37114

A great looking line up of layouts, I can't wait.

A bit more progress tonight, as I try and finalise the last few gardens. The gardens for the last 2 houses are in reality just the footpath so relatively easy to do, I need to paint and weather the middle gate. I have also filled in a few bits of "concrete" near the track as well as the last set of steps at the houses at the back of the layout I have also made some progress on the water tower, having scratchbuilt the access platform. I also found a ladder in the spares box, in the picture it is just loosely in place as I need to make a landing for the roof of the boiler house.

The National roof was always a pain to fit, they were always Banana shaped. Built a few over the years.

Interesting programme, a few thoughts: - I hope the program helps the hobby in general, my feeling is it will. - Clearly it showed Hornby are up for a fight and determined to win back market share. I can understand the Hattons and Rails team being annoyed but to be honest probably more so from the thinly veiled denials of "no no, we had this in our plans for ages, it was in the plans from before I left and is nothing to do with your announcement, we are going for the cheap end" denials from SK than the duplication per se, if it was me personally I would rather Hornby be more open and say "look we were not happy with what you are doing, this is what we will do if you keep pursuing your own models" and be honest rather than try and make us some cock and bull story. It would have been interesting if Rails and Hattons had got together and said "stop them both or we buy nothing" to see if Hornby had changed their mind. In the end SK was right, they still need Hornby and there are plenty of examples of retailers taking on certain brands and losing (look up what happened when Sainsbury's delisted Coke) and great to hear then 2019 range has proved popular with retailers. - Great to see Hornby investing in new talent and developing the product designer for scalextric, hope she does well. - Office move makes sense if you are on the hook for the factory lease/freehold anyway, that said the offices looked very 1970's in layout so not conducive to team working. Having worked in a mix of office layouts over the years, strange though it may sound having a good quality, modern office helps employees creativity and well being so may prove to be retrograde in the long term - The so called Professional layout builders - really???? Who the f*** applies glue with an 8" screw driver????

Most of my modelling over the last few weeks has been on my Southern Pride XP64 coach but I now need to make progress quicker than planned, more of which anon. The gardens at the front have had further work, the garden with the pond having the grass finished, I plan to put a flower bed down the right hand side fence hence the masking tape in one picture and lose scatter in the other: The house next door had a garden shed but nothing else. The positioning of the shed wasn't ideal, and could have done with being closer to the fence but the flip side was I had an area around the back for junk storage, the assumption being this was the home of a local builder (perhaps the one doing the job 2 doors up?). As with some terrace houses it is modelled with an access path across the gardens to allow access for the bin men etc, the shed being just the right distance from the front of the layout for the path to pass in front. I have added some garden tools and ladders which have come from the spares box and included a cat climbing on the rubbish bin. The other development of note is the exhibition debut of the layout maybe earlier than previously planned. At the back of my mind I was slightly nervous about such a large and well attended show as Trainwest being the layouts first show as although close to home it is a very busy 2 day show. Although at an embryonic planning stage, there will potentially be a one day show later this year which will be a quieter and enable a proper test run to be undertaken but means I need to have the layout finished by November - eek!

Last update for a bit as I am have quite a bit of travelling with work coming up and I am also out of model filler which is required before going too much further. To help identify how much filling is required I decided to get a coat of primer on the coach but to do so I needed to fit the self adhesive window frames. Reading the SP instructions it was clear from the "this is fiddly and we know it" tone that it would not be an easy job. In reality the frames would be much better if they were etched rather than the flexible vinyl but then I presume the cost would go up. I did consider buying Shawplan MK2 frames but wasn't sure if they would fit. I started with the toilet windows first as there are a couple of spares and being smaller they are easier to fit. The main frames are much harder and in my view are oversize with brass side being visible inside the frame. The frame also has a tendency to jump onto the side when it is a few mm away (as if it is magnetic). I used a knife blade to hold the window and then started from 1 corner and worked round. I got better as I progressed but a couple of frames are slightly wonky After all the frames were on it was out to the garage to do some spraying: The initial coat has revealed plenty of work to do although not as much as I feared. It will likely be a few weeks before I get the filling done and will then be on with the paint job.

Looks good and quite prototypical, quite a few of the owner drivers on container work have ex Stobart kit, the rates on containers are not the best so it is hard to justify brand new vehicles.

Tonight's focus was the interior. I had on hand an old interior that I think came from a Hornby CK of some description. As the interior was a composite, the compartments in each section were slightly different Window spacing with the first class area lining up perfectly with the XP64 windows but the second class were too close together. As the XP64 has a Z shaped corridor I needed to cut the interior up anyway so it was no big deal. First job was to cut the interior in half and remove the corridor floor area as the SP sides are a bit thicker: After I took the photo above I also cut down the floor on the non corridor side so it was flush with the seats. The photo below shows a trial fit of the interior that did not need modifying: For the other interior I made a plasticard floor as I needed to cut the compartments away from the floor and space the seats further apart. While the plasticard was out I extended the partitions and added the toilet compartment wall. When I did my BSO I put in quite a bit of the detail in the interior which ended up not being visible when on the layout so I haven't gone too mental here. As will be evident from the above photos I found it easier to fit one of the sides when adding the interior. The sides are a tight fit in the channel, but a handy tip is to get a section of spare bodyside and slide it from side to side in the channel a few times. This helps identify tight spots as well as helping to clear swarf out of the channel: The first side was quite straightforward, the second one was more difficult but I got there in the end. The roof now fits much better as well. The next job is to fit the window frames which look tricky before a coat of primer to show up the imperfections ready for filling.

Nice work on these, you have done a good job on the skelly.

The tension lock coupler won't be visible due to the way the layout is operated as it would only be used to pull the coach back into the fiddle yard. When the layout is next out of the garage I will post a photo to show what I mean.

Thanks Phil, progress has been quicker than hoped so plan is to finish it by Easter, then at least I get 6 months out of it before somebody announces an RTR one at Warley.

I heard £15m?

Thanks, your post also prompted me to think about couplings for this. One end will definitely have 3 links, the other end may have either either 3 links or NEM as due to the nature of my layout it potentially works to have a tension lock coupling to enable the coach to be pulled off scene. Tonight I was joined by modelling amigos Dave and Alan along with copious amounts of real ale. Before too much Ale was consumed I have cracked on with the sides. The first bit I did was to cut a 2.5mm long section of the plastic side which goes at the extreme end by the doors. The next bit was to cut the plastic sides to shape and glue them to the door sections in the middle. I found it helpful to have the etched brass sides on hand to help positioning: After a couple of hours work I had the sides assembled and brass sides added. The SP instructions suggest fitting the etches once you have fitted the plastic sides to the coach but I preferred to add them to the plastic side first. With the sides dry, I have test fitted them to the coach chassis. Plenty of fettling to do but not too far off is the verdict.

I am led to believe that 83301 retained its power unit but had extra ballast installed as well. It was looked at for preservation in the early days when 33s were hard to get hold of (at the time there were 3 preserved but all were in a bad way and were later scrapped) but was deemed too difficult to undo the modifications

The door conundrum has been solved - I have plumped for the Bachmann doors as I did some more comparison and the door shape was spot on for the SP sides. Looking at photos it appears that when BR replaced the doors they put the narrower MK1 doors centrally in the centre Aisle but at the toilet ends they put the doors at the outer end and panelled in the respective gaps (it maybe a trick of the eye but it appears you can see the panel joins). The doors I have on hand are the left over from 2 BSK's which were cut and shut into a MK1 BSO, with some of the rest of the remnants being used to create a 1/4 of an SK as part of a backscene and also a Southern Region steam heating vans. As such I had to do more cutting than I would have liked, if I had to do it again then I would buy a Hachette Mk1 and cut that up as it would be easier to do the central doors. I used the plastic surrounds SP provide and cut the Bachmann doors off just above the top panel line (modified door on the left, unmodified on the right): The plastic SP door surrounds require a thin layer of plasticard to pack the doors out so they are flush with the brass sides which sit on top of the curved lip. Shown below is one of the end doors (the door surround tabs needs trimming down), I will need to extend the tumblehome so it goes up to the door but will do this when the sides are fixed to the chassis. The door surrounds shown below show an end one in the middle of the photo and a centre doorway one to the left To show how it all fits together I loosely laid the sides out to show the general arrangement, you can see the difference between the end and centre doors. Next job is to cut the clear plastic sides and start gluing it up.