Owen

Having not had a proper day/weekend in the shed since Christmas (generally due to too much time being spent on the real thing), I managed to get a number of jobs done today, and have done far more than anticipated. Over the past few weeks I've slowly but surely got the landscaping nearly finished and have made a start on putting down a bit of scenic cover. On Friday, a box arrived with 7 Packets of Peco Platform Edging along with some ramps, which I've been waiting on so I can make a start on the platforms. After measuring, cutting and setting some balsa wood blocks in place last night, the platforms sections were suitably moulded to shape and fixed into position. Once reasonably firm, I moved my Airbrush compressor over to the layout so all of the trackwork could be sprayed up as I've found this is far quicker than painting individual rail sides with a paintbrush! I used a mix of H155 & H82 for the job and this gives a slightly rusty shade suitable for the rust, brake dust, oil and grime as per the prototype. After this job, I measured up and cut up some Metcalfe Stone Card Sheets for the platform edges - the ones supplied are no good and from past experience they peel off eventually anyway! By midday, the platforms were in and ready for ballasting: I hadn't intended to ballast the track up today, but after remembering I had two large tubs of fine granite chippings stashed away I made a start on it and glued the first section to make sure everything was OK. After this, the rest of the ballast was put in place: All the ballast has now been glued in place, so hopefully it will be dry in the morning!

Nice work on those, they look like the real deal. Only one thing I noticed that you could do to improve them would be to mucky up the fuel tank taps on the LH side. It could be the photo but they look very white and they get used quite regularly!

At one end of the layout are four tracks which enter the fiddle yard. The distance across them is quite large and somehow the entrance to the fiddle yard needs to be hidden so I began to build a bridge last night to span the four tracks. After looking at a couple of scratchbuilt bridges on here, I found a few spare materials and knocked up something that looked like a girder plate bridge. The plate sides are made of 6mm Plywood, with plastic strip to represent the vertical struts and a couple of lengths of 'I' Girder sections were fixed along the bottom. The road deck is from a sheet of 1.5mm Balsa and the abundments were made from a couple of Wills Brick Sheets, with corner stones to match. The girders were given a coat of grey and I'll make a start on further painting and weathering in good time.

Hmmm...I'm very tempted. I spent a bit of time firing Truro over the summer, it's a cracking loco and the model looks spot on!

Cheers chaps B) The watered down white stains seem to always work quite well in adding a bit more depth - I find that airbrushed water scale never has the sharpness that the prototype has. I would add that initially it feels like a very big leap of faith as they are very bold when first applied but subsequent sprayings of various dull shades it all blends in a bit more. I find it quite hard to get 'right' - I may have gone a little OTT on the J83, but there never seems to be a fixed formula when it comes to weathering. I've done a Hornby A3 and A4 in the past and they were left much cleaner but the principle stays the same. Cheers, Owen

I've been muckying up a few locos recently as a break from work on the layout and my other modelling hobby of building plastic kits to rebrand & renumber and mucky up a few locos that were in LNER liveries. I've been working on a Bachmann J39, and Hornby J94, J83 and J52 - along with a few diesels not shown (Bachmann Cl.25, 44 & 55) The four steam locos lined up: All have been sprayed up in relatively the same fashion and I wanted all of them to be pretty heavily weathered. I made a hash of the J83 and got the cabside numbers in the wrong place but have managed to make them a little less conspicious! Even so its a blighter as it only clicked once I'd spent an hour or so putting them on and had already sprayed the first colour. My weathering technique is to first give the locos some hard water stains with watered down white acrylic, then spray a dusting of Humbrol (H) 67 (Tank Grey), followed by a dusting of H155 (Olive Drab. Once dry the smokebox is given a coat of matt varnish and then a few more water stains are added along with some shades of rust on the smokebox and the cabside numbers are wiped back with a bit of white spirit on a cotton bud. It is all then blended back in with a spray of H32 which is a dark shade of grey. Usually it seems to work alright, although I've made a hash of it on one loco before! In detail, here are the now weathered locos. All were originally in LNER liveries and are all now in BR late crest. Hornby J52 - Now 68792 Hornby J94 - Now 68017 (The water tanks haven't been screwed down yet btw) Hornby J83 - Now 68492 Bachmann J39 - Now 64735 Cheers, Owen

More shelving space - I build lots of plastic kits and I'm running out of shelving space, so it seemed like a good idea!

I spent a lot of last week and most of Sunday working on the layout. The fiddle yard is now mainly finished and has been boxed over: On Sunday I finished all the wiring and the control box is now fully functioning with all three lines now working: I've got a few bits out recently just to have a play (and to check everything works!). Here's a 9F with a mixed freight: And here's a Black 5 too: Cheers, Owen

My winter project is to make a start on my 12'6" mock-ECML junction station, set somewhere on the borders of the North Eastern and Eastern Region. The plan, looks roughly like this, although I've made a few changes: Although a lot has changed since these photos were taken, these are the most recent photos of the layout: The fiddle yard has now been "boxed" over to give a bit more shelving space and the backscene breaks are now in place. The next step is to make a start on the platforms and to begin building up the landscape.