S7 scratch building

[airnimal]

Simon, thank you for your kind words.  I would dearly love to build a diorama or small layout to place my models in, but there never seems to be enough time. I thought being retired it would be a simple task just to knock up a small test track to push a few wagons around but I hadn't figured into the mix my other half involvements in all things grandchildren. 

We agreed that we would have them one day a week to save on nursery fees. Silly me assumed that they would come here and sit and play with a few toys on the floor without much trouble.  My wifes idea is we would take them everywhere like the zoo, cinema, play centres etc etc. If I mention that she is trying to do to much all I get is that she missed out as a child and her grandchildren will not. In theory it is one day a week but in practice it is far more often because of operational needs and crises.

I blame the media and advertising for telling us we have to do everything in our power to fill there little lives to the max. Our grandsons went to a party on Sunday which cost for their parents over £800. This was for children aged 4. 

I love my grandchildren the same as everyone but it appears the jelly and a balloon to go home with is not enough these days. If I say anything I am made out to be a grumpy old sod who needs to get with it.

Over the last six months I have decorated the kitchen, bathroom and 2 bedrooms and she is now eyeing up the No 3 bedroom before our daughter comes here in June.

On top of this my wife likes to farm me out to do all sorts of jobs for her friends and neighbour's.  

I built our staircase with chrome and polished wood banisters including glass panels. This was because the old wood one was getting past it and becoming unsafe. I didn't want to spent 3 days doing it but needs dictated it. One of my wife's friends has seen it and has told me I can do the same at her house which is brand new even though she has more than enough money to pay a top builder to come in and do it for her.

Rant over ! Brake vans to finish.

 

 

Edited March 1, 2022 by airnimal

[Simond]

Michael

 

there's a simple answer to the neighbour who wants you to do her staircase.  Give her a quotation.  Why  the hell should you be expected to do it for free.

 

Two possible outcomes; 

               it'll be cheaper for her to go to the top dollar builder up the road. 

   or

               it'll be enough to cover the costs, give you some pocket money, and to ensure your profits are sufficient to pay a top loco builder to build you the loco of your dreams

 

depends whether you want to do it or not.

 

good luck

Simon

[rocor]

Being involuntary conscripted into doing chores, beyond those which you gladly do on behalf of your own family, does seem to be a somewhat presumptuous demand upon your free time.    

[Caley Jim]

1 hour ago, Simond said:

Michael

 

there's a simple answer to the neighbour who wants you to do her staircase.  Give her a quotation.  Why  the hell should you be expected to do it for free. 

The other alternative is when they ask when you'll be free to do it you tell them 'Never. I'm always very expensive.' 

 

Jim

[Regularity]

2 hours ago, Caley Jim said:

The other alternative is when they ask when you'll be free to do it you tell them 'Never. I'm always very expensive.' 

I’ve asked you this before, I think, but I am being very specific about the locality as in my experience Scots are very generous, but are you absolutely certain there isn’t something if the “Fife miser” in your dna…?

[Regularity]

6 hours ago, airnimal said:

Rant over ! Brake vans to finish.

Oh, they are nice!

[Simond]

I happily do stuff for my immediate neighbours, because we are blessed with the kind of folks who happily do stuff for us and for others, and it’s nice.  
 

There are other neighbours for whom, as a Northern pal once said “ah wouldn’t cross th’ road t’ piss in ‘is ear if ‘is brain were on fire”.

 

but I doubt I’d be building a staircase, even for the nice ones…!

[Caley Jim]

1 hour ago, Regularity said:

I’ve asked you this before, I think, but I am being very specific about the locality as in my experience Scots are very generous, but are you absolutely certain there isn’t something if the “Fife miser” in your dna…?

It's just  a flippant response I make due to my twisted sense of humour.  If anyone asks if I'm free to do something or go somewhere on a certain day, my response is usually, 'No, I'm very expensive, but I could give you special rates!'  

 

Like @Simond, I'm only too happy to help out neighbours.  The elderly lady and her two daughters who live next door handed me in a bottle of wine at the weekend for clearing the snow for them over the winter.  As I said to them, 'It's what neighbours do!'.

 

Building a staircase (or any other work of that nature) is way outside my abilities however.

 

Jim

[Northroader]

7 minutes ago, Caley Jim said:

'It'sh what neighboursh do! (hic!)

Jim

 

[Caley Jim]

Which reminds me........

 

Jim  

[airnimal]

I have to apologise to everyone on here because I used the wrong term for something I claimed to have done. I didn't make the staircase, but the staircase panels, handrails and all the uprights. I didn't mean to make out that I built the stairs but all the parts still had to be made strong and safe. The thought any of person falling through a glass panel and and down the stairs is quite alarming.  It is far stronger than the ones that were previously there. 

 

A new magazine from the LNWR society came today with a fabulous centre fold picture of Warwick road coal depot.  The line of wagons includes 3 LNWR wagons with different loads which is invaluable for modelling. The interior shots clearly indicate that the planks on the inside do not have a chamfer like the outside. Also the coach bolts are virtually invisible and probably counter sunk into the wood.

One wagon is labelled coal wagon but is carrying clay pipes packed in straw while another is carrying something like sand or soil. The colours of the wood are similar on 2 of them with the third looks like lime or other dry powder. All 3 are similar to my model but from different diagrams. All are weathered with faded markings and chalk destinations scribbled on.

 

My wife went yesterday to a retail park to buy the grandchildren some more clothes, so I went with her and called into my old work place. I usually have Christmas dinner with them but with covid this hasn't happened for the past 2 years.  What a change !   2 of the highly skilled staff have gone, one because he was 75 and just had a triple heart bypass and the other because he just had a large inheritance.  

So there was only the bosses daughter and one young skilled lad who was holding the fort. I got him the job when his mother was working with my youngest daughter and ask if she knew anyone was looking for a skilled tool maker. He had been made redundant from a large engineering company just after he finished his apprenticeship. 

Would you like to come back and work for us again was not something I was expecting.  Choose your own hours for as many days as you like but it's not going to happen.  It was good to see them but I have no desire to work for a living again. I wonder if they can keep going in a highly specialised field with so little staff and bulging order books.

 

 

[airnimal]

After being offered my old job back again, I was offered another similar position from one of my cycling friends. I have known him for many years and I knew he ran the family engineering firm after his father died.  But like my old firm his workforce is down to just him and one other cycling friend. When I told him about being offered my old job back he said I could go and work for him instead  !

And them my wife who retired last Christmas was offered a job from a friend of hers. This time it was full time but on a fabulous salary.  She was tempted by the money but on reflection decided that at her age she didn't need the hassle.  It appears that us old folk are still wanted . 

I went out on my bike last week for the first time since my operation and did just short of 40 miles. 

I was very pleased that it didn't cause me any discomfort which is a good sign for the future. 

 

Not much in the way of model making just at present but I keep doing little bits. I revisited one of my old wagons and repainted the interior. I am still not happy with my interpretation of the colour of wood. I don't have a artist's eye to these things.  Compare this one to another I made before which has a more cream colour. 

I also added the retaining straps to the bottom of the W-irons on the Exactoscale chassis that I made awhile ago.

[Simond]

I’d be very happy if I could reliably paint plastic to look as much like wood as that does!

[magmouse]

Painting anything to look like old wood is just the hardest thing. You’ve done really well with this. If anything, I would suggest applying a few more layers of lighter and darker layers of light washes and dry brushing. The times when I feel I have made some progress with this, it’s been by keeping on fiddling around with it, gradually getting less dissatisfied. At some point, the descending curve of patience meets the (very slightly) rising curve of satisfaction, and I stop. I can’t call it a method, but it occasionally produces results that are OK.

 

Nick.

[airnimal]

 I wasn't going to start anything until I had finished all my other wagons but the photograph in the latest LNWR journal featuring a Dia 53 coal wagon is just to good to ignore.  Besides the sun has come out and it feels like spring once again, even the Bluetits are in our bird box. I think this is going to be a long build because of all the other jobs and visiting we have to do. I am sure my better half has many  things that I don't know about pencilled in for me without me knowing. 

 

So the floor has been marked out with the bottom doors including the counter sunk holes for the fixing bolts. The floor has been cut slightly over long to be trimmed back later. I am struggling to get everything evenly marked out. The plank width on the bottom doors is not as consistent as I would have liked. 

 

 

[airnimal]

Not a lot happening here. Household chores and car related subjects are at the forefront of life at present. I think this is as far as it's going to go for a few weeks because of life's little jobs that were so straight forward years ago before the internet.  Changing insurance was once a quick visit to a broker that would do the job for you but now it's spend hours on the I-pad. And if you need to phone up to query anything  it's 20 minutes of cr*p music at premium rate. Sorry for the rant !  I have joined the grumpy old man's club. 

 

Headstock and solebar's fixed but not trimmed to size just yet but the wheels have been installed.  

[airnimal]

Out yesterday, I came across some old wood on a jetty. With it being well worn I took a couple of photographs to compare it to what I have being trying to achieve with my wagons. I think I don't have enough grey in my models but I am more than happy with the texture.  The last photograph clearly has some newer planks with less grain.

 

 

 

 

Edited April 9, 2022 by airnimal
New photographs

[airnimal]

Like everyone else I am delighted to have RM web back. 

I am not sure how many of photographs have disappeared from my ramblings so I have added some old ones from the past. I have included a few of my favourite models. 

[Poggy1165]

They are all excellent but I particularly adore the Richard Evans one, which would (cough) look good behind an MS&LR outside framed 0-6-0.

 

On the question of being conscripted into doing stuff, you may need to go on an assertiveness course. Because overload can lead to issues, and you really do not want to go there. (My personal brand of assertiveness is very simple - I have learned to say 'no' to almost everything.) Life is too short and there are not as many days left as one would like.

[airnimal]

Thanks. I am sure all the requests that I am asked to do will be declined with a polite smile. 

 

 I think this would be a better wagon to go with a MS&LR outside framed 0-6-0.

[airnimal]

There has not been a lot of activity of late because I have been in Australia with my better half for the past 5 weeks seeing our new granddaughter and the rest of the clan. 

 

Now I'm back I need a plan to sort out my workshop and get something moving on a diorama or layout. I could really do with a cull of railway books and magazines and dispose of surplus bits that I am never going to use.  I keep wondering if a total reorganise would be better to give me more room.

I suppose I am a bit of a hoarder like most modellers. 

 

Because the length of time I have had away from the workbench I am finding it hard to get going again.  So I look around to see if if there was anything I could play with that's not to taxing and came across this old building that never got finished because i was unhappy with the painting.  I have played around with some new paintwork with is an improvement but it still doesn't satisfy me. I have cut out a crude window frame which looks awful but it not been glued in place so it can be replaced with ease. 

[Coal Tank]

Hi Mike, Im in OZ at the moment 

[airnimal]

I went to the S7 meeting in Albury at the weekend which was quite a distance to travel for a small show but after our Australia holiday I was up to chat about railways again and see friends.  It proved valuable in several ways because I took some photographs with me from the Glegg St goods yard in Oldham.

Taking with Tony Watts we worked out the lettering on one of the private owner wagons that I had been puzzling over for some time. This was a private owner belonging to Park Lane in Wigan which Tony knows a lot about but the photograph isn't very clear and the letters on the top plank was a mystery.  But with the help of Tony and a new book on traffic patterns on the L&Y we believe the lettering reads Bryn which is where the colliery was located. 

Also with fresh eyes we believe that this other private owner wagon belonging to Joel Carrington has sloping insides like a hopper wagon. I had looked many times at this and because it has a tarpaulin dangling over at one end I had taken the slope at the far end to be the same when in fact we now believe that it is a hopper. 

Joel Carrington was a lime dealer based in Oldham but with a lime works in Buxton. 

With not having any hopper wagons i decided that this small wagon would be an interesting build. 

I already had a dumb buffer wagon chassis of the right size already made. So this has been pressed into service with a new body. 

[airnimal]

A small amount of work completed today on this small hopper wagon.  I have replaced the crown plates and added other small details. 

The wagon building competition at this years S7 AGM is for a hopper wagon in 2 categories, kitbuit and scratch built. I could enter with this wagon if it is finished in time but I have not had a happy experience before when entering the previous time so I don't think I will bother.

[S.D.L.]

I love how crisp these models look, its a pleasure to watch them emerge from sheets of Styrene and your hands.

 

Steve