Class 100... most interesting... what are you building it from?

 

Alasdair

Etched brass sides and ends supplied by Worsley Works.

Obviously not a kit and needs a fair degree of tweaking but a great basis to build an accurate (hopefully) model.

Will post when complete..currently working on profile of front dome on the trailer car and fitting rains trips.

On our new project ..Larbert..Gloucesters figure quite prominently.

Dave. 

Attached image..waiting for next skim of filler to dome then wet & dry and fit gutters/rainstrips.

Dave.

..second image should have been this slightly different angle..

6 hours ago, Neal Ball said:

Truly fascinating Paul thank you. 
 

Can I be cheeky and ask you post post a photo of one of the pages.... in our modern world of units, it’s fascinating to see these turns being listed. 
 

Plus as you say, one crew have their loco prepared for them and another has to do it themselves. I doubt they would have thought anything of it though.

 

Thanks for the details.

Glad it was of interest!

No problem, I will post photos of the two pages that relate to the Henley trains in a day or two.

Bye the Bye, I have tracked down my source for this sort of documents.

I was wrong in that I did find these guys on 'Bay:-

JTPend1

He has a wide range of documentation, not all of interest to RMWeb readers, and there are some 25 pages of listings at 50 items a page! Mostly copies rather than original documents, but these are c half the price of original documents (where he offers both copy and original).

He still has the copies of the OOC engine diagrams that I quoted from.

(no connection except as a satisfied customer!)

wttreprints

This chap has a more limited range than JTPend1, but it is all WTT related.

I have not actually used him, but might do in the near future.

Hope this info is of use ?

Best regards

Paul

8 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

Nice work Steve. Please share your secret for getting Modelmaster transfers to stick and for hiding the carrier film.

Thank you, kind of you to say so!

The paint was Halfords aerosols in each case; red oxide primer and matt white.  Then several coats of Klear in the areas where the transfers were to go, until the surface was gloss.  Then put the transfers on in the usual way but then brushed over with some very old Carr's Transfix which I've had for ages (don't know whether it's still available).  Then another coat of Klear to seal the transfers in place.  Then sprayed the sides with Testor's Dullcote; the brown one took two coats of that to hide the gloss patches. The glossy patches on the brown van still hadn't completely disappeared, but did after I'd done the weathering, which was a mixture of Humbrol Matt Black and number 29 (Dark Earth).  After the final Klear but before the matt varnish, I ran my fingernail down the plank lines where the transfer film crossed them.

I do find Modelmasters transfers quite variable as to whether they stick well or not.  The transfers for these wagons didn't come from the same sheet.  I think I'd probably had them in stock for about the same length of time, but the black ones stuck really well while the white ones weren't as good and I had to write off one attempt at the Tare Weight figures and use another set; even then I ended up chasing individual characters across the wagon side!  Luckily I couldn't read what the actual tare weight of that wagon really was .....

Oops.......

For various reasons this one has taken a while to finish. I had a bit of a fight with the lettering, harsh closeups show my errors.

I wanted to weather it as photographed in the wagon book with the lime getting well into the grain of the timber. That was done with rotring white ink and powders, my lack of weathering skills shows up, but it gives the right overall impression I think.

A few pictures in the on the layout;

Finally the signalman looks on as a mineral train and mixed goods pass in front of the box. The Lime wagon adds a bit of character to the train I think.

Ok, bench tidied up , what next

Having got a rolling chassis I turned my attention to the footplate. The one from the kit was unusable so a brass plate cut out and the valance added.

Next part, splashers. The DJH Dunalastair 1 is a kit for OO. With EM you need about 23 mm to clear the wheel fronts, the cast wm ones were much too thick to be any use. That also made the cab too wide. I rather think that the kit was always a bit too wide, in EM it was going to be far too wide. There was no way the outer splashers would clear the coupling rods either. Out with the brass sheet again.

It’s a casting. Sort of ….



Anyway, Progress to date. Needs some cleaning up but its the right size and square.

While I was at it I had a look at the tender. Hmm, not my kind of chassis, and the amount of fettleing it would need to make it the right width was silly. I looked at the parts I would need, added it all up and just decided to buy a tender kit from caley coaches. Ok, it will need a bit of adjustment for a Dunalastair 1 but far less work than the original.

Hmm, that looks more like it.

Boiler next, lets see….

There we are, the D63 in service after its 30 year refurbishment.

I’m not sure that I’m completely happy with it but perhaps we are all getting a bit harsh on ourselves since close up photography shows up all sorts of things that are just invisible from normal viewing distances. You never know, one of the rtr manufacturers might bring out a very nice version. Probably by the time this one has been in service for another 30 years……

So a close up pic;



Aye, well. In practice these vans would have spent most of their time on coal traffic so thats the service I will be using it for.

I popped into my local modelshop for some supplies. ( Pastimes, Glasgow. All sorts of interesting stuff, lots of secondhand. ) Pottering about I noticed that oxford had added a Newbattle PO livery to the NB Jubilee wagon, so I bought one.

Well here it is out of the box. Nice crisp printing. Ok, perhaps not perfectly to the original drawings, but bearing in mind that many wagons were built to this general diagram by an assortment of builders for various customers there were bound to be variations.



Main problem, its 00. Having converted a couple of these last year I can report that EM wheels on 26 mm axles wouldn't fit, and if I used the oxford 25mm axle the rear face of the plastic W irons would need to be thinned a bit. I therefore opted to use 51L etched pre group W irons and some whitemetal axleboxes. So 5 minutes later….



The most noticeable error on the body is the loop hinges are wrong. No biggie, clip the old one off, drill 0.4 through the door, add brass ring. Also a horse shunting loop. Close up some of the bolt positions are a bit out, but from normal distances ( and given the PO variations) I’m not going to move them.



From underneath its what you would expect. The solebars just needed a tiny amount of thinning to clear the W irons. I drilled through the V casting and the end of the brakelever, a bit of brass wire gives strength and lines it all up.



There we are. A bit of detail painting and light weathering and I think it looks ok. Better than I could manage doing that livery by hand.

I know that historically it would have mainly lived in the east, but I’ll stretch a point. After all, the base wagon is less than a tenner, so I’m happy to buy one in the vague hope that rtr manufacturers see that there is a bit of a market for pre-group stock. Might even encourage them to cast their eyes to the west…..