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Yes it's another Timber Track's kit, but with a Severn Models Photo-etch interior, some bits from Scale Model Scenery and a Modelu Signalman. Considering it's size this was quite a lengthy build: First up building the basic structure, this follows the general layers approach of a Timber Tracks kit. There's also a nifty jig to help build the staircase. I also had the challenge of building a photo-etch interior from Severn Models, the basic construction was fiddly, but straight forward. The interior is what took the time, as it all had to painted, glazing installed, provision for lighting included and of course painting the photo-etch (which for the most part was done by hand) Once this was done, the roof, chimney and gable ends were added. The slate roofing was then added and the painting began.. The guttering and down-pipes were fitted and the painting completed. The Thornbury Nameplate was then added and the whole structure was weathered, before it big reveal.. And that is definitely all on the buildings front till next year.. Till next time TBG

Time working on this has been reduced since going away at half term and building some baseboards for a 5' radius test track type 'layout' to enjoy with my son who is, fortunately, train mad. Honestly it is those wiggly bits of pipework immediately in front of the cab below the tanks that I am avoiding. N Brass Locos have an ejector/injector casting but it does not look like the wet type that existed on pannier tanks when compared to photographs. I have been focusing my efforts on the chassis instead. First off I checked the fit of an 'engine' in the boiler/tank space. This is held in place by the brass tabs left on the boiler lower portion being adjusted until they grip the can of the motor sufficiently. The motor is a 7x17mm coreless type from eBay. The firebox has been cut down as much as I dare on one side to check the mesh of the worm, which is infinitely adjustable by packing the motor fore and aft to suit. An initial look at this suggests that it will require minimal packing to get the mesh on assembly just right. The motor will necessarily remain part of the body to allow the bottom of the boiler to be modelled. Also visible in this view are the filed to size and shape sandboxes, which were drilled out to accept the lids. The latter began life as flanged crankpins. The front guard irons have been reinstated. On 645/655 class the guard irons are on the ends of the brake pull rods but this engine has been so Swindonised by this time in it's life that the picture shows separate front guard irons. I wish I never cut them off because they are so far from the wheels now. Moving onto brakes: This was another job that I had been putting off since I saw a photo of the particular engine I had selected because the Swindonisation had also extended to replacement of the original inside brake pull rods to those wiggly external ones that I had hoped to avoid by building a 645/655 class. Oh well! The original brakes that I had built for the original conversion were problematic and of the incorrect type. A new set were filed out of a set of frames that I was not going to use. There are/were two options with the 57xx replacement chassis; one for middle axle drive and one for rear axle drive. The former requires compromise with the gears visible if you want to avoid a skirt to the boiler (as the Farish body is cast). The latter is/was available as a separate etch with frames that can be substituted to allow the drive to be completely within the firebox - though machining of the body casting is necessary to get a motor in the boiler/tanks. I was never going to use the other set of frames and they had a convenient set of holes for the brake hangers at the correct spacing - I just had to mark out and file around them. A brake subassembly was built up around a second chassis as a jig. If I was building the whole kit from the beginning I would do it this way again. Surely I will build another pannier tank at some point and so this frame assembly will not be wasted. I do not like soldering anywhere near the wheels since the tyres are steel and I have suffered problems with rust. (On the independent recommendation of three people I now have a dehumidifier in the workshop, which will hopefully make a difference.) This method also allows the brakes to be a completely separate assembly that will allow better ease of maintenance in the future should it be required. The downside is that only way that I could think of to attach it is by the copperclad between the brake pull rods with two screws into an additional frame spacer in the bottom of the firebox/ash pan area. Where the pull rods are outside of the wheels this will mean that the copperclad is visible between the rear coupled wheels. I'm not sure how intrusive this will be once painted and therefore how I feel about it. Next steps include cutting the assembly free by severing the ties at the top of the brake hangers and assembling the whole. What is left of the cut wire can be unsoldered and cleaned up to use the frames again for the next brake assembly and a further pannier tank. The photo below shows the corresponding location for the screws in the chassis. Nuts are soldered to the top of the additional frame spacer, which was necessarily soldered in place next to the wheels as I did not fancy removing/replacing them. A packing piece of insulating material 1mm in thickness is needed between the chassis and brake assembly. A further interruption to modelling is about to happen: Christmas...

These past weeks I have had some pleasant early morning modelling sessions, building a GWR covered float for my early 1900s setting. The model was built using two drawings in Great Western Horse Power by Janet Russel (figs 180 and 182) and a photo in Great Western Way p.163 (original edition). I was a bit slow to discover that there are variations between the drawings and the photo. The prototype is not in the GWR diagram book for horse-drawn carriages, but is arguably a variant of the E5 diagram (see GWR Goods Cartage Vol 1 by Tony Atkins). I say 'scratchbuilt', but the wheels are from an Arch Laser kit for another wagon (see discussion here). They conveniently represent the correct 4'6" diameter 14 spoke pattern used by the GWR in earlier days. Although just a lowly float, the prototype had a certain Victorian elegance in the design. Like all floats, they had cranked axels to allow for a low floor and thereby easier loading of goods. The hoop sticks for the tilt were formed over a jig, stuck on with duct tape and dunked in boiling water. The drawings show the tilt with vertical sides and a curved top. The wagon in the reference photo suggests a rounder shape. I initially concluded that this was an optical illusion. In retrospect I am not so sure. The shafts were also nicked from the Arch Laser kit. They are flat as they come, but on my prototype they have a curve so I rolled them with a round scalpel, and modifed them to allow proper fixing to the body. The shafts had extended mounting plates/irons along the side of the wagon. Mine are a bit over scale. The springs were cut on my Silhouette. A rough outline was enough as the wheels obscure the details. The brake design seems to have varied on these vehicles. The reference photo shows a somewhat crude external design, operated by a lever from the front, so I imitated this. For the painting, I followed Tony Atkins who in GWR Goods Cartage Vol 1 states: "According to the Railway Magazine, at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries GW horse lorries for delivering goods had red wheels, shafts and framing, while horse-drawn vans used for collecting and delivering passenger train parcels were painted chocolate all over [...] In 1909 horse vans were also given the same red shafts and wheels as lorries." Although floats sometimes doubled as parcels vans at rural stations, they were first and foremost intended for goods cartage, so I opted for red wheels, springs and shafts for my early 1900s period. As an aside, I'm never entirely confident about livery references in the Railway Magazine of the 1900s, but that is another story. Then along came Charlie, new to the GWR stables. Young and hopeful, he dreamt of a career in tap dancing and an endless supply of Cheese & Cucumber sandwiches. We quickly put an end to that! Here he is being modified with extra harness. I modelled the harness so that it loosely indicates the method used to pull fixed-shaft wagons, while also allowing the wagon to rest on the back of the now disillusioned Charlie. This solved the problem of balancing a one-axle vehicle. The tilt was made from plain paper, with the lettering copied from the reference photo. Period photos show that tilts of this type were very taut, with the impression of the hoop sticks sometimes showing through. To indicate this I wetted the paper and formed it around the hoop sticks. The tarp was then varnished several times, and holes punched in the sides to emulate how it was fixed in place. I wish I had used the number of a wagon that hadn't been photographed, as that would have solved the problem of inconsistencies between the drawings and the reference photo! The reference photo shows two thin and rather unsightly boards along the sides of the tilt, presumably to pin it down further and stabilise it. I made them from masking tape. The lettering in the reference photo shows a style used during the 1890s (sometimes with, sometimes without the "Co."). I pieced it together from a couple of photos using this style. The tilt had separate protective tarps fitted on the inside of the hoops at the front and rear. Again, these were simply made from paper. Photos suggest that in daily practice the rear "flap" on horsedrawn vehicles was often secured in half-open or fully open position. Lastly the wheels hubs were fitted, made from a styrene tube and filled with putty. So that's it. I won’t be fitting reins at this point, as I have to set up my layouts every time I want to run trains, so reins are just not practical. In this view you can see that the wheels are Lasercut, but it's OK from normal viewing distance. There are photos of fixed-shaft vehicles resting like this in GWR yards. Smaller carts without a tilt were sometimes, er, tilted the other way. By and large, Charlie appears to have accepted his fate. Though sometimes, out of the corner of my eye, I can see him doing a secret little tap dance. Lastly a view of the horsedrawn GWR fleet at Farthing as it currently appears. So much for corporate identity!

Just a quick post to show the result of a couple of days of painting. Hope I did them justice! Can't wait to get them 'planted' and actually have something scenic on the layout. The oast still needs its steps assembling and glazing fitting, but that may not happen before Christmas. All for now, Jonathan

Another Timber Track building, but this time a conversion from a two to a four track Engine Shed. I started this when I was finishing off the Coaling Stage and then it went on a bit of a back-burner while my client finalised his track plans.. Basically I built the first shed as per the instructions, to get it to a certain point. Again construction was very straight-forward and quick - aided by a quick drying pva wood glue (Javis Velo-set). Shed 1 sat idle till late November and the track plans were finally signed off. Then I could begin conversion work, first up I removed most of one wall, using a jig-saw.. Then cut-away the corresponding area's of shed two's wall and glued that to shed one and began building the shed out from there. At this point I realised, I would have to remove the roof frames from shed one to allow better access for painting & internal working - fortunately I was able to unglue them easily. Both sets of roof framing dry-fitted and one of the ash/ inspection pits made up for the client. At this point I added some girders and columns to the openings. These were made from styrene H sections and rod. Once everything had cured for a few days, I braved the cold and gave the whole shed (apart from the roof framing) a couple of coats of Halfords Grey Primer. That's it for this build for now. TBG

My usual apologies for the ridiculously sporadic nature of these blog entries; unfortunately updating this is not very high on my priority list as it takes a long time! That said, as it's the festive season and soon to be the start of a new year, I thought it would be good to start to tie up a few loose ends! I'm afraid the photos are a bit out of sequence, but I've hopefully layed it out in a more logical progression than I had actually done it at the time! Back in February of 2016 (was it seriously that long ago?!), plans were afoot to tackle perhaps the most important structure on Sandy Shores; the lighthouse. I tasked my Dad with finding a suitable lump of wood, and within 10 minutes I walk into the garage to find this sat on the wood lathe: In the time it took me to make a cup of tea, this lump of wood was whittled down into something more cylindrical, in a flurry of wood shavings. In the photo below, you can see a parting chisel being used to mark the length: Whilst this C-shaped chisel was used to help form the taper from top to bottom: Which resulted in a rather nice final shape for the lighthouse. Note that the ends are yet to be parted off: After a long break focusing on other aspects of the layout (and also taking time to produce a video game soundtrack), it was about time I carried on with the next step; chiselling out the various openings. My carpentry skills leaves something to be desired, but a bit of careful work with a narrow wood chisel resulted in some appropriately sized apertures for the windows and door. Thankfully, whilst it's useful to keep the edges as neat as possible, the tidiness of the depth is not really important; as we'll be covering the whole lot in air drying clay shortly. Worthy of note is the importance of safety when doing work like this; the entire lighthouse was clamped (using an old t-shirt/cloth to prevent indentations/marks) in a vice, and I was incredibly cautious about handling the chisel in a way that meant my hands were always far behind the cutting point. As my old teacher told me, "You won't stab yourself if your hands aren't in the way of the pointy bit!" Work could now begin on covering the entire thing in air drying clay; with a thin layer applied on PVA, and done so fairly evenly. It was then smoothed with a wet finger; that said, I wasn't after a totally flat surface, as any small bumps would add a lot to make the finished stonework look more natural. This was then left to harden overnight, ready for the next stage. Thus the next day, work could recommence, and the first area to be tackled was the balcony section outside the lantern room. This required a stone supporting ring, which was quickly formed by rolling the clay to form a long cylindrical piece. To provide a bit more strength, the joint was lapped, although this needed to harden before any further work could be done. (Actually done far later (in March 2019), but included here for the sake of completeness!) To produce the horizontal mortar courses, I had originally intended to hold a craft knife horizontally in a small pin vice, raising it up for every mortar course. Unfortunately, the base of the lighthouse was not quite level, and the belt sander simply not powerful enough to sand it flat, so the whole lot was done by hand instead. This took many hours, split over two days, with plenty of long breaks in between to stave off insanity... and that's just the horizontal courses! If you look closely in the photo below, you should just be able to see some faint markings going up the entire tower to help keep everything level. I worked my way around the tower doing small sections at a time; using a short piece of card to help guide the craft knife. As the tower is tapered, any attempt to do larger lengths would result in a curved line; as it was there are a few wobbly lines, but nothing that looks out of place: The next challenge was to work out how to scribe the vertical mortar courses. Again, the tapering tower makes this more difficult than simply marking out every 10mm or so. but I was keen for something to be relatively straightforward; so a simple solution was needed. Fortunately, I came up with an idea (although in my haste, I forgot to take a photo!). On the top and bottom of the tower, a mark was made every 15 degrees (as it's a factor of 360 degrees, so there wouldn't be any odd sized gaps), these were then lightly joined with a mechanical pencil to give vertical divisions that I could base the stone lengths around. This results in slightly trapezoid shaped stones to account for the taper, and it was easy to offset alternating layers. The end result are perfectly matching stone courses all around the tower; I was pretty surprised myself to be honest! You can see in the photo below that all (over 700!) vertical courses have been scribed; and that now I am roughing up the courses and taking out small chunks to suggest wear and tear: In order to produce the stepped lower section on the lighthouse, what I should've done was produce this effect on the lathe when it was still a wooden base. Unfortunately, I realised far too late, and now had the unenviable task of forming the steps out of layers of clay strips and hundreds of tiny clay blocks. I suppose what also might've worked would be to cut off the lower section, and turn a new bit on the lathe, but oh well! The basic construction method is outlined below, and I think you'll agree; quite a tedious process! I start off by rolling clay out, and seperating them into strips, which are then scribed to form blocks. As you can see, it's important to cover all but the strip you are immediately using with clingfilm, to prevent the clay drying out prematurely: After hours of work, the various step levels are completed. It may not be the most elegant or efficient process, but it works; and that's the main thing! As you can see, I very quickly lost count of how many blocks I needed, but suffice to say, it is a lot! Much like the prototype at Spurn Point, the access door to this lighthouse is quite a ways up the tower because it sits in an area sometimes covered by high tides. That means it needed it's own access bridge. This was actually a very simple (if a little fiddly) build. It's actually made entirely of lollipop sticks; cut up finely with a hand-held chopper tool! There are a pair of longitudunal beams, onto which the slats are glued with PVA. Handrails are also fabricated from tiny pieces of lollipop sticks, and are glued to the outside edge of one of the longitudunal beams. This could all then be painted in a four step process; firstly a wash of black, then a brown wash, then a slightly thicker brown wash. Followed by a final weathering with a dry brush of "light sand". I always use Vallejo Model Color paints for this kind of work, as I find them incredibly easy to work with (and they seem to last forever despite being in tiny bottles)! Anyway, you'll see this technique explored in more detail in a later entry, but here's the finished result: May 2018, and with just a few days before Sandy Shores' first exhibition (at our family-run event), I wanted to progress the lighthouse further. I knew I wouldn't have time to paint it all, but I did make a start on a basic lantern room from plastruct sections and plasticard. This ended up being a temporary solution though, as we'll see shortly! After a long break, I came back to Sandy Shores in February 2019. One of the jobs I had in mind was to make more progress with the lighthouse. First on the list was to replace the original lantern room; which didn't quite look right to me. After a mock-up was made out of paper, I realised that the prototype at Spurn Point looked to have had a tapered lantern room (to match the taper of the tower I presume). Working off of a tiny photo (the only one I could find), I quickly mocked up another, and despite being such a minor change, it resulted in a significant improvement: Two octagonal plasticard rings were formed (using a template on a scrap bit of cardboard to keep things square), and the lower panels tapered and mitred. Uprights and two more rings would be needed to surround the glass panes, which can be seen in the photo below on the left side: The upright frames also had a mm cut out from the inside edge, and were assembled; using my drawings on the cardboard as a template: I had originally planned to form window surrounds with slithers of plasticard, but the desired effect could not be achieved easily. Thankfully, I stumbled across a post somewhere that had shown glazing bars immitated by simply scribing the outside of the "glass" with a craft knife. The effect is subtle, but works brilliantly for thinly framed panels: The lower panels however were not just simple flat metal sheets, they actually had some sort of pattern. Sadly the reference photo was too poor quality, so I opted to produce panels from really thin plasticard to sit on top of the existing ones. Seven out of the eight had a hole punched through the middle (using a hole punch), and the eighth panel had a tiny access hatch frame cut to fit, as well as the hatch itself which was formed by a multitude of tiny slithers of plasticard: Once the glue had dried on these panels, it attacked the ones with the hole in with a small spherical cutting implement on the end of my Dremel, to produce a sort of counter-sunk effect. These then had a pushpin pushed through them. In reality, these would be vents (presumably something to do with keeping the windows from fogging up, or simply ventilation?), but I did not fancy my chances of making tiny vent hoods! It wasn't just the lantern room that needed detailing. The tower had various window surrounds formed from stone, and these were actually produced not by scribing the clay, but by gouging out the clay and putting plasticard frames in place instead. This may sound counter-intuitive, but I wanted the edges to be relatively neat, and I think I would've struggled to get it looking this way with clay alone. Due to the curvature of the tower, these were held in place with rubber bands overnight; to give the PVA time to hold firmly. With an invite to what turned out to be a game-changing outing to the RMweb SWAG member's day in April 2019, I really wanted to get the lighthouse to a reasonable state of play. It was time to therefore carry out the next tedious task; painting! The photo (leftmost) shows a general undercoat of a mix of two Dulux tester pots - Perfectly Taupe, and Lemon Pie. These created a concrete-ish colour which I could use as a good starting point to build up the rest of the colours. The middle photo shows the result of many many hours of painting variations of the same colour (mixed with a range of browns, whites, greys, and sand colours from Model Color). This is where the most experimentation took place, and where I found the greatest challenge in getting colours that were not so vastly different as to be out of place, but different enough to give some variation. In the end, some of the browns look a bit pink, and the dark greys look a bit blue (a common problem on this layout it seems!). Finally, the last photo shows one of the various washes of colour I used afterwards to try and blend the colours together a bit better, and give some highlights and variation. The white here is the last one to go on (after a yellowish one, and has just been brushed on in the photo, awaiting immediate rubbing off with a kitchen roll to remove the worst of it. Judging by the prototype at Spurn, the close proximity to the sea creates a lot of salt deposits or something on the seaward side; hence this white streak. Painting has never been my strong point, but prototype reference photos do a lot to help. With a final wash of greens and a bit of black on the stepped section (where algae and seaweed builds up), the painting was pretty much as good as finished: And bringing you right up to date, just in time for Sandy Shores' visit to ExpoNG, in Swanley back in October, I decided it was about time that the railings were finished off. These are from a (I think Ratio) kit, and are plastic stanchions coupled with wire for the handrails. The plastic makes these incredibly wobbly and prone to damage, so it was somewhat of a labour of love to get them to look reasonably straight. The handrails were pre-bent by hand, and then threaded through the (glued) stanchions. These were then soldered together, and a bit of glue applied around the holes in the stanchions. It's reasonably sturdy, but it wouldn't take a lot to rip the handrails out of the clay, as the stanchions don't have a long "leg" with which to push them deep into the clay. Anyway, these were painted off-white, and left to dry overnight. Note the foghorns built from scrap plastic bits, and the roof formed from thin triangles of plasticard, with rain strips to cover the gaps! The windows were also finally installed; made from a rectangle of clear plastic packaging, and four frame pieces of plasticard. These were fitted in place (scraping excess clay off with a craft knife where necessary), and then any holes filled with, yup, more clay! And there we have it; the (almost) complete lighthouse. As you might be able to see, there is an LED in there, which is fitted to a cheap flashing unit, but it will be replaced at some point as it's not terribly realistic! Hopefully I haven't missed off anything, but either way, I hope you've enjoyed this condensed (!) look at the building of Sandy Shores' lighthouse. I welcome any and all questions and comments down below. Next time, I plan to show you the next building; the loco shed. See you then! Jam

After talking about my class 37 plans for the past few days, its time to crack on with modelling them. First up is 37403, a respray from what was a Large Logo Blue 37412 (its Extreme Etchings nameplates will be finding their way onto the classifieds at the weekend) The project started with the preparation of the bodyshell, the Bachmann roof grill was removed (an Extreme Etchings replacement has been ordered). The Large Logo, number transfer and scotty dog were removed (using a combination of wet & dry and a fiberglass pencil), and the joint between yellow and blue was also sanded down to blend it together. My plan was to keep the grey roof (keeping the cantrail stripes) and use the existing yellow for the ends, so these were masked off before giving the whole thing a light dusting of primer. The weather today was just about warm enough for painting, so after heating up the garage it was out with the airbrush. (Although it took a while to get the bottle of Railmatch paint open, soaking in a bath of boiling water.) A couple of coats of green paint later, and its starting to look like 37403. It needs a couple of minor touch ups where the masking didn't quite work. I have emailed Railtec to see if its possible to get a set of faded BR crests (along with the other transfers). Lamp irons are also going to have to be added (the Bachmann ones were removed to assist with the warning panel masking.) I have a Brassmasters etch which should provide suitable replacements. Next up will be preparing 37245 for its conversion into 37230 (cleaning the body, priming & spraying the yellow and grey. The next weeks weather is looking too cold so I suspect it will not be until after Christmas now.

After about a 3 month break, I returned to HMCS Snowberry, my plan of action was simple, get the hull cleaned up, add some details to the forecastle and get the hull into painted.. Hull cleaned up, more wooden decking removed and detailing added. Looking fine in Halfords Grey Primer While the primer was curing, I made a start on the main gun. In the spray booth - well mostly! Western Approaches colour scheme being applied, instead of mixing paints as per the Revell Instructions, I used close matches in the Vallejo Model Air Range (71.044 Grey RLM02, 71.101 Blue RLM78 & 71.121 Light Gull Grey). Yep I knocked off the rudder! With the Keel painted Anthracite Grey and the masking removed she was back on the workbench. More detail added to the main gun. Rudder refitted and screw installed. Roll on another 3 and a half months and she was back on the bench.. A sense of scale, next to the RAF Rescue Launch - HMCS Snowberry is ready for her deck to be painted. Deck painted - Revell got the colour call out for the deck wrong! More details added, main gun deck installed. Gun shield decaled and wheel house fitted. More bits added, and more railings fitted. More bits added, it's endless building boxes and boy do they need clean up! That's all for now TBG

So two build's for the price of one here.. First up the Sand House, this was a straight-forward build apart from the curving the roof and also had lighting to install. Completely built Part way painting Installing the lighting Painting almost done. I also painted the interior Fresh from Weathering Testing the lighting and then outside for a photo-shoot. Up next was the Stable Block, this took a bit more time to build and again would have lighting. Then it was priming and paint.. And then some weathering.. Testing the lighting And outside for a photo-shoot. That's all for these builds TBG

Just more finessing of the paint. There truly isn't much more to do. I just didn't do much over the past week. Really, I'll move onto something else soon.

While I wasn't expecting to be starting any painting this year, inspired by the desire to crack on with a model of a Class 37 on my other blog coupled with a very mild day, tonight I was out in the garage getting started on some painting. With the garage heated up in advance (and the paint warmed in a bath of hot water before heading outside), I got on with spraying some GWR green. Between each coat the models were treated to a quick blast with a hairdryer to dry the paint in order to get the finish complete in one go. I did find a little more issue than normal in getting paint into the corners (as usual with resprays there are a couple of touch ups needed). I also couldn't find my paint handles so it was a little trickier to move the workpiece around. So now I have the green painted on the Bird, 73xx and 2251 along with their respective tenders. On the latter there are a few areas which I need to confirm the colour (were the insides of the tender fairings painted green or black, likewise the toolboxes). Black will all be hand painted with a weathered mix of Vallejo acrylics (given that I hate trying to mask steam locos for spraying the black). Then I need to get on with building the chassis for 7313 and 2213, the Bird just needs a little work to make it run.