Leaderboard

On the way to the workbench I passed a flock of newly arrived tail lamps making their way towards their traditional nesting habitat; to whit some buffer stops. Beautiful plumage. And so session number 2 with the signal kit. The next step in the instructions is to make the arm. All quite straightforward, but in the absence of any non-soldery pins to hold things square I did this by lying it face down on a bit of wood with a hole drilled for end of the pivot wire. Then looking down from above I lined up the other hole by sight, holding it with the point of a needle file while soldering. It worked. Hoorah! Next is the bit of tube that forms the pivot for the arm. Following the instructions to make a jig I reached for the 2mm drill bit. And then reached a bit more. Nowhere. Never mind, to Plan B. Well actually it was kind of Plan A as I did this on the previous kit - after marking the place I filed, with a round needle file, a small notch in the post. The cut to length tube and post get a dollop of flux and the tube placed. I guess it's surface tension or something (possibly quantum) but tube either wants to 'stick' parallel to the post or sit in the dimple at 90', i.e. where I want it. A blob of solder and done. And guess what is in the photo, top left... Next the butt, which is what the wider bit of the post at the bottom is called I now know, was chamfered at the top to get the slopey join and soldered. And then the 1/8in hole is made in the base plate (this is kind of optional). Being of the metric persuasion I don't have that drill, but 3mm bit and a couple of minutes with needle file did just fine. I then used my square (one of my favourite tools, sad isn't it) to get it square and soldered away. The instructions suggest cutting a slot for the ladder in the base next; rightly or wrongly I went for a couple holes because Monday or something. Next is the counter balance. This is simple enough, but when soldering the bracket part of the assembly to the post I used a paper casket between the arm and the bracket so it didn't get soldered too. This is just a bit of paper added to the sandwich in the appropriate place to stop the solder creeping along the rod and fixing to the crank, just tear it out afterwards. Now spot the mistake... Yep - counter intuitively the balance weights (I opted for no extra weights, as the supplied ones appear somewhat large) stick out to the front of the signal, which is fine. But on the other side. Then did it again. And then on the third attempt got it right. I hope. And now it's brew time.

The D38 glass well wagon has given me a challenge but I’m reasonably happy with the overall result. The support frame has a slight lean, but it is only really noticeable in closeup and square on photos. As specials I think the wagon would be in good condition for the Edwardian era, it is in its first decade in service. I therefore just gave it some very light weathering. If someone has any transfers a scale 1” high that say “OIL” then I’ll buy some. those 3 dots above the axleboxes will have to do for now. I don’t usually go in for helicopter shots, but this shows the interior detail and the size of the well in context. The screw jacks holding the crate are peco trackpins, which I have found over the years to be very useful for everything apart from pinning track down. I have improvised the tie down rings, I assume something like that was fitted. Those interested in Caley wagons will note the mysterious mark on the rh end of the solebar. Clearly seen on the original so I aded one. We might find out what it means one day.

Who hangs on to old tins of paint, wherein gloopy remains stick to the bottom? I have an old tin of Humbrol 27004 Metalcote Gunmetal, most of which was used for airbrushing onto wheels and smokeboxes in a black/gunmetal mixture. During a search for suitable buffer head grease I found that the otherwise unusable pigment that remained in the bottom of an improperly closed tinlet had an interesting property. A lump of this goo was attached to a buffer head, smeared about a bit and left to dry. Once dry, it was gently buffed to bring out the metallic sheen. On 1444 I have used this simple process for the buffers, after treating them to a layer of Dullcote and some MIG Dark Mud. These two final photographs show the end result. Now I'm off to work on the Golden Arrow.

This weekend was a chance to finish off painting the asphalt and to make a start on getting all the road lining and decals down. Ferry terminals seem to be covered with white yellow and red lining of different sorts so out with the acrylic pens and bendy ruler to start marking it all on. (marking on the top road lines first using the bendy ruler for the corners.) (I then marked out a chevron where the two routes split before marking the lines down the ramp.) The ramp road crosses the railway at the bottom. Due to the dockside industrial nature I decided to make this an open crossing with give way decals rather than full barriers. The first thing to do was to mark on the box junction. I decided to go with a hybrid design using the diamond pattern courtesy of my daughters set square but spread over the whole box as when vehicles are running they use both lanes in one direction on the ramp. Not quite to DfT diagram standard but as this is a private road I didn't think that mattered. (box junction marked on) I really like these acrylic pens. They make line painting really easy. I then lined the rest of the junction Having completed this it was out with the scale model scenery self-adhesive decals again to put the finishing touches to the road markings. The tiny writing proved quite tricky to get off the sheet, but everything else came off and onto the layout relatively painlessly. (arrows where the traffic flows meet) (decals applied to Junction) Having completed the approach roads I turned my attention to the dockside. Having looked at images of Dover the mooring points are marked with red paint and a yellow border whilst on the train ferry Dock there were numbers marked on the dockside I assume as a count down for the ships crew to know when they were about to butt up to the Linkspan. I wanted to mark out the area of the tramway in a similar way to how it was done at Weymouth with a single 45 degree line and dashed outer edge. Unfortunately my yellow pen started running out when I got to that part. Here is the state of play when I finished this evening. (marking the mooring points) (additional parking bays marked in with yellow lining progressed. Lots of no parking paint slapped down) (scaled count down to Linkspan in metres along Dock edge) I need to order a new yellow pen to finish off the yellow lining. Thanks for reading

Whilst painting and decorating, fitting fishplates and the final bits of rodding and signal wires proceeds in stops and starts (they aren't my favourite activities) I decided building a nice kit would be a pleasant diversion. Though I'm itching to build the 43two1 Models BR 20T brake van kit (I built one a few years ago, a delightful kit) reason suggested making the MSE signal kit for the platform would be more practical. Those of the tidy workshop persuasion might like to go and have a lie down at this point. Whilst tidying up (i.e. making a space) I found the lamp off the buffer stops mentioned in an earlier post as being lost in action on the floor - right in front of me hidden in plain sight. 30 mins I was crawling around on the floor! I've made one of these before, or at least I thought I had, and had kept the jigs I'd made for the loop at the top of the ladder and such. However this kit has a loop in the etch. I'm not sure if the kit has been updated or the earlier one wasn't in fact not an MSE kit at all. Anyhow, it will be interesting to compare the finished results. So what do you get? Well, everything bar paint and solder it seems. The etches are nice and crisp as I've found with other MSE kits, and the post and ladder are surely 'tall' enough for any reasonable height of signal. Options for short or long home arms are provided, as is a distant flavour one - lots of bits left over for the S&T sub-diorama. The post includes a broader bit to slide over to form the step in the post. The instructions run to 4 pages (2x double sided) and are, to say the least, comprehensive. There's a conversion chart for choosing the height and so on, and recommendations about which solder to use where and such. I'm pretty sure this isn't the kit I built before now. I will be making it working, with a sub mm LED in the lamp as per the other one. Time to actually RTFM and make a start after tea.

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.

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 layer of Sleeper Grime/Frame Dirt mixture was prepared for airbrushing the sides, using more than the usual amount of white spirit. I wanted to be able to apply very thin layers, even thinner than my usual approach. Why a mixture of the two colours? Laziness, basically. My pot of one was empty and I couldn't be bothered to find another. The two colours are so similar that I didn't think it would matter. The whole of both sides and ends was given a thin application of this mixture and then a wide flat shader brush was used to drag it down the tank sides before it dried compeletely. This was to give an impression of dirt being carried down the side by rain and generous tank filling exercises. It worked better on one side than it did on the other.

Before starting work on this locomotive I decided to remove the rather large supplied couplings. My original intention was to simply have no couplings at all, but then I noticed that there is a coupling hook on both buffer beams, albeit grossly over scale. A delve into a box labelled 'Couplings', that hasn't been opened for years (because it contains, mainly, supplied couplings from RTR rolling stock) revealed the presence of a couple of packets of Roger Smith unassembled 3-link couplings. A quick check of dimensions showed that the links could be assembled and clicked into place in the Hornby coupling hooks.

After searching at least 10 books for usable photographs I have managed to find a few that allow me to establish which parts of a cared for locomotive are cleaner than the rest. I thought that Gordon Edgar's wonderful books would help, but subsequently realised that a lot of the photographs that might have helped were re-touched black and white ones. Note that this is not a criticism! I have found many other photographs of small industrial locomotives that have provided clues about colour and placing of oil, grease, dirt and more, so I can make a start on the dirtying process. I have decided not to make any more changes to the locomotive before starting on it. Many things could be tweaked, replaced, added or subtracted to improve it, but this is not intended to be anything other than a weathering exercise. My plan, such as it is, is to produce an oily but fairly clean chassis and wheels, topped by a dirty running plate and cleaned tank sides, cab sides and bunker. The smokebox will be finished matt as befits a hot but maintained one, and the upper surfaces will be sooty. I will attempt to work on the cab interior as well, but that will be a little tricky because of the rather small openings.

The whistle on the cab roof is very fragile and particularly vulnerable. There will be a lot of work to be done with the locomotive upside down, so some sort of protection is going to be needed. I just happened to have some blue coloured sticky stuff available, so I've used that to provide some protection. Something that must be done before any weathering is started is to remove all excess grease and oil from the motor and drive mechanism. If this is not done then at some time in the future all of the carefully applied weathering will take on the same oily, dark appearance. There is a reason for me knowing this. Upon closer investigation, it is apparent that this model was lubricated by using a spoon . . . . . . . It must all be removed, and in this case I employed a cocktail stick so that I could get into all the edges, corners and spaces, lifting the wheels and axles out to clean inside the bearing slots and gearwheel teeth.

In much the same way as D3721 was started, the loco is upside down in a foam cradle and has been airbrushed with Railmatch Sleeper Grime, the enamel version. The wheels were rotated 1/4 turn after each light spray so that there were no shadow areas behind wheels or motion. This process also helps the pickup wipers to clear the wet paint from the rear of the wheels if any strays that far. The airbrush in use this time is an Iwata HP-SB Plus, one of my two favourites, which allows me to be quite accurate with the small quantities I'll be wanting to apply to this small loco. You can just see (I hope) that the paint has reached the chassis area but not strayed into the bodyside panels. I haven't knocked anything off yet!

Now to remove some of the paint applied to the motion and wheels. Remembering the intended clean state of this loco, the coupling and connecting rods will be portrayed as 'wiped clean'. The sleeper grime thus needs to be removed from the areas where that wiping would have taken place, so some clean white spirit was applied with a small brush and rubbed gently to remove some paint. I have also removed some from the slide bars and whatever else might have been kept clean or wiped clean in normal use.

Further paint is removed so that the wheels can be shown as relatively clean but oily. The brush was dipped in white spirit and the wheels turned by faithful PP9 battery. At a later stage the wheels and motion will be treated with a fluid that gives a wet, oily appearance, but the white spirit needs to be given time to evaporate completely.

With the model still in its foam cradle I have airbrushed some more Sleeper Grime onto the buffer beams. I left it to dry for 15-20 minutes (time for a coffee) and then started to remove the paint with a damp brush. The brush is not dampened by dipping it into thinners, but by placing a couple of drops of thinners onto the bristles with a disposable pipette. The combination of not-quite-dry paint and slightly damp brush gives a lot of control over how much paint is removed. With the use of light pressure on the brush, the paint will be left accumulated around detail but removed elsewhere.

The saddle tank on this model is a hefty lump of metal, but still well detailed. In order to emphasise the uneven surface of the tank, I have used T-Cut applied with small cotton swabs to create the shine. Yet again, only small quantities have been applied, and the result is a nicely subdued shine that has proved extremely difficult to photograph successfully.

D3721 and Peckett No. 883 will be at the Hornby Magazine Great Electric Train Show this weekend, so if you plan on going, come and see how/if they differ from the photographs. Look for a bloke doing weathering demonstrations. Point and snigger all you like, he won't mind He'll have his back to you.