Buckjumper

The curse of RMweb; I've only just found this thread and it's 77 pages long. Just going for a read - I may be some time...

That's the award Ken. I'll get Andy on to Warner's - I'm sure they'll sponsor it. Chris (2manySpams) might be interested to know that Mike Williams was the owner and designer of College Models kits, and of course he's now the owner of Agenoria and designed Chris' 1366 kit... circles within circles....

Ah, a typical day with an Acme kit. The last one I had I felt like taking it up the local clay pigeon shooting range, loading it into a trap and shouting 'Pull!' We definitely need a 'Heroic' button added to the forum software for anyone completing one

Despite your current hindrance, the layout is really beginning to take shape, and the contours make a massive difference. Thanks for the plethora of photos, they help to get a feel for what you're doing, and it's looking superb. All the best with the surgery; I hope you get it sorted out quickly and with as little additional discomfort as possible.

Thanks everyone for your kind comments! Yes Mark, I think so. Next time I see John I'll see if the artwork will sustain a straight drop to 4mm, or if there'll need some strengthening in key areas so they're not too fragile. Yes, I've seen it in the Lapston gallery, and very nice it is too, MiDAS! There's an interesting comment on over on Western Thunder: The later replacement chimney may be Laurie Griffin's 'tall' one cat. no. 6-15. The surface was very good. It's the Shapeways FUD plastic, and the surface is frosted and feels 'etched' if you know what I mean - not glassy smooth, but no ridges, bumps or unsightly stuff. No filling, smoothing required, all I did was give it a wash, a spray with Halfords grey primer and then Halfords satin black on top. I was very pleased with it (understatement!)

He does indeed. I bought 6-15, the one marked 'tall', but it still didn't match the tall & skinny Darlington one, being too short and much too wide, and really wasn't really that different from the original. I'll see if I can find it and I'll show it against a spare printed one.

Last year, in the antediluvian period, I was sent this RTR Finescale Brass Ivatt 2MT for weathering and, well, you know, splish, splash, splosh, Noah, and all that, so it went into storage while we dried out and rebuilt. Fortunately my client is a very patient chap, but here she is, out of storage and is now on the first part of a long journey down under to Oz where she'll work out her life on a little twig of an Essex branchline. The model came to me painted and lined, but the new owner wanted a Darlington tall & skinny chimney fitted, so I hunted round for drawings but could I find one? not likely. In the end Mark (a.k.a. 46444) kindly sent me his 4mm model with a Comet chimney so I could at least get some base line dimensions. I also looked at drawings of chimneys produced at Darlington for the old NER, just to get a feel of the shape and style they used to produce. Photos of the members of the class with the t&s chimney weren't particularly helpful as it seems to play tricks on the camera by looking different in each one! So these, along with my notes and scribbles I sent to my friend John Birch who is a dab-hand at CAD 3D drawing, and after several emails '...a bit more flare, a little less taper...' we were happy. Off the file went to Shapeways, and a little while later the 3D printed result popped through the letterbox, and I think it looks just about right - it certainly plays tricks with my camera, so it's in good company... It's a shame the range is being wound down - for an RTR loco in the mid-range price it's a cracking model and runs very sweetly. OK, there are compromises between the frames, but if determined they're not insurmountable. A little weathering - as usual I spent more time removing grime than putting it on, followed by my regime of adding highlights and shadows which is a time-thief, but worth the effort in spades and she looks like a working, but cared for engine.

Superb - I love the beams of light cast onto the platform from the windows and doors. I think Mikkel's right - the level looks about right to me too. On the lucky occasions I was invited into one of the 'boxes on the local branch during the evenings I was always surprised at just how low the level of lighting was, even in the 80s, which added to the olde worlde atmosphere they always seemed to exude.

Thanks Dave. Yes, it's gloss varnish, a few drops of paint and plenty of thinners. Because it's so wet I tend to blow dry with a hairbrush as the tint lands, just until the thinners flash off. I prefer a glossy finish as for me it accentuates the richness of the paint which a straight satin, eggshell or matt finish can't replicate, and then later I knock the finish back to a scale level (can of worms open!) with the weathering process.

Jim Harris designs...aids to scratchbuilding and hair loss. I had one of his kits to build several years ago; kept the smokebox door, swept the rest in the bin and got the piercing saw out. Kudos for perseverance - I think I'd have several pannier-shaped marks on the wall by now

Thanks Mikkel. The plate reads Haughley and Laxfield Branch, and was a typical feature of (ex) GE branch line sets. One thing I've not mentioned is the presence of three link couplings, where of course screw couplings should be, but the owner uses Lincs (see original pic) and I assume the tommy bar might interfere with the auto couplings (?).

Companion to the six wheeled composite of the previous entry is this D&S brake 3rd which as you can see, was built and painted to a lovely standard by Danny Pinnock many years ago, but in the interim has gained some less than appropriate weathering: I realigned some errant transfers, then again I tweaked the chocolate brown base to a rich chestnut with tinted mist coats, weathered it more appropriately as described in the last entry, and finally re-glazed the carriage with 0.13mm glass. Very pleased with the result, and so is the owner.

Sure. First of all I sprayed on some very thin gloss mist coats with a chestnut tint mixed up using enamels on the palette, tweaking the tint until I was happy. A lot of people use black and leather (Humbrol 33 and 62) for the base weathering mix, adding gunmetal 53, satin brown 133 and a range of other colours as described in Martyn Welch's weathering bible. That's great, and it's perhaps my most dog-eared modelling book, but as you say, I find that mix is just too light - too beige (even for dusty underframes) so for a long time now I've used a simplified palette of black 33 and satin brown 133 for the majority of my base weathering mixes, keeping it on the dark side, and adding drops of leather or gunmetal etc in restrained quantities. Following conversations I've had with Martyn it turns out that he's done pretty much the same. This can be airbrushed or washed onto the coach sides and left to dry for 15-20 minutes before removing with cotton buds moistened with thinners. This is all very well, and is the point where most people stop the weathering process but you're only halfway there as the effect is too flat and lifeless, so I spend a lot of time creating highlights and shadows by drybrushing a lighter and darker mix of the base colour over all the raised detail.

Thanks Mark. From 1924, Stratford turned out all ex-GE carriages which had been painted crimson from 1919 onwards in shades of brown ranging from chestnut to an almost ochre colour (the official LNER plain brown was on the spectrum somewhere) - the crimson having stained the wood irretrievably. Carriages which avoided the crimson were stripped and varnished. The colour Danny originally painted the carriage was, as you can see, almost chocolate - but I've been able to knock it into a sort of rich chestnut shade with some transparent layers over the top, a bit of a buff-up and some false highlights and shadows. I think it's changed from being fairly mundane to quite an attractive colour. Thanks Peter.Yes, the glass makes a great deal of difference, both in clarity and in removing the prismatic effect. I use canopy glue to fix it in place as is dries clear and after about 15-20 minutes any blobs are removed with a sharp cocktail stick. Not long now and I'll be wielding the hot spanner and magic wand again No, no nocturnal modelling going on - once I get the juice hooked up though... Yes I agree; the original photo I posted had too much green in it so I've removed it and compensated in Photoshop by lightening it up, reducing the green and blue and adding some red and a warm filter to try and give a closer comparison between the two. The original was taken under an overcast winter sky and the finished thing under an autumn sun, so there's quite a big difference in light temperature, but I think there quite an interesting gulf between the fairly plain brown it came in and the rich chestnut on the finished model, so I'm very pleased with how it turned out. To be honest it's not too hard letting them go, and get quite a rush from the reaction of the new owner when they see it for the first time. There's quite a psychological divide between models I build for others and those of my own - parting with those, even if they no longer fit in with my current plans, is much harder!

Wow, what a fascinating engine! I guess there weren't any baffles in the side tanks of the 4-2-4T at that sort of date which wouldn't have helped with stability, and as you say, that's an awful lot of water sloshing around in there - almost tidal surges Perhaps not one of Dean's most elegant designs either...

Well it's been a very long time - in fact 223 days since the flood, but there is at long last a definite light at the end of the tunnel, even if it's still a way off. Eventually ten rooms were severely affected either directly or by secondary damage, and taken back to brick and concrete. Where there were timber frames they were removed and ceilings propped up, and my workshop was razed to the ground. It took until the end of July to dry the house out, but we've got one room completed with two more due for completion in a couple of weeks or so. Three rooms have yet to be started, so we're still in a process! Anyway, the main thing is my new workshop has risen from the silt, and is just waiting for the sparky to come and hook up the juice, which will probably happen at the same time as the two almost-completed rooms. What it means is that I now have somewhere during daylight hours where I can cut slivers of glass and slosh MEK without being a danger to the kids, though without electricity or lighting soldering and airbrushing is still not possible. RMWeb Live @ Coventry was my first opportunity to wield some new soldering equipment and sundry tools, but I've got a shopping list as long as your arm of things still to replace. Enough of that, you want pics. For those of you who take the MRJ regularly you may remember a lovely little essay in 7mm on the Mid-Suffolk called Debenham. The layout is now sold and the builder is constructing a new light railway for which I built a J68 and a J15. Last year he also asked if I would weather a couple of ex-GE 6-wheel coaches which he was never entirely happy with. So first up is a D&S kit of a composite to diagram 208. This was originally built and painted by Danny Pinnock many years ago, and in the interim given a little weathering, and this is how it came to me: Last winter I waved the magic wand over it, added some judicious drybrushing and I've now finally got round to reglazing it with 0.13mm glass, and this is the result:

It's a very nicely composed scene. I like how the arches in the background tie it all in to The Bay, and that shot up into the blue sky...wow! But remember - where there are birds there's muck Your ears were probably burning over the weekend as gwrrob and I chatted quite a bit about Farthing.

3. The Brazilians are getting muellered.

Now with Meteor Models code HB2.

That works really well, and I agree with Ian, the red wagons look lovely. Now, how can we convince you to exhibit the Farthing layouts in the UK? Is it time to petition David 'Cheeseplant' Lane to whisk you over here for Railex?

The GE Dia.15 vans were initially rated 9T, though later on some had bigger journals so were re-rated 10T. Yours is a post-1901 build as it has the vents on the ends. As you say, they were extinct from c1931, but quite a few have survived to preservation by virtue of being sold off or utilised as stores as here. I think you're right that it was Richard who mastered these, along with several other contemporary vans from other companies. It's a shame his are no longer available as I could do with several - looks like I'll have to make my own master.

As with all your architectural stuff, this is impressive modelling Dave, and it's amazing how a little colour starts brings it all to life, even at this stage. Gratuitous pictures of your Dean Goods are always welcome!

In lieu of an airbrush, the haze can be produced by several very patient dry-brushing sessions, but it's a bit of a mental battle to persevere. That's a lovely collection of photos, from some of the comments it looks like I found the album a few years ago but had forgotten about it. Further divergence may be had by perusing this Flickr album, and the clarity of some of these shots is astonishing: https://www.flickr.com/photos/hisgett/sets/72157626617067470/ I mean...what's there not to like about the pre-Grouping period?

Catching up... Agree with all the thumbs up above! Although an overline bridge from the fiddle yard is often considered a modeller's clich