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After contemplating sprung intermediate buffer, due to practical considerations, an executive decision was made - fixed W/M buffers! The tender is now complete and has temporarily been connected to the loco. The latter has had some fine strips added to the rear edge of the fall plates, to bridge the gap to the tender. Still got to fit locating pins to the loco number and shed plates but, otherwise, I think it's finished ready for painting. Here is the finished loco, face to face with a later class mate. Dave.

Earlier this year I came into possession of a Proscale Princess which was originally built by Alan Sibley. The model,46200 Princess Royal, was DC with a Portescap motor and I have converted it to DCC for use on Barrow Road - not strictly prototypical but I like the model. Alan obviously was sparing in his use of solder to assemble the kit as I had to re-attach a lot of small parts which fell off when I breathed on them!!! Hope you like the video 46200 Princess Royal

I made a brief video of the layout showing a few trains running. David

Having tackled the sides, now comes the time to assemble them into a body. First we need a couple of ends. These are an excellent design and very easy to make, being just a single etch which then folds up into a self-locating component for both the chassis and the sides. Here's one such end (they're handed, so need to be at the right end of the coach!) with two nuts soldered in place as was also done with the bogie mounts. One very nice bit of design is two small tabs which fold down either side of the base plate, which in turn locate into slots in the turn-under at the base of the coach side. These tabs help align the ends and sides very nicely: Ignore the fact that I've tinned the underside of the base plate: a mistake on my part and not needed. Now to begin soldering the whole lot together. There's no getting around the fact that this is slightly fiddly but there's no limit on the number of tries you can have - the worst that happens is that you clean off the solder and have another go. I find that these locating tabs are a good place to start, so with the side and end held in alignment (I go by eye, rather than using a jig) I tack solder the tab, If this is looking good, I then apply another tack at the cant-rail level, before finishing off with a strengthening fillet of solder all the way down the join. With these coaches, the ends have to tuck between the sides - other kits may vary. Here's a soldered side and end: Now repeat for the rest of the coach. There are several possibilities here: you could solder up a pair of side-ends and then solder them together, or an end-side-end to which a side is then fixed. I've no idea which is best, but for these kits I've had no problem making a side-end-side, and then soldering the other end in last. Check for squareness and parallel-ness as you go, but you should be fine - I found that they were a breeze, probably due to those clever alignment tabs. It's very satisfying to complete the body - suddenly what were a bunch of flat, flimsy bits of brass have structural integrity and are beginning to look vaguely like a coach! Happy days! In the above pic, the method of mounting the body to the chasis should be apparent. Bolts go up through the slots in the chassis, into the retained nuts in the base plates at either end of the body. Comet use an identical system and it works well since the mounting points are usually in the toilets or vestibules, well out of the way of any interior stuff you might want to add. The ionly snag I found with the Roxey arrangement, and it's a minor one, is that the slots in the chassis all needed elongating out toward the buffers. Now the body can be test-mounted to the chassis. During the chassis assembly, a few tabs and castings will have protruded up above the solebar level and may interfere with a good, snug fit of the body, so these need to be filed back to a level surface. I haven't yet bolted the body on in this shot, but I couldn't resist seeing how the corridor third will look within the formation. Again, I hope this has been useful and I look forward to cracking on with the remaining tasks. Cheers!

With the bogies and chassis more or less done, work turns to the body sides. There's nothing particularly tricky here, it's just all a bit time-consuming and I split the work below across two evenings. Here are the two etches for the sides, with the lower etch showing the droplight windows soldered into position. I don't have any magic solutions for this job, which is a bit tedious! The droplights must be positioned looking at the coach from the outside, or else they can end up a bit off-centered or askew. Once positioned, they need to be soldered in from the other side, which entails turning the etch over and keeping the dropliight from moving around in the process. I tin the area where the droplight will go, position it, flip over, hold the droplight in place with some convenient tool such as a wooden peg, apply flux and a dab more solder and go for it! Then rinse and repeat for all the other droplights, on both sides. Of course if a droplight ends up seriously out of register, it must be unsoldered and repositioned. I usually model one or two per coach in lowered position, which helps add a touch of life to the finished model. With the droplights attended to, the next job is to solder the ventilators onto the front of the coach side - a slightly easier job as at least you don't have to solder in from behind. Again, I tin the area and aim to apply flux (and possibly a tiny amount of additional solder) to sweat the ventilator into position. I've seen much neater work than my own but it can be cleaned up quite satisfactorily. The main thing is to keep the vents nice and horizontal. A peg is too large to hold them in place and allow the iron to get in, so I position them with the tip of a fine file. It's a small enough contact area not to result in any loss of heat. Incidentally I've found that if I solder in the vents first, then do the droplights, there's a tendency for the vents to un-solder. So now I prefer to do t.e droplights first, then the finer work of adding the vents. Next we move onto forming the coach profile. A right angle fold needs to be made along the lower edge of the side, and the instructions suggest making this after forming the tumblehome. My preference is to begin forming this fold, as shown below, then attend to the tumblehole, then complete the fold. For some reason I seem to get a crisper result that way. Again this is made with the Hold and Fold tool. Now onto the tumblehome, which is not pronounced on these coaches. I've had some goes with rolling bars, but for these models (perhaps because of the horizontal waist panelling) I find I'm very comfortable just forming the curve with gentle finger and thumb pressure, working along the side gently and making only small tweaks. Use the end etches as a reference for when you're getting near the desired profile. It doesn't need to be spot-on as soldering the side to the ends will take care of any minor deviations in the curve.. And here's the finished side, with the tumblehome formed, the lower fold completed, and another fold made in the top of the etch. The profile is just about visible here: That's it for now. There are still some details to be added - door hinges and commode handles - but these can be attended to after the sides are assembled onto the ends. Cheers!

So here we have the airfix moon buggy, or more correctly the lunar rover. I have added seat backs, antenna's, and the cargo rack/bulkhead behind the seats. I still need to add the satellite dish on the main antenna, and the distinctive orange mudguards. The two astronauts in the background are taking rock and dust samples, that's some kind of probe, not a rifle. These guys are roughly half way through painting, I think the space suits look better with a matt finish. I also have a Revell F104G starfighter in progress at the moment, will get back to something rail-related soon.

For several months I've been thinking that I just need to do a little bit more to the west end of the Camerton layout then I'll be able to post a new entry on the blog. Looking back at the previous entry (way back in February), though, I reckon I've made a fair bit of progress so it's well past time for an update. First an overall 'warts and all' photo where you can see the yard and, beyond the bridge, the station area is covered in modelling materials. I'm also beginning to make progress around the station but that will be a subject for a future entry. The third section beyond the station is still sitting in the garage in raw pink foam so it will be a while before I get any further at that end. The first major development was the completion of the road bridge, a 4mm plywood base covered with Scalescenes brick paper together with some home-made papers for the quoins and the large blue brick wall capping. I've also made a start on the road surfaces using chinchilla dust over a grey base but, as can be seen, much remains to be done here. The yard surface is mostly Carr's ash ballast. Other folk have commented on its dark colour even when the glue has dried. I reckon it looks fine for a wet day, but ash was typically much lighter when dry. To try to capture this I've been rubbing in grey and white powders to give plenty of variation across the area. The effect can be seen here though the appearance to the eye is closer to the lighter shades in the photos. Nevertheless, I think I need to do more as the real Camerton yard was probably a mix of ash and the local white lias and other limestones. Another development visible in the photos is the static grass cover with some clumps of hanging basket liner for rougher vegetation such as brambles. I've been quite pleased with the results that I've been getting from my home made grass machine. It struggles a bit with the longer fibres, but the overall effects are quite pleassing. I've been using blends from a range of grass colours and lengths, mostly Noch 'wild' and 'meadow' types in lengths from 1.5mm to 12mm, together with a few Mini-Natur 4.5 and 6mm types. The intention is that some of the surrounding areas are quite overgrown, but the GWR permanent way crew has been doing a good job of keeping the grass short adjacent to the lines and working areas. The entrance to the yard now has gates. These were made from sections of Ratio fencing with added hinges and other details together with carved wooden gate posts. There are few photos showing the original gates and none show any detail, but there is just enough to indicate they were similar to the yard gates at Monkton Combe which, fortunately, have been photographed more often. The gate photos above also give a good impression of perhaps the most time-consuming feature to be added so far, that is the fencing. The posts are all cut from 1.6mm square brass then blackened, painted and planted. The bit that took the time was making the typical GWR strainer posts at each end of a row of fencing and at strategic points along its length. These are such a characteristic part of the GWR lineside that I felt they had to be included. EZ Line was strung between the strainer posts then glued to each of the intermediate posts. Usually there were six or seven strands of wire in these fences, but I've left out the two lowest runs which would probably be hidden in the grass. The rail-based strainers are made from lengths of BGS bridge rail with all the necessary slots cut to aid bending and holes drilled to accept the wires. As supplied, the rail is a simple 'T' shape without the characteristic hollow profile of the prototype. Fortunately, at this scale the hollow underside is only visible in places, so can be represented by a simple cut with a razor saw. The next photo is just clear enough to show the details of an unused (and undrilled) example of the bracing pieces. There's much work still to do. More vegetation and a few trees, road surfaces, a yard crane, a corrugated hut on the platform, signals (which I'm working on), turnout operating units, tie bars and rodding, ... Finally, for now, a view through the bridge towards Hallatrow. Nick

Further work on the buildings continues with the 'new' sand dryer building, which from aerial photos in my my possession was built in the late 1940s . I found a stock of old Formcraft bricks which I decided to use to build the front with it's pillars and use slaters english bond sheet for the remainder. On reflection this was probably not my best idea as it took rather longer to build than anticipated. My first attempt at adding 'sand' by using talc did not convince so I raided that grand daughters covered sand pit - with permission - a borrowed a cup full. Next building project is to clad the arches of Barrow Road with Wills coarse stone........

Having got a decent enough test track to run things I've been adding to my freight stock. I need a couple of brake vans and in an exhibition a little while back (when we had them things) I bought a partly built Cambrian models SR brake van kit from a 'member sales' stand. The chassis had been assembled (as rigid) and the duckets had been glued to the mixed plank sides (great as that is the variety I'm modelling). Putting this together has been bit of a pain as the body interior is actually lower by 0.5 mm than the ends and fixing the doors should be done before attaching the roof (!) ... like I didn't and it shows. Also, being in P4 the long wheel base in a rigid chassis resulted in immediate derailment on my dodgiest bit of track. So I bodged a compensated axle using a Blacksmith internal compensation unit designed for compensating etched coach bogies . it worked a treat! Still a work in progress I need to attached the couplings (Dingham) and the steps and finish painting. Some photos of progress follows ... Firstly body assembled with ends, having packed the centre compartment sides to raise them to meet the roof (!) I was painting as I went along so the internal bits that would be hard to paint afterwards were done, but I wish I hadn't dome the sides ... This is the underside showing the weight and the compensation unit close up of compensation unit and a lot of fat hand / finger (Sorry) now with doors and buffers replaced with Bachmann sprung loco buffers which might be a bit too long and the other side

A bit off topic for RM Web, and about 12 months late for the Apollo 11 anniversary, here is my first attempt at the Airfix astronaut figure set.... These are made of slightly squishy vinyl rather than hard plastic. This can be hard to paint (ask my 12 year old self), but it turns out a quick coat of watered-down PVA glue works as a primer (leftovers from IKEA). Paint used is a mix of humbrol and revell enamel, with some cheap watercolour paint from The Works for weathering. Think I will try assembling one of the moon buggies next.

47465 is my Bath GP shaded Jinty which was a Bachmann Jinty P4 conversion (that was the basis for the EMGS conversion data sheet). Since that sheet was created a long long time ago, poor 47465 had an unfortunate accident, being sent flying from the layout to the floor (!). The result was that the front LHS wheel acquired a loose tyre (the only damage!!). It took a while for me to get around to fixing the tyre (super glue) and it then ran fine. However, in the process of investigating the damage I had to cut off the brake gear which in any case was a bodge fix of the original Bachmann shoes and pull rods. So the loco ran 'naked' for a while (actually a few years). Now in lock down I've got around to replacing the brake gear, which has been 'stolen' from a static model (!) the 'Great British Locomotives' collection Jinty that I got from Ebay. (This was an experimental purchase to see if these static models were any good or usable as a cheap source of replacement loco bodies - it seems so!). The brake gear part of the GBL Jinty needed a little hacking about to reduce the size of the brake shoes but the plastic is remarkably strong so I had only one breakage disaster. So here are some photos of the model .... I should point out that the body has replacement steps (Mainy Trains) and has had the cab floor cut so it can sit on a Perseverance chassis that is waiting in the wings for it .... incidentally with a bit of lubrication it runs quite well and can creep with a PWM controller (Gaugemaster in my case)

Hopefully I won't disappoint anyone if I reveal that I don't mean interior details. Rather, I've added the spectacle plates, beading and vertical handrails on the outside of the cab. For the spectacles I made use of the etch I made previously for the Banking Tank. I already had a spare copy from which I had "borrowed" some other part during construction, so I thought I would make use of this. On the Banking Tank, the spectacles were part of half-etched overlays for the cab front and back, so I had to cut these out and carefully file/sand around them. Here you see this operation done for the first of the front rings: And here are all four. A major factor in deciding to reuse this etch was to save having to make the vertical bars across the rear spectacles by hand. I then soldered them in place on the outside of the cab front and rear You see them in the next two photos. Although not perfect, I think the result is neater than I could manage by fabricating them. Next up, I tackled the beading around the cab windows. This was made with 0.3mm nickel silver wire soldered on the outside of the body (a little subterfuge that works perfectly well). I toyed with using 0.2mm wire but decided it looked too thin. The photo below shows my technique, which is to solder one side, then bend around the corner, then solder the next side, and so on. This is what it looks like when the whole side is complete. I file the ends to length after attaching the handrails. Here's the finished article. The handrails are made from the same 0.3mm wire, cut over length, soldered behind the beading wire, then filed down to height. I find this simple method of construction is surprisingly effective, and it is not obvious at all that the beading is made from wire. The holes I had carefully drilled in the footplate for these handrails turned out to be in slightly the wrong place (of course), so I just soldered the bottom ends on top of the footplate.

Barrow Road shed had a number of locos visit yesterday and the following photos give a flavour with locos belonging to myself and a number of friends from the Scalefour Society. You know who you are.