Castle Aching

[Annie]

17 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Bellerophon?

Ah yes, - I forgot that one.  However Bellerophon is a preserved survivor which makes it a marketable model.  If this wonderful old locomotive had gone to the scrapyard ages ago would a manufacturer have bothered to take the risk?

[wagonman]

I actually had a ride behind Bellerophon on the Foxfield Railway a few years ago as a diversion from working at the Stafford Records Office. Not often that I can combine an archive visit with a preserved railway visit (I have a very tolerant wife).

Edited October 3, 2021 by wagonman

[Edwardian]

No updates, I'm afraid.  On Saturday I found I was completely without energy to stick bolt heads on WN wagons. Spent Sunday morning at the flicks with the Offspring watching Rather a Long Time to Die.

 

Found had less energy after that.

 

Miss T has spent 2 days in bed, poor thing, and so is off school. I am exhausted, barely the will and muscle-power to type or mouse click, so I, too, will be going back to bed as soon as I have walked dogs and picked up other child.

 

I think that, having shielded more or less for 18 months to escape the Plague, we seem to have no immunity to anything else!  

[Nearholmer]

Please accept a virtual mug of hot lemon and honey, and a forecast that it will take about a week to completely clear-up.

 

Our household has copped the "back to school cold super-cold" over the past few weeks too (self and youngest first, then MiL and son, now my good lady), and it is definitely a miserable one. I set out to go to the first TCS gathering for two years, got in the car and had driven about two hundred yards before deciding I wasn't fit for an hour on the motorway in each direction, came home, lay down, and promptly fell asleep for three hours in the middle of the day. We've all consistently tested -ve for covid.

[Gypsy]

Get well soon - we had the same thing, with the double whammy that the kids then brought Covid back from school just as we were recovering. Double jabbed but that still knocked us both out for two weeks, and still feeling pretty feeeble...

[monkeysarefun]

I just watched Dianna The Musical on Netflix and now  I feel like that too.

[Nearholmer]

27 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

I just watched Dianna The Musical

Why?

[monkeysarefun]

Having been co-written by that royal expert the  keyboard player from Bon Jovi and with promising  lines like  "it's like the Thriller In Manilla but with Camilla" I had sky high hopes for it.

[Caley Jim]

I clicked 'Friendly supportive because there isn't a 'you need to get out more' button.  Oh!  But of course, you can't get out at all, can you?

 

My friend in Melbourne sent me a whole load of lockdown one liners including:

 

'121days in and the dog is looking at me like he's saying 'now you know why I chew the furniture!'

 

Jim

[Regularity]

49 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

Having been co-written by that royal expert the  keyboard player from Bon Jovi and with promising  lines like  "it's like the Thriller In Manilla but with Camilla" I had sky high hopes for it.

As Kevin said:

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Why?

 

[Nearholmer]

Having been reminded that Monkeys is still caged-up, we probably don’t need to

pursue the root cause analysis, simply express that most reassuring of reassurances: It’ll all be over by Christmas.

[Edwardian]

Well, that was unpleasant. Can't remember when I last had to spend a whole day in bed. I cannot recall ever being so wiped out. Usually there is a phase with these things when your mind is at least functioning well enough to get bored.  I have been too wiped out to care. 

 

Miss T got up this afternoon, and I'm feeling a little more human this evening.

 

Haven't really eaten very much, but now I am more or less awake, I find myself wanting to eat ice cream and listen to AC/DC. Weird the way illness can affect you. 

[Caley Jim]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

It’ll all be over by Christmas.

Aye, right!

 

James, I can fully empathise with you.  My cold steadily deteriorated last night to the stage where, if I didn't go to bed, I was in danger of falling asleep where I sat.  Also had a migraine developing.  Went to bed with a paracetamol and I must have fallen asleep when my head hit the pillow.  Spent the morning in bed.  I was supposed to be at a Probus meeting this morning and a Presbytery meeting in Lanark this evening, but gave my apologies for both last night.  Been better this afternoon, but beginning to feel a bit tired now.  Isn't it great how the grandkids get a mild infection then toughen up the bugs before they pass them on to you! 

 

Jim

Edited October 5, 2021 by Caley Jim

[TurboSnail]

1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

I find myself wanting to eat ice cream and listen to AC/DC. Weird the way illness can affect you. 

 

Hang on, is that not normal?

[drduncan]

1 hour ago, TurboSnail said:

 

Hang on, is that not normal?

Nah, old ‘mains and battery’ are sooo 1970s. Give me Queen, Journey, or Boston anytime 

[monkeysarefun]

2 hours ago, TurboSnail said:

 

Hang on, is that not normal?

 

A highlight of  the drive south from here is to pass a point just outside Bargo where a  few decades ago now someone  jumped the fence, dashed across the main southern rail line, climbed up a snake ridden slope and  daubed AC/AC on the brick embankment wall.

 

I guess it was done back when they were just  another  struggling local Sydney band and people still didnt know how to spell their name.

Edited October 5, 2021 by monkeysarefun

[monkeysarefun]

1 hour ago, drduncan said:

Nah, old ‘mains and battery’ are sooo 1970s. Give me Queen, Journey, or Boston anytime 

 

I'd have called them all 1970's but maybe thats just when they got played down here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 5, 2021 by monkeysarefun

[St Enodoc]

7 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Having been reminded that Monkeys is still caged-up, we probably don’t need to

pursue the root cause analysis, simply express that most reassuring of reassurances: It’ll all be over by Christmas.

Perhaps.

[wagonman]

On 05/10/2021 at 17:09, Nearholmer said:

It’ll all be over by Christmas.

 

Undoubtedly true – but which Christmas?

[Edwardian]

Feeling at least well enough to post again, though given how rough and grumpy I currently feel, that may be no good thing!

 

I have to say this has been a rough week. Still rather feverish, but hopefully now more tired than ill, but will probably spend the next three days sleeping!

 

I may, however, get up just now!

[16Brunel]

Hullo James - just checking that you're still with us!

 

Some incentive to hang around:

[Edwardian]

Well, last week I decided to emerge into the light, and take Thursday and Friday off.  I think it is the only holiday I have taken this year, so I don't feel too self-indulgent!

 

Anyway, I insinuated myself among a group of 3mm modellers over a long-weekend in Oxfordshire.  There I sat at the feet of Greatness, determined to learn one of the Dark Arts that I had hitherto feared to attempt.

 

The upshot is that I think I have learnt enough to continue and replicate the necessary steps solo with a reasonable prospect of success. 

 

Here is the first attempt:

 

 

It is, of course, one of David Eveleigh's Great Eastern coach etches; a luggage composite. 

 

David was going to produce a Cleminson arrangement, but in the end designed a much simplified 6-wheel chassis kit, also seen.  The centre axle has plenty of transverse 'slop' and a little pivot. One outer axle is fixed.  The other rocks. Seems to negotiate the test track curves just fine. It ought to be good for something much tighter than CA's 3' radius. 

 

It'll need some tidying up, but I don't despair of achieving a reasonable result with it in the end. 

 

With this first attempt at an etched brass kit well underway, I feel as if I've taken my first step into a larger universe, and my thanks must go to Allen Dogherty of Worsley Works for being the Obi Wan Kenobi to my Luke Skywalker. 

 

Just need the time to finish this and to build the other 5 in the train! Christmas, probably. 

[Caley Jim]

Well done, James!  I was in two minds as to whether to click on 'craftsmanship/ clever' or 'round of applause' and decided on the latter.  Another couple of coaches in and you'll be wondering what you were afraid of.     Soldering will soon become second nature to you!  

 

Jim

[Edwardian]

In other news, the WNR will be able in due course to receive goods originating in GWR territory ......

 

 

 

In the 'flesh' the colour is a very good red oxide that looks very credible. These shots in artificial light do not quite show it properly.

 

They've come out pretty well.  There is always some slight bow to the roof, I find, because it's a friction fit gripped as it were at each end.  I think the a dab of glue in the centre of the roof edges will improve matters.

 

In terms of decoration, Dapol tends to be a bit heavy on the painting, a matter which could be improved upon, and I note here this has caused the spring stops to be filled with paint, so these will need to be filed out. The tampo-pad printing on the lettering has come out rather well. 

 

I am not a fan of the clunky Dapol wheels, so I'll fit Gibsons.  I will also ditch the NEM coupling pockets, which simply unscrew. There is a cosmetic coupling hook, so, whether it will prove robust enough to take working 3-links remains to be seen.  I suspect I'll end up drilling out in favour of etched draw bars. 

 

But a Victorian pre-Grouping livery RTR wagon, with the correct physical 'tooling', is a welcome development and addition to the fleet.

[Compound2632]

28 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

In the 'flesh' the colour is a very good red oxide that looks very credible.

 

Very nice and I like the shade of red, more as it appears in the upper photo - it captures the reported "warm red". The lower has a tinge of brown which I put down to lighting. Red is a difficult colour to photograph. But I will continue to contend that the description "red oxide" misrepresents the pigment used, which I am confident would have been red lead. Semantics rather than chromatics!

 

Here's one of my Raito bodges, retaining the Ratio defect of wrong-side door latch. Also lacks the lifting hole in the solebars. (And wheels and couplings - it does have them now!) The axlebox stops are larger and squarer on the Ratio kit; looking through All About, the Rails model is closer to the truth there as elsewhere. I've put the number on the end higher up than on the Rails models; I was following photos in Atkins et al.; looking at the photo of 57604 in All About, I'm satisfied that I'm right. Neither model captures the tinny thinness and rivetiness of the roof. I haven't counted the bodywork rivets but am happy to believe they are more correctly done on the Rails model; they're certainly finer. You'll note that I've tactfully picked one from my fleet that has red running gear rather than black - a point on which I am in a state of indecision. The red is Halfords rattle-can red primer, which seems to me to be a good representation of red lead - Forth Bridge colour - though here lighting gives it a hint of brown.

 

 

I look forward to future Rails pre-grouping vans that can go head-to-head with my kit-built fleet!

 

 

 

Edited November 2, 2021 by Compound2632