AlfaZagato Posted January 24, 2020 Share Posted January 24, 2020 I'm pretty certain mine is in molded colors. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold checkrail Posted January 25, 2020 Author RMweb Gold Share Posted January 25, 2020 'A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault'. - John Henry Newman I do like your Cardinal Newman epigram Rich. A new one to me but very apposite when approaching scary modelling projects. Other sayings I recall when things aren't working out 100% as planned, or I'm making things worse when attempting to correct errors, are ' The best is the enemy of the good' and ' The man who never made a mistake never made anything'. 8 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium St Enodoc Posted January 25, 2020 RMweb Premium Share Posted January 25, 2020 (edited) 5 hours ago, checkrail said: 'A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault'. - John Henry Newman I do like your Cardinal Newman epigram Rich. A new one to me but very apposite when approaching scary modelling projects. Other sayings I recall when things aren't working out 100% as planned, or I'm making things worse when attempting to correct errors, are ' The best is the enemy of the good' and ' The man who never made a mistake never made anything'. How about: "If it ain't broke, break it." or "If at first you don't succeed, give up." or "If the job's worth doing, it's worth doing twice." Edited January 25, 2020 by St Enodoc 1 3 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Regularity Posted January 25, 2020 RMweb Gold Share Posted January 25, 2020 If you try to do a 20 minute job in 15 minutes, then at some point later, you will end up doing it properly in 20 minutes, taking 35 minutes to do a 20 minute job... 2 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold checkrail Posted January 26, 2020 Author RMweb Gold Share Posted January 26, 2020 10 hours ago, St Enodoc said: "If at first you don't succeed, give up." Or as a late friend of mine always used to say, "They said it couldn't be done - so I didn't bother". 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Harlequin Posted January 26, 2020 RMweb Gold Share Posted January 26, 2020 (edited) Homer also said, "In case you didn't notice, I was being sarcastic!" Edited January 26, 2020 by Harlequin 1 1 3 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
richbrummitt Posted January 26, 2020 Share Posted January 26, 2020 14 hours ago, St Enodoc said: How about: "If it ain't broke, break it." or "If at first you don't succeed, give up." or "If the job's worth doing, it's worth doing twice." The 1st is me. Taking things apart is a speciality. I often feel like the second and the thought of the third really angers me. Hence I procrastinate too much. I saw written recently something that amounted to perfection stands in the way of progress. That sounds like the story of my modelling right now. 1 5 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
vulcanbomber Posted January 27, 2020 Share Posted January 27, 2020 If at first you don't succeed, clear away all evidence that you ever tried in the first place. 2 5 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Ramblin Rich Posted January 27, 2020 RMweb Gold Share Posted January 27, 2020 A phrase I've heard recently is 'Paralysis by analysis;' in other words, over thinking problems so that nothing gets done. Definitely applies to me 4 2 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold The Fatadder Posted February 3, 2020 RMweb Gold Share Posted February 3, 2020 Out of interest, do you have the approximate width of your bag platform (and the width of your waiting room that is on it) please? given my struggles to get my own bay platform / waiting room looking right, I’m interested to see a comparison in widths. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Popular Post checkrail Posted February 4, 2020 Author RMweb Gold Popular Post Share Posted February 4, 2020 17 hours ago, The Fatadder said: Out of interest, do you have the approximate width of your bag platform (and the width of your waiting room that is on it) please? given my struggles to get my own bay platform / waiting room looking right, I’m interested to see a comparison in widths. Rich, the central portion of my island platform is 106mm wide. The Timber Tracks island platform building is 46mm wide, so there is clearance of 30mm (7' 6") between the building and platform edge on both sides. This is also the distance by which the canopies jut out from the sides of the building. Brian Lewis had cleverly designed his IPB kit in the knowledge that most modellers would be working to minimum clearances, and it was a bit of serendipity that they were such a good fit for my platform - seeing that I'd already built it, and on a slight curve too, before I came across his lovely kit. Here are a few pics of the site. (By having a bench full of people in front of the building I'm probably accentuating the narrowness of the clearance, but it's not that apparent in normal side-on view.) And here are a couple of views of the IPB footprint with building removed. BTW, nice to see the bracket signal find a good home. Hope all goes well with ingenious motorising idea for the dud arm. John C. 16 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold The Fatadder Posted February 4, 2020 RMweb Gold Share Posted February 4, 2020 Thanks for that, it looks like I have made the platform about 15mm too narrow based on those dimensions. However it is within the gauging information I have found (all be it based on a 1950 document transcribed by Clive Mortimer elsewhere on the forum which gives the minimum platform edge to building as 24mm in 4mm scale. So I think its going to work, “just”, all be it with the platforms looking a little narrow. I wont be able to include the benches though as it would be too narrow for them… Tested the signal approach at the weekend, everything seemed to work in principle so now it just the final soldering & installation once the platforms are finished. Thanks again for it. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Popular Post checkrail Posted February 4, 2020 Author RMweb Gold Popular Post Share Posted February 4, 2020 Here's Winslow Hall on a Newton Abbot - Plymouth local service, with a toplight C31 third in the consist of the M set. The coach is built from an old PC kit but with etched brass sides in place of the printed acetate ones supplied. I don't know who made the brass sides, but they were, fortuitously, included as extras in the box when I acquired the kit via eBay some years ago. So thank you to whomever I bought it from! This was my first try at a hybrid like this, and my first time working with etched brass sides. Putting a positive spin on things it's been a valuable learning exercise. Other descriptions are available. ('Comedy of errors' and 'catalogue of disasters' come to mind.) I'll add a bit about the experience, lessons learned and queries raised in another post. Meanwhile it'll do for now as a 'layout coach' tucked away in its train where it will I hope pass muster to the proverbial blind man on the galloping horse. John C. 21 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Barry Ten Posted February 4, 2020 RMweb Gold Share Posted February 4, 2020 Can't see much wrong with that coach, John. 2 4 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold colin penfold Posted February 4, 2020 RMweb Gold Share Posted February 4, 2020 How's the horse Barry, still galloping?? 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Popular Post checkrail Posted February 4, 2020 Author RMweb Gold Popular Post Share Posted February 4, 2020 3 minutes ago, Barry Ten said: Can't see much wrong with that coach, John. Thanks Barry Ten, but here's my guilty secret - I glued the second side on before the first had set hard, and somehow it moved a bit (ok, I must have knocked it). By the time I came to offer the roof up it would no longer fit quite rightly as one side of the coach was higher than the other at one end. I did try to get a side off again, but by then the adhesive was firmly set and I began to bend the side in the attempt. I did have a go at twisting the tin roof slightly, but that was fraught as I'd already detailed and painted it. The only way the roof would fit was with the cantrails partly behind the sides, meaning that the tops of the ends needed filing down a bit making the whole coach just a smidgen too low, and the ends ending up (after application of filler) a little too wide at the top. How to rectify this mess? Well, I disguised it as best I could by adding new 'false' cantrails with microstrip. Think I've just about got away with it! Here are a few more pics. And here's one of the other side, alongside a Slater's E88 compo for comparison. John C. 16 2 1 5 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium St Enodoc Posted February 4, 2020 RMweb Premium Share Posted February 4, 2020 2 hours ago, checkrail said: Thanks Barry Ten, but here's my guilty secret - I glued the second side on before the first had set hard, and somehow it moved a bit (ok, I must have knocked it). By the time I came to offer the roof up it would no longer fit quite rightly as one side of the coach was higher than the other at one end. I did try to get a side off again, but by then the adhesive was firmly set and I began to bend the side in the attempt. I did have a go at twisting the tin roof slightly, but that was fraught as I'd already detailed and painted it. The only way the roof would fit was with the cantrails partly behind the sides, meaning that the tops of the ends needed filing down a bit making the whole coach just a smidgen too low, and the ends ending up (after application of filler) a little too wide at the top. How to rectify this mess? Well, I disguised it as best I could by adding new 'false' cantrails with microstrip. Think I've just about got away with it! Here are a few more pics. And here's one of the other side, alongside a Slater's E88 compo for comparison. John C. You can only see one side at a time though John, can't you? 2 1 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium St Enodoc Posted February 4, 2020 RMweb Premium Share Posted February 4, 2020 5 hours ago, The Fatadder said: Thanks for that, it looks like I have made the platform about 15mm too narrow based on those dimensions. However it is within the gauging information I have found (all be it based on a 1950 document transcribed by Clive Mortimer elsewhere on the forum which gives the minimum platform edge to building as 24mm in 4mm scale. So I think its going to work, “just”, all be it with the platforms looking a little narrow. I wont be able to include the benches though as it would be too narrow for them… Tested the signal approach at the weekend, everything seemed to work in principle so now it just the final soldering & installation once the platforms are finished. Thanks again for it. Six feet (24mm) is correct Rich. It comes from the Ministry of Transport "Requirements", usually known as the Blue Book. Here's a thought: place the building slightly off centre so that the side you can see is slightly further from the platform edge than the side you can't... 3 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Popular Post checkrail Posted February 4, 2020 Author RMweb Gold Popular Post Share Posted February 4, 2020 One thing that did work quite well was to replicate the M.O. of the original PC kits, by painting and detailing the brass sides before applying to the coach. (But after forming the tumblehome with an offcut of bullnose skirting board and a couple of other bits of timber.) I mentioned in an earlier post that I'd fabricated the door vents from microstrip. Another element not present with the etched sides was the droplights, which gave me the idea of using parts of the original PC kit's printed acetate sides, fixed behind the window apertures with Glue 'n' Glaze, thus taking care of the droplights, glazing and corridor-side internal handrails all in one go. Of course I still had to paint all those fiddly bolections. A problem area was the extruded aluminium roof. I've learned that I should support such roofs more firmly when drilling for shell vents to avoid dimples. Filler tanks were formed of thin Plastikard with a border of Plastikard rivet strips, while filler caps were slices of an old Dapol telegraph pole with bits of wire for the handles. But the big bugbear was the rainstrips. How do other people stick these to metal roofs? I'm afraid I've left bits of superglue residue which several coats of paint haven't entirely obliterated. Another aspect I need to improve is door furniture. The Brassmasters grab handles I had in stock are a bit overscale I think, and the distance between their two fixing prongs greater than that between the pre-marked holes on the etch, so I kept scratching my nice new paintwork while offering them up. in the end I cut off the lower prongs, so all the grab handles hang from top fixing only, which is why they're not all totally straight! As for those little T handles - well, there are 18 on the coach, and probably another 18 on the loft floor somewhere. But it's all good fun. Here's a cruel close-up, followed by a shot of the coach within its train while 3603 comes off the Earlsbridge branch with a goods train. John C. 19 1 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Neal Ball Posted February 5, 2020 RMweb Premium Share Posted February 5, 2020 (edited) The close up is too cruel John @checkrail the carriage is only ever seen in the train and then it looks the part. If you hadn’t said about the various issues, no-one would know. Thanks as ever for sharing. Edited February 5, 2020 by Neal Ball Typo 1 6 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold 88C Posted February 5, 2020 RMweb Gold Share Posted February 5, 2020 Neal has beaten me to it, as he said if you had shown us the pictures of the train the first thought is that looks more like a typical GW train. I have been building models for a long time now and I am never completely satisfied when constructing them but once they are on the layout I don’t notice the faults and, yes, close up photos are cruel. A lovely layout and I wish that I had the space to realistically run express trains. Brian 4 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Popular Post checkrail Posted February 25, 2020 Author RMweb Gold Popular Post Share Posted February 25, 2020 (edited) I mentioned some time ago that I still had three PO wagons on 10 foot steel underframes lurking at the back of my coal train. Here they are, two Evans & Bevan (old Lima bodies on Dapol underframes) and one Diamond Anthracite (early Bachmann, ex-Mainline). It was about time I replaced them with something better, but I did like the liveries. There are photos of the E & B wagons, with their distinctive heart-shaped logos in the GWR in the 30s albums and also in 'The big four in colour'. (The latter is in the LNER section. I was only looking, honest!) The Diamond wagon is a work of art, and provides a nice flash of red among all those black vehicles. So I ordered pre-printed kits from Powsides. They arrived after a long wait but well worth it, so no complaints. What's more, all are of the shorter Gloucester RC & W wagons (Slater's kits), adding a bit of variety to the usual RCH design from Bachmann, OR etc. Here they are before weathering. John C. Edited February 25, 2020 by checkrail To acknowledge Slater's 21 3 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold gwrrob Posted February 25, 2020 RMweb Gold Share Posted February 25, 2020 A man after my own heart young man. 1 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Popular Post checkrail Posted February 25, 2020 Author RMweb Gold Popular Post Share Posted February 25, 2020 Seemed almost a shame to besmirch those lovely colour schemes, but to replicate the age of steam, smoke and soot a modeller's gotta do what a modeller's gotta do. So I did, using Vallejo black wash, applied in downward vertical strokes with a 1/4" flat paintbrush. Each wagon has shortened Bachmann couplings, Alan Gibson wheels, and a bit of lead (from Eileen's) stuck below the floor. The insides have been treated with a mixture of dirty black paint, coal dust, weathering powder and a good spray of Dullcote. Here they are back in the train, for now in pride of place immediately behind the loco. John C. 27 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold checkrail Posted February 26, 2020 Author RMweb Gold Share Posted February 26, 2020 (edited) Just for comparison here are the Diamond wagons, old and new or little and large. Note the identical numbers - both purport to be models of the same vehicle. But Bachmann did make a lovely job of the printing. The Dapol 10 foot w'base steel underframes on the E & B wagons didn't go to waste either. Lurking in a drawer I had an ancient Airfix/Mainline GW van with couplings like snowploughs on huge blocks and the brake shoes aligned with the W irons. But the body and decoration were ok. I also remembered that I had a Ratio kit for a 'grounded van body' given as a freebie with RM a year or two back. A bit of carving the underframe to fit, some Dave Franks buffers and coupling hooks, a bit of lead weighting, and after application of paint and transfers another Mink was ready for the road. Waste not, want not. Here's Broome Hall on a westbound freight with the old Airfix/Mainline van immediately behind the engine and the Ratio one behind that. John C. Edited February 26, 2020 by checkrail put pics in right order 15 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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