Leaderboard

My brother despite, or perhaps because of, my predilection for the LSWR will insist on giving me LBSCR kits/stock/books. To be fair we did grow up in a flat above a LBSCR station so I think he's returning me to my roots or something. It's got to the stage where I have almost as much Brighton stuff as South Western. So it's time to bite the bullet and get something Brighton running. Within the many "relief parcels" I found a set of 4 Etched Pixels 4-wheel coaches and Peco chassis' (he thinks of everything, damn him!) so this is where I started. Early days before gaps have been filled, partitions added and the soldering cleaned up. These are great kits - although the Guard's duckets did require my strongest language to get them to fit properly (and even then I could probably do a better job if I was willing to burn all my fingers). Partitions added, body painted and just sitting on the chassis'. The paint finish looks better in real life, so I'm wondering if the camera was on too high an ISO or if the flash has shown up flaws I can't see. Or of course I was spraying from too far away. I'm currently plucking up the courage to fit Dapol magnetic couplings to the outside ends of the two Brake Thirds and will run them as a fixed rake. All in all, this Brighton stuff is OK... after a fashion :-)

A very long time ago, I went to one of the CMRA Workshop events. The bookseller was selling a copy of "Tramlink - Official Handbook" published by Capital Transport. (It was Geoff Gamble - I told you it was a long time ago) Anyway I bought the thing, discovered that Alphagraphix were doing card kits of light rail units, and I got fired up with the idea of building one , and making a working model. This obviously would need somewhere to run, so the idea of building a small layout based on Tramlink was rapidly born. The overhead was fairly simple posts, concrete sleeper track could be used... Ravenser Mk1 was visibly a problem - try again with some proper boards This whole thing occupied much of my modelling in the early part of the millenium, along with the club project and the Boxfile. The baseboards were constructed in a one bedroom flat using a junior hacksaw and a plastic benchhook - the main plywood plates being cut to size by the timber yard. (Never again... I bought a Black & Decker Workbox not long after. And the timber yard has now closed and been flattened for redevelopment as housing. No-one within 15 miles can cut time to size as far as I know) The basic design can be seen from the photos: Each board is 3' x 11" - they box up as an opposed pair, and the idea was that they would just about be carriable on public transport as a boxed unit. At that time I didn't have a car, as I was commuting daily by train . Here is Elmers' End. Two Wills kits are still in stock for the platform canopy. The photocopy mock-up of the Goods Office is still in place, pending the rework and building of the full kit... And here is the second board, labelled as Beckenham. I know you can't actually run from Elmer's End to Beckenham on Tramlink, but this was not conceived as finescale layout. In fact Beckenham was originally conceived as the fiddle yard, until I thought that a terminus in a station forecourt could be suggested, and therefore I could have a fully scenic layout: The "unique selling point" was that it was to be an all-card layout I built the first LRV . It was successful - sort of . It has a Tenshodo at one end , it runs - but it's very light weight and propelling trailer first into (or was it out of?) the cripple siding at Elmer's End it came off every time. The system of articulation was shall we say basic, and would never feature in MRJ. I think the idea was to have one trailing bogie live vto one side, and the other to the other rail. These were A1 etched H frames for wagon bogies, and I cadged some bogie castings off Mark Hughes, who makes a respectable whitemetal kit But it did get written up in the DOGA Journal (also a long time ago) Then I attempted proper Croydon cars from an Alphagrapix kit. These are skirted vehicles, and the skirts fouled the H frames and it wouldn't take a curve at all.... Since the body is a sealed unit there is no way in bar tearing it apart.... (That photocopy mockup really needs replacing. The back of an advertising hoarding was to go in the gap) Oh and one end sat too high.... About the last thing to be done was a push to build super-detail semis from Bilteezi sheets, which stalled: There was even briefly a thought of expanding it with a representation of the depot inserted in the middle Tramlink (Kent) has been stored, boxed up, in the study with an ever growing pile of Railway Modellers on top for more years than I like to admit to. For some years it was occasionally hauled out for use as a DC test track, The wiring was always very, very, basic with hand thrown points and something has come adrift and the Beckenham board is dead. After I built the external CDU for the Boxfile external CDU and connections I had good intentions of sorting out poor old Tramlink with a rewire. Suitable DIN sockets were sourced from Maplins (remember them?) to take the connectors from the Boxfile. I even sourced a new small radius point , to replace the troublesome Settrack point at Elmers End, with a view to lifting and relaying and realigning the lead into the cripple siding . Not to mention two solenoid point motors - might as well fit a point-motor while I'm doing it , and then we could see if a point motor could be retrofitted at Beckenham. I have all the bits - nothing has been done, as I have a long list of jobs with more urgency and more obvious reward. When I still haven't fixed the W Yorks 155 , Tramlink is unlikely to get priority. Once or twice the idea has crossed my mind of scrapping it and reusing the boards for a shunting layout to give the stock off the Boxfile more room to breath (and maybe some of the kettles a chance to use it, too) . But to be honest I don't really want to destroy all the buildings which took a lot of work and scrubbed up well, and I can't see how any kind of meaningful shunting plan could be arranged without doing that. Come to that I don't actually have a meaningful 6' x 11" shunting design So poor old Tramlink stays in its box buried under the magazines....

I got this very old Kemtron kit from a friend of mine. It is etched from very thick brass and had to be filed to shape.... I will use plastic trucks as the brass ones included wasn't of the caboose sort with leaf springs. The amount of heat needed to solder this kit was daunting.... The shape of the roof had to be shaped with a mallet over a wooden form due to the thickness of the brass. Finished and ready for paint. It was a fun kit to build, albeit a bit dated. It will be fun to paint and weather it.

I do dislike waiting for paint to dry, but it's a basic essential. As of this morning I have 4 wagons, all with some paint too damp and sticky to handle. At least I've made the decision on what the final V16 livery will be. No not BR unfitted grey, but GWR grey. The clubs, and my V12 as well as the GWR V14 will all be liveried as 10 Ton. The BR bauxite V14 and that indecision V16 will be 12 Ton liveries, a result of up-rating. It's at this point where a production line build starts to make sense. Initially all the same strikes as being over the top, but once painted with subtly different shades and later with different livery decals it'll all be fine ! Dad-1

https://youtu.be/wnBlaaYlDOI Regards Charlie

Wagon number 2 off the production line a Parkside Dundas MCO 16 ton mineral wagon with added detailing from 51L Wizard Models and Fox Transfers. I painted and weathered it as replated example.

Three 12t Vanwides, a VWV and two VEA. All three are Parkside kits with buffers and draw hooks from Lanarkshire Model Supplies and brake leavers from Bill Bedford, VWV decals are mostly Modelmaster and VEA decals are mostly Railtec. I might weather the VWV and lightly weather the VEA with the Haz symbols as VEAs were in good condition in the early 1980s. I weighted these with an M10 nut held in place with a piece of sprue. Couplings are Bachmann short cranked on Parkside mounts.

In my collection of Lima and Hornby Seacow ballast wagons I so far have 5 Lima YGH and 1 Hornby YGB. The pictures show them as i weather them and detail them. As I received them from Temeraire. The first stages of weathering. The Lima versions need to be made a little more rusty looking. The Hornby one came from Neil Mason and needs a little attention, its missing a head protector at one end and a sets of steps has broken off. put side by side and you can tell they are by different manufacturers. I really must find a photo of the inside of these wagons. The Lima centre bulhead is higer than the Hornby one but i think they should both be cut down in reality. I've also managed to lose a white plastic handrail on one of the Lima wagons which I will have to try and replace with some wire.

I built a LaBelle HOn3 gondola kit, and decided to make a honorary car for my late mother Yvonne who died last year of cancer. I have already a mine on my layout called the Ywon mine. So this became the Yvon/Ywon Gold mine Co. car number 47 (as in her birth year). Weathered to represent a well used car that has shipped a lot of gold ore. The text are dry transfers. The boggies are 3D printed from Shapeways with Kadee wheels. The couplers are Sergent Sharon-couplers. I'm very satisfied with it.

My Westside models C25 in HOn3 will be getting some upgrades. It already has new gears installed and will now get sound, lights and a good paint job. I will also improve the power pick-ups with added wipers on the tender and the locomotive. The parts involved (well, at least some of them...). Disassembly of the locomotive. The main parts cleaned with soda and repaired. Some loose solder joints that had to be fixed. AO blasted, ready for paint. As can be seen it isn't air blowed clean yet as some of the blasting medium is still on the model. More blasted parts... Painted and decalled. The paint is Scalecoat 1 engine black that has been baked in the oven. The decals are from San Juan decals. The number was easy to choose as the D&RGW only had one C25; #375... The smokebox is painted with Alclad silver. The tender shell. All in all a good start on the project. Now I have to install the decoder, light and speaker. Then some light weathering... I'll be making it look like the photos of the original.

Everything got upside down One So, we made our plans. Then my wife had a serious fall in the bathroom and insured her back badly. Her recovery will take some time. The Billy cabinet has now to wait for a while. But that is now problem. Two I want to thank everyone who gave me useful information for the design of my Billy plank. I already started with making a new plan. Three One of the advices was to buy the excellent book Modelling Grassland and landscape detailing from Gordon Gravett. I also bought Creating the rural scene – A guide for Railway Modellers and Diorama Model Makers from David Wright. When I browsed the books, I noticed that there was still a lot to learn for me. So, I will go back for now to the building of small dioramas. In that way I can try out the several techniques I want to use for my Billy plank diorama and built some rural scenes. In this way I can support my wife with her recovery and do some technique developing modelling. Kind regards, Job

Ouch, almost 2 months since I last posted. I've not been exactly sleeping at the wheel. A few more wagons into the fray. I didn't think I had many Lowfit wagons and decided to have a shot at the Parkside kit. Initially I was a little miffed by instructions saying they were all wooden solebars, but that was me forgetting that while BR made steel chassis versions LNER had kept to timber on their version. These are very light and quite simple, I was past the making before I dug my camera out. Belatedly I took a couple of shots where I was fitting lead sheet into the small voids on the floor mouldings underside. Before decalling they were put behind a locomotive and reversed several times around a layout with some 1st radius curves. They were pushing 19 other wagons, these were No.20, & 21 some load ! yet not a single derailment. Now Decalled, both from a ModelMaster sheet included with the latest Peco 'Parkside' release. My other kit was an earlier one without decals. Note the use of Peco 'Parkside' PA34 mounting blocks into which I always use Bachmenn narrow tension-lock couplings. Construction is now moving onto Parkside GWR Mink 'A' wagons. I liked the look of one made for the club back in November and now have two others well on the way, with another two currently not started. So many options louvre end vents, bonnet vents, fitted, unfitted, GWR, or BR liveries. I have a mixture in mind That's enough at present, more later some time. Dad-1

I recently completed these three wagons. Two BR 13ton medfit from Parkside Dundas kits, both with some additonal brake detailing, one with 51L axleboxes. BR Medfits spent most of their life in non-revenue use so naturally this was how I wanted to model them, frustratingly no specific ZAV decals are available so I modified some Modelmaster decals. Paint is Precision on Halfords undercoat. Rust is Rust-it The third wagon is a Cambrian Dogfish with some additional detailing with brass wire for the vacuum pipe and I replaced the handrail with wire as well, paint is as above and decals are slightly modified Modelmaster apart from the Overhead Electrical warning flash is by Fox. Next up on the workbench are some vans. Brian.

My lack of blogs may suggest that nothing has been happening but that is only partly true! It is really just that nothing interesting has been happenimg but that has all just changed! Last Saturday morning I loked at a £2.50 sheet of 10 thouh Nickel Silver and thought ' I know what you shall become' and a week latter..... Maybe not quite a complete whim as I had a second Mark Clark 3d printed Simplex chassis spare, the first working very well on a Wrighlines protected body, but needed something to put on it. Only real option was to scratch build something. I did, however have devious designs on the chasis. So, withseveral copies of a resized plan to hand I started to bend metal to size This I did with aid of bending bars and and much bending until it sheered into nice straight lines. The drawing was then cut out and double sided taped onto the metal and the trusty GW rivet press pressed into service again. Where several perces had to be identical they were solderd together in a sanwich, filled to profile and then seperated. the pieces were then assembled on a piece of copper clad sheet to ensure everything was level. The uprights were soldered to the frame by drilling the reverse where it wouldn't be seen and then filling the hole with solder ib a kind of spot weld. thus keeping the edges solder free. I wasn't looking forward to the curved end panels but a cardboard template made easy work of this. Another bit I wasn't looking forward to was the roof but again a simple jig of 2x4 made a;igning the supports easy. So her is the body with the power unit in place, That seems a simple statement but the self inflicted work to get it there took several days. Not wishing to make anything simple for myself, I decided to make the chasis split frame as I find pick ups to be one of the prime causes of poor running especially in small locos. THE 3s printed chassis was a great starting point and just needed the bearings to be connected together on each side with a bus bar. I then used Branch lInes 2mm split axles made up in thier jig for the axles. The wheels were a bit of an issue however so as they were all insulated with a plasyic hub. On one side I drilled a hole in the centre of the axle on the lathe and then sodered a wire from here to a hole in the wheel face. On the other side I cut a notch in the axle and oldered a wire into this and then into a drilled hole in the wheel face. A brass strip was then glued to the bottom of the chassis to bolt to the body. And then the detailing started and we all know where the devil is! So one week later I have a passable 40hp Simplex and am just awaiting some etched chequer plate from Narrow Planet to make up the floors onto which I shall fitt the radiator, fuel tank and brake stand. Al that will be needed then is to fit the DCC chip and a bit of paint!

This was going to be a real first - a live blog from 1000ft up a Welsh slate quarry - full 4g signal, pics on phone and then RMWeb in complete meltdown! All the nasties nicely sorted and the blow by blow account by Andy of what was going on was very nicely done. So back home from a crafty two nights in North Wales and here are some pics. After a relatively early start and big breakfast in Porthmadoc (nothing happening at Harbour or WH Heritage), a rapidly brightening day saw us proceeding on virtually car (and certainly coach and caravan!), free roads up past Beddgelert, Llyngwynant and Pen-y-Pass down to Llanberris. While Louise elected to go though the papers now not so little Iz and I went exploring and got a bit carried away. Straight up Dinorwic A1 incline, then A2 and then A3. I must point out that all this is completely within the bits that you are allowed in and we didn't go off piste at all but the amount to see was just staggering. Best of all it appears that you can just keep going up the A incline right to the top but we really hadn't equipped ourselves for such and adventure that day so turned around and headed for deserted beaches on Anglesey instead. Next morning while the girls were taking their usual and completely inexplicable long time getting moving I went off in search of the Ynys Pandy Slate Mill. I have previously failed to find it but was a bit more prepared this time and was completely successful although if the mist had been any thicker I might have missed it completely! Oh yes - the mysterious baby elephants! Well that is what I presume the family in the Travel Lodge room above us must have had with them. Up and down, bang, bang ,bang until well past midnight both nights, Funny thing was that we couldn't here any voices just ceiling shattering thumps. With all credit to the Travel Lodge staff who I have always found to be completely brilliant in every one we have ever stayed in , they did offer to move us but was going to be a bit complicated as there wouldn't as no cleaned rooms were available in the morning and we wanted to get off without moving the extra ordinary amount of stuff that the out numbering female contingent of the household seem to find necessary to bring for a two night stay! Any way back home with glass of wine and looking forward to a good nights sleep! And a Happy New Year to you all!

Four more mineral wagons completed this evening, all are Parkside Dundas kits with additional parts from 51L and transfers from Modelmaster. One diag 1-110 21 ton mineral, two 1978 rebuilt 21 ton mineral and one diag 1-115 24.5 ton mineral. I'm trying to achieve a 1970s early 1980s appearance, quite pleased with how these ones turned out.

I've finally finished my first wagon, a Parkside Dundas Diag. 110 21 ton mineral, transfers are from Modelmaster.