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I'm beginning to feel like a bus, I don't post anything for ages then a string of posts one after the other. I'm keeping the posts minimal to provide a bit of bite sized interest and to avoid boring you all with the same background for all the photos. Please bear with me, it's all I've got at the moment! A few images of some early London & Brighton Railway stock. The open sided second coupe break (surely far too many titles for such a basic vehicle?) appears to be waiting for an engine of some description. The conductor (that's what they were called in those days) remains calm but his patience is wearing thin! The carriage lacks a few passengers, or perhaps the weather is so good they've all booked an open third, which conveniently leads on to the second picture. The third pic shows the roofed version of the same open third and there is an enclosed second version too, although I haven't photographed it yet. Perhaps a little job for this weekend.

I've made a fair amount of progress on the B1 chassis since getting a replacement soldering iron from Eileen. Getting the Antex with the slightly more flexible cable option is definitely worth the extra £3. I was finally able to fasten all the bits of the slide bars together and get them fixed into the cylinders. This finally locks the clearance between the back of the cross-head and the coupling rods which is tight given the accurate track gauge. I had to thin down the crank pin nut on the leading axle a bit but it all turned ok in the end. The drop link off the cross-head consists of 3 pieces of etch none of them larger than a few millimetres in any direction. It took most of an afternoon, no-one can say this chassis kit isn't value for money in terms of hours of 'play value'! The piston castings soldered on surprisingly easily and then I couldn't avoid the cylinder wrappers any longer. I had expected these to be trouble but to my surprise they bent up and soldered on remarkably easily. At the moment the but I should be able to sort that out. I still have to fit the cylinder covers on the front. I've started reading the instructions for the rest of the valve gear and can foresee a bulk order for .55mm drill bits to Eileen soon. I just know I'm going to break lots! This bit of etch is 30mm from top to bottom so, as you can see, these bits are not big! Wish me luck! David

Hello RMwebber's. Snitzl is a nickname I've had from very young, used by my mother to describe the mess I used to make whenever I made something. These blogs will illustrate whatever I've been obsessed with, whether it be sctrach building, electronics or venture's into the unknown. I tend to model whatever I like, with little thought as to location. For instance, the illustrated lattice bridge is based on a bridge that existed at Kimberley Station, Notts, which was G.N.R. and later became Midland and the engine pictured alongside it is a scratch built L.S.W.R. by Stephenson ( 7 foot driving wheels ). Below are examples of some of my work taken from the two layouts that I am currently working on, these are 'Snitzl Town' and 'Fun Town. I take my inspiration not only from the real world but also the model press and films. The terraced cottages below are based on structures found on a layout called Eaton Gomery, by Peter Thomas, the Mart, also pictured below actually existed in the early 1900's on Lower Parliament Street, Nottingham. The track plan for Snitzl Town is similar in design to Iain Rice's Tregarrick, which was a North Cornwall Minerals Railway, Fun Town on the other hand, is a very simple micro layout which breaks alot of rules. On Fun Town, none of the rolling stock ever existed in the real world and many features such as Jules Vernes Tower, Vernes Flying Machine, Monorail, Railway Market and Steam Tram are pure modelling fun. I started scratch building in the early 1980's and have included a few images below of my efforts.

Well it's not every day you have the excuse to use the word triumvirate but today I'm feeling lucky! These three are a bit late for my own layout, but never too late for the glass cabinet screwed to my living room wall. The Beadle wagon is a recent addition to the range, crisp masters by Simon Turner, lettering transfers by POW sides. The Lime wagon and Booth Bros. wagons are revivals of excellent Woodham Wagon Works kits, masters by Burgundy many moons ago, but I made a new mould for the Lime Wagon and intend doing the same for the Booth Bros. at some point in the not too distant future. Lettering by my own fists of ham.

One job that I have been putting off for some time is improving the awful tepid green that Hornby use to spray their GWR locos, last year I had a first attempt using Simon's clear lacquer on a Hornby grange. The lacquer had been recomended elsewhere (I think @checkrail first mentioned it), but I have had mixed results. When it works it is a great product, however a couple of times (the aforementioned Grange and on the tender for my 43xx) the varnish has reacted badly and resulted in a crazy paving effect. I put this down to either spraying at the wrong tempreture, too much moisture in the air, or not shaking the can enough, so now will only use it in the warm after an extra long shake. The intention today was to have another go at seeing how much it can improve the tepid Hornby green. Here is my model of 6000 King George V taken not long after I renumbered / rebranded the tender. I masked the smokebox, footplate and underframe (along with the cab windows) and gave a coat of the lacquer. The colour is still not perfect, but I think is a distinct improvement over the out of the box shade. with a little more richness to the colour. Eventually I still think they will all need to be repainted, however right now I think the loss of colour is made up for in the better quality OEM lining. The gloss black roof will get a coat of weathered black soon, while the rest of the black areas will get a degree of weathering eventually. My hope is that once weathered it will take the edge off the remaining annoyance from the colour. 6000 can now return to test duties on the layout, although at some point soon I really need to get round to fitting a Dingham into the tender as its about time I started testing with the planned couplings fitted!

I didn't do any actual modelling as such yesterday (it was too hot for anything involving moving about and soldering), instead I had a think about some of the challenges I can do on my layout. The main challenge is the classic inglenook, using the headshunt at position 1 (that fits 5 wagons) and the sidings at 2 and the through line at 3. The sidings at 2 can hold up to 4 wagons, possible 5 small ones if I want to increase the difficulty that way. Then additional challenges can be added. I'm thinking at the moment, I want to add a brake, which needs to be sorted out from the incoming train at 1, stored on the run-round at 4, then re-attached to the back of the completed train. This gets a bit complicated as the loco has to run round and finish at 3 instead of at 1. The other challenge is having a certain van that needs to unload at point 5, then get sorted back into the outgoing train in the usual random order (probably to be decided with a shuffled card system). Maybe I could try both extra challenges at once, but I'm not sure that's actually possible with the brake blocking the run-round loop! Any idea for any other challenges I could try?

Some may remember a while ago I made a kit for Hunslet 22hp 4wDM 1786, also known as 'Courage' or 'Sweet Pea'. However, the Mk1 was a bit too fast to really be usable, and eventually got broken while trying to modify it to reduce the speed. Now I've worked up the 'Courage' to have another go at it (sorry), and the Mk2 is underway, and works! The pickups are a bit crude, but work, and it's much slower than last time, although I've only managed to test it with a 9v battery so far. Time to get the controller out...

Well, I nearly missed a day! Today's effort was trial fitting some of the SER d1553 brake bits. The solebars and underframe have come out well, and fit, but the body on this one is a little bit warped, so I'm not going to build it up into a full test. I need to check the coupling height first, then I'll reprint and have another go. Shame, but hopefully worth it for the layout. 3d printing is very frustrating at times!

I got back from work at 3am this morning, so naturally, not a lot of modelling got done. All I really have to show is the Hunslet chassis running in. It's held upside down from a 9v battery, still a little bit noisy after about an hour each way, but considering the gears I've used, I don't think it's too bad. A couple of the wheels are a tad wonky, but I think that's mainly due to them being assembled and disassembled so many times by now, as they're re-used from the Mk1.

My new Hornby LMS brake van in BR guise appeared in a previous blog entry. As I mentioned then I felt the curved moulded rain strips were reminiscent of the old Airfix BR brake van kit. Prototype photos showed angled batons. Microstrip was used to make these. The lower handrails were bowed so replaced with brass wire painted with Halfords white primer. I painted the buffer beams bauxite to match the body. The veranda foot boards were also painted Weathering was carried out with washes and dry brushing of Vallejo acrylics. Then Tamiya acrylics were sprayed on the roof and underframe. A nice little project which certainly enhances an excellent model. Cheers, Mark

Just a very small update as long days at work finishing year end reporting are not leaving a great deal of time in the evening for myself…. However over the past few evenings the chassis for 7316 has started to come together. I started off chopping the original P4 spacers in half, this was done to assist in getting enough heat onto the old spacers one at a time (whilst ensuring that solder did not fill the slots). With that done the chassis was rebuilt in OO, although I didn’t find my Poppy’s Woodtech jig as helpful as I had hoped. I was expecting that buy buying an 8 coupled version I would be future proofing the tool, however rather than a “one size fits all” approach the slots are too short and wouldn’t accept the rod positions for the 73xx. The solution was to elongate the centre axle slot (which will need further modification in order to accept the rods for my 2251 build.) The chassis has been tested on a set of Gibson P4 wheels, but I can’t progress with the brake gear until the new (Gibson) OO wheels arrive. Why Gibson rather than Markits? I am fed up with paying a premium for wheels which won’t fit on the axles without significant fettling! I haven’t quite worked out how I am going to solder the brake gear into position yet as I don’t want flux getting near to the steel wheels. One thought is to regauge the P4 wheels to OO, and use those as a guide for soldering the brakes into position. Once that’s done I still need to regauge the tender (for which I haven’t got spacers) and add the pony truck, for the tender I think I have a few Comet frame spacers available… Test fitting the body and chassis together has highlighted some additional work that will be required, there are 3 locations towards the front of the loco where components are soldered through the footplate. With P4 spacers these fell between the frames, but with the narrower OO spacers they obstruct the frame. I need to find a flat angled file and remove the obstructions. Speaking of the body, thanks to John for the kind donation of some outside steam pipe castings the body is now complete (bar the fitting of number plates which will wait until I have enough to make a Narrow Planet order worthwhile. The other outstanding task is going to be the repair of the varnish damage to the tender rear, based upon the repairs to 37403’s bonnet top I should be able to fix this with a combination of sanding, hand painting and a new coat of varnish.