Life in a Northern Town

[Neil]

I'm pleased to say that the station build is all over bar the shouting. There will be some weathering to come, once the paint has hardened and I'm in the right frame of mind and there's also some detail painting to be done on the shoulders of the chimneys to represent cement render.

 

 

 

Though small this is about the fiddliest building I've put together but it's not the first go at this particular prototype. Many years ago when I lived in York I built a cruder version of it for my Foss Bank layout. The layout is long gone but there was something about the concept that I really liked.

[Neil]

The last week and a bit has been hectic so I have little to show apart from these three wooden coal wagons. They are early Oxford Rail products, starting out like this with the weird sandy coloured weathering over the lower parts. I was given one and bought a couple because the under a tenner price seemed right. They had hidden away in a stock box waiting for attention for a few years but came out a fortnight ago. I wanted to improve the weathering but also make them look less like identical triplets while keeping the work to a minimum.

 

 

The first job was to match the charcoal colour of the running number patches and adjust the shape and size of them so that they were all different. I kept the same running number as they were neatly printed and I guessed that most would be deceived by the different backgrounds. I picked out some planks in pale grey/tan colours to represent bare wood and some in other shades of grey. After leaving for several days to harden the sides got a wash of warm dark grey, a mix of Humbrol matt black and cream which gives a lovely warm, smoky hue.  This was carried down onto the wooden solebars. The underframe metalwork and wheels got a coat of rusty black (matt black, a hint of cream and a touch of red oxide.

 

Still to do are the couplings which remain in sand, I'll probably give them a wash over with the same rusty black mix as the underframes.

Edited February 1 by Neil

[Neil]

What does seven quids worth of nostalgia look like? There's a bit of a story behind this one. Last week Jan (Mrs R) and I went to Shrewsbury on the train, partly for a lovely day out and partly to buy patchwork material. We also took a look in the antique centre near the museum, a subterranean treasure house of tat; but interesting tat. There's usually a case or two of model railway bits which I browse. Mrs R could see that I was tempted and egged me on to buy and I might have done if the colour was blue rather than red. The next day I took a look on ebay, made an offer and yesterday this little beauty in blue arrived through the cat flap (posties parcel portal of choice).

 

 

It's not mint, it doesn't have its original box, it's nowhere near finescale but it does have charm, nothing's broken off and it runs surprisingly well. Will I be souping it up, adding detail and finesse?  No, it would loose all its character and no longer be the model the pre teen Neil lusted after.  It's a thing of loveliness just as it is despite all its imperfections.

[ian]

Fulfilling childhood desires like that is one of the great pleasures of adulthood.

[Captain Kernow]

What a lovely thing to have acquired!

 

[Neil]

It's not all shopping here, also getting attention this week has been the platform for the light railway terminus. It's built from card to a DVLR style to match the station building. I am a little worried about using card as the garage while insulated isn't heated over winter, unless I'm working in it, so sometimes has a slightly damp atmosphere. With that I mind it's all stuck together with UHU and has received a couple of coats of Halfords primer to try and seal the card; it'll probably get another couple before finish painting.

 

 

 

Also on the workbench my Oxford J72 has been weathered to match as best I can the state of the real thing seen here in York's shed. By the way the caption of it being a Blyth loco is at odds with the BR data base which has it down as a York engine at the date of the photo.

 

 

Finally, I've also had my jar of crushed coal out to provide wagon loads and to fill up the tender.

 

 

Wagon coal loads are using a mixture of Parkside and Airfix kit bases trimmed as necessary as I seem to have quite a large stock of them put to one side. I've fabricated a removable base for the tender as I like to keep and carry the loco in its original packaging. The plastic shaped insert in the packaging won't allow for a coal load to be fixed in place so ....

 

 

Edited February 17 by Neil
duplicate photo

[Neil]

The light railway platform came inside after the test fitting for painting and fixing the brick plinths which would have supported the timber edge.

 

 

Also seen on the workbench this week a pair of wagons requiring finishing off. The match wagon started out as a Triang single bolster with a chassis cobbled up out of Parkside parts. Originally OO it's been converted to EM and then back to OO. It had three link couplings in early life, then changed to some not very good tension lock hoops and then finally gaining some proper Bachmann small tension locks using Parkside mounting blocks last week. The brake lever on one side had gone AWOL over the years so I found a near replacement in my box of useful bits and cut it down to size.

 

 

The lowfit is an out of the box Bachmann example to which I added some weathering. Weirdly I found both couplings to be angled offset. Their mounting pads not sitting squarely on the chassis moulding. They are a screw fix but locate on a moulded ridge which I had to trim back to allow me to centre the mounting pad and therefore the coupling.

[Neil]

Look what rolled up earlier this week.

 

 

Well I could hardly resist, could I? It's a York loco, on my interpretation of what might have been in York, ordered and delivered from Monk Bar Model Shop in York. I'm impressed both by the sweet running loco and the service from Monk Bar. I had an email on Monday saying the loco was in stock, I phoned them on Tuesday with my details and it arrived in the post on Wednesday dinnertime.

 

I know that the real thing was kept in reasonable order, but I am going to have to do something about the cab roof and tone down the bodywork. I thought I may have to repaint the buffer faces, but apparently not, just some grease marks should do the job. Here's No.84 in York's roundhouse in 1968.

 

Finally another gratuitous shot of one York icon viewed against another.

 

 

 

[Neil]

Can you have too many wagons? The latest stuff up on the workbench, more wagons. Over the years I've picked up the odd wagon that I like the look of, even if it doesn't fit in with the grand scheme of things. One thing they do have in common is that they're all bought second hand for three to four quid and they all started life with the ugly large tension lock couplings. Some can be replaced with the screw fixing sort of mini tension lock from Bachmann (with a bit of faffing) but those with the plug in style efforts take a bit more work; here's how I do it.

 

Unclip the covers and take the old couplings out; you'll need the long reach screw fit couplings from Bachmann as replacements. While you're at it take out the wheels too as they'll get in the way.

 

 

If you line up the couplings with the moulded spigot on the coupling mount you will see that even the long reach coupling is set too far back.

 

 

However the clip on cover has its hole offset to the rear in the factory fitted position but if we reverse it then it brings the locating hole a few mm closer to the end of the wagon and we can just about get by with this, so file away the moulded spigot.

 

 

You will now be able to fit the clip the 'wrong' way round.

 

 

Drill down through the clip with a 2mm bit and also trim back the wings of the coupling so that it will slide between the two raised edges on the coupling mount. I took the cover off to show the altered mounting position compared to the ghostly outline where the spigot was filed away.

 

 

Clip the cover on, if like me you removed it, and slide the trimmed back coupling in until all the holes line up. I use some 2mm diameter plastic rod to peg all three bits, mount, coupling and cover together, and fix in place with glue. I was lucky that this particular underframe was moulded in the sort of plastic that can be solvent welded. Obviously the rod was cut to size once glued in place. It's easier to line everything up with a long length which then needs cutting back than one cut to the exact length required.

 

 

Now I should point out that the coupling still won't stick out as far as is usual so it is a bit of a compromise but if your curves are of a reasonable radius all should be well. Here's the wagon coupled up, closer than usual but not ridiculously so.

 

 

Finally, why bother with stuff that doesn't fit with the premise of the layout? Why put in the time and effort? I think it all boils down to the sheer attractiveness of the models; they're nice things to have but it's possible to make them even more pleasing by putting a little work in, weathering lifts the models as does fitting better working and more discrete couplings. Here's the two latest wagons on the left and a couple I did earlier on the right.

 

[JZ]

51 minutes ago, Neil said:

Can you have too many wagons?

Yes.

 

But it's never enough.

[Fishplate]

2 hours ago, Neil said:

here's how I do it

 

Thank you Jules @JZ. I've bookmarked your great illustrated description for future reference.