Leaderboard

This looks great Pete. End-on views aren't often explored on layouts, perhaps because many people feel that scenic breaks are a must. I have discovered the pleasures of end-on viewing with a couple of my layouts though, the depth does add realism. Taking photos from that angle can be more difficult, as the camera cannot be tricked to disregard the chasm along the front in the way that your mind can! But never mind - layouts aren't built for photos after all. I have to say, 2mm stock has become quite detailed of late

I keep coming back to your photos, Mike. Especially that first one. It really is extraordinary. Just noticed the 'sunshine' outside - very effective and a neat way of masking off the rest of the world. I like the weathering on the ramp in the other shots. Looks just like paint that's slowly peeling off.

Compound, I cut the buffer heads from the sprue with too much plastic on them and drilled out the holes a little. When glued and set, I could then file them to shape without them pinging off. I had to file the door bangers to get a good fit between the solebar projections. Definitely easier to fit before the solebar is attached to the floor. The mould lines are still there but hopefully some more filing and painting will help. Thanks Will

I bought some of these chiefly to use the sheet rail parts to improve Coopercraft O4s. I've built two up as O11 and O15 in 1950s condition; the sacktruck door modification may send me back to the others. Parkside kits are generally superb but on this one I couldn't really get on with the buffer heads and the spring door-stops, components that are victims of a slight mis-registration between the two halves of the mold. You seem to have made a good job of the buffers but the step on the door-bangers is still very obvious. After much scraping and filing, on the second one I built I gave up and made some from brass strip.

Excellent work and very opportune, as I have just taken delivery of a few kits and can add some additional variation.

Just a few pics showing how the wire roof was constructed for anyone interested. These roof structure may look very complicated but they are relatively easy to make once you break it all down into its respective components etc. As a builder, I've a bit of understanding of how they are constructed in real life - this knowledge has helped enormously. The bundles of wire are seperated into seperate strands. These are then G clamped to either end of a furniture clamp - the clamp is turned in reverse to stretch the wire straight and introduce a little tension. I've already ruined one furniture clamp (on previous schemes) as they are obviously not designed to work in reverse. It took about 230 x 3ft lengths of wire to make this structure and a lot was used up by the circular Truss design. I studied a lot of pictures of the prototype and carefully drew out the Truss design onto a piece of plaster board. This holds the wire firmly in place during soldering. For such a large 3ft by 3ft structure I needed 78 of these. Soldering them all up in the same jig ensures repitition. The circles were easy to make by using a broom handle. This was for the smaller outer circles - the big central one was made by using an old postal tube in a similar fashion. The six beams were the next job. They required two sides a piece - this differs from the prototype in as much as the bottom plate is a single 2 inch thick piece of flat steel. I had to double up because they would been far too wobbly to work with and they needed to be as ridgid as possible. The next job was to tie the structure together. An exact plan of the roof was drawn out onto a piece of flat ply and the beams placed precisely into the positions determined by the walls. The Trusses were soldered together - note how they line up with the beam positions. The trusses were then soldered to the beams. I used a Dremel to cut the top of the beams and slid the trusses down into place. Once everything was throughly washed down it was onto the cardboard ridge and valley sections. Note how the metal bars used to join the trusses have been covered over with card spacers. These were cut to the same pattern and they nicely hide the join. Once I was happy, the whole thing was sprayed Matt Black from rattle cans. Unfortunately, no matter how accurate you try to be you will always get deviation from perfect true so there has been a lot of McGuyvering since - cutting out a wire here and cutting or adding cardboard there etc. The test photographs have helped me identify areas where things look a little lumpy etc - still a bit of fiddling to go yet.

Definitely very atmospheric! I’ve found that Aluminium kitchen foil is really good at masking out light leakage