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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!

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

....turns out that I'll be at sea over Christmas. After my rather mixed trip to Aberdeen on Weds, one of the people I'd contacted (to no useful effect, as I thought it) rang to ask me to mobilise on Sunday... rig move in UKCS, about 15 days, which is about par for a jack-up move in those waters. Couldn't really say no, as I've had little worthwhile work for some time now and next year looks bleak on the construction front. I've concluded I need to make some sort of move to make rig moves happen for me in 2020. Given the way the oil industry thinks, there's nothing like doing the job, so a rig move (preferably a large, modern one for a major, with at least one more scheduled move in 1Q 2020) sounds like a good start. It did result in some controversy, but that's life in the oil patch for you. So it's Xmas and quite likely, New Year in one of the most dispiriting places in God's green world. I don't quite know what it is about the North Sea, but as a place for looking out the window and thinking "what am I doing HERE?" there's nowhere quite like it. press on!

Part two of the loco painting..... As with 37403, I had some issues with the paint not getting into corners. The solution has been a lot more touch up work with a fine brush, I think the weather paid a part, as did the mix of paint, along with my experimentation with a different airbrush needle (using the medium rather than my usual fine). Once that was complete it was time to add the other colours, starting with the footplate / steps using a dirty black / brown mix of Vallejo acrylics, the smokebox and roof in grey black and the buffer beams in red. With that done there were a few minor repairs to complete, a rear handrail had snapped off the Bird and a casting was dislodged from the 73xx, both also needed buffers gluing in position. The final task was to add the nameplates / numberplates to 3449, and the bufferbeam numbers / tender crests to all three. I still need to get number plates for 7313 and 2213 which will go on my next Narrow Planet order (likely along with replacements for 1470 for which I cannot find the missing plate.) 3449 "Nightingale" 7313 - should be 7316! 2213 Given I had some left over paint I have cracked on with a few other outstanding jobs, adding some additional weathering to my Grange, weathering 5108 (which if I can find the missing buffers will end up on eBay on Monday to partially fund a new Hornby example), and repainting the smokebox (and Gibson chimney) on my Bachmann 2251 ready for comparison with the Finney example. It will eventually get a new brass cab using the leftover Finney parts... While varnishing 37403 I decided to see how the GWR green looked with a coat of varnish. Again I used the Simons clear gloss varnish. Given it had worked perfectly in the morning I was surprised when the finish crackled. I think the reason was holding the can too close to the model. Thankfully its just the rear of the tender that’s effected. The effected area Varnished vs unvarnished On Christmas day I will be getting the new chassis jig at which point I can crack on with building the new chassis for both 7313 and 2213 (although the latter will still need wheels sourcing), while for 7313 I am experimenting with Gibson wheels (and will do the build tests with an old set of P4 Gibsons to avoid having to take the wheels off and on too many times). If they work ok then I halve the cost of wheels going forwards, if not it will get rewheeled with a set of Markits (eventually). 2213 will be tested with a set of Ultrascale P4 wheels to prove it works, before sitting on a set of Bachmann wheels until its new wheels are sourced.

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