Bethania: 1920-30s Welsh Highland Railway in OO9

[LBSC123]

After what must be about a 10-year hiatus from model railways and the cancelling of a month of travelling as a result of the Coronavirus crisis, I am back. Faced with a month between jobs, the only logical thing to do was to build a model railway. 

 

Background: 

 

During my 'break' from model railways, I've still maintained a keen interest in railways, and have always had a particular soft spot for the narrow gauge lines around Porthmadog, travelling to them for a few days most years. The Welsh Highland Railway has a fantastic history, only opening in its full length in 1923, and only operating over the full length for 13 years. It must have been quite something to travel along the route of the line, through remote and spectacular scenery, up fierce ruling grades behind small engines (evidently I've got a soft spot for the line). 

 

OO9 technology has moved on a great deal during my hiatus, and a reasonable portion of suitable motive power is already or is soon to be in 'ready-to-run' or 3D printed form, which sealed the decision for this to be the line to model. 

 

Designing the layout: 

 

I was keen to build something portable and self-contained, so opted for a roundy-roundy style layout on a 3' 6" by 2' 6" board, the station itself is freelance, taking inspiration from various stations along the line, and with a track plan loosely based on Beddgelert station. 

 

Progress to date: 

 

Over the last two weeks I've cracked on with the layout at a fairly good speed, I'll largely let the photos do the talking in this section but hope to provide more detailed updates on particular areas of progress moving forward. 

 

The baseboards were built with ply and softwood girders and a ply top, to give a lightweight but sturdy base to build the layout on. I've used 11inch set track curves and 12 inch Peco electrofrog points, with Gaugemaster Seep point motors. The wiring has been future-proofed for DCC with droppers to every siding, for when I inevitably succumb to purchasing DCC Sound Baldwin 590. 

 

The scenery has been built mainly out of Celotex, or similar foam, covered with poly-filler for the rocks, and with a mix of filler, sieved soil and paint as a base layer for future layers. The roads and platform areas have been made out of DAS clay and the back scenes are some ID back scenes based on Llanberis cut down to a suitable height. I'm making the trees out of twisted wire, copydex, seafoam and lichen. The buildings are a mix of a SceneCraft engine shed, a Ratio waiting room and a cottage from the Ancorton range. 

 

As you can see there's still a fair amount to do, but hope you find it of interest!

 

Thanks for looking. 

 

 

 

Edited May 5, 2020 by lbsc123
Finally decided on a name for the layout!

[LBSC123]

A few more photos as I don't seem to be able to get more than a few in each message!

[LBSC123]

After letting the sieved  and dried soil and plaster mix harden, progress over the last few days was focussed on colouring the DAS clay for the roads, station and yard area.

 

To achieve what I considered to be a suitable shade I spent much time looking at black and white photographs of Beddgelert station as well as colour pictures of the Ffestiniog from the 1950s and 1960s.  I am still not 100 per cent happy with the colours but they should provide a good base for further weathering later down the line. 

The Yard area was the first area I experimented with painting, seen here after the first base coat and re-darkening of the track.

After a few more washes I was happy with the general look so proceeded to paint the rest of the DAS. 
 

I started with a grey emulsion base coat, using B&Q tester points Chris Nevard style. I covered this with various acrylic mixes diluted down to achieve the appropriate colour and shade for different areas, for example ensuring that the ground was darker nearer the running lines and in the shed and yard area. After this had dried, I went back over the rails with a dry brush to pick out the colour of the rusty rails. 

The yard and road were done, fairly happy with how they look but need to improve my camera work! 
 

Next, I set to work on the rock faces. These were made from Celotex and covered in filler, I used the 'leopard spotting' technique using various shades of greys to slowly build up the colour on these. I still think these might need some more work but again they provide a good base layer of colour. I also added some crushed slate to help tie this in with the track and ballast. 

The rock faces in the cutting after their first leopard spotting. 

Finally, I added some 'scree' to the embankment sides of the railway, this appeared in several photographs I'd seen of the WHR and was keen to capture this effect on the model. I will go over this with static grass etc, so hopefully, it'll appear more subtle once complete. This was done by mixing crushed up slate of various sizes and sieved and dried soil, held in place with water and then glued down with diluted PVA. 

The rocks in the cutting after being bedded in with crushed slate and scree mix. The tree on the left is an experiment with twisted wire trees.  The ones on the left just bits of Heather bush, and will undergo the full scenic process in due course. 

The cuttings with scree mix applied, this will be covered with static grass and will hopefully be quite a subtle effect. 

The next job is to bed in the drystone walls and finish the trees!

Edited April 16, 2020 by lbsc123

[Billy Boy]

Hi,

 

I'm enjoying reading about the progress on your new layout.  It is really starting to take shape!

 

I particularly like the backscene.  Are these your own photo's or did you buy them?  If it is the latter, please can you confirm where?

 

Many thanks,

 

Billy Boy

[2750Papyrus]

Enjoying reading about  your new railway.  I have always found the WHR fascinating and, as a child, had a print made of a photo my Dad took of Russel at Beddgelert six months before he and mum got married in 1935. 

 

Though progress on my main layout is painfully slow, I have thought about a small roundy-round which would fit under a double bed.  590, bug-boxes, bow siders and a forthcoming small England are proving very tempting, and I shall be very interested to see how your layout develops.

[LBSC123]

2 hours ago, Billy Boy said:

Hi,

 

I'm enjoying reading about the progress on your new layout.  It is really starting to take shape!

 

I particularly like the backscene.  Are these your own photo's or did you buy them?  If it is the latter, please can you confirm where?

 

Many thanks,

 

Billy Boy

Hi Billy Boy, many thanks for the comment. The backscene is an ID backscene of Llanberis mountains which I purchased here (no link other than being a happy customer).

It is 15" high, which is much taller than my backscene at 8" but I've cut, (I think) a 2" strip off the bottom and a 4" off the top, I still need to trim the top down neatly but the highest mountains fit in OK. 
 

2 hours ago, 2750Papyrus said:

Enjoying reading about  your new railway.  I have always found the WHR fascinating and, as a child, had a print made of a photo my Dad took of Russel at Beddgelert six months before he and mum got married in 1935. 

 

Though progress on my main layout is painfully slow, I have thought about a small roundy-round which would fit under a double bed.  590, bug-boxes, bow siders and a forthcoming small England are proving very tempting, and I shall be very interested to see how your layout develops.

Thanks for the kind words, that sounds like a lovely story,  I would love to see the photo if you still had it.

This layout sounds like a fairly similar specification to what you list, It's designed to fit under a double bed and is 3' 6" by 2' 6". From a personal perspective I'd recommend a bit more on the width if you can afford to, I'm using set-track curves from a ROCO starter set which work out at 11" radius and 12" Peco points, where as Peco OO9 set track points are 9". 

I managed to pick up a plain black 590 and am eyeing up some bug boxes etc too. I've also seen you can get a 3D printed body of Russell to fit a Roco outside framed 0-6-0t, which I happened to get in the starter set I picked up! However, for now I'm focussing on the scenery and getting the layout to some sort of stage of completion. 

 

 

[LBSC123]

Today's progress has been focussed on getting the drystone walls into place. With the benefit of hindsight, I possibly should've done this before getting too carried away with the scenery on the embankments.

 

After a bit of research, I decided to get some drystone walls of eBay here (again no connection other than being a happy customer). They seemed cheap enough and of reasonable quality. 

 

Once they arrived I offered them up around the road and cottage, I did consider putting them around the tops of the embankments but when looking at photographs of the WHR it was clear that they used a wire and post style fencing when it was constructed, so I have some of this on order to for the embankment tops. 

Drystone walls loosely offered up in place prior to gluing. 

 

Checking clearances with two (non period) cars 

 

I offered the sections up loosely and then once I was happy with them stuck them down with PVA glue. 

 

Once dried, I filled the gaps with the road and between the sections I used Polly filler, to get a smooth finish on this, I used a wet paper brush to avoid it sinking into the drystone wall detail. some of the excess water has seeped into the surrounding scenery, so this will need some degree of rectification tomorrow. 

 

The gaps now filled with polly filler, the collateral damage from this will be tidied up tomorrow. 

 

The next job will be to paint this a slate colour and bed this into the surrounding scenery. 

 

 

 

 

[LBSC123]

This morning's job was to paint the drystone walls into a more appropriate granite/slate colour to tie these in with the other buildings and rectify some of the collateral damage to the scenery. 

 

This was done with a few watered-down washes of various emulsion and acrylic grey paint mixes, from afar they look a lot better, although the rather cruel close up reveals the gaps to still be somewhat visible.

 

I'll go back over these with a finer brush to darken the filler down, and use some DAS clay in some of the worse gaps, and possibly strategically use some bushes and static grass to hide any remaining gaps, ditto for the gap between the road and the floor. 

 

The drystone walling looked much better after a few washes with grey paint. 

 

However, this close up still highlights the additional work required to better hide the joints in the walling.

 

The next job I turned to was the trees. As mentioned before, these were produced with the twisted wire technique, covered in Copydex and then filler and painted. If I end up making another I'll do a better step by step for this, I then used Copydex to stick lichen in place for the smaller branches, before spraying the whole set-up with some matt browny/grey paint. 

 

The tree armatures after gluing on the lichen. 

 

After dulling these down with grey/brown paint.

 

The finished result ( I will trim some of the lichen into shape to remove any of the stray branches).

 

The next job will be to pick out the colours of the trunk with a dry brush and put various flocks on the top to represent leaves with some spray adhesive. I'm currently waiting for the latter to arrive so won't have any more progress on this front until after the weekend. 

 

After the trees had dried I couldn't resist putting them on the layout to see how they looked. 

 

 

The next job is to finish the cottage and some smaller bits of ground terrain that are unfinished. 

 

 

[LBSC123]

Progress over the last few days has been somewhat slowed waiting for parts in the post, namely the spray mount glue which I need to finish the trees before attaching them to the layout, after this, I'll make a start on the grass and undergrowth. 

 

In the meantime I've been doing a few odd jobs around the railway which were outstanding, such as finishing the Ancorton Cottage, if I do say so myself it looks the part and fits in with the rest of the layout, card isn't my favourite material to build with (the kit is a wooden frame with card details, all laser cut), but I think it's come out rather well. It was painted with a mix of emulsion and acrylic paint. I added some glazing to the windows using some acetate, which didn't come with the kit. In time I'll glue this down and bed it into the rest of the scenery. 

The completed cottage looks right at home on the layout. 

 

Alongside this, I finally took the plunge and cut the excess back scene off, after some experimentation, with a sharp Stanley knife, I opted to use some very sharp but fine scissors to get a neat cut. I left a few millimetres on the top which I will glue to the top of the back scene. I also fitted some wooden supports at either corner to keep the back scene square with the boards. 

 

I also decided the layout could do with another tree, which I built over the last few days (I can provide some more detailed step by steps if anyone is interested). 

 

This tree (although not yet finished) was made from the twisted wire technique over the last few days. 

 

Finally, I got some laser cut lineside fencing in the post, so after painting, I drilled holes into the scenery and glued these into place. I've got some suitable 0.2mm wire to fit in the holes. These are slightly coarser than I would've liked, but I think they'll look okay once blended into the scenery. 

Post and wire fence will blend into the scenery nicely once the static grass has been applied. 

 

Hopefully, tomorrow will bring the spray mount and then I can get cracking with the trees and static grass. 

 

 

 

[LBSC123]

The spray mount still hasn't arrived and so I've been rather limited on what I can do over the last few days. 

 

One of the things I did decide to do was to attack the weathered and ballasted track and fit some magnets between the sleepers to operate Greenwich couplings, theoretically allowing hands-free coupling (very theoretically at this stage, I haven't got my stock equipped with these couplings yet). 

 

This was a bit of a late addition to the layout, and I hadn't planned to fit magnets into the track (otherwise I would've done it at a much earlier stage). I purchased the magnets, Greenwich coupling height gauge from Dundas models, however when they arrived it became clear that I would have to cut a sleeper to get the magnet into place, this rather daunted me and so I looked for another option. 

 

Some internet research led me to 'Isle Ornsay', a fantastic OO9 layout which puts mine to shame. The builder used similar powered square magnets which fit between the gaps in the sleepers, as seen here. Although the video is now 9 years old you can still obtain the same magnets which were duly ordered. 

Alternative magnets as they arrived, these fit perfectly between the sleepers in OO9 track. 

 

I did a few trials at getting the ballast, clay and cork out of the gap between the sleepers on a test piece of track and decided to mount the attack on the main layout with a small flat pointed screwdriver.

The hole in the track ready to accept the uncoupling magnet.

 

I vacuumed the mess up and then used PVA glue to hold the magnets in place, using the height gauge to ensure the magnet was at the correct depth. Once this has dried I'll blend these into the surrounding trackbed using the same method of acrylic paints as I did to weather the track. 

 

Checking the magnet height with the etched gauge. 

 

 

Magnets all glued into place, there are also two in the goods siding. All will be weathered into the surrounding track once the glue has dried.  

 

One final job I completed was fitting a plywood facia to the front of the baseboard, this will be tied in with the hills at the front of the layout and then painted in due course. 

Plywood facia fitted to the front of the layout. 

 

 

 

[LBSC123]

Had a bit of a re-think and concluded that fitting the trees in place before the static grass wasn't a very sensible idea, so decided to get cracking on the grass. Before this I squared off the gap between the facia and the existing terrain using a rather horrible mix of PVA, sifted and dried soil, paint and tile cement, this is a bit of a horrible mixture but provides a good soil like base. With this dry, it was finally time for.....

 

The Grass!

I really liked the look that static grass gives, but have hitherto never been able to justify purchasing a static grass applicator, I couldn't really justify an expensive one for a layout with a scenic area of about 6 foot, so decided to go for a cheap ex-fly swatter one, for about £15 on eBay. To be honest, this wasn't that good and made the job harder than it needed to be, but I couldn't justify an alternative.

 

I read a few threads and watched plenty of videos on Youtube about the best way to proceed. If you want to see a professional do it, I watched this video, no link other than a satisfied follower of the video!

 

I used a mix of 2.5mm Gaugemaster summer, along with 2mm spring (In practice very similar to the Gaugemaster summer), 4mm summer, autumn, and 6mm meadow and winter grass, all from WWS, I bought this via their eBay site which meant you could get various shades and lengths without getting huge quantities of the stuff. 

 

I first started with a mix of the 2mm fibres and a few 4mm thrown to add variety), this was applied to a thin skim of PVA glue, dotted around most of the area I wanted to cover.

PVA dotted into place. 
 

After the 2mm fibres were applied (before vacuuming off).

 

I found that it was necessary to go back over the area with the static applicator after applying the grass without the dispenser in place to help get the grass to stand vertically.

 

 The sock helped catch the fibres so they could then be reused, reducing waste. 

 

Using an old (clean) sock, I then hoovered the excess off, which further helped the grass stand vertically. I then went back over this once more with the applicator with no fibres in, to pull the strands up even more.  

 

 I then dribbled some 50/50 water and PVA mix into selected areas of the piece I was working on. Depending on the effect I was going for, this was then covered with a mix of 4mm fibres, with a few 6mm thrown in, and the above process repeated. I then repeated this process for a mix of 6mm fibres. 

50/50 PVA mix applied in areas I wanted the second layer to fix to. 

 

After a layer of summer and autumn 4mm fibres. 

 

Next was the 6mm meadow and dead grass.

 

Finally, I used a pencil to gently ruffle up the grass into natural tufts, to avoid it looking too uniform and to create natural tufts. 

 

I'm pretty happy with the result!

 

 

Edited April 23, 2020 by lbsc123

[LBSC123]

Got a bit carried away with modelling over the last few days, so what follows is a well overdue update.

 

After finishing the static grass at the back of the layout, I went over the cutting sides with some Woodland Scenics fine leaf foliage, to represent bramble and gorse bushes, and the general overgrown look of a downtrodden railway. 

Next, I turned my attention to the fences. Using some 0.2mm silver coated wire I carefully threaded through each of the holes in the laser cut fence posts. I super glued these at one end, left this to dry and then pulled them taught and super glued them at the other end, cutting off the excess afterwards. I am glad I've only got about 2 feet of fencing on my layout as this job made my eyes want to explode!

 

After this, I turned my attention to the trees. The spray mount finally arrived and so I was able to set to work. I carefully sprayed the lichen with the glue, being careful to avoid the trunk, I then covered this with Woodland Scenics coarse turf, and Gaugemaster foliage and leaf cover, with a bit of Javis scatter for the highlights. I sealed the whole lot with hairspray. For the trees over the cutting, I used some felt type stuff sprayed brown and repeated the above process. 

 

The tree armature prior to being glued

 

Tree covered with spray mount. 

 

Coarse turf and other products being applied.

 

 I'm rather pleased with how these have come out and thought the lichen is a good way of making wire trees a lot simpler to make. 

 

The next day I planted the trees on the layout. The keen-eyed person may have noticed I've spread out the roots at the bottom, so couldn't go down the traditional method of drilling a hole to locate the tree into the landscape. Instead, I mixed up a batch of soil, PVA, poly filler and paint, and applied a dollop of this where I wanted the tree to go (I thankfully had the foresight to leave these areas free of static grass when doing the rest of the static grass). I then sprinkled sieved soil over this to ensure a matt finish. I unfortunately didn't take any picutres of this as I was too focussed in getting the trees into situ. 

 

After this, I carefully applied static grass to blend it in with surrounding scenery. 

 

This is the state of play at the moment: 

 

 

 

 

[otty]

Looking great 

 

Baz

[LBSC123]

Today I turned my attention to the water tower. 

 

I was rather unhappy with the water tower I'd currently got on the layout, which was based on the Talyllyn one at Dolgoch and from my last foray into OO9 modelling many years ago. It was too small and looked like the one from the Talyllyn so I wanted to improve this. 

 

I managed to source a resin replacement from Any scale models for a couple of quid, which seemed to be more suitable. I offered it up and it was a vast improvement. To fit it, I had to dig out a bit of the DAS base. 

 

Water tower as supplied. 

 

Turning to my attention to the water tower, I decided to modify the tank. As supplied the tower came with a bent piece of copper wire for the outlet pipe, this didn't look right and was coming out of the wrong side for my application. I filled the existing hole and drilled a new one in another side. I then fashioned up a new beefier outlet out of a thinker bit of copper wire, using a cotton bud tube flattened with a soldering iron at the bottom I made the bag that would hang from this.

 

New hole, tank outlet and bag. 

 

I then used another thinner piece of wire to be the water valve handle.  I glued this in place and then painted up the water tower. I painted the tank first with a matt rust colour, and then went over this with a thinner wash of black, to give a slightly rusty colour to the paint. 

 

After the first coat of paint. 

 

After the second coat of paint.

 

I then glued this into place and finished the shed scenery, the ash piles in front were made with DAS clay, covered with real ash out of a coal fireplace, sieved to a fine dust, and given a few thin washes of paint to dull it down. The picture is slightly harsh, as the glue and paint aren't quite dry and it's under artificial light, but thought I'd show it anyway. 

Water tower now fitted and scenery in the surrounding area completed. 

[LBSC123]

This morning I set to work on creating some facilities for the shipment of goods from the station. 

 

A number of Nantmor and Ynysfor Halt both used grounded ex Ffestiniog Railway 4 wheel coach bodies as makeshift goods facilities so I decided to replicate this. 

 

Checking clearances between the goods shed and the siding 

 

I had an old Ffestiniog and Blanaeu style coach from my previous foray into OO9 modelling which I decided to re-paint and fit to the layout. I changed the gloss maroon for matt grey/black, replaced the glazing and fitted a new roof made from some thick cardboard. I chopped off the running gear and mounted this on a few suitably painted match sticks, before glueing this in and bedding it in with weeds and static grass. 

 

The goods shed after being bedded into the scenery. 

 

I got a bit carried away so there aren't many pictures of construction, but this is what the layout looks like now. 

 

[LBSC123]

Another detailing job I needed to do was a small pile of coal for the siding. Looking at archival photographs, it didn't appear that any of the stations had coal staithes, and instead stacked the coal in a pile using larger lumps at the edge to keep it from falling over or being stolen. 

 

I didn't envisage there being much coal traffic at this station, so build a former for the pile roughly equivalent to the size of one 4 ton WHR coal truck, which would've been the minimum load coming to a station like this. The former was shaped out of DAS clay, I then painted this black and glued it in place, before glueing some crushed up coal on the former and the surrounding yard area. I then weathered this into the surrounding area with a few washes of matt black paint. Eventually, I intend to have some figures and a small lorry or horse and cart loading up the coal. 

 

It's quite hard to photograph coal as it's so dark, but here's the coal stack fitted at the end of the siding (some lighter patches as the glue is still wet). 

 

 

I also build up a coal stage for the engine shed. I again took inspiration from the WHR and the FR, and using some match sticks knocked up something roughly the size of an old wagon chassis. I then painted and weathered this and glued it into the layout, bedding it in with some sieved coal and ash around the base. 

 

Newly fitted coaling stage for the shed area. 

 

You may notice in the above photos I've also put some grass tufts around the running line to give it a more run down look. 

Edited April 29, 2020 by lbsc123

[LBSC123]

Not much progress today as I need to make an order for some detailing parts, such as vehicles, figures, animals and tools. So instead, I decided to get out some of the stock I've got for the layout and clean it up, most of this bar the Baldwin was built about 10-15 years ago, and in places needs a bit of tidying up and dusting. 

 

 I'll make a workbench thread soon for these improvements and building other suitable stock. But for now, I didn't think this looked too out of place.

 

The Baldwin departs from the station with a two coach train made up of an Ex NWNGR Ashbury coach and Ffestiniog Railway Bogie Brake van No.10. 

[TangoOscarMike]

Towards the right hand side there are creases in the backscene. There's no denying it.

 

But over on the left, with the hills, I'm finding the backscene weirdly compelling. I know it's not real, but part of my brain is insisting that the foreground is blended seamlessly with the background. Well done!

 

[LBSC123]

On 30/04/2020 at 22:59, TangoOscarMike said:

Towards the right hand side there are creases in the backscene. There's no denying it.

 

But over on the left, with the hills, I'm finding the backscene weirdly compelling. I know it's not real, but part of my brain is insisting that the foreground is blended seamlessly with the background. Well done!

 

 

Thanks, TangoOscarMike! The creases don't look amazing in that light but will be a lot less obtrusive when I've fitted the layout lighting (which is the next job). 

 

There's not been much progress to report over the last few days as I've been stuck waiting for bits. A package arrived yesterday enabling me to fit a loop at the rear of the layout to increase operational flexibility. 

 

 

I also got a few Worsley Works etched brass scratch aid coach etches to be cracking along with. I also received some Dundas Models WHR wagons, which aren't pictured. I'll make a start on these over the coming days, is it worth making a workbench thread or carry on posting the stuff in here? 

 

 

I also finally settled on a name for the layout which is 'Bethania' this is a small collection of houses just up the Afon Glaslyn from Beddgelert, it was also at the foot of the Incline to the tramway from the South Snowdon slate works. It doesn't take too much modellers licence to imagine that the Porthmadog, Beddgelert and South Snowdon Railway might have got a bit closer to finishing the line prior to the war, and had the slate workings been more expansive the railway could've easily been extended to meet them at the foot of the incline. 

 

[LBSC123]

Today I made some progress on finishing the landscaping, so I could have a good hoover up and then get some trains running.

 

One of the outstanding jobs was to add some leaf fall under the trees, to do this I picked up a few dry dead leaves from the garden and put them in a small blender, until they were about the size of sawdust scatter. I then sprinkled this under the trees and held this in place with some hair spray. I also added some fallen branches in the woodland at the rear which are just small bits of heather bush.

 

Leaf fall under trees. 
 

I wired up the isolation for the loop at the rear of the layout and then tested the track. 
 

I then made a start on some Dundas Models plastic kits for the layout, including two WHR 4 ton open wagons, and a ex Ffestiniog Railway Quarrymens coach. This has been modified to be WHR brake van No. 4, which was a duel braked van used between 1923-27 on the line.

Baldwin 590 offered up with WHR open wagons as part of a freight train  

 

End windows were carefully drilled and cut into the ends of the Quarrymens coach 

 

The principle differences being the fitting of windows into the ends of the coach. To do this I carefully drilled and filed holes to the right size, it’s not perfect but I’m fairly happy at what is my first attempt at hacking around with plastic kits. I’ll paint these up and add couplings in due course.  

[LBSC123]

Over the last few days, I have managed to get a bit more done on the layout and stock. 

 

I have been working on the 3D printed body of Russell in cut-down condition. This was a 3D printed model from ROBEX Models on Shapeways. I opted to get the most expensive and smooth print you could get called 'smoothest detailed plastic'. This arrived and I left it to soak for a few hours in white spirit to remove any of the printing residue. 

 

The Shapeways body as it arrived. 

 

3D print lines are very visible before any sanding. 

 

After soaking in white spirit and some sanding with the glass fibre brush

 

I then carefully went over the remaining rough surfaces with a glass fibre brush to help smooth these down and then applied a coat of primer. I'll have to repeat this process for some of the remaining ridges on the tank sides. 

 

Russell after the first coat of primer, you can still see some printing lines in the tank side. 

 

For some reason this side doesn't seem so bad. 

 

 

Finally, I have been working on the lighting gantry, this is constructed from some Aluminium L angle, bolted and riveted together. In due course, I'll add a wooden facia on the top and paint this all matt black.

Aluminium L-angle frame for the LED layout lights. 

[LBSC123]

I've spent a bit more time over the last few days on Russell. I flatted back the tanks with a glass fibre brush and some 400 grit wet and dry, then applied two more coats of primer and flatted it back with more 400 grit until I was happy about the ridges in the tanks. In total, it took 4 coats of primer. 

 

Next, I fitted the handrails at the top of the smokebox, and the smokebox dart, the former were obtained from Eileen's emporium and the latter from RT models.

 

This somewhat cruel closeup shows some ridges still evident from the printing process, I went back over these with 400 grit after taking the photo. 

 

After this, I spent some time knocking up the steam pipes and regulator linkage, the sanding linkage and injector control on the top of the boiler out of some scrap plastic and wire. Next, I need to fit the handrails in the cab and source some vacuum pipes. After I've fitted the handrails in the cab it'll be ready for topcoat. It's far from perfect but I'm pretty pleased with how my first attempt at building up a 3D printed model has gone. 

 

Russell with detailing on the top of the boiler. 

 

Finally, I also assembled some Greenwich couplings and fitted them to the wagons I built and am refurbishing.

 

Greenwich couplings after assembly. 

 

Wagons fitted with Greenwich couplings

[JZ]

On 10/05/2020 at 15:28, lbsc123 said:

Over the last few days, I have managed to get a bit more done on the layout and stock. 

 

I have been working on the 3D printed body of Russell in cut-down condition. This was a 3D printed model from ROBEX Models on Shapeways. I opted to get the most expensive and smooth print you could get called 'smoothest detailed plastic'. This arrived and I left it to soak for a few hours in white spirit to remove any of the printing residue. 

 

The Shapeways body as it arrived. 

 

I've bought a couple of things from Shapeways in Smooth fine detail plastic and they have had smoother finish than this, with no rubbing down at all.

[LBSC123]

On 11/05/2020 at 20:36, JZ said:

I've bought a couple of things from Shapeways in Smooth fine detail plastic and they have had smoother finish than this, with no rubbing down at all.

 

This is interesting, not sure it was worth splashing out on the most expensive print! One to remember for the future...

[JZ]

15 hours ago, lbsc123 said:

 

This is interesting, not sure it was worth splashing out on the most expensive print! One to remember for the future...

Certainly don't get the cheapest, unless that is all that is available. I've had it for passenger car trucks and it's quite rough, however, they barely show. This is my Tweetsie (East Tennessee & Western North Carolina RR) caboose in Smooth Fine Detail. The only place it is a little rough, is around the widows.

PS. The planking doesn't show very well in this photo, but looks OK in naturel light.