Bearwood West Yard

April Update With another month having passed, things are starting to gain momentum once again. Following on from last month, I’ve finalised the transfers for test train coaches 6261 and 977969. Having selected the appropriate size transfers from the test sheet, I have added these to a separate Publisher document. As a rule of thumb, I always print double what I will need as ink does sometimes run during post print handling and initial lacquer application. I may have stated my transfer manufacturing method a long time ago but for the benefit of those who have followed this thread since (hello and welcome by the way!) I’ll go over how it’s done the Hardy way. - Printing is done on a domestic Epson XP-4155 series Inkjet printer, nothing fancy. I adjust the paper settings to Prem Gloss. - For paper, I use both Clear and White inkjet water slide papers sourced from Mr Decal Paper. Because white cannot be printed, anything requiring a white background or contains white is printed on white paper, while the rest is printed on clear to enable the colour of the applied-to surface to show through. I sourced this paper via EBay about 4 years ago. Once I’ve printed what I need, I cut off the excess paper to be used again another time. - My lacquer of choice is PlastiKote Polyurethane Varnish. With the paper on the lid of an old plastic storage box, I spray from 12-18 inches away in an across motion from the top of the paper down, attaching the rest of the box to prevent dust and other particles attaching to the sticky lacquer. I repeat this with another lacquer coat again after 15-20 minutes. I then leave these a full 24 hours to dry. The Clear transfers are in the picture below and are now curing after their 2nd lacquer coat. The White transfer sheet will be printed once this set has cured and the outside conditions for spraying are favourable. In other news, I’ve said goodbye to some models and welcomed some new. The EMT 158 and Bachmann DCC Sound 66040 have since departed for new homes, with additional stock also being made ready for sale. Adding to the fleet, is an original Bachmann 8-pin Class 37, 37412 in Transrail livery. A bargain off eBay and compatible for the EWS 37419 shell I bought last year for respray into Dutch-Transrail. Whichever shell is used, it suits well as a ‘stand in’ loco for the Regional Railways Mk2’s - stock which will undergo its own project with time. The MLA’s are currently on hold in terms of getting EP1 prototypes printed. The files are ready to go, it’s just a matter of being in a position to commit to a print budget before contacting the studio for a quote. Part of the reason I’m selling some of my stock, in addition to funding Accurascale pre-orders.

Have done some digging and found 66847 doing the honours with the full 4.2kg RDT. Have linked the video but it is just the opening clip that’s relevant. On another occasion I have added 5x Autoballasters to the rear but that was pushing it with the layout curves. The loco’s performance is stable throughout the clip in the video attached, however I wouldn’t run it for more then 25-30 minutes at a time as the motor tends to get toasty from current draw. A side effect of working the loco hard. Hopefully the AS 66’s perform as well and can stand up to such hard working. Jord

The Hatton’s 66’s had the best tractive effort of any Class 66 when it was released. All 6 of mine did fine with a full 13 wagon RDT at 4.2kg (11x Hatton’s FEA-S + 2x Hornby KFA) on track at radius 4/5. Operating on DCC though.

66’s are on the high seas I believe. With the 50’s in production. Best looking at Accurascale’s project progress table on their website. Unlike retailers who take pre-orders and then payment when the products arrive into stock, I believe AS take the pre-order payment and then you have a guaranteed model once they land in the U.K. - this is how I would define it.

Given that 37’s and 47’s lasted over 40 years with plentiful fleet sizes and modifications over the years, it wouldn’t surprise me if the older 66’s lasted the same length of time. As I understand it, loco failures and poor availability was a key problem in the mid 90’s with the 37’s in particular. But with the 59’s well over 30 years old and still going strong in terms of the age to yearly failure ratio, EMD’s key sale point of reliability may well see the 59’s and 66’s become the longest time served diesel locomotive class in constant use. Although the failure rate will increase, I’ve confidence that they will hit 45 years service at the very least if not 50. Given the time it takes to develop and procure new locomotives of equal reliability, especially replacing entire loco fleets, if the oldest 66’s were to start being retired in the next 10-15 years then I would like to have thought the ‘railway grapevine’ would be awash with rumours of long term fleet replacement/sustanability projects starting to take place. Ultimately, the 66’s will be here for as long as they remain reliable and FOC’s are prepared to support them. As for the wires, if the Great Western electrification is anything to go by, I’ll have long been retired before the wires reach Exeter let alone Newton Abbott… and I’m 5 years into the world of work 😅

March Update: With few opportunities to further the current fiddle yard progress, I’ve been turning my attention more towards the workbench. 1256 has had the roof sprayed into Ford Polar Grey, with attention now turning to the end details. 977969 has had the ‘end detail’ treatment. A full new set of handrails fabricated from 0.5mm styrene, located into new positions on the carriage end. Those holes drilled to Ø0.8 with a pin vice for good location and ease of gluing. The orange electrical boxes are from pieces of scrap styrene billet trimmed to the right appearance and painted orange. Now at the same stage as 6261, transfer size testing. As my transfers are fully homemade, the process is a bit of trial and error. This often involves countless hours on Microsoft Paint to produce details and writing that at scale are no more than pixels, followed by multiple scalings publisher at “around the right size”, before printing onto paper and cutting them out for a size test and “yes that looks right against pictures” check. I’m at this latter stage with 977969 and 6261 currently. These both going for the circa-2014 look. Other than these, I’ve been working on the “Sub Hunter’” Type 23 Frigate, renewing my fine painting skills after a lot of time away from the finer brushes.

This is very true!

@EWS60065 Glad you picked up on the stripe! I’d rather run the unit as per prototype so safe to say picking up on the stripe has saved me a lot of work! And money too! 😅

Thats what I'm waiting for, and can then put my existing EMT bodies into Ex-SWT with SWR vinyls.

Not a bad price at all. Think I paid £49 for the SWR shells at Kernows. I used Rainbow Railways to source my SWR Blue paint for the air dams, they should do any specialist paints that you may need.

Cracking work! Loving the weathering on the MHA’s, I think this has to be the most life-like weathering I’ve seen on them. Balfour Beatty BDA looks brilliant! Top quality work as always! Glad my 159 rebodying project has given you inspiration! How much were the GWR 158 bodies direct from Bachmann? Giving me ideas now!

“Hello is that the RAF… I’d like to requisition one of your C17 Globemaster transport aircraft for a round trip to China, training of course… no it’s not for the tea crisis…”

A weekend of good progress made. The next Fiddle Yard board has seen track mostly laid, alongside what felt like a full box set run of “Yes Minister” on a channel of a name that escapes me - for this weekends background noise! As this area won’t be ballasted, I’ve opted to cover the whole top with cork sheet. Main objective this weekend was to get the track sections loosely laid and lined up. I’ve succeeded in my plan to have a line from the yard headshunt onto the up main, so I can have long trains continuously running from the scenic yard to the scenic yard and appearing to be a “new train” when it appears on the scenic section. Plus, this headshunt also acts as a run round loop for the longest of trains. The gap in the middle of the 10 roads will allow for a removable road indicator to be installed. Most layouts have an overhead gantry of numbers for siding ID and the fiddle yard will be no different. More to come on this board in the coming weeks! In workbench news, I’ve completed my previous renovations and have quite the facilities now. Lots of shelving for storage! I’ve even bought another kit of HMS Ark Royal with a Destroyer! Back onto rail… Test train coach 977969 has had the roof sprayed up into Polar Grey. All I need to do next is sort out 1256 to get up to the same standard. The T45 and T23 hulls have been primed and I’ve made a start on the T23 with some new Tamiya paints. First time using them and I rather like them as opposed to Humbrol par the odour. Either way, I am tempted to bite the bullet and buy the full Tamiya acrylic range 😅 Thats all for now

With building management having resolved various issues of severity, I’ve been able to bring the layout out of external storage much earlier than expected. So some good news for February. I’ve also brought the next fiddle yard board which I’ll start work on around March. In the meantime, I’ve been upgrading my modelling facilities. More shelves going on the wall for models at different workbench stages, a new tool chest/roll cab combo for workbench tools, paintbrushes, general tools and paints is a big step in the right direction. The largest paint/wash bottles in my collection are MiG /Ammo weathering wash bottles and these just fit in the deeper 84mm drawers. Humbrols and MiG/Ammo paints fit comfortably with all my decade-old Airfix starter set paints. The Hobbyzone storage units served me well but are just not quite practical without a permanent workbench - plus the difficulty in obtaining them since 2019. I’ll be keeping some for project specific boxes but only half a dozen. Should prompt me to get what I’ve got on the go done before starting anything new! Speaking of Airfix, I’m warming up the modelling mojo again with a few ship and aircraft kits after a good half decade hiatus. I find it easy to get burned out from just doing rail related workbench things, so these will be a good test to see if changing projects and kits around every so often will keep the mojo intact. As much as gaming is also another hobby of mine, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t also wanting to heavily reduce my screen time 😅 That’s all for now!

The plan is to print them with ribs attached to the body. At this stage, it’s more about ensuring everything can be printed problem free. But for now, the ribs will locate just like an airfix kit onto the sides. The ends of the reservoir do have flats, should air pipes and under frame detailing be done with styrene at a later date. The angle of screen grab just isn’t great.

January Roundup! With the end of the month fast approaching, its time for an update. In terms of the layout, no further changes have been made since the above postings. For those who have just found and joined my thread, welcome! Layout - Good news and Bad news The four scenic boards are all operational as is the semi-scenic fiddle yard board I have just completed. This has now been commissioned independently but requires a small bit of work to integrate with scenic board 'A' - mostly from a railhead height and track radius perspective. To do this, I need to reheat the etched sleepers and fine tune the rail height before allowing the solder to set. Both boards will require this work. Only when I have the fiddle yard constructed can I run long trains over the baseboard joins and further iron out any problems should they arise. The other fiddle yard pointwork board will be the next board to tackle when the time is right. This comes directly from the station but unlike the last board, won't be scenic so pointwork can start straight after the backscene, utilising the whole board. Sadly, this work is being postponed for the next few months at minimum as the layout and all workbench materials go into off site storage for their own safety. I'll go into details when they are back and layout work resumes. Workbench - Ongoing Project Updates The workbench has been at a stalemate for the past 6 months or so, mostly due to all the layout kit clogging up the modelling space. Whilst this is the case, I'm conducting an efficiency exercise to determine where I'm wasting space and can best improve upon. As the layout and workbench are stored in an active bedroom, re-organisation is needed from time to time and thats where things currently stand. In particular, I'm trying to phase out a cheap bookcase and bedside table that contain all the paints and workbench materials along with layout tools. A lot of space here is wasted. Test Train: Mk1 BG '6261' has been ready for decals since Autumn. '1256' Is having the ends done and then requires the roof to be sprayed. 977969 is in a similar boat. When these are all at the same stage, decals can be made and they can be finished as a batch. LWRT: No further progress. Gantry to be completed once Test Train is off the bench. MLA: The one bit of good news is that I have finalised the development for the MLA-B and I'm in the process of getting initial prototypes 3D printed. As it stands, each wagon contains 58 components over 3 sub assemblies and a general assembly. To avoid problems with component misprints, the ribs are to be printed separately to the main sides for now. This will mean greater expense in the short term but I aim to integrate the components once I know they print reliably and I'm aware of any defect areas. With the interest in this project, I am still hoping to make a saleable batch. However, this will only be possible if I can produce these for a reasonable price per unit and market them for an equally fair but affordable price. I've created some renders to get a feel for what the model would look like once painted. These are of the B variant in EWS and Network Rail.

What works for the Electrostar if considered is that Bachmann produced the Class 450 for SWT. Although I don't know exact production numbers, they took a good few years to fully sell but considering that the 450's are very limited to where they see use, never straying far from the LSWR mainlines of Waterloo - Reading/Windsor/Portsmouth/Poole. As you mention, the wide geographical spread from 387's of GWR to all the operators and liveries of Sussex and Kent. A far larger operating region than the 450's and hopefully a good justification to say if Bachmann can make a success with the Desiro, Electrostars should have a far easier time selling.

Superb work! Great to see some of your project stock running.

Ahh I see! Yes, realism sometimes does come with its own sacrifices. The Unifrogs are pretty good in the test stage. Though time will tell! They seem to be electrifrogs but with a much smaller frog and plastic area, so pretty much a mish-mash of Insulfrog and Electrofrog. But yeah, recommend keep using what you’re familiar with until they’re properly rolled out. Can safely say I won’t be doing any point upgrades once they’re rolled out, no matter how much better they look than Insulfrog 😅

Done some digging for you. Have been having a read myself and seems the intention is to roll out unifrog across the range, so you have one line of products and not product duplication as with Electrofrog and Insulfrog. A smart move.

I thought it best to be a bit more thorough in my testing. I always knew some locos would struggle on the tighter curves such as the 37. The method in my madness with using locos such as the Terrier enable me to gauge what stock will be happy on the tighter curves. From memory, Bachmann OCA’s are built to have movement in the axle mountings to aid traverse in curves. In theory these should be okay, though it was my MHA/MFA rake I was most concerned about. The short wheelbase is perfect for tight curves but at 20 wagons long, the most concerning thing is coupling tension trying to pull the stock over and into the curve. But you are right, they can be little s*ds! In all honesty I’m not the best person to ask about the rest of the Unifrog range. I’ve only opted for them as they’re small curved points - for now the frog remains unpowered as the outer rails are connected to power and the locos haven’t yet stalled on the frog. There might be a thread in the Peco section of RMWeb buried a few pages in though that could be of better help?

Back again! Weekend plans didn’t quite go ahead last weekend so only just got around to setting up latest baseboard and testing it on loco’s after work this eve. I had a few loco’s to hand but enough to tick the boxes. Naturally, with a year or so of not being used, all loco’s took some running in to warm up. This time, I didn’t rig any results by using a particular Class 37 with sound and stay alives! The Hornby A1 Terrier is my smallest and shortest loco by wheelbase (beating an 08). As expected, it navigated the inside Unifrog point rad well despite stalling on the frogs. Though, on the outer rad no trouble at all. Class 33/1 navigated all lines well with no trouble at all. Bachmann Colas 37421 navigated all okay apart from the inner most line, which saw a few minor axle jumpings when preparing to cross the bridge. Class 67 alike the 33, passed and route cleared for all lines. Hornby T9, cleared for all lines boiler first. The tender has tendency to catch on the frogs and derail the loco. A bit of a bonus is that this is the first time since Mk1 was active that I’ve had all three LSWR kettles out of their boxes at the same time. A little line up was a must - A1 in the yard with an 0415 piloting a T9… exciting things to come! I’m yet to test rolling stock on these yet but will publish my findings in due course. I suspect anything longer than a Falcon will have trouble on the Rad 2. Glad now that I made the decision to only run from the frogs to the blades and not the other way around! Hopefully informative to others debating the use of these unifrog small rad points. Useful and good for space saving, but come with the price of selective stock being route cleared.

Even the die hard Preservation scene modeller can justify a bit of red and gold! I remember seeing a picture of an EWS Class 66 and 67 with a load of Seacows at Corfe Castle on the Swanage Railway back in the early 2000’s. So anything is possible

@scottrains29 is onto something there! As we’ve seen with all of AS’s second runs, at least half a dozen liveries are kitted out at any one time so 66111 is a worthy candidate. Having done some digging, Hatton’s and Olivia’s sold Bachmann 32-725U in Q2/3 2014 (over 9 years ago). Model Rail Scotland seems the logical place to announce such a livery - especially as AS have said that it won’t be more recently done liveries which includes 66789 as @The Meerkatsuggested (done by Bachmann and Hatton’s). On the theme of old liveries being brought back to the market, aside from 66111, my clue to colour is going on GBRf 66720 in its ‘Rainbow’ livery which was another limited edition but of 512 models for Rail Express Magazine in Q2/Q3 2016. I could be barking up the wrong tree but both are limited editions, 66720 more so. That’s my ten pence.

Oh no not again - mine had only just recovered! Excellent news for AS and the hobby especially with the gloom of Hatton’s becoming a name of the past currently hanging over us.