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Almost there now. Some MIG Dark Mud pigment has been used to indicate the beginnings of surface corrosion on the chimney, and some Gunmetal metallic pigment has been used to indicate the beginnings of shiny handrail portions in the most used areas. Small amounts are crucial to the success of this type of effect. All pigment applications were done with a filbert brush. Only one more day to go.

Clare station was built in the bailey of Clare Castle (you could do that kind of thing in 1865!) and the castle motte is still present behind the goods shed. I don't have the space to model the whole mound but need to try to make something that gives the right feeling. There needs to be a bit of forced perspective going on too which complicates things. This section of the aerial photograph gives some idea of the scale of the real thing. To those who have visited over the last few years it will be clear that there are a lot more bushes and trees on the mound now than in 1947. I've made an attempt at getting a suitable shape in polystyrene and sculptamold and, as always, I'd appreciate the views of the RMWeb eyes. The main line in the foreground is curving around to Stoke at a steeper angle than the prototype because I have to make the layout fit in the room. These means that the area between the main line and the yard is bigger than on the prototype. It was mostly grass and waste ground. The scar on the motte is where the winding path up the side runs. From the opposite view the hill climbs up, with a flat area of goods yard and grass at its foot. The very top of the hill will have a number of bushes on it and possibly even a small section of wall. Moving back towards the station platforms you get a better view of the overall effect. The most obvious compression has been in the space between the goods shed and the mound, I've to bring the two closer together in order to get some degree of height to the hill. I'm hoping I can get away with it because of the viewing angle. Let me know what you think. David

It's high time I posted an update on the scrap tank, which is approaching completion. Painting started with a coat of grey Halfords primer from a rattle can. I then used the airbrush to spray the basic green colour all over. I find that Tamiya acrylics spray quite nicely, so I used a mixture of olive green and white, thinned about 50:50 with Tamiya's own thinner. This works for me spraying at about 15 psi (although I don't really trust the gauge on my cheap and cheerful compressor). After painting the basic green colour I used a brush to paint the black smokebox, cream cab interior, and various other details. I used enamels for the metallic colours. I carefully scraped the paint of the handrails to leave the bare steel colour. Here are a couple of views of the body shell after both painting and decals. The latter are the waterslide transfers printed by Railtec from my design and now available from the 2mm Association. Before applying them, I (brush) painted the body with gloss Humbrol Clear, which I am told is similar to the old Johnsons Klear. After a couple of coats I thought I had ruined it with some ugly streaks etc. But I persevered and applied the transfers. I sealed them on with more Clear and finally a spray coat of matt varnish (aerosol of "anti-shine" from the Army Painter range). At this point, the ugly streaks miraculously disappeared, along with any visible transfer carrier film. So I was quite chuffed. Next I turned to the chassis. The cylinder block was sprayed at the same time as the body, and below you can see it temporarily attached to the chassis for testing. Something you can see at the rear (to the right in the photo below) are the extra pick-up "skids", which I don't think I mentioned before. The design of the chassis didn't allow for the fitting of "Simpson springs", and I found that the current collection was dubious. Thus I fitted some phosphor-bronze wires with flattened ends that rest on the rail. I tried to disguise them to look like sandpipes from normal viewing distance. (Not as well disguised as the invisible brakes, however!) The skids substantially improved the current collection, and the loco now creeps along quite reliably on my test track. Time will tell how it performs "in the wild". Once satisfied that all was running (i.e. after interminable fettling of slide bars, realising that one of the wheels was wonky in its muff so fitting a new muff, etc.), I soldered on the crank pin washers (from the 2mm Association etch) and cut off the excess length of the crankpins with the piercing saw. To solder on the washers, I used layers of Rizla paper soaked in oil underneath them to avoid gumming up the motion. Two or three layers seemed about right. It's important on this loco that the coupling rods don't have too much sideplay, as there is no washer on the leading crankpin and hence it would be liable to come loose otherwise. With hindsight I cut these front crankpins down a bit too much. You can see the different in the following (poor) view. Here's a rear view. The cab windows (front and rear) were glazed with Micro Kristal Klear, a small bottle of which I have had for years. It's actually similar to PVA glue. What you can't see in the photo is that the loco is still missing any coal in the bunker, in which you can see the motor from above. You can also see the motor through the side of the cab, so I will probably cover it with black paper and fit a crew to further mask it. And I haven't yet fitted any couplings (functional or cosmetic!). The coupling hooks themselves were spare ones from a previous etch. I'll try to take some better photos at some point...

A dark mix of Railmatch Weathered Black and Frame Dirt has been airbrushed over the top of the boiler, the cab roof and the driving wheel centres. This is to represent the soot present on the former two and the oil on the latter. The photograph that I have been using as a reference shows a much more marked contrast between the wheel rims and the wheel centres, but it does not look quite right to my eye so I have reduced the contrast by using a slightly darker shade of brown. Black Smoke pigment has been used on the smokebox and its door, with a very light application of the same to the front corner and edge of the tanks to show where water continually runs if the filling process means the tanks overflow. Not far to go now. Thanks for sticking with it!

A few more printing projects over the last week. I found some nice pictures on the internet of the same sort of tortoise stove I'd seen at Thelkeld. The hardest bit to model up was the 'Celtic rope' design around the top, mind you I'm not sure drawing tortoises is my strong suite. The text around the top is tiny, the letters are .8mm tall and are have .25mm of relief. That they are visible once printed is nothing short of miraculous. I couldn't actually make out the text on the raw print and it only really became visible after painting and dry brushing. Owing to my stupidity with the support structure the flue didn't come out but I can add it with a piece of Plastruct tube. I'll probably have another go. Still, the occupants of my shed will now be able to keep warm and make some tea. For reference this stove is 36mm tall by 20mm in diameter. At the same time I printed a machinist vice for the pillar drill. While on the printer I also made a load of G-Clamps, as you know you can never have too many G-Clamps. I modeled one and adjusted the size by 10% up and down to give some different sizes. You can't quite make out the 'Made in England' legend but you can just make out there is something there. Finally I got a bit silly with the hand tools. The planes were based on a page from a Stanley catalogue I found online, the adze from a picture from my friend Alan who will be getting a few more tools in the post. The planes vary from 12 to 16mm (scale 9" to 12"). The adze has a scale 3' long handle. The garage has got too cold for printing now, the resin going extremely gloopy at low temperatures. Fortunately I was able to set the printer up inside and I tried the technology outlet's Premium Low Odour resin. I guess 'Low Odour' is a relative term but at least it didn't stink the house out. I've got some sculptamold on the Stour valley castle mount now. It looks ok but doesn't photograph too well in its white state. I'll post some pictures once it gets some brown undercoat on it. David

As I mentioned in my last blog the next bit of workshop machinery I fancied trying to reproduce was a pillar drill. This proved to be quite a tricky bit of modeling just because there were so many features. I'd taken a photograph of this drill in the shed at Thelkeld. It looked to me as if the drill was originally belt driven with a 'new' electric motor powering the original drive wheel at the bottom. There then seems to be a belt which takes the drive to the top of the drill via a choice of three pairs of pulleys depending on the speed you require. I could also see the interesting hand wheel which raises and lowers the platform on the pillar. I'm not really sure exactly what all the rest of the gubbins on the top of the drill is for. Perhaps someone can enlighten me. It looked to me as if there was a handle to pull down the drill head but it looks as if this can be reconfigured to give some kind of automatic geared lowering? It looks like you could set the machine up and leave it to drill down at a preset speed? Anyway, it had lots of interesting shapes and, while I've not exactly modeled it all precisely I hope I've captured the feel of the prototype. The main pillar was divided into two and the table and bottom drive wheels printed as separate parts. Also separate are the hand wheel to lift the table and the quadrant handle. The parts took just over 4 hours to print at .04mm layer height on the Anycubic Photon. The parts took a little cleaning up but I was blown away by the detail which came out. The toothed rack behind the drill head and the teeth of the gears came out remarkable well, even the lift rod on the table has a thread on it (albeit with a rather coarse pitch than the prototype). Please bear in mind that this part is only 35mm from front to back. I intend to make some drive belts out of paper in a bit. I found a rather nice Bachmann 16mm fireman and together with workbench you can get a sense of scale. The sharp eyed amongst you will have noticed that there is a section of wall behind the workbench rather that piece of MDF and I'd like your opinion on this. I've never been any good at trying to scribe random stone so I thought I'd try a rolling pin I downloaded from the thingiverse. This printed out on my Ender 5 and looks, well frankly, a bit weird. The roller is 86mm tall and ~25mm diameter so gives a repeat in the pattern at ~80mm. I laid down a 6mm thick of layer of Sculptamold and let it go off for about 30 minutes until it was firm but still 'green'. The roller was rolled into the surface and it took the pattern well. I then made the pattern slightly less patio and more wall by adding in some extra horizontal joints in the stonework. I also found I could smooth in a little extra Sculptamold to fill in some of the joints to make the pattern so it didn't repeat so obviously. Finally I found that a coarse old paint brush could be used to apply a little more texture and strata markings to individual rocks. Do you think this will work as the inside walls of the shed? Ultimately I want something which looks like old white-washed stone. Please let me know what you think. David

The model world is awash with 'shunting planks', I know, but I hope my design might be of interest to a few readers, and maintaining this diary might spur me to keep working on the layout. The track plan (9'6" x 2'6") is thus: [PICT2209 DESTROYED] The red line denotes the boundary between the two levels. Inspired by a diagram by Iain Rice, I can claim no credit for the ideas. I am working on the lower layout at the moment: [PICT2204 DESTROYED] Below is before I started track-laying, with the upper (passenger station) board, 'Atherington Victoria', balanced on timber to give an idea of design. The boxes are where buildings will be - a warehouse and grain silos on the left, and a small station building (part) on the right end of the viaduct. Hope this all makes sense. The yard on the lower board, 'East Yard', will be a B.R. blue-era general goods yard, merging into a 'Speedlink' yard depending on the stock run, somewhere on the High Weald of the South Downs (Tunbridge Wells, East Grinstead, Haywards Heath, Guildford). However, as I rather like boat trains, it might be 'moved' occasionally to the Sussex coast to allow an inter-regional portion to use the station. I will post more, when I get the hang of this 'blogging lark'. Thanks for reading.

It's a heavy goods loco in this episode of Sudrian Spotlight, 8F No.802 'Indomitable'. Thought it's a pretty basic customisation, I think it has a certain presence...

The cab roof comes off! Heart in mouth moment when I removed the engine from its wheel-spraying cradle - something fell on the floor. Only the roof, though, not being held in place by the two small magnets any more. This gave me the idea of adding some grime to the easily accessible cab interior, so out came the MIG Dark Wash again and some was applied to the brightly coloured pipework. Not covering the whole assembly with grime, but just hinting that there had been some work going on in that area. Nothing more than a white spirit dampened rigger brush being dipped into the wash and then applied to pipe joins from the tip of the bristles.

It's the turn of the airbrush now. The inderframe will be discoloured using Railmatch Sleeper Grime, applied with an Iwata Eclipse SBS. The driven wheels are turned while the paint is sprayed, to prevent there being a patchy finish to the rims. With N Gauge and OO/HO Gauge engines this can be done with a PP9 battery, but this doesn't work with O Gauge. I use two pieces of scrap OO Gauge rail screwed into place through a piece of wiring terminal block set at the width of the wheel treads and bent to the width of the battery terminals on the other side. The wheels are airbrushed first and then the rest of the underparts, not forgetting the buffer beams. The wheels on the trailing axle are turned by hand. After I thought I had finished I saw from the photographs that I was wrong. I had to return to the spray booth and finish off the patchy bits I thought I had avoided!

The chassis of this model includes a representation of the inside motion, visible in the gap 'twixt boiler and running plate. It's bright red! I didn't want to hide this completely, so decided to add a layer of wash to the parts that were visible. The rigger brush was ideal for this task, enabling just enough wash to be deposited.

Buffer beams get dirty. They're not alone in that, obviously, but this aspect of weathering doesn't always get the attention it deserves, and I include myself there. There is much opportunity for detail weathering in O Gauge, so I decided to put a little more effort into this subject by applying a wash to the varied protruberances on the buffer beams. A straightforward process, involving a rigger brush, white spirit and MIG Dark Wash. The brush bristles are first loaded with white spirit and then dipped into the bottle of wash. The tip of the brush is applied to the edge of a detail (bolt head in this case) and capillary action will take the fliud as far as the consistency permits. The thinner the wash the further it will travel. You should be able to see just where it has been applied by studying the photographs. Note that the colouring will be lighter once the wash has dried, as is always the case with the paints we apply to our models.

I printed out the parts for my forge blower. There was some spare space on the build platform so I printed a few extra tools at the same time. I deliberately put the parts on twice and in a couple of different orientations to see which came out best. Splitting the blower into two halves allowed the bottom sides to be sanded and form the join. You can just make out the Alcoso No4 text on the parts and, while you can't read the text, the builder's plate has some relief on it which makes it look rather nice. The layers show up in the picture but hide as soon as some paint is applied. I used some brass rod to make the axle for the belt drive wheel, it rotates but I don't image it will be accurate to actually drive round.. I also drew up and printed out some pipe work to connect the blower to the bottom of the forge. It looks a bit two heavy duty and I didn't think more modern 'tumble drier venting duct' would look right. On the same print job I also printed up a number of buckets and pales. These were really simple to draw up and modify to give different handle versions. I could also easily scale in the slicer to give different sizes. So my little workshop/forge scene is coming on. Next I'll be moving on to a range of machine tools. David

I had modeled the forge up as 8 separate parts to allow me to position them on the Anycubic Photon to get the quickest prints. The resulting jobs filled the print bed twice and at a .04mm layer height it took about 5 hours to print out the parts. The results weren't too bad, there was a bit of warping on the largest part (the main base of the forge) but it was fairly easy to conceal as the worse bits are under the base and not visible. The top came out very nicely and I don't think there is a quicker, more consistent, way to make something with those compound curves than CAD and a 3D printer. The parts were stuck together with CA glue, the legs actually fitted fairly well into the corner cut outs made for them. Filings of the resin actually make an excellent filler in the joints when a drop of thin CA glue is put onto the surface. The complete forge stands at 84mm tall with the base being a scale 3' square. I'm very pleased with the way the manufacturer's name came out on the front and the general look of being made from cast metal. When positioned with the anvil and work bench I think it looks the part. There will need to be some kind of belt driven blower positioned next to it to feed in air and a good layer of coal/ashes. I'm also wondering about fitting an orange glowing LED. I'll also need a bucket of water and a sack of coal to go with it. David