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The next task was to modify one of the bogies to become articulated. This was very easy. I simply cut off anything that protruded above the top, and cut off the coupling. I then marked and drilled two 2mm holes for the new pivot pins (15mm brass nails obtained from a set of picture-hanging fixtures) and glued them in place with two good blobs of Loctite 'Power Flex' superglue gel. (I love Power Flex, by the way: it's so thick that it supports small features as it sets, which makes it ideal for gluing crews and headlamps on locomotives).

 

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With the articulation taken care of, it was time to turn my attention to the streamlining. Again, I'm not looking for scrupulous scale accuracy here - the nature of the coaches I'm using precludes it - but something that gives at least the impression of the Silver Jubilee. So I decided to use what was already provided on the coach as supports for the streamline skirts.

I cut a pair of shims for each side of each coach - one 1mm thick, the other 0.5mm thick. Sandwiched together and glued to the truss rods, they gave me a backing that a 1mm thick skirt could be affixed to. 

 

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Finally I made a card template for the sideskirts and used it to make the skirts from 1mm plasticard. Once they'd been neatened up with a rotary sander in my dremel, I glued them in place and painted them. Tamiya XF-77 is a reasonable match with Hornby's choice of grey for these coaches. 

Here is the final result, and I must say I'm very pleased with it. I know it's not accurate, and I know the purists may very well howl in derision, but for a modeller on a budget I think it's not a bad approach to getting something that looks a lot more like the Silver Jubilee than what Hornby offers!

 

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Well this is irritating. After getting everything together to solder some droppers to some track, I discover that my wire strippers have gone walkabout.

The downside to knowing exactly where you left something is that, when it turns out not to be there, you are utterly bereft of ideas for where it might be...

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5 hours ago, Black Marlin said:

Well this is irritating. After getting everything together to solder some droppers to some track, I discover that my wire strippers have gone walkabout.

The downside to knowing exactly where you left something is that, when it turns out not to be there, you are utterly bereft of ideas for where it might be...

Buy another. Then you'll have two.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Have spent the last few days going through my various reference books looking at photographs to see what prototypical train formations I can recreate with my stock, and noting them down so that I can eventually run accurate trains. One I was very pleased to find is in B.W.L. Brooksbank's "Triumph & Beyond: The ECML 1939 - 1959". It shows K3 No. 1307 with an ambulance train on 27th May 1940. Unfortunately, due to the angle of the picture, it's impossible to see what lamp headcode is in use. I assume Express Passenger 'A'? Or were ambulance trains a special case using something else?

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  • 2 months later...

I decided in the end that the ambulance train justified getting one of Hornby's extremely smart-looking D16s in LNER lined black. It fulfils the brief admirably, and it was on offer at a much-reduced price; what's not to love?

Apologies for the poor quality of the pic. This is the train on the test track in my conservatory.

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Edited by Black Marlin
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  • 4 weeks later...

Finally completed my version of the Silver Jubilee. Obviously it's a pastiche rather than an accurate model, and is lacking the restaurant triplet set, but for all its many outstanding flaws I'm still very pleased with it. 

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Edited by Black Marlin
Picture restoration
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  • 5 weeks later...

On my layout there shall be two stations. The main one is, of course, Girtby Sea; but I'd welcome your thoughts on the name for the other. It shall be small - a branchline station with a single platform, a single engine shed and a couple of goods sidings - and I have narrowed down the name options to two. Of these, which would you choose?

Sodding Chipbury

 

or


Tether's End

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  • 7 months later...

I have just treated myself to one of Hornby's new (at least to me) Princess Royals - R3854 Duchess of Kent. One slight flaw notwithstanding (it arrived without a speedometer cable - not broken, just never fitted) it's deeply impressive: it strolled off up-grade with fourteen Hornby Stanier coaches and a 12-wheel dining car in tow. 

(This was a test track set up for the purposes of experimentation. Sadly, Girtby Sea has not grown much. Much more 9mm plywood is required!)

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On 04/06/2021 at 17:37, Black Marlin said:

Sodding Chipbury

 

or


Tether's End

I know it’s a long time ago that you asked, but for me, it has to be Sodding Chipbury.  The tunnel was well known for track circuit problems and was known in my circles as Sodding Chipbury Tunnel.

O.K., it doesn’t have a branch line feel but I’m sure you can overlook that.

Paul.

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  • 5 weeks later...

Some little modelling work has been done. First of all, I've taken a file to the bogie mounting points on my two Hornby LMS 12-wheel dining cars and shaved off 1.5mm from each. The ride height is now much better but I'm struggling to get the cars to sit level - they want to lean to the left or right. Clearly it's because my filing efforts have not been perfectly perpendicular. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get a better result?

Other modelling: crewing, coaling and head-lamping a Bachmann 1F half-cab 0-6-0 (for the quayside line when I'm running it in BR(M) late crest mode) and preparing the next baseboard for work to start (though it's been so cold and stormy - I've had a couple of power cuts that have left me without electricity for days on end - that I haven't been able to start work, as there's nowhere warm enough to do so!)

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  • 10 months later...

Although there is little to report, this layout isn't dead; I am slowly trying to scrape together the money necessary for the barn conversion. The plans have, if anything, grown; a new and additional branchline will run to a narrow gauge loop, at least some of which will run on Tillig dual-gauge track! And yes, there has been some buying of stock and buildings to make the whole thing come together...

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  • 5 months later...

Plans for the barn conversion are firming up; the hope is that work will start next summer. 

In the meantime, I continue to save my pennies, although a recent trip to the Marklin museum/factory in Goppingen threw a whole host of temptations my way. Nobly, I resisted.

Well, mostly. I may have got some tunnel lining pieces.

...And a castle. 

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On 04/05/2021 at 21:47, Black Marlin said:

Finally completed my version of the Silver Jubilee. Obviously it's a pastiche rather than an accurate model, and is lacking the restaurant triplet set, but for all its many outstanding flaws I'm still very pleased with it. 


I managed to pick up another Silver Jubilee coach on t'bay. It was going cheap because its truss bars were broken. Happily I was going to diguise those anyway, so it didn't matter. I took out the internals, glued white plasticard behind the windows, made new pivot points in the chassis and added streamlining - and voila, a pastiche (albeit a very inaccurate one) of the central kitchen car of the restaurant triplet. I know it's very flawed (it's the wrong length, for one thing) but so far this is the only way I can think of to get a Silver Jubilee restaurant triplet set that takes full advantage of Hornby's lovely paint job. I set it up in the hall as it's the only place I could lay track long enough to get a straight, side elevation view for the camera!

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hello to Jason Isaacs.

Back in hardware mode, for the first time in donkeys'. This is the first baseboard of what will be the upper branchline. It also features the shallow pond that will become a watercress farm (not something I think I've ever seen modelled before). I'm still playing around with the placement of the buildings behind the bridge (a much-butchered Skaledale item; I think I'm going to have to gouge out bigger arches for it, having chopped its legs off!) but it's a little tricky to visualise as they are going to be on different levels. The manse is Hornby's Ticklepenny Cottage: who knew how vital it would be to have a house in the range that came with its own bridge?

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I've completed the basic woodworking for this baseboard, although I still need to work out how to brace it from below. Given that four tracks - only two of which are parallel - will turn through 90 degrees beneath it and the vertical clearances are tight, it is not yet at all clear how I'm going to do this. 

Hmmmm...

 

 

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After investigations with a measuring tape, I can comfortably use 25mm beams for bracing purposes, and I think I have some set aside in the barn. 

In other news, I've just placed an order for 700 screws of various sizes and some hot wire foam cutters. I do enjoy the scenery-making aspect of this hobby. And while buying rolling stock can feel like an indulgence, buying tools feels like something much more upright, sober and puritanical... I am bathed in a wholly unearned sense of warm and cosy moral smugness!

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A while ago I started putting together a trainload of loaded PO wagons. The impetus for this was trying to work out what to do with the crate loads that come, bafflingly, as standard on the Hornby lowmac. I needed the lowmacs as match/runner trucks for my girder train...
 

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...so the crates were going spare. I settled on various iterations of the Bachmann 1-plank wagon (H. Lees, in this case), found a supplier of 1mm hemp-coloured thread and got busy with the superglue: 

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At this point, I had the bit firmly between my teeth and I started looking for other loads I had lying around that I could usefully deploy. Another Bachmann 1-plank suited a Hornby Skaledale car:

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...while an LNER 3-plank offered a suitable home for another Skaledale load.

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The discovery of yet another lowmac crate prompted another wagon purchase, but given that the crate was different the wagon could be too. It adds variety, which is no bad thing!

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Having become slightly obsessed, and used up what I had lying around in terms of loads (though not in terms of wagons, as I shall explain in the next post), I cast about on eBay to see what there was to be seen. A resin industrial load that I could amuse myself by painting one rainy evening? Perfect. And, again, a 1-plank wagon would show it off to best advantage: 

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