HRH_Dan_Hull's Workbench

[HRH_Dan_Hull]

As I can't find a more general workbench area I thought it best to start here:

First off, as with any layout project I have amassed a mountain of kits and ideas for kit bashes etc but I have yet to make any significant progress on any, I am mainly being held back by a lack of a dremel or similar tool, something which I may add I shall soon be investing in. many n gauge modellers may have noticed that a lot of kits are rather old and the chassis they're desgined to go onto either look wrong or are a pain to convert to DCC or both, my plan is to attempt to fit some engines onto more suitable chassis during my builds, 2 examples of this that I have are the Langley 56xx and Langley LNER L1/3 (GCR 1B) both I believe will look and perform far far better if put on a new Farish Jinty chassis, in fact the spacing and wheel diameter is near spot on the for the 1B. The problem that follows is having to file out the inside of the body to accomdate the coreless motor and it's housing, there is space but it will take some work and some swearing I dare say! I have a few GCR loco kits sat around waiting to be done, aside from the 1B I have a 9N, D and 2x 11F as well as plans to use the body from a union mills 9J as a scratch aid and plans to make a 15 from an american model with some help from a friend who can assit by 3D modelling and 3D prints. As progress starts on all of these I shall of course be updating this thread.

 

For now however I'd like to talk about customisation, if I can I like to make my models unique, the quality of what can be bought off the shelf however is too great to turn ones back on though, but with a little research and a renumber a unique model is easy to achieve. One such example on my layout is an engine that is totally wrong for my layout's prototype but the model is great. The Farish N class in SECR is a strange one, when it came out i did extensive research and unearthed that their choice of number was strange, 810 was a prototype and as such has subtle differences to it's later class mates which were all the same as each other and the same as the Farish model. So I simply found a photo of one of these, then renumbered the model to suit.

 

Yet to be repainted from SECR Grey, 820 is seen here in 1925, 2 years into SR ownership.

The model.

 

Another example of customisation is a couple of rolling stock works in progress. Modelling the GCR is a problem (in SOME scales!) the lack of RTR and kits means added to that that I don't get on well with Brass as a kit material doesn't help either, however being willing to compromise I came up with these representations which were very cheap to do and work quite well I think. As I say they are representations and by no means rivet counter proof, but they can do the job to tide over until perfect examples can be found. First up is a set of '1911 vestibule stock' These were achived by extending the corridors on the old Farish mainline coaches a repaint of the body and roof and adding new metal wheels to give good running quality as well as adding the white wall tyres.

I guess I need to crack on with an 11F to run with them! Rather than a Thompson thing.

 

The other example is a GC loco coal wagon, though the model has only 2 doors unlike the prototypes 3, it still provides a tide over representation.

 

As you may know, transfers are a problem, GC wagon and carriage ones being (as far as I am aware) currently non existant in N scale, the 'G C' on these wagons was achieved by, well I wonder if anyone can guess? I shall give the answer in my next workbench post.