Leaderboard

FACT SHEET NWR No. 901 NWR Name: Revenge Wheel Arrangement 2-8-0+0-8-2 Builder Beyer Peacock, Gorton Works, Manchester, 1924 Class Beyer-Garratt History Since Cronk and Maron are much higher than Suddery Junction near Wellsworth, the four miles at a ruling gradient of 1 in 45 have through the years been a testing ground for NWR locomotives. Bankers are stationed at Wellsworth specifically for this section. In 1924 the NWR ordered an articulated 2-8-0+0-8-2 Beyer-Garratt from Gorton, to do the work of two locos while requiring a single crew. The design was to use the wheels, motion and cylinders from ex-ROD 2-8-0s being sold as war surplus, enabling a commonality of components with other NWR locos. For crews, the Garratt was hard work. Lack of a mechanical stoker put a huge strain on the fireman. The enclosed cab, whilst a great help in Winter when the cold wind blows in from the Irish Sea, was a furnace in high summer. When compared to Gresley’s 6-cylinder Garratt, the NWR example was able to maintain a head of steam and occasionally worked service trains. Like most NWR goods locos, ‘Revenge’ was named after a warship built at Barrow, in this case the battleship HMS Revenge of 1915. The Model Hattons’ ‘Sale of the Century’ yielded a supply of cheap ex-GWR ROD 2-8-0 locos, the tenders of which ended up on the Woolwich moguls. The chassis found their way onto the Garratt. I had to re-mount the motors so they sat over the centre of the chassis, thereby locating them in the engine units and enabling the boiler frame to sit over the driving wheels. The boiler itself was also from Hattons’ spare parts department, a victim of Heljan’s burnt out motors and broken valve gear from the first production run of the LMS Garratt. The engine unit superstructures were mounted on running plates salvaged from Hornby 8Fs I was cutting up for the boilers and cabs, with the bodies made from styrene sheet. Handrails are from Markits and the filler lids were salvaged from Great British Locomotives static models. Click here to see the thread.

Just as I am deeply immersed in learning about 3D printing and also struggling with the complexities of Broad Gauge locomotive design, along comes a completely new website format. I've added a little introductory text but, as yet, have no idea how to re-create the contents list, which aimed to help readers to find their way around. I'm not sure when/if I shall get around to this additional challenge of learning the new format but, at least, all my earlier posts on how I have tackled modelling problems seem to have come across and will, I hope continue to be helpful to other modellers.

After a quiet spring things are moving again on Farthing. The Slipper Boy story is featured in the June 2016 BRM, which seems a good way to mark the end of work on that layout. Many thanks to BRM for featuring the story. It’s all just a bit of fun of course, but while studying the court case that inspired the story, it did occur to me just how much scope there is for modelling particular historical incidents on the railways. Meanwhile there has been progress on “The sidings”, my third layout in the Farthing series. Track and groundcover is now in place and trains are running. It hasn’t been without birth pains though. The layout was on the backburner for quite a while and I was losing interest, so I decided to do three things: First, I adjusted the design to balance the layout better and “open up” the views. This involved widening the baseboard and moving the fiddle yard off the main baseboard. The trackplan remains mostly the same though, following the original inspiration from the backwaters of Gloucester Old Yard. This includes the very short headshunt and the two sidings with loading facilities that were hired out to private companies. I’ve played around with the latter and added a bit of, ahem, local lore - more on that in another post. Secondly, I scrapped the idea of using gravity shunting. Despite some success with initial experiments, it was becoming a major project in itself and was bogging down progress. I appreciate all the ideas offered though, maybe another time. There is still shunting to be had, thanks to the short headshunt and the exchange of wagons between two locos, as was also done at Gloucester. Thirdly, I cut a corner and decided to have the two points built professionally. This hurt my pride a bit, but I wanted to move on and so John Jones (aka “Hayfield") of this parish built me a couple of nice 00-SF (aka 4-SF) points at a very reasonable price. With momentum duly restored I set about building the plain track. Sleepers were cut using my old paper cutter… …and stuck onto templates of GWR 44 ft track lengths. I tried to copy the GWR’s sleeper spacing at the rail joins. According to Stephen Williams, the GWR employed two different ways of laying sleepers at the end of points, the “interlaced” pattern being more common. So I did that. For the groundcover, I used the latest supersmooth, superlight, supertasty Polyfilla formula. This was built up in layers and sanded down in-between. The groundcover was taken up to the sleeper tops, as per many photos of GWR yards in the 1900s. I’m considering raising it even further in some places, eg just over the sleeper tops like here: http://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrhd692b.htm, or even higher like here: http://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrbsh1195.htm For point operation I’ve used Cobalt IP Analogs. Definitely over the top for a glorified shunting plank, but I wanted to see what slow action motors are like. They work well enough, although I find them a bit noisy – no doubt amplified by the foamboard. The next step is to add a few final details to the track, clean up the sleepers and paint the rails, and then I'll finally be able to start work on the buildings and structures, something I look forward to. Finally here's a short video clip proving that the beast is alive – warts and all. I still need to tweak things a bit, but I’m quite happy with the way my wagons (built to very simple standards) and the RTR chassis move through John's 00-SF points.

I had some professional photos of my Bakewell layout shot by Chris Nevard of Model Rail magazine a couple of weeks ago. These will hopefully be published in due course. Needless to say, the quality is amazing and I will be uploading some more photos in due course. The layout is coming along nicely with small cosmetic changes now being made. Next will be the DDC concepts Mimic ground signals, signal box interior lighting and upgraded lineside fencing from Scale Model Scenery.

I have now produced two lighting boards - one for each vehicle of the first unit. Each board powers one vehicles Cab light, Saloon lights & BIL Indicators. I have used stripboard so I can mount all required LED's & resistors directly to the board to avoid any difficult to hide wiring. Unfortunately with this board in place the standard glazing unit won't fit back in completely so that has had to be cut down with a sharp scalpel and carefully snapping it. I haven't been too picky with the resistor values as, if the lights are too bright, I can dim them through the LokSound or LokPilot FX decoders as appropriate. I plan on mounting both the decoders in the powered vehicle and using small JST plugs to connect track power and lighting wires through to the other vehicle. I have some Express Models tower LED's to fit head & tail lights - I plan on creating the lew style light fittings with bi-colour Marker/Tail lights, firstly because this is easier but also as this is what probably would have been fitted if GWR still had any 142s. Once the head and tail lights are in and my LokPilot FX is here I can start to work on wiring in the decoders and connecting everything together. After the decoders are in and it all works there are just a few cosmetic things to sort out - Rebuild parts of the interior, fitting of the NRN radio pods, painting the seating & cutting a hole in the front skirt for future coupling fitting (I hope Bachmann offer their new 158/9 coupling as a spare so I can fit all my 14x, 15x & 17x fleet). Oh, and then there's another one to do before I move on to my next project!

My Howes sound chip has arrived and it's time to remap the functions! The 142 isn't ready for a chip yet - lots to do - but I couldn't resist having a play with the chip. At the moment I am using a ViTrains 37 body and using the standard speaker that is supplied with the LokSound 4. I am using the Howes sound project. I started by reading all CV's using DecoderPro so I have a backup file in case it all goes pear shaped, it took around an hour to read all of the CV's. I used this, along with the provided function sheet, to establish which sound slots associated with which sounds. Then I began remapping the functions to a 'personal standard' so all of my stock will use common functions (this is in the notepad file at the top), the function mapping tab of DecoderPro is also in the gallery. I'm not too sure about having door open and close on the same latching function - this means that the door close sound plays whenever track power is turned on and also seems to play whenever I select speed-step 0 from anywhere above 50%. For now I think it's time to return to the 142 and get that ready for decoder fitting before settling on function order and volume settings! Cheers.

Today, my DCC Concepts order arrived - so it was time to fit the bodyside indicators. I have used DCC Concepts MicroLights - these are pre-wired LED's measuring less than 1mm in either direction. I could have used any surface mount LED but the benefit of them being pre-wired is a necessity for me at this size! I bought a 0.5mm drill to make a hole for the wires to pass through and just stuck the LED on the surface with Loctite. Not a great photo at the moment - My wife took the photo while I held the wires against my multimeter. Still en-route is the two speakers, the Howes sound decoder and some NRN Radio pods, I still have to decide on the LEDs used to fit head & tail lights. I also ordered some 1.6mm 'Butterfly' LEDs which I am planning to use for cab and passenger lights. I'm currently waiting for a new soldering iron before I construct a stripboard 'roof unit' which will contain all resistors for the cab, saloon and BIL lights - when I have this along with the decoder I'll be able to take some better photos! Then I just need to think about micro plugs to connect the two units. Does anyone know how I can insert more than one photo into a blog post? Fred

Starting with a few dabs of paint on the underframe - silver on the exhaust, a couple of spots of orange and red on some mouldings. The Hornby underframe is fairly crude so the red and orange paint don't really match up to the prototype. After that dried I brushed over with some 'Rusty Wash' made using some Tamiya Orange Brown and a drop of Orange mixed with suitable paint thinners; and some 'Dirty Wash' made using some Tamiya Dark Grey and a dash of Orange Brown, again with suitable paint thinners. As you can see I managed to damage the glazing mould, I have had to order a complete body spare from Peters Spares. I plan to saw the glazing so I have access to the roof to fit the DCC Decoder, wiring and lighting. Next - Altering the internal seating to give a more prototypical look.

Almost 6 years later (with no progress), it's time to continue. With a wife, two kids and a new full time job since the last progress, time will be tight but I'm sure I can do more than I have done in the last six years! I've ordered some NRN radio pods from PH Designs, a total of 6, to add to my two pacers and my 121. It was £20 but I can't seem to find any others - I've previously used Hurst but they seem to be out of stock of everything. Although NRN is out of use the pods are still fitted to most stock. I'll also need to make a pod for the GSM antenna. From the photos I've seen this is a small 'lump' behind the NRN pod. I've half weathered the underframes and just waiting for the wash to dry before I take on the other sides, I'll post some photos when they are done. Then I'll move on to the interior: Removal of the DCC Sockets Cutting the interior moulding Adding lower floor where possible Adding a toilet cubicle Fitting directional, cab & Saloon lights Adding Sound chips and fitting speakers Hopefully it will take less than 6 years!

I have now painted the interior of one of my units. For the seating I have used Humbrol RC404, although this isn't a match for First Great Western Blue, I think that it is close enough when viewed through a window of the unit. I have also used Tamiya X-32 (Titan Silver) on the very top edge of the seats, this is to represent the hand-rails on the top of every seat, I am hoping that this will show up when I fit internal saloon lighting. I have painted the passenger side of the cab door partially black (upper half) as in photographs of the units that I have seen, I have also painted the drivers side of the door all-black, this is because there is no representation of this in any images and I want to be clear where the door is, I may well go over this door in another colour as it probably isn't black in the actual units. I have painted the wheel sides using Tamiya XF-64 (Red Brown) and I have painted the tank cap (on the side of the chassis) Titan Silver. Much of the interior painting looks un-neat but a lot of this will be hidden by the body and passenger figures.

The Hornby 142 is a rather crude representation of the Class 142 'Pacer' and the model dates back to the days of Lima. Not only is the model crude, but the 142 itself has changed a fair amount since the model has been released, the doors for a start have changed and new features such as NRN antennas have been added. I would like to bring my models up to date and also to correct shortfalls that were, not surprisingly, made in the days of Lima. When I have completed this project I hope to have: Detailed roof, including NRN Radio Pods and vents. (SJR Models) Detailed interior, including cab details and hiding the DCC decoder. Further electrical connections between cars. (to provide digital functions) Correctly represented folding leaf doors. (Electra Railway Graphics) Detailed front end including windscreen wipers and BSI Coupler. (East Kent Models - Hornby Spares) Representation of corridor connections. (Folded card) Directional lighting. (Express Models Kit) Interior Saloon lighting. (LED Lighting strips) Individually controlled cab lighting. (LEDs) These images show the current state of my two Hornby 142's in First Great Western Livery.

I have started by removing fittings from the seating unit that aren't present in images of unit interiors. These fittings are shown here and include dividers and screw fittings that are used to mount the DCC socket, something that I will also remove as it isn't very easy to hide with such large proportion of the model being clear plastic.

Excuse the terrible pun! I'm putting this one back on the shelf for a few weeks now - it's had me tearing my hair out on several occasions this week trying to fabricate the flush glazing for the cab fronts, and near disaster as one cab seperated from the body! I've finished transfers on her (which do look fantastic - a great job by John at Precision Labels - they were a custom set for me), painted the underframe all matt black (ready for weathering) and painted the small bodyside details (door open orange beacons at roof line, the buttons by the doors) and found some foam to use as a corridor connection. I've still got to do the interiors, wire the two cars together, fabricate some windscreen wipers and weather the two units... which can wait until I've got my sanity back!

...and you can start to see the layout emerging in line with my initial sketches and ideas. Reading a copy of Barry Norman's 'Landscape Modelling' that I picked up from the Bridgnorth station shop on Saturday is proving to be quite inspiring and it's one of the driving forces behind this renewed vigour. Rose Hill is the perfect layout to try some of this observation and careful scene selection, compression and impressionism out on - and will be a great lead into my Meadow Lane project which is evolving slowly as well. These photos are not great - they were taken in bad lighting and Photoshop has only half rescued them - they do however give a sense of where we are, where we're going and what's next. Not a lot of progress for my 2010 challenge entry really, no real layout to speak of - but promise I think... it's certainly got that! Thanks for your recent encouragement - I hope to post some Pacer progress next week, and have some scenery to share with you all by the end of October.

What other half baked excuse could there possibly be for my baseboard being 6 months late? Well today my daughter and I were building a platform for her Harry the Hauler trainset and it seemed rude to not finish off the plywood - so 6 months on and progress had made a giant leap forwards and the baseboard is 'finished' (just needs sealing with satinwood later this evening now the PVA is dry). So I thought I'd share this milestone for two reasons - show that the project isn't dead yes, but also to show my slightly odd baseboard construction. Paxton Road used insulation board framed with plywood - but that gives a lightweight but chunky side profile. As this layout is aimed to be viewed on three sides (the two long edges and the curved edge) to make the most of the P4 track, with just a backscene along the short straight edge, I wanted to give the feeling of the layout floating. If I ever exhibit I don't intend to use a curtain - so I'll need to do something quite 'trick' with the legs to, but I think I've achieved my first aim - by using a 24mm ply top surface and a soft planed pine spine I've got a very thin edge with enough rigidity (given the very simple track plan) for the scenic board. There is a small fiddle yard to be added at a later date when I can be bothered! So what next? Once the paint is dry I'll turn the board over and can stick the track down - and then craft the landscape from insulation board (hopefully). I think I'll use hardboard for the road surfaces to avoid issues with trying to smooth a filler. I'll knock up a softwood core for the platform and then build the finish on to it I expect. I might be a bit beyond the deadline here but I hope to be well on the way with the scenics now by Christmas which at one point seemed very unlikely. One last thing - I've got to find somewhere to put it now though!

I'm a victim of my own interests - I'm sure I'm not alone in having a myriad of projects on my workbench at one time all vying for my attention. Well Rose Hill has taken a bit of a back seat if I'm honest with the construction of my first etched brass kit for Meadow Lane (my Manchester Ship Canal Railway project) and tinkering on OO stuff from time to time as Paxton Road crawls forwards. However, with the kit stalled awaiting some weighting to improve running I looked to my masking tape an airbrush and decided it was time to start painting the Pacer. Those that followed this project will remember it's a very early Hornby model - with significant re-worked detail above and below the chassis with a simple Ultrascale conversion to P4. I started by spraying on the white paint on the doors and where the stripes were. When this was dry I masked the body and sprayed the yellow ends. When this was dry I did the roof and inside ends. I was now at a point where I could begin on the sides - and started with masking the yellow, grey and the doors/white striped. I applied the purple (which ended up being Halfords 'Berry Purple' as I couldn't get a good enough match by mixing) all over and then once this was dry masked the purple and applied the blue. When all the masking was removed - success! Certainly a unit that looked Northern! The night after I added the black cab window surrounds and the orange cantrail stripe using a lining pen. I couldn't help myself this evening and dug out the custom transfers John at Precision Labels had made up for me They look superb don't they! After splashing some matt black on the chassis, and temporarily fitting the glazing, I posed her outdoors for a few shots to show you all how she's coming together (very nicely indeed - I'm very happy!).Hornby Pace I mentioned in the forum earlier in the week that I've also made some progress on the station building. This is now at a position where I can add the detailing (pipe runs, guttering, signage etc) as I've finished the basic brick and roof finish. This has been achieved using just Humbrol 100, 98 and 33 - along with some white 34. Mixing on a pallette and then dry brushing on the brick colour - building this up and then adding washes of brown and grey when it was dry to try and match prototype photos! I think it's showing some real promise! Questions, comments and encouragement all welcomed! I hope to finish the Pacer before getting stuck back into painting the kit - and the station is a nice 'hospital job' I can pick up between other projects. The pub however hasn't progressed at all with a lack of enthusiasm for cutting out hundreds more windows and making a very tricky roof. One day!

Somehow even just mocking up something with wood and offcuts makes it all come to life in my mind... Rose Hill has the beginnings of a baseboard! If you count an un-cut 18mm sheet of plywood as a beginning. These shots show her mocked up with track, Pacer and the two buildings. A view from the fiddleyard/backscene end of the layout from both sides - note the planned curved end A few other shots... low angle and overhead A Northern Pacer waits with the 14:12 departure for Manchester Picadilly With the encouragement and progress of my other new project (Meadow Lane) I had worried that this simple single line branchline terminus might not hold my interest. I'd needn't have worried. Looking at these photos and working on the pub building last night have convinced me it's well worth finishing - even if only as a scenic exercise!

My P4 project, part of the RMWeb 2010 challenge is a model of Rose Hill, Marple. It's a toe dipping exercise in prototype observation - not 100% to scale (something more like 80% with the station building and pub) but with the definite intention of 'feeling right'. That means fantastic observation of prototype and artistic colouring. The only rolling stock required (until Bachmann release a 150/1 in Northern Rail) was deemed to be a Pacer as I had one of the original Hornby ones to hand from my childhood. Over the past few months this has undergone a massive transformation (more details on RMWeb) but I reached 2 milestones today. 1) Ready for painting and 2) Ordering the custom decals from Precision Labels! One thing I'm particularly pleased with is the underframe. I've not gone to the extent of massive rebuilding but with new front dams, beefed up suspension units and some judicious cutting of the box for the weight I've got something I'm happy with. I'm also pretty pleased with the new exhaust pipes - the pipe at the bottom will be glued to the underframe rather than hanging down once the body is painted. So now I just need to source some suitable paints!

An exciting looking pair of parcels arrived this morning, just after I got home from town rather chuffed to find my article in Model Rail (see my other blog)... A long thin tube and a big jiffy bag nicely labelled up from Exactoscale! My P4 track components (and gauges) plus some OO stuff to compare as well! Then I had to go out so I spent the whole day itching to read my article and put together a few trial sections of P4 track. I finally managed it about 6pm this evening and after a quick check of the Pacer's back to back I connected up my controller for an inaugral run... and success! The Pacer moved from one end of the 0.5m section to the other!! Excellent. The Pacer and progress on Rose Hill to date - slow but steady. This end on shot will be possible on the finished layout thanks to the plan to be able to view on 3 sides, including the bufferstops. The track goes together very easily. I opted to try steel rail this time, which seems ok so far, and a lovely realistic colour to it! The Exactoscale components are well packaged and nicely moulded and a 0.5m section like this goes together in about 5 minutes. I could build all the track I need for Rose Hill in under an hour! Here are couple of other shots just to show how excited I am - and impressed with the increased fidelity for virtually no increase in pain. Mind you this layout doesn't need any points - so that's a bridge left to cross before I throw myself completely to the finescale wind! Hopefully over Christmas I'll put together some base boards to allow progress to start on scenery. Before then I should really work out how much I'm compressing the plan by! Oh well. Mustn't be distracted by the myriad of other projects on my workbench!

I always find a good sketch helps me visualise how things are going to work - ever since the early days of armchair modelling for Paxton Road, so today saw me knock something up for Rose Hill. Usually I'd start from scratch but I wondered if I could build on the (poor) photos I took last night with some ink to show what I have in mind and check out whether the scaling factor will still trick the eye. What do you think? I'm pretty pleased. I suspect I'll lengthen the platform by about 10cm (up to a metre) which will mean a little baseboard creep. I'm going to mock up the baseboard shape in paper and determine whether or not I'll need a join or not. In the meantime I really should stop browsing the forum and crack on with the Pacer! (and still no fix for the blog posting date thingamy - hence the December 31st date - it's really today, Monday 4th January 2010 at 20:25).

Well Christmas and New Year have come and gone and despite a few items (a sound equipped 37, EWS Seacow and a Dynamis controller) I've managed to make some progress on Rose Hill. This evening I've been scaling up dimensions from Google Maps (great tool - when you draw a line it tells you how many feet it is!). From my simple layout (see below) I've determined a number of key dimensions: Platform length = 332ft = 1328mm Station building length = 42ft = 168mm Pub length = 52ft = 208mm Flatbottom rail = 440ft = 1760mm Bullhead rail = 175ft = 700mm Rough layout length (length of blue rectangle) = 628ft = 2500mm Woah! Daunting or what? That's a pretty hefty layout for just a SLT! So having already scratchbuilt the station building on a slightly condensed scale (as it was originally intended to just be a photo plank) I measured that up again. Length = 12cm. A happy comprimise? Anyhow for now it's far too good to scrap! So what scaling factor does that give? 16.8cm/12cm = 0.7 I then applied that to the other dimensions to see how they looked... Platform = 0.9m FB rail = 1.2m BH rail = 0.5m Promising, I thought - if it would pull it off full size, so out came an old roll of wrapping paper left over from Christmas and I laid things out on the floor. Wrapping paper, some postcards, Pacer chassis, track and a sharpie pen! As you can see it's still pretty massive for a single line terminus, and luckily, as the track plan is so simple, that kind of visually hides the reduction in length. For comparison here are some prototype shots: 1994 http://kevin818.fotopic.net/p48334824.html 1997 http://117305.fotopic.net/p47647470.html 2006 http://jst.fotopic.net/p37311167.html 2006 http://dwb.railcollection.fotopic.net/p35274350.html Now I'm at a quandry. This layout is supposed to be an exercise in prototype observation, in 'scale' modelling, and with an interesting baseboard shape to give a novel viewing situation if ever exhibited... Is this 'scaling' of reality really the done thing? I mean, is it a comprimise too far? If I don't scale the layout then it will need to be made as two boards - itself not a problem, until you lay the platform down and end up with a mighty big join in the platform, the station car park etc etc. I really wanted to avoid that and at about 170cm the reduced size plan is long, but do-able (and it will fit in my car - just). See what I mean, this is a real issue! Can I have a few thoughts please?!

If you remember a few weeks ago I was moaning about the Slaters pantile embossed plasticard and it's lack of relief. I wanted something that had more relief and I could get the 3D effect on the ends of the roof showing overlapping tiles as well... Well the answer I came up with was perhaps a little different from the norm but before I tell you how I did it, here is a photo which shows the end result. I'm really pleased, it looks just right to me and hopefully the idea will help other modellers with a similar quandry - as it uses a similar idea to overlapping paper tiles used on all sorts of great buildings I've read about in Model Railway Journal over the years... So I looked at Slaters other embossed plasticard - and came across a sheet of the 4mm corrugated steel and I thought, hmm, this looks A LOT like pantiles, would it work if I cut it into 5.5mm strips and then layed them upside down? A small demo piece looked fantastic, so I moved onto the real thing... First up I cut a base piece of plasticard. To complete the effect I added a few strips of plasti-strip along the front edge to raise the first row of tiles and then layered them up the roof, 4.5mm showing of each row. The chimney is just single sheet thickness Slaters embossed brickwork with a plastic cap and I let this into the roof. The roof is simply strips of corrugated iron embossed plasticard layed up which gives a great appearance and accurate end on view as well However as you can see, the back of the building is still not complete! At least this shot shows how the building is built up of laminated plasticard - glued together using superglue where possible to reduce the risk of warping. I will be adding the rear and second half of the roof now I'm happy with the finish of the first half over Christmas. Meanwhile work on the Pacer has really slowed down a little - though this one is ready for priming. I'll crack on with the second car over the festive season as well! The detailed Pacer car posing with the half finished building.

It might not look like much but I feel I've reached a milestone this evening... At this rate it's a good thing I'm building just a single line terminus! Nevertheless the first car of my Pacer is at a point where it can be painted. Full side on view showing overall progress to date! Work has been quite extensive - perhaps not as far as some have gone, but I've chosen to work on the things that will make the largest visual difference. On the front ends I've replaced the handrails, added the roof aerial, replaced the fender, added a coupling (with pipework) and fabricated replacement steps. On the back I've added a replacement exhaust stack (that links down to the underside of the floor) and support brackets (fiddly). In addition, and as can be seen in the photos, I've re-wheeled her for P4, modified the wheelset framing (to represent the heavier duty spring bases) and worked a little on the interior, as well as adding full door handrails using .45 and .35mm wire. Next up is bringing the second car up to scratch before I put them through the paint booth to appear as 142036 in Northern livery... unless I'm distracted by the Mainline 58 or new sound class 37 over Christmas!

A flurry of activity on the Rose Hill project over the last few days and after the inspiration last Friday, and a day or two to mull things over I ordered my first P4 bits... Thanks to Dave at Ultrascale they arrived this morning - the wheelsets to convert the Pacer. I was so excited I had to test fit one of the driving sets before I even took a photo!! I've not yet got the trackwork and gauges ordered - so can't prepare the wheelsets properly as I need a back to back, but the visual improvement over the Hornby originals is staggering. I just hope the mechanism isn't too dissappointing. I test ran it in OO mode and I was happy so it should be fine. I'll need to work out a way of adding a pick up to the rear wheelset without too much drag though as this bears on the axle which is now completely insulated from the wheel tyres. P4 wheelset kit - ready to build up and a comparison in the top left corner, incredible visual improvement! and the first driving wheel fitted to test clearances and if this is going to work! Other progress on the Pacer has been slow - although I've started working on a front coupling. I scoured Hornby spares and Bachmann spares to get a version of their recent Sprinter releases to no avail - so have resorted to scratchbuilding. However I'm quite impressed and I think with painting and weathering it will more than look the part Scratchbuilt coupling, I can't find anything better on the market. The last bit of progress to report is the fitting of half the roof to the station building. More recent research has shown that I've actually scaled down the building a little too much - it's about 4 or 5' shorter than the prototype. I'm trying to decide if this is actually a good thing and means I can scale down the whole area slightly to keep the build under more manageable proportions. I know this is P4 but it's not my usual style to go 100% prototypical - more if it looks right it probably is... with this in mind I need to decide over the coming weeks if it's a comprimise I'm willing to put up with or if I need to rebuild. Anyhow - the dissappointment is the pantile embossed plasticard from Slaters is very poor. There brickwork is excellent and very easy to work with hence why I plumped for the roof tiles - however they just don't have enough relief. Any suggestions? I'm really at a loss at present how to build these without having to resort to complete scratchbuilding!! Help! Dissappointing - the Slaters pantile embossed sheet just doesn't cut the mustard. Time for a re-think... Anyway enough of my ramblings on here. Comments and encouragement is very welcome!!

Just one small step... that's all this is - one small toe dipped in the P4 water... With the excuse of the 2010 challenge I've finally decided to scratch that itch so to speak. P4 has intrigued me for a number of years with the increase in fidelity appealing to both my engineer and artistic natures. Rose Hill will be an exercise in restraint, in prototype observation and a bit of fun - not too much of a distraction from my real love - Southern region late 90's stock. photo © and (P) Stephen McKay So where is Rose Hill? It's perhaps the modern quintessential branch line terminus? A single line terminus, one platform, park and ride style car park situated in Marple on the outskirts of Stockport (itself on the edge of Greater Manchester). The branch is a little over a mile long and leaves the Hope Valley line (Manchester to Sheffield) after Romiley. There are about 3 services an hour into Manchester Piccadilly. I plan to model the station with the road bridge as a scenic break. I will model the carpark and fuel yard in their entirety as well as what I believe was an old Hotel on the main road. Here is a plan of what the layout will cover - easily within 13.9 sq ft with fiddle yard in 4mm. Rose Hill is not a new project for me entirely. It's been on my workbench for about 2 months as a possible layout idea. The 2010 challenge has given me the impetus to try something new (P4) and model it accurately. You can find my previous posts on my Paxton Road blogs here: A distraction... Rose Hill, Marple Pacesetting... Pacer progress... So what next? Get out the credit card and order some P4 bits... On a more serious note can I thank all of those who responded to my thread in the 2010 Challenge forum, and in particular those who have today offered a great deal of support and advice in taking the P4 plunge. Thankyou. I hope Rose Hill will be a credit to me, the scale and modern image modelling.