Leaderboard

A blog in several parts, due to photo size. The kit is designed so that the body folds up from the floor in two halves jointed at the floor centreline, with quite large gaps to be filled with card. The corridor wall is then soldered in. I thought about this and decided it worried me. The sides fold inwards about 5 mm at cantrail height narrowing the aperture to get in and do the interior. I made coaches this way in the past and it was a real hassle getting in to add details and glaze the windows. That was with full compartment stock, I don’t know how folk manage to paint the corridor side. So, a bit of lateral thinking. Firstly the roof and ends. Some delicate forming of the roof section, then the support structure and ends. I worked off a board with it all clamped down to keep it square. Lighting is in place, lamps are central to the compartments. Note the little tabs soldered to the support structure at cantrail height. They line up with compartment partitions. A coat of white primer on the inside. One of the features of these coaches was that the body sat on a set of rubber blocks. I haven’t quite gone that far, but here is the floor cut from 10 thou brass, studs to fix it to the frames and the corridor etch soldered in. Again, note the little tabs soldered to the floor. I spent a fair time thinking about lighting. I tried latching reeds a long time ago, temperamental and delicate.So I needed a switch, but where to put it? The obvious answer was battery in one toilet and switch in the other, but how to operate the switch? It dawned on me, there are four small holes in the roof for the toilet tank fillers. Made from 1.5 mm tube, three dummies and one leading down to the switch. Just push a bit of wire down to turn the lights on and off. So here it is on the frames. Plenty of access to fit the compartments and seating. Easy battery change. And the next bit ...

This Ruston & Hornsby 48DS was supplied new to the Midland Widget Works, in 1949. The works closed in 1973 and the contract to demolish and dispose of all scrap metal on site went to Charlie Strong. The loco was found to be in excellent mechanical condition and was taken to Garrison Lane to join No.2 in shunting the yard. It was last recorded by the IRS as being seen in 1984. Presumed scrapped or sold thereafter.

Not managed many photos of weathering I have done recently .. Duchesses and Princesses have been weathered as well as more wagons and locos... But today with the temperature at a reasonable level I took some recent weathering work outside to get some photos. One item is for my own use the other two are fr use on Wentworth Junction.. Starting with two Hornby English Electric 350hp shunters. Mine is the Western Region one. There are some nice colour photographs of these locos now available. These are based on a pair of the real locos at rest at Manvers Main Colliery And just to prove I have weathered both sides Next up a Brush Type 2 A1A A1A (Airfix modified by Mike Edge) Baz

You wait months and two blog entries come together... Having experimented successfully yesterday with neat paint pigment powder as a trackbed weathering medium, today I turned my attention back to the rolling stock, to test a possible source of significantly cheaper pigment: Ladies eyeshadow. Yes ladies, your eyeshadow will now be under threat from the modeller in your life. My brother, an expert sci-fi modeller, suggested this hack, so I bought a pack of 6 Goth-like shades (white to charcoal grey) for £2.85 from Tatbay, and a 12 pack of "neutrals" from the same supplier who charged me £3.35 including a multibuy discount. That's £6.20 for 18 colours. Compare that to £8 plus £1.75 postage for three, smaller pigments made for modellers, and you can see why I was interested in trying these face warpaint shades. They are perfect. The pigment is finer, and doesn't like brushing on so much as modelling pigments, but because, apparently, ladies like to blend their warpaint, they are great for adding subtle tone changes, but also are easily blended with the Mk1 finger as well as the sponge applicators, ideal as train bodies tend not to be as smooth as skin and can rip the make up applicators. They also respond well to application by cotton bud. i tried them on three different train bodies: a scrap Lima 87 with their less than perfect paintwork, a Bachmann 150 with modern paint and printing, and a repainted Hornby 86 using brush applied commercially available paint, and separately applied transfers, in order to see if there were any reactions or odd behaviours when interacting with the different paint jobs. Given the Lima was the worst, the Bachmann the best and the Hornby in the middle, I figured it was a reasonably scientific experiment. All coped well with the pigments and none suffered any untoward behaviour. It was clear though that the finer pigment in the warpaint needed fixing. Again, I wanted to conduct an experiment. For the Tamiya model pigments I've been using a clear modelling lacquer, semi matt, which has been good, but costs £6 for 85g, but as I have some Daler-Rowney Pastel fixative, which is £12-14 for a 400g can. I thought I would try it on the eyeshadow to see if it causes problems or attacks the plastic. Again, the experiment worked, no obvious reactions either from the eye paint or the plastic. So, all in all, a useful day's experimentation. However, gents, if you want to try eyeshadow as a weathering medium I strongly suggest you buy your own, or be prepared to wear your happy sacks as ear-rings if you borrow the other half's makeup bag. The two make up packs sourced from Tatbay, showing the subtle shading possibilities and the finer grained pigment. You get 18 shades for just over six sheets, compared to eight for three Tamiya weathering master shades - and the amount per tint is probably three times what you get in the "proper" model pack. Experiment 1: Bachmann. Using the sponge applicator and cotton buds you can get some good streaking effects. Experiment 2. Italian pish. Difficult to see here due to the lighting and the extremely matt base paint but the Italian paint job took the pigment well. I was concerned, given Lima's 1970s reputation for non-sticking paint that would strip if you blew on it, the pigment might react, but it didn't. Fortunately, I have only a few Lima bodies to weather, all of the much better later fully painted variety, but the fact the old "show it the paint brush and that'll do" unvarnished paint coped is encouraging. Experiment 3 - Hornby/modeller repaint. These images are post spraying with the fixative. Surprisingly it didn't dilute the pigment too much, when I used to do paintings in pastel, spraying with the fixative was always horrendous as your carefully composed artwork would have some of the vibrancy sucked out of it. The fixative worked better than expected, and really seals in the face paint. That dirt ain't going nowhere in a hurry. Probably because I used the chassis under a Class 81...

Feeling quite proud of myself with progress so far I decided on a full glamour photo shoot which also catches up with a few extra details added since the last blog such as the drivers control unit and brake, various hand rails, lamps and the buffer. I have also managed to meet up with Trevor and have taken delivery delivery of the first two prototype drive units for testing. I have set up a rather ingenious test track but more of this and the chassis next time. The other big advance although I am a bit short of pictures is that I now have a roof courtesy of my Ender 3d printer and much toil over CAD which does not come naturally to me but got there in the end. It does now also have a trolley plank and various experiments to get a trolley pole working but not with any degree of success as yet. Again, I will get there eventually. Building upon what I have learned from the two tram builds so far I have also been hard at work on CAD drawings for two other classes and am almost ready to commit myself to shelling out for some etchings. These will be composite structures making use of 3d prints, etches and good old scratch building as to my mind no one method can cover everything. Progress with these has been slightly hampered by lack of access to what few real cars that exist. A rather fruitless trip to the Black County Museum yesterday found the place in the grips of a major rebuilding program which has (temporarily I presume), severed the tracks to the tram depot which was locked up tight with it's treasures inside. The double decker was spotted at the very back of the bus shed but there was no one about to try and talk my way in. Still, the ticket allows unlimited reentry for a year so all is not lost! Am planning a trip to the Tramway Museum at Critch tomorrow and although there are no actual Dudley cars there , there are some interesting models and plenty of other cars to get some ideas from.