Buckjumper

Looks lovely and flows very nicely Dave! I agree with Ian, the incline is a great idea and will add interest (motorised gate to the siding?). Now, you are going to treat us to a little video of the first loco aren't you [/necklock]

That was five years ago Mike! Wasn't too far out though was I?

Ugh! Late to the party again - still not getting the update notices. Oh boy, this is looking very interesting now. I know the location of Farthing has always been left deliberately vague, but (personal preference, probably) I'd always imagined it somewhere between PDN and Oxford (despite the 0-4-4T!), so it's interesting to see ideas coming together from both within and without the GW system, and I'm looking forward to see how you make it all gel. Of course I'm delighted that you've decided to stick with the Edwardian period. The 40s is a very interesting time of great change, but the pre-Group period is a tenacious beastie and once it's got its hooks in you...

I love this concept Job. Perhaps an mp3 player and speaker under the baseboard with some contemporary music coming from the record shop adding verisimilitude

Fab video - thoughtful viewpoints and nicely edited Chaz. It makes up for (in a very small way) not being able to get to the Basingstoke show. The somersault signal is hypnotic - I took the video back a few times just to watch it go over and back again.

A common error often repeated in model railway circles, but Friesians have been imported into Britain since the 19th century with a short break from 1892 due to a serious outbreak of foot and mouth on the continent. Granted they weren't as common a breed here back then as more home-grown ones, but (what became known as) the British Friesian is a perfectly acceptable occupant, particularly in the East of England and Scotland. It was the American Holstein-Friesian breed (a different bloodline) which appeared here just after WW2.

Paul was only nagging you because we were nagging him and like Dave I'm glad he's succeeded! Trams often seem toy-like rather than models, and I think that's usually down to the painting which can be awkward with their intricate liveries and delicate railings, but these are indeed exquisite - even down to the subtle weathering, and are probably the best models of trams I've seen. Looking forward to seeing more of the setting and the railway passing through it.

For such a small, utilitarian building it's got bags of character. The SEF brick sheet is quite an improvement over the Slaters sheet, and during my current dead-time have been wondering about how to tackle the brick buildings on Basilica. I'd written off the Slaters and was considering scribed Das - time intensive, but unique. Seeing what a lovely job the SEF sheet can make of things I may now plump for SEF on large expanses and Das for any unique intricate bits. Lovely colour to the bricks and mortar too.

Any room for a modified Slater's 7mm PLV/PMV I built last year? It's green under the grime...honest! T'other end: There's a little bit about the build on my blog here: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/27/entry-13391-grotbags-a-plv-also-available-in-green/

Looking utterly fragrant Tim. Beautiful modelling and very well conceived.

Whoopsie; your written English is much better than a lot of natives, and as such I sometimes forget it's not your first language! Glad to be able to expand your repertoire - I suggest reading PG Wodehouse's Jeeves & Wooster or Blandings for delving deeper into a truly bizarre (and often archaic) potpourri of top-hole English phrases from the roaring 20s and onwards It's the bally balliness of it all that makes it all so bally bally.

Thanks for your comments chaps! Yes, in a way I suppose it is similar to the techniqes used by some wargamers, but I also find the results in that genre are usually overdone to the point that it becomes a caricature and I lose interest. When I say drybrushing, I mean even more dry than is usually meant by the term - only a barely perceptable smudge of colour should be seen when wiped on a kitchen paper towel before use, and the colour should only be a shade or two either side of the base weathering mix. I use light grey instead of white, and find black works ok, but just a dob or two (the ratio is very technical stuff you see), not much. Brushes - ha! I should have shares in brush emporiums and get through them like the clappers. I do have newish ones for drybrushing bodywork and they soon work down the pecking order as I sort them by degrees of bog-brushiness; the more splayed the bristles, the lower and more inaccessible confines of underframes they're relegated to. I trim the more wayward terrors as I go with nail scissors, but there comes a point (always too soon) where the brush is useless and binned. Cheese? You're crackers I often use Citadel brushes. They're good, for drybrushing, and I find they last a little longer than other more delicate makes, but don't expect too much more mileage from 'em!

The last one by a long shot; it gives the impression of a late-autumn afternoon with a warm, low sun which I find very appealing.

Thanks Julia - you're too kind Time to grubby up your maroon siphon? It'll look a treat.

When I handed the painted EWS Queen Mary brake van back to Jim McGeown of Connoisseur Models for his exhibition stand last spring he said, 'Thanks very much old chap, would you like to do one in Southern livery too?' I said 'Yes please Jim, delighted to, old bean,' and skipped away with another heavy box of brass and whitemetal. When I got home I opened it and found the model constructed to Jim's usual high standard; free from excess solder blobs and squeaky clean. Nevertheless it now had the oils from both his and my hands all over it, so I gave it a good scrub with Barkeeper's Friend, a rinse in hot water and left it to dry for 24 hours before blowing it over with a hairdryer to chase out any trapped droplets. After blackening the wheels with Birchwwod Casey Super Blue I drifted Clostermann black etch primer over the sprung(!) bogies and Acid #8 over both the body and roof. The Clostermann primer goes on very wet out of the tin, so I had the hairdryer at the ready, just in case it decided to droop or run, but all was well, and half an hour later it was dry enough to remove the paint from the wheel treads with a moistened cotton bud. The coverage was such that no top coat was needed on the bogies and they were ready for weathering. As well as reducing the time and expense, on less coat of paint helps to keep the detail nice and sharp. I applied the vermilion to the body first then while that was drying painted the roof white. 24 hours later I masked off the ends and painted the body brown. All the Precision paints for wagons have a dull finish, so after leaving the paint to cure for 72 hours I sprayed Windsor & Newton Galeria gloss varnish in the areas I was going to add transfers and left it to dry for another 24 hours. Transfers were a mix of Parkside left over from the earlier Pill Box and some Fox waterslide I had in stock, and I sealed these with a mix of matt and satin Galeria varnish. Weathering was pretty much as before - my limited palette of Humbrol matt black and satin brown, with addition hints of leather, light grey and gunmetal where appropriate, putting it on and taking it off again to build up the patina. Again, I spent much more time than anything else over adding the highlights and shadows with a dry brush, finishing off with a grain or two of powders here and there. It's a bit of a beast of a brakevan - there's certainly a lot to it - and I can heartily recommend the kit Southern aficionados with a couple of etched kits under their belt. These are the last completed photos I can find on my cloud (so far) so until I get the computers up and running again things could a little quiet. I have some 'work in progress snaps' on my phone, but they may not be up to publication standard - I'll work through them and if anything jumps out will post them.

Thanks Paul, and I'm delighted to see you've started your own blog on here too. Thanks for that Pete. Yes, I've seen some pretty garish reds on the ends of brake vans too, and against the brown of the body the Precision red was a bit...yikes! With reds, once weathered down a bit most of these concerns tend to fade away - (a colourfast joke, now there's a thing!) The Southern as an entity, for me, is a bit of an enigma, and compared to other companies I have little written source material, so these sorts of comments I find very useful. Looking forward to seeing yours done too.

Thanks David. 'Normal', we've been told, could be several months away. In re Basilica Fields; with all the broughaha I've snatched a little time for a bit more writing here and there, and have the bones of several posts which still need a little fleshing out. As I'm not able to model at present I may see those come together quite quickly. Obviously I've not been able to do any physical work on it, and with the upheaval I'm not going to meet the deadline of the Challenge 33 competition in October, but there has been significant progress and I hope to be able to share that with you all soon.

Another from last year's archive, today's positively sil blog entry has an appropriate soundtrack, so and enjoy (YouTube link). Very much contemporaneous, I reckon you needed to have a sunny disposish to remain sane as a goods guard in the gloomy Pill Box brake vans. Not sure if the vermilion ends were an absolutely most redic safety feature or an attempt to cheer up the poor chap incarcerated inside. The Parkside kit is as well designed as other kits from the stable, most of the parts just needing moulding lines cleaned up before fixing in position. There are a surprising amount of little bits, particularly around the springs which increases the build time and therefore makes it good value for money in the time/outlay equation, and they all fitted together easily and without any problems. I had some concerns the long low footboards might be a bit too delicate, but in practice they've been fine and are quite resilient. Freshly painted the vermilion ends were pretty garish, but the grime of a few months hard labour soon fixed that. As usual I spent a lot of time drybrushing the highlights and shadows to bring the van to life, and although the prototype was pretty grim, I think the model is quite delish. Apols to Gershwin!

What a fantastic collection of wagons, I especially like the minks, but all the etched underframes are excellent. 3 links and instanters in 2mm...I love that particular brand of hair shirt

You're too kind; there's a five bob note in the post to the Kingdom

Thanks! I found a photo of a PMV with a chalked window which I thought was fantastic and just had to be replicated. I guess the grot must have been sun-baked on to allow the chalk to take. With you there Dave - I'm partial a broad range from classic to neo

Thanks Missy. The secret is simple; don't weather it in one hit. The real thing was weathered by degrees - it accumulated grime, some of which was washed off in the rain, then more was added and so on. So, lots of thin coats of your favourite weathering brew each wiped off with moistened cotton buds before the next is applied until the desired patina is built up - this works for all degrees of weathering from almost ex-Works to wheezing on last legs. The part which takes the longest, but is one of my favourite modelling tasks as it brings it all to life is applying all the highlights and shadows - the usual brew with an extra dollop of light grey or black respectively, drybrushed onto every raised or angled surface - that can take hours to get right, and is very easy to overdo. Something soothing on iTunes and something soothing in a glass works wonders. For me that's a bit of prog and JD on the rocks. It's a hard life being a modeller...

Thanks Mikkel. I'd wanted to build one of these for ages, so it was nice to have the opportunity to do so. Incidentally, the marked difference in quality between the construction and finished photos is because the former are happy snaps taken on my phone and the latter by the DSLR.

Here is a broken record of the construction of a Slater's Southern PLV. Or is it a PMV? I was asked to paint it malachite, and although I don't want to start a bun fight, I'm sure it looked fine to whomever was drinking Elixir Végétal de la Grande-Chartreuse at Southern HQ at the time The Slater's kit is rather lovely, and the parts fit together exceptionally well. The instructions cover an awful lot of variations, some of which aren't catered for in the kit, so I went through it with a malechite green highlighter to ensure I didn't miss anything for an example from the 1931 batch I'd chosen to emulate. I deviated from the instructions by fitting the roof early on; a gappy ill-fitting roof is a particular bête noire of mine, and I much prefer to secure and seal them once the sides and ends are together, and it gives the added advantage of quickly making a very stable structure. At this stage I also took the liberty of providing cross-body bracing to mitigate against any potential bowing of the sides due to solvent fumes or stresses in the plastic relieving themselves over time. The multitude of brass castings cleaned up beautifuly and were superglued in place. Later in life many PLV/PMVs had the tops of the planked ends covered with steel sheet which I made from 10thou plasticard. I airbrushed the sides and ends green, but then realised the ends were meant to be black... The roof was painted a dirty grey and the underframe constructed according to the instructions, though I added some extra pipework and safety loops as these are very apparent at eye-level viewing and are very much a part of the overall appeal of the van. Before securing the body to the underframe I glazed the windows and added some safety bars from plastic strip. With the underframe secure I weighted the van with a matrix of fluid lead and pva glued between the cross members. With plenty of expansion room the lead/pva mix won't cause the same disasterous results seen when packed into loco boilers. Transfers were a pickle. Some of those in the kit were shaded gilt for the olive green period and some were sunshine yellow for malachite, but after discussing things with Graham Muz, it seems neither set completely covered either period so I made up the shortfall from Fox which needed subtle trimming to fit. NPCS never seems to have been taken care of to any great degree, not even in pre-Grouping times, and photographic evidence seems to indicate that these parcels vans wern't cleaned from one repaint to the next, so their typical appearance was various shades of grot, the paint only showing through where jackets and hands of those loading the vans have rubbed against it. The van was finished off with some white indian ink scrawls applied with a nib and knocked back with a further haze of grime and some lovely screw couplings from Pat Legg at CPL. Edited for finger trouble on the android.