Heaton Lodge Junction

[Denbridge]

On 17/01/2022 at 13:00, woodenhead said:

Most railway modelling is in a way depressing, unless you are modelling the current day then in some form or other you are harking back to an earlier time in your life where you perceived you were happier.

 

For you it is memories of a sunny day in Dawlish, on Heaton Lodge it is watching trains go by in Yorkshire in 1983.  I have finally found my happy place too - Northwest England in the 1970s - banger blue with DMUs, ideally I'd do Manchester Victoria, Crewe or York but I don't have the space or the skill so I imagine a what if scenario.

I don't know how that works for the many, including me who's modelling depicts periods long before we were born. My own modelling is the 1920's & 30's or earlier and I was born in the early 60's.

[HeatonLodge40]

Busy week this week..

 

After learning from the experience in Wakefield and on the advice from Jonathan the automation guru, I’m going to create a DMU depot at the west end of the fiddle yard.
This is so the 4 car 124 Trans Pennine (currently about to undergo a twin motor conversion) and up to 6 x 2 car units will be able to run around each other when called into operation. This will free up the other dead end siding for loco stabling points especially shunters. 
So before April I’m aiming to have a 10 ft  long DMU depot (multiple Heljan Kits), one of the working 1m high lighting gantries, a coach washing machine and various other bits and bats in a new fully scenic’ed area.

 

Much progress on the gantries. In the end I decided to use brazing for the structural brass angle corners then plastruct for the cross members araldited in. 
There are 4 islands for railway workers to rest whilst climbing the internal ladders. Ladders are also plastruct whilst the islands are wills chequer plate sheets. Fiddly but looking good. The gantry head with 30 odd searchlights will be a challenge!

 

Also started repairing and servicing the wagon fleet. Hell of a lot to do before April.

 

Put 8/9/10th April in your diary by the way especially if you live in the South West! 
Will be publishing details of the next exhibition up imminently! 

[Solderpete]

Looking forward to your next show and seeing the changes.
I hope that the exhibition will be accessible by train.

[HeatonLodge40]

8 hours ago, Solderpete said:

Looking forward to your next show and seeing the changes.
I hope that the exhibition will be accessible by train.

Cheers it most definitely is!

[HeatonLodge40]

Spent all day today weathering and weighting (with lead) 43 new Dapol VEA’s. 
The Railfreight red on the vans appears to be self coloured plastic which is surprising. Even heavily weathered this plastic appearance is still apparent which is a tad disappointing. 
The roofs have all had a taste of Precision paints roof colour which gives them a nice dusty appearance. 
Tomorrow I’ll finish them, oil the axles and wire in a working Dapol brake light in the last van.

This train will then be hauled by a class 40 going forward ..
 

[37260xbhrIS]

Must admit not too impressed with the almost pink on these wagons.....

[hmrspaul]

1 hour ago, HeatonLodge40 said:

Spent all day today weathering and weighting (with lead) 43 new Dapol VEA’s. 
The Railfreight red on the vans appears to be self coloured plastic which is surprising. Even heavily weathered this plastic appearance is still apparent which is a tad disappointing. 

 

 

As the VEA topic shows, and Richard has confirmed, the red is painted, although the plastic is also red. It sounds as if the answer is to paint the inside of the van black. The red in all the colour photos I've seen looks very accurate. They were very bright! Of course Pink is good because BR Railfreight red went pink in a year or three. 

 

Paul

Edited January 22, 2022 by hmrspaul

[HeatonLodge40]

1 hour ago, 37260xbhrIS said:

Must admit not too impressed with the almost pink on these wagons.....

 

1 minute ago, hmrspaul said:

 

As the VEA topic shows, and Richard has confirmed, the red is painted, although the plastic is also red. It sounds as if the answer is to paint the inside of the van black. The red in all the colour photos I've seen looks very accurated. They were very bright! Of course Pink is good because BR Railfreight red went pink in a year or three. 

 

Paul

Good idea painting the interior black. I’ll try that.

Yes agreed when I repainted around 10 EWS VAA Heljan vans into Railfreight livery I used various pinky shades for the Railfreight red.

[Tony Teague]

On 17/01/2022 at 13:00, woodenhead said:

Most railway modelling is in a way depressing, unless you are modelling the current day then in some form or other you are harking back to an earlier time in your life where you perceived you were happier.

 

Not sure I agree with this - if it was, I probably woudn't be doing it!

No, I find it relaxing, pleasurable when watching / playing trains, and I get a sense of achievement when building / fettling / painting things.

[Crepello]

Wow, that'll be an impressive train. Does it represent a particular working? Apologies if I've missed this earlier.

[TheSignalEngineer]

17 minutes ago, Crepello said:

Wow, that'll be an impressive train. Does it represent a particular working? Apologies if I've missed this earlier.

I remember some monster trains of vans coming out of Kineton during the Falklands war. They were brought up to Fenny Compton for handing over to BR. The place was crawling with police at the time.

When it was all over the unused stuff was returned for store and loaded vans left unattended everywhere. One day a 33 and Southern crew turned up at Banbury with a load from Portsmouth. They didn't sign the road beyond and there was no local driver to conduct or loco to take it forward so they uncoupled and headed home. The vans full of assorted munitions were left in Banbury over the weekend completely unguarded.

[HeatonLodge40]

Well that’s all weekend spent underground. As a result I’ve weighted and weathered 42 VEA’s.

 

All I’ve done with these is to spray the sides and chassis with precision dirty black before using a finger wrapped in a paper towel to go downwards repeatedly along the sides. This leaves the remaining paint around the straps and handles.

The roof gets a coat of roof colour and the chassis a dry brush of rust pigment.

Not outstanding but good enough for me.

 

It’s probably too heavy a weathering for a summer layout but this is the Pennines in winter! 

[HeatonLodge40]

Update on the next exhibition..

 

It’s at the Bath & West Showground on April 8/9/10th (Fri/Sat/Sun) in the ‘Showering Pavilion’ 9.30am-5pm daily

http://www.bathandwestshowground.com/venue-hire/exhibition-halls/showering-pavilion

 

This time though we have a few more layouts (as well as HLJ) plus manufacturers such as (of course) Heljan as well as Revolution Trains, DCC Concepts, Ellis Clarke Trains plus most of the traders who provided products for the layout such as Absolute Aspects (colour light signals) Treemendus (trees and other interesting scenic items) Tim Horn (baseboards & frames) the list goes on and awaiting confirmation from others.

 

Nearest railway station is Castle Cary.

(I’m trying to arrange a shuttle bus from here but due to a lack of PSV drivers it may prove difficult but I will post updates regularly.)

Free Parking at venue & Cafe on site 

£12 per person, children 16 & under £8 Kids under 5 free.

 

 

 

[Gilbert]

Excellent - I shall be at NEWGOG with  Gare de Brindille on 9th but will be down on 8th or 10th.

Chris

 

[37114]

Excellent news, well done, will definitely get there.

[Bill Eaton]

Great to hear confirmation of the next showing, I will definitely be there.

[HeatonLodge40]

I’m slowly working my way through servicing and repairing all the wagons including fitting brake lamps on all end ones. So far I’m 3 trains in.

 

This Dapol HAA is having a working Dapol brake lamp fitted using a CR2032 battery holder and a 2.2k resistor which makes the brightness of the lamp about right.

I don’t really care what the underside of a wagon looks like so after snipping off various bits I’ve hot glued the battery holder into place. All in all takes an hour.

I found a cargowaggen in a storage trunk earlier with its brake lamp still lit a month after the exhibition - so the batteries last well!

 

In case you’re wondering, the orange stripe underneath denotes it’s been serviced since the last exhibition.

[HeatonLodge40]

Also..I’m slowly getting higher fitting all the cross struts to the 1m high lighting gantry. 
It’s the top with the searchlights that’s going to take even more time but I’m confident these gantries will look really good. 
 

Cooling Towers next month. 

[47606odin]

On 26/01/2022 at 04:48, HeatonLodge40 said:

I’m slowly working my way through servicing and repairing all the wagons including fitting brake lamps on all end ones. So far I’m 3 trains in.

Tail lamps surely? 

[AY Mod]

1 hour ago, 47606odin said:

Tail lamps surely? 

 

An easy slip for a petrol head. 

[HeatonLodge40]

4 hours ago, AY Mod said:

 

An easy slip for a petrol head. 

So true! Apologies tail lamps !

[HeatonLodge40]

I’ve been rectifying a whole list of issues that the Wakefield exhibition laid bare. 
One of these was the tracks through the dive under tunnels at some points (despite removable scenery) being inaccessible.

This caused a near disaster on the first day as I broke a rail and had to repair it using just a finger and thumb holding the soldering iron. Fortunately I managed it but it was a close call.

 

Anyway out with a circular saw and new access holes are now in place. 
These sort of jobs are an absolute pain.

 

I then decided on a whim to rip out all the track through the tunnels as (don’t ask me why) I’d originally super elevated not just the track going in the tunnels on a curve, but the whole lot underneath too. 
This has been causing alignment issues with track crossing board joints at right angles on top of the super elevation itself. 

Two days later and it’s now flat through the tunnels and gradually super elevates as it comes out. 

Another job done. 

[HeatonLodge40]

I don’t mind admitting I’ve had a almighty crap few days, so this afternoon I spent half hour doing something that would brighten my spirits. 
 

These 7 brand new Heljan 47’s landed last night having been decoder & sound fitted by Lee Edmondson - 5 of which are diagrammed to work just the Trans-Pennines. 
47444 ‘University of Nottingham’ & 47421 Brontes of Haworth are both favourites that I used to see frequently at Heaton Lodge in the ‘80’s so both are included in this magnificent 7 line up.

 

I enjoy weathering locos and stock but one of my faults is I use way too much of everything. Too much superglue too much flux too much paint.
So I’ve limited myself to 3 colours only when weathering locos especially - Dirty Black, Roof dirt & frame dirt.
It’s easy to transform a loco with just these 3 colours so I thought I’d demonstrate how I weathered 47482 with an Iwata Eclipse airbrush earlier which took less than 20 mins ..

(in fact the Iwata Eclipse is a bit like the Class 47 of the airbrush world - a good all rounder)

After trying to fit this monster onto my paint stand the first job is to give the bogies and frames a pretty light dusting of Precision Paints dirty black. Even just doing this makes a huge improvement 

Next staying with dirty black I’ve moved onto the sides picking out the grills, corners of the windows and any raised joins or rivets.  The ledge just below the windscreen gets a light dusting, as does the cab sides.
The only parts of the roof though to get dirty black, is around the exhaust, the bright red roof fans and the immediate area next to them.
 

 

Amazing the transformation with just one colour me thinks. I actually nearly left it at that.
However..next up is the Precision Paints (no affiliation just good paint) roof dirt. Bit of a no brainer this it simply gets dusted over the whole roof (on top of the odd bits of dirty black too). 

 

 

Finally it’s on to frame dirt. Once again a general colour - and this I do try and use a tad more sparingly picking out the bottom of the bogies and tanks - in fact those parts closest to the track. 
 

 

Yep that’s frame dirt going on..

 

 

 

That’s it! All of 18 minutes. 
It’s not going to be worthy of a modelling cup at a exhibition but for a layout set in the winter it looks good enough for me! 
6 more 47’s to go..

 

Newly weathered 47482 sits next to ‘out of the box’ 47587. 

Have a bash yourself it’s good fun 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[TDM]

That has brightened up my evening thanks,  just about to take the plunge and get an airbrush ironically. 
 

It’s the kind of straightforward but professional standard inspiration that can be hard to come by in this hobby (though that is improving). Really appreciate you taking the time to explain it 

[Gallows Close]

Those ‘47’s - Especially the ‘Brontes’ remind me so much of the loco hauled Transpennines. 
 

Line me up a mark 2a TSO next to the loco please - heaters on full and winged headrests a slightly greasy dark grey. Oh, the memories. 
 

best wishes, Chris.