters: A curtain. A real curtain. From the real Pegasus. Perhaps even the one old Madge wiped her fingers on after scoffing that tea and scones on her birthday Then this, a piece of the carpet, which for some obscure reason decided to auto-rotate itself. The photo, not the carpet. Followed by this little section of granite from the bartop - remember that bartop that I thought was going to be such a struggle? Yet turned out to be one of my favorite items in the build Then we have a couple of brass hooks, and a pair of attendant call buttons. (You can get off your sides now, looks like we've stopped auto-rotating) And finally, to wrap up, we have the pièce de resistance, and a part that never in a gazillion years could I have imagined getting my hands on – a section of wall panel with the birds eye maple star inlay See - there's that Birds Eye Maple inlay I spent so long trying to figure out how to replicate. How can I sum this up? I’m kinda lost for words. I am indebted to Andrew for going to all the trouble of tracking me down and reaching out to make contact. He didn’t know me from Adam and there was absolutely no reason for him to go to all this trouble to get these items into my hands. I will forever be indebted to him for his generosity and kindness. The question you are all asking now is what on earth am I going to do with these now that I have them? Well, my current plan is to have a custom shadow box made up which will house these mementos and can be displayed alongside the Pegasus model. Something along these lines So look out for another post sometime in the future when I manage to get that done.

Thanks NS. Unfortunately I am one of those modelers who has to have a "connection" to the subject matter, otherwise I find that my heart just isn't in it, and Pegasus was my only foray into the rail industry during my professional career. It was that connection that kept me working on it for the 6 years it took to bring to fruition. Sadly, Ian, I fear you are correct. I was also involved in designing an observation car for some client whom I can no longer remember, but it never got past the concept stage so there were no drawings produced. If I ever feel the urge to model rail stock again, that could be a potential subject. I don't want to say too much at this time, but there has been a (very surprising) further development in the story of this build. If things go according to plan, there may be a further update in the not too distant future... fingers crossed. I shall let you all know if it all pans out (or not)

Well spotted Ian. I'm working on a Bristol F2b from 1920, and a Hawker Audax from around 1930, both 28 Sqn aircraft

Thanks Ian. You can hold off on the boo hiss for a few weeks yet... read on... A few quick jobs to finish off. The mirror got glued in place and a quick peek of the underside The track end caps got glued in place Everything got cleaned up and dusted off as best I could The roof was finally lifted into place quick view from the front Then I finally pulled the display cover out of its packaging Look mom! no train! for the first time in 6 years, there is no Pullman car on my bench - it's a strange feeling but not before I had painted up the plinth and added the plaque now follows a bunch of gratuitous shots, just because I took 'em... Officially finished. But... I have decided that I really do not like the rod going full length of the roof as I feel it really detracts from the roof detail when viewed in the mirror. Therefore, I am going to attempt to make the support gantries in brass which will provide much stronger supports and I should be able to support the roof with a short cantilever. Would you believe I cannot source brass H beam here in the US? I'm going to have to order a bunch of material from the UK so it's going to take a few weeks for that to arrive. That will give me a nice little break form this, and hopefully the brass gantries will not take to long. They won't be exactly the same as the 3d printed ones but will be as close as I can get them given the tools I have . but I'm still calling it finished! back in a few weeks...

I've given up on the ballast now Mike. More arrived this week and it was the wrong scale. More importantly I really don't think there's any room and it would look forced Keith, JCM, - nice idea but I'd need a really heavy counterweight with such a short moment available on the other side Thanks Ian, what a great find! Thanks for sharing - it brought back some memories yep Bucoops, it was indeed THE coach The last piece of the jigsaw puzzle arrived during the week. What it is you may well ask? Okay then. It's a mirror. A real glass one, not one of those cheap acrylic plasticky ones. Bloomin' expensive it was too. I searched for days trying to find something cheaper, but twas not to be. In the end, I bit the bullet and just bought it. It should show up the underside of the roof nicely with the added bonus that you can actually see some of the chassis work too. It's just resting in place at the moment. This weekend should see it all finished. I also bought a plaque. I'm not sure if I like the wording but couldn't think of anything else. I also printed off a base for the plaque - which will be sprayed black in due course - if I decide to use it. I may just lay the plaque flat on the case. Tantalizingly close to the finish line now. I can almost taste the axle grease.

Thanks Simon. After much consideration I believe I am going to forego the ballast. Not 100% sure yet, but almost On the contrary Ian, it was a great idea. Its just in this case that I think its going to be impractical - mainly due to space limitations with everything else that's going on in the build. A funny old day today was. It threw up a few surprises and almost had me reaching for the tranquilizers. First item on the agenda was to mark out the base. The white paper taped in place is my surrogate mirror. I wanted to make sure I didn't end up with the supports fixed in place then the mirror wouldn't fit did I? That would have been stoopid. It was a case of measure everything three times, then measure it another three, then check those dimensions at the opposite end to make sure I had everything symmetrical. Then I had to drill 4 holes through the upper and lower surfaces of the acrylic base. Drilling that stuff is no fun. Not at all. I had modeled a couple of holes in the base of the support structure as fixing points. The first attempt was using self tappers, but the deep thread on those started splitting the resin as it is so brittle. Next up was machine screws. Those managed to cut their own threads into the resin but stripped the resin easily when tightening the screws. Okay then what's next? More machine screws but this time, I cut off their heads and epoxied the threaded rod into the support structures That way, I could then bolt the things in from below. The old step drills came in handy again to open the holes out underneath and I managed to get a hole large enough to fit a socket through, making fixing them in place a breeze. I was careful not to tighten the nuts too much in case I puled the epoxy out of the base - just snug enough so that nothing moved, then added a lock nut for security. Both support structures now in place, it was time to attempt hoisting the roof into place. That was a lot easier to write than it was to accomplish since I only have two hands, and found during this exercise that I needed about 6 hands to do the job. There was lots of balancing, cursing, sweating, more cursing and the greatest fear I have ever encountered while building a model. It scared the crappola out of me to be honest. One false move, one little slip, or something giving way and I could have two years of repair work ahead of me to finish this build (again)! The gods were smiling, well, maybe not quite smiling - I think they had more of a wry grin on their faces today. I got everything in place and realized... Gadzooks! This is not going to work! All these months I've been handling this roof, it felt very light. Today it felt very, very heavy, and very dangerous I present the evidence below. Ignore the fact the roof is the wrong way up and take a look at the overall arrangement. Notice anything? There's a bit of a bend isn't there? A hell of a bend in fact. At this point a mild panic set in. - All this design and effort and the darned thing isn't going to work. The moment arm on that cantilever is too long and creating the bend in the brass tube. First thought... okay, I can replace that with brass rod. However, I'm now startling to question the support structure. The moment introduced by that cantilever is placing a lot of stress on the printed parts, particularly the angled support. The moment is also trying to tip the vertical supports in towards the center. Replacing the bras tube with rod isn't going to fix that - if anything, the rigidity of the rod is going to place yet more stress on the support structure. Okay, it's holding now, but the printed resin is very brittle and to be honest I have no idea how strong it really is or how long it could last in that state before a catastrophic failure. And that catastrophic failure could be, well, catastrophic! It was coffee time. I ran through a bunch of ideas with input from a few folks before hitting on an idea, that while not ideal, would eliminate the danger of the thing crumbling before my very eyes, and me lying crying on the floor. A quick trip to the local hardware store found the supplies I needed. Of course, being in the US all the supplies were in units of barleycorns inches. I had designed the structure to take a 3 mm diameter tube/rod, and all I could get here was 1/8", and as we all know - 1/8" is not 3 mm, it's 3 point freaking 2 mm. That 0.2 mm took a lot of work let me tell you, along with a boatload more apprehension and fear thrown in for good measure. First I had to open out the holes little by little (yes, I was too darned lazy to take the structure off the base again), before finally filing the holes so I had a nice clip fit with the 1/8" rod and here's my (bodged) fix. One single long rod instead of two shorter rods. Having one continuous rod eliminates 95% of the moment arm that was acting on each end structure. There is still a small, though much reduced moment acting on the angled support arms due to the slight bend in the rod, but the majority of the weight of the roof will now for the most part act down through the vertical structures where they are at their strongest It's not ideal I know. Okay, it is far from ideal as I now have a humongous rod traveling all the way down the length of the roof, obscuring some of that detail that I spent so much time on all those years ago. However, I'd much rather that detail be partially obscured than end up in pieces on the floor at some future point. Now the question is did it actually work? Have a guess... In the interest of full disclosure I made an oopsie. But the oopsie turned out to be rather beneficial - most unlike things for me! The oopsie was in those measurements that I made earlier. Despite measuring in triplicate triple times, and then double checking that, I had completely ignored the roof cradles in all my measurements. Doofus! I had intended the roof to be approximately 5 mm or thereabouts clear of the car, where now, due to my utter ineptitude, the roof cradle rests ever so gently on the side-frame, holding the roof at an almost perfect viewing angle. A clearer shot of the interference here. I really couldn't have planned it better. Lucky or what! With all that excitement it was time to lay down for a rest, so to finish the day off, I blackened the brass rod and gave it a shine with cherry blossom's finest I also bought some 1/8" steel rod and may substitute the brass with that as it has less tendency to bend, though I feel pretty confident the entire structure is now safe enough. Now that problem has been solved... those gears are whirring again, and I can now think of a way to use the same principles and have the roof un-obscured. That would all depend on me being able to find the right brass profiles in the right lengths though and my old supply house has shut down and I don't think those brass profiles are available any longer. To be honest though - I need to finish this and put it to bed soon. I may revisit the roof supports at a future date mirror and plaque next

Thanks Ian - I'm very pleased with how they're turning out thanks Paul I'll see what I can dig up. I'm sure I have something around that will do. Now, on to this weeks adventures Chicken grit on the left. Too pink and too large. The grit was intended for adult birds so I got another bag, this time intended for starter birds, and to be honest there wasn't much difference in size... and still too pink. On the right, some other grit I found. I can't remember what exactly. The color is perfect, but the grit size is too small. I could have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for those pesky... wait. Wrong thread. The grit has some extra chemicals in it and is very damp. I decided against using it as I am not sure how it will react with the glue etc. over the long term. I've been reading up on how the rail modelers fix the ballast and that has me a bit worried too. It seems that a mix of PVA/Water/IPA is used. Makes sense - but typically that is used to fix the ballast to a porous surface of some description. I have a very shiny, very hard, very non-porous acrylic base. I have a feeling that over time the PVA will shrink slightly and start peeling back at the edges. I am definitely not going to be sanding the surface of the acrylic base as there's no going back after that. More thought required on that front, before I commit to potentially ruining the base. On the steampunk front, the roof support structures were assembled. I used the liquid resin and some free daylight to join the upper and lower structure, and CA gel to secure the angled support arm. The roof cradles were tidied up. Since I had never fully 3D modeled the roof, and it was hand made anyway, I had to guess at the finished dimensions of the cradle to hold it. It turns out I wasn't too far off but they did require a certain amount of work before they would fit. Luckily I had made them beefy enough that I could file quite a bit away and still have them strong enough to hold the roof. The biggest issue was that I hadn't accounted for the rain guides and the end of the roof. They were 1 mm high and that 1 mm caused a lot of additional work to overcome. Once done though, the cradles fit nicely. I also made these end covers for the tracks. It didn't seem right just to have the ends of the rails sitting there in the open. Once painted up they're quite unobtrusive Now for the good part. The support structures got painted - and I used up my very last supply of now discontinued Grimy Black Flat, which has been one of my favorite paints over the last few years. I don't know what I am going to do without it. I've given the base the first coat of "concrete" When complete it's going to be somewhere in this location, give or take. I'm very pleased with the supports. I don't think they look out of place and they look interesting without taking over the view. I will admit to a certain degree of panic towards the end when I knew I had to create a support structure but went through 3 or 4 designs - none of which I was happy with. Stumbling across this idea was fortuitous indeed. Aside from the ballast question, the biggest issue I face now is: The support structure is black - should the cradle also be black? It's going to be pretty stark against the white roof. Or should I paint the cradle white to blend in with the roof? But I'm not sure a white cradle and a black support would look any good. Black it may have to be.

thanks for the kind words ikcdab. I have some poultry grit on order so we'll see how my experimentation works out So diluted PVA (with water) would work? I have been printing the last pieces of structure over the last few days but encountered some issues. These are the end caps for the tracks... and as you can see clearly - print failures. Temperatures have dropped drastically over the last couple of weeks and the basement temperature is at the bottom end of the recommended printing range, but I'm not certain that was the root cause, especially as I have printed successfully at lower temperatures before. The prints failed because the supports separated from the structure. I believe that was because the walls in those areas are relatively thick. I'm using a new version of Chitubox and went with their default auto support feature for these prints. In the shot below, another print failure on the left - so went back and added more supports to the bottom end, and this time it printed successfully. These are the additional parts need for the structure. The steampunk arches printed successfully as did the girder sections, but the two arc thingies were another print failure. There should have been a hook feature on each end of the arc. However, the prints have failed in such a manner that I may be able to add the hook from styrene sheet. If that doesn't work, I know what the problem was and can simply reprint them I still get amazed by the level of detail every time I print something. The rivets and joint plates on these are only 0.3 mm thick. but what will it look like assembled? Well, your wait is over - it's going to look like this Parts are just resting against each other here and I used a scrap piece of brass rod just to see how it's going to look. The arc support is going to be fitted onto the end of a rod, and that is what the roof will be sitting on, which will allow me to rotate the roof to the best vantage point. it kind of sucks as I have a pest control guy in today as I got a hornet infestation in the basement in the last week so I have to stay out of the area while his poisons do their work - and I took a days vacation today too! Arghhhh. I had lots of things planned, but they're going to be delayed until I can get into the basement again without being poisoned.

Thanks Ian. I knew the ballast question was going to crop up. I'm undecided at the moment - for the following reasons: 1: There will be a mirror mounted directly on the base on the same side as the roof. That mirror is going to butt up very close to the sleepers and will match the full length of the car, so there wouldn't be much room for spreading ballast. The ballast would have to stop almost at the same line as the edge of the sleepers. 2: There will be a engraved plate on the front side at the center ( 2" x 4" or roughly 50 mm x 100 mm). Again, that will butt up almost to the edge of the sleepers, maybe a 10 mm gap or so. 3: Once I start, there's no going back as I'll never get the base back to the glossy shine it now has. I'm certainly considering it though. Any tips on laying ballast? and what size/grade I should go for?

welcome aboard Mike. Glad you found the thread. 3D printing is a marvelous innovation for us modelers, especially as it has now become affordable to most folks. I find it particularly helpful where there are multiples of an object to be made. I really enjoy the scratch building aspect, but when I have to make multiples. I find I always lose interest after about two copies. It is also extremely helpful for some object that just couldn't be made by hand - the luggage racks for instance (at least not by my hands) No problems Ian. Marg I believe was in a McDonalds happy meal that my daughter got many years ago. No idea how it ended up in my basement. The baby Yoda? My daughter wanted one so I printed one - then she bought a larger one so now Yoda is Keeper of the Solder. The galloping wolf was a present from my daughter after her first visit to the Safari park back in Scotland. The divers helmet - we were visiting one of the local beaches a few years ago and one of the shops had a full sized divers helmet on display. I commented that I had always wanted one, and my mother in law found the divers helmet (actually a pencil sharpener) Soon to join the horde is Jack Skellington (one of my all time favorite movies) - my daughter found one in a shop just last week and bought it for me. Look! The display case arrived I'm avoiding unwrapping it until it's absolutely necessary due to the amount of dust in my incredibly untidy basement. First job on the agenda was to sort those tracks. I had read a few threads around t'interweb about the Brass Black and it was suggested to soak in vinegar prior to applying the blackening agent. So, out came the wire wool again and the tracks were given a good thrashing to remove all the blackening. Then I had to find a container that I could fit the tracks into - remember these are over two foot long. After searching fruitlessly (why do we search fruitlessly?) for a tray long enough, I came across a length of Schedule 40 PVC pipe that I had lying about. I cut the pipe to length, and glued a bottle cap onto one end using Gloop, left it overnight to cure, then filled it up with vinegar. Only to make the discovery that Gloop doesn't like vinegar and about 3/4 of a pint of the smelly stuff ended up on the floor. (Good job it's a cement floor!). Rather than spend half an hour to go to the hardware store and spend about 50 cents on a proper end cap for the pipe, I scoured the basement over two days before coming across a silicone mold that I'd made years ago using a measuring cup as a holder. That meant I had a nice little Silicone stopper shaped thin. That was too big to fit into the pipe! I made it fit eventually and this time the vinegar stayed where it was supposed to stay. Two days later and out came the brass tracks. This time I made sure I only handled them while wearing gloves. They were rinsed and dried in preparation for the black stuff This is after the second application (I think). I took shots after each application but the camera seems to have eaten one and I'm not sure which. The black stuff was applied liberally by brush, allowed to soak for a while then the excess was rinsed off with water and they were left to dry. I still had an uneven finish, with almost bare brass showing through in places. I'm not sure what's going on there... something to do with how the tracks were formed perhaps? Density? Hardness? Anyway, I had them almost there - just need some finishing touches. After some cleanup, the tracks were fitted into the sleeper carriers. I know the sleepers aren't the best, but they're polypropylene so won't accept paint so I'm going to leave them as is (but remove the dust!). The star of the show after all, is Pegasus. I'm not after a diorama (especially as I'm not very good at them). I was a bit concerned though at the longevity of the finish. I know the black parts will be adequately protected, but what about those bits with some brass showing through... are they going to corrode over time? Then I had an idea. Bull! No, not that kind of bull. The polishing bull, like wot we did wiv our boots back in the day. Out cam Cherry Blossom's finest dark brown polish and the result can be seen here. Front rail is untouched and the rail at the rear has been polished and buffed. It's difficult to capture in camera, but the rails now have a lovely bronzed look to them, and look good, without being tacky or kitsch (imo anyway). Now it was time to get down to business - setting things out for their final resting place. The tracks were held in place by three self tappers down into the base. The material is a very hard acrylic and I was very conscious of making sure the hole was large enough so that the base would not crack, but small enough so that the self tappers would grip. Then I cracked it anyway! I was using the pillar drill to make sure the holes were truly vertical, and the drill "caught" and slammed the base up into the chuck. I was lucky. The base did crack, but only about 3 or 4 mm, and all under one of the sleepers. Needless to say the remainder of the holes were drilled by hand. The tracks were taken care of by the self tappers, but I still had the car itself to fix to the base. That was achieved by drilling completely through the base, then opening up the hole on the bottom side with a step drill (incredibly useful tools) until the hole was large enough to get the head of the screw through. If you can remember back a long time ago, I used coupler nuts on the underside to help secure the bogies. My plan worked! The screw comes up from the underside of the base, and screws right into the coupler nut at the center of the bogie. Okay, it's noticeable of you know where to look , but it's unobtrusive enough for me. Look, the car finally affixed to the base. (though it may yet come off again for some more cleanup and dust removal) and just to prove the fixing method worked.... I've actually had it perched at about 45 degrees and there was no movement. I even gave it a little shake, so I am confident it's going to be safe for the long term. That just leaves the roof. That darned roof. How as I going to hold that in place for the display? I didn't want anything to obscure the full view of the car from a side on view, so that meant that the holding method had to be cantilevered. Well, I tried a whole bunch of designs and wasn't happy with any of them. They all looked crap. Then I hit on the idea of looking at photo's of railroads and rail yards, and came across the idea of a signal bridge. After messing around in Solidworks I came up with this idea... I tried to make it look like something that wouldn't look out of place in a rail yard or beside some tracks somewhere. Overall it's about 75 mm wide at the base, about 180 mm tall and about 6.5 mm deep at the girder section (a bit thicker at the footing) I'll print this in two sections - unless someone tells me I'm absolutely crazy and this looks dreadful - which is not out of the realms of possibility! I can then hang the roof from this, cantilever style like so The cantilever moment will be shorter in the final product. The roof shown above is not complete. I'll also have a bracket which will allow me to rotate the roof along the longitudinal axis to show it to best advantage (I forgot to take a screenshot, sorry) Almost there, almost there.

I've just got big hands Ian! I got some better shots of the roof. Rotating vent in focus this time All vents and greeblies fitted, and shinied up Definitely shiny. I am very impressed with Mr Color crystal clear and their leveling thinners. I still need to address the whole display case thing though. Not only the case but the tracks themselves. They've been lying in my basement now for the last several years, and the brass has started to get a bit grungy That's nothing that a good attack with some wire wool won't sort out, but it did alert me to the possibility that this may happen over time in the display case. As nice as bright clean brass is, I don't think I want the polished brass look on the tracks themselves. For one, real tracks are not brass, and two, shiny brass in the wrong setting can look a bit tacky. A quick search on Amazon brought some brass blacking solution. Tracks were cut to length, and attached with wire wool. Blackening agent applied and it didn't go according to plan. Some parts of the track looked really good, but in others the blackening didn't appear to work. I wire wooled the tracks again, then followed that up with a dremel clone wire wheel, then degreased the tracks and applied the blackening agent again. . Some of the black wipes off with just a light wipe of paper towel, and other bits need a good scrub with wire wool to get back to brass. I'm wondering if the black will give a good key for paint, and I may just spray the tracks, sleepers and all with a not quite black, black. Need to ponder that one. I did make one discovery though - my original plan of mounting the roof in front of, and below the car was not going to work. Now that I had the car and the roof I made a mock up - forgetting to take any photos and realized that my plan was just not viable. That lead to a mild state of panic before realizing that there was indeed a relatively simple option. I could simply display the roof as if it were hinged open, like so A quick check with some plastic mirror reveals that this option will work. I still need to figure out the actual mechanics of how to mount the roof. It's too late in the game to have a hard mounting point on the car itself - at least not without damaging something. However, the roof has to be close to the car in order for it not to look strange. I'm mulling over support options for the roof but haven't yet settled on anything. At least I can now get the final dimensions of the display case.

I completely agree Ian. BTW, I checked out some of your work and was blown away by the craftsmanship and skills you show. That ships stove is a model in it's own right, I can hardly believe some of the detail you've captured there. Fan-bloomin-tastic! Thanks @Nova Scotian & @laurenceb - you guys are too kind. A busy week prevented me from descending into the basement - that plus a whole lot of "cannae be bothered" this week for some reason. But the weekend comes around as it does most weeks, and on Friday night I couldn't be bothered either. It got worse as I only managed to get half the grass cut yesterday before getting hit with a huge thunderstorm - which means that the grass cutting now hangs over me like a large dark cloud until I get it done - but it chucked it down again today so I sauntered off doon the basement. First order of the day was to splat some brown/umber on the ends - a bit of a cheat, but this way the white will still follow the lines of the actual roof and the brown will hopefully fade into the background. I doubt it will ever be looked at from this angle anyways. First pass of white paint. Then on the second pass as I was turning the roof around my grip slipped and the roof fell against my shirt. Oh flip I muttered. The main problem with the roof is it's sheer size. - Just over 600 mm long (2 foot'ish) and just over 80 mm (3 inch'ish) wide and since I am painting the entire top surface the only way I can hold it is by resting it upon my hand - and remember, I'm waving around a live airbrush in my other hand. So it's two arms waving around one balancing and turning, while the other tries to aim at the roof and not spill paint all over myself. I'm not good at this multi-tasking malarkey. It could have been a lot worse - it wouldn't have been the first time I had dropped a model onto the floor while painting - though thankfully I haven't done that for a while now. Rather than panic and try to rescue anything at this point, I sat it down, walked away and left it for a while. Once the paint hardened sufficiently I gave it a quick micromesh and smoothed it all out. That allowed me to start applying the next coat.. until I ran out of white paint again!!! Fortune was smiling on me this time though as I got enough coverage and could call it a day. There's still a few small gaps around the rain guides but I've applied some diluted PVA to close those up. Now it was time for those last pieces of this six year jigsaw puzzle. The brass channel got a lick of white paint (some dregs in the bottom of the jar) Then super-glued in position - after careful and repeated measuring to make sure they were centered. Then just to close up any gaps that may be showing from the side, I glued small strips onto the roof adjacent to the verticals. I then spent about 15 minutes trying to find the tread-plates I had shaped a few weeks ago, but they were nowhere to be found - must be in that safe place again. Just as well really because when I pulled out the styrene sheet I cut them from I realized it was way over scale. I had a backup plan though - I had purchased some photo-etch tread-plate a few years ago for something or other - it may even have been for this job... who knows? It turned out to be perfect Some more dregs from the paint jar were summonsed and there was just enough to cover the new additions to the roof. A half hour to dry then I hit it with the gloss coat. Mr Color Crystal Clear is becoming a favorite - easy to apply and gives a nice shiny hard coat when dry. It goes on a lot more evenly than other clear coats I've tried. I even had an Oh Crap moment when near the end, my airbrush coughed and splattered a few big drops just as I was finishing off. Lo and behold - I was also using Mr Color Leveling Thinners - and the splatters leveled out before it dried. Amazing. I think I'll be sticking with that combo in future. I'll run some micromesh along that brown/white border later once the clear coat hardens to clean up that rough look. It's hard to capture the gloss finish on a white surface, but it's there believe me. The completed roof - oops - still got the rotating vents to add That will be tomorrows job. So, how does it feel after 6 years on and off of slogging on this build? Well, to be honest it's all a bit of an anti climax and left me feeling a bit empty. There was no huge "reveal" at the end, nor was there a "this bit goes here" and wow, all of a sudden, it's a train. It was 8 little pieces that could have been assembled anytime during the last few weeks. Maybe it will sink in a bit more over the next few days or weeks. As you are all aware I still have to order the display case. I have deliberately delayed ordering it until this point. Now that the roof is finished I can mock up how it will look in the case and check just how much room I need underneath it in order to be able to see everything with a mirror. That means there's a little bit more to come on this build, but nothing as exciting as the last half decade. You asked for a link to some of my other work. Here's a link to a build I did a couple of years ago. The finished build can be found at: https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234994581-28-sqn-wessex-xt678-hotel-hc2-raf-sek-kong-19823/ That link also contains a link to the build log Or my My very first build after returning to modeling after a 40+ year break. Starting with this... and finishing up with one of these... I go by the same moniker over on that forum so you should be able to stumble across some of my work easily enough keep yer masks on!

Thanks Ian. I've already started my next project but unfortunately, it's not train related. I'm going back to aircraft modeling again. Won't you guys be glad to see the back of me? This week was a bit busy so I did not get as much time on Pegasus as I had hoped, however, I managed to lock myself away today and get some work accomplished - it's getting Sssoooooooo close I can taste it. I wanted to get the interior done before I started adding greeblies to the outside as it was a certainty that if greeblies were on the outside, I was going to knock them off as I worked on the ceiling panels. First order of the day was to fit the chrome down-lights in the bar - easy job for once They were followed by three more down-lights in the ceiling panel, in turn followed by two brass vents and the PA speaker By this point things are moving fairly quickly as there's no real "work" to be done - just measuring a location and sticking something on there. More vents, another PA speaker and the six double lamps. Can't get more straightforward than that can we? Lastly, the dinette ceiling got a PA speaker and it's own brass vent Overall view of the internal gubbinses. That's all fine and well, but its all much of a muchness - too much white and there's nothing that really draws the eye (is that a bad thing?). I had anticipated this and had a sort of plan. I wasn't sure it was going to work or not but I knew I needed to do something to break up all that white area. I opted for adding the structure that would have been attached to these panels had the roof actually been fitted. For example, red oxide strips where the side frame would have been, and wooden strips where the partitions would have been located. Now things got a bit more complicated and I actually had to measure and cut with reasonable accuracy to make this thing work and not look plain sloppy. For the "side-frame" I'm using the very last of my 1/32" ply - the very last! I had to scrabble around to find enough to do the job as I really didn't want to have to place another order of this stuff just to finish off the last few inches of roof. Once I had found all I could, I cut it into 3 mm strips and painted red oxide. That seems to break things up nicely. Kitchen & Corridor end finished off Then Bathroom, corridor and dinette area finished. I then realized that I also needed to add framework for the entrance doors and vestibule area... 20 minutes later it's done Close up shot for no other reason that I took the photo Then the other end and the interior of the roof is FINISHED at long last. Only 4 years behind schedule but its done. Now onto the very very very last area of work (I think) The roof exterior. First job on the exterior was to cap the ends so that you couldn't see in behind the paneling. To be honest I'm not that enthralled by how this turned out and I know it's not 100% accurate, but I really don't see any other way of doing it. I think once it's all painted it won't look as cludgy - I guess I'll find out later (oops spoiler alert - you can see the rest of the roof here) again, this went very quickly as it was just sticking bits into the holes. Starting at the kitchen end... center portion Lastly, the dinette end The only thing left to go onto the roof now are the tread-plates at either end. I didn't fit them at this point because it would have been impossible to paint inside the supports so they will get added once the roof has received a good coat of white paint. All things going well, I may even get to throw some white paint on it tomorrow

that's fantastic. The wealth of detail belies the true scale of Fun Town - I had imagined it being much larger. Somehow the small footprint makes it all the more interesting and captivating