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  1. Second bit, room for a few more pics. The tank assembly sits on the two pins soldered onto the cab front. A single screw holds the whole thing together from below the chassis to a threaded hole right up into that solid brass block in the smokebox. A view from underneath, the slight gap between the tank and the boiler will I think vanish when it is all painted black. All still a bit rough,( especially my soldering ) but with a lot of cleaning up I can see that working out quite well. So, bunker and cab floor, then a start on some details.
    25 points
  2. Carrying on ... The sides have the floor section removed and the cantrail fold cut back to 2mm. small brass blocks at cantrail height and a 2mm brass bar at floor level to stiffen it up. Note the holes match up with those tabs. A coat of primer on to seal it all. Then the sides. I mentioned those tabs. Well, they are not brass, but tinplate. Cut from this kind of paper fastener, convenient 5 mm strips of 10 thou tinplate. So with magnets in the holes in the side support bar and in the little blocks at cantrail height I can just attach and remove the sides as many times as I like. Now I can well imagine folk thinking that all that is a lot of messing about. Why not just build the coach , then paint it and line it ? Well, therein lies the problem. I am not good at painting and lining. So, for me being able to do that with the sides on the flat makes the chance of success a bit greater. If I make a mess it is just a side to strip, not a whole coach. Ok, the next three……
    21 points
  3. A couple of darker pictures to show the lighting. I think I got it about right, these would be nowhere near as bright as modern stock. They look ok to the eye, but I found it difficult to photograph. Gives an idea anyway. And another just or fun.
    17 points
  4. Mikkel. Your work has often been described as 'inspirational' and for once, I have been inspired actually to do something. I have had this omnibus part-made for some time but your post here has got me going. The kit is very similar to yours but I am not sure of it's origin as there are differences. The roof is cast in the checked pattern which I filed down and filled the holes with some paint to reduce the chunky look. The two mouldings around the waist are cast on my kit. I can't remember the corner joints as I had already made and painted the model. However, I have aded the railings around the top and added a couple of small rollers of brass micro-tube at the top of the luggage hoist; there is a rail around the driver's seat; I have painted a faint gold lining on the mouldings and added 'Great Western Railway'. The latter I culled from a photo of a cast sign, bumped the resolution up to 300dpi then reduced it to 1mm tall and printed it on ivory coloured paper. I have coloured the tyres with an HB pencil, a tip I was given recently and to get the silver in to the lamps I used a very small burr. The horse is temporary, just for the photos. I apologise for the photos. I just cannot take a decent one at the moment, whatever I do. Perhaps it is the poor winter light but I am more inclined to my ineptitude. Thank you, Mikkel.
    15 points
  5. I am impressed by your in-depth research on this subject! Vintners' Yard included a mere token representation to create the atmosphere of horse drawn traffic. Evidently, I need to spread it about more generously. Best wishes Eric
    14 points
  6. PS: During a recent bout of the flu I got bored and compiled data from Ian Harrison's 1921 GWR loco allocations book. The idea was to get a feel for the spatial distribution of the 1854 and 2721 classes. This led to the following overview. Wales was clearly a stronghold of both classes in 1921 - but not as exclusively as I thought, with 53% of the 1854s allocated outside Wales in that year. I uploaded the data in an XCEL file to “My Maps” in Google Maps. Hopefully the link below leads to an online version of the map. It can be zoomed, and the class in question can be switched on or off (to avoid overlaps). The pins are just approximate indications of the general area. In some cases I had to adjust the shed name to humour Google (e.g. I‘ve labelled “Branches Fork” shed as Pontnewynydd). https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1ukwWmwpqiPGZUrZvlm2pHKAHw1JLXtoF&usp=sharing Perhaps the map can be expanded with other classes later on.
    13 points
  7. If you are going to the trouble of making an extra board that can only be used at shows I'd be tempted to go the whole hog and do another full size baseboard with that engine shed scene you talked about. Would an extra board fit in your normal transport? Few of the pictures we didn't use in the MRJ article, Jerry
    13 points
  8. Boiler more or less done and some of the ‘sticky-uppy bits’ added. The gearbox under the boiler is clearly evident at the moment but should be hidden once the drivers and splashers are in place.
    13 points
  9. Kind of you to say Mikkel, but I'm still fumbling my way along picking up gems of advice from the really good modellers here... These are the latest test pieces I've been experimenting with: The two pieces on the right are laser cut card, one of which was sealed with Mod Podge before painting & filling (just to see what, if any, benefit it gave). On the left are my first three trial 3d printed pieces. These are U shaped, intended to wrap around the base of a buttress. The top course is chamfered. Top was a test to see if the wall could be printed face down on the build plate (for speed). Answer a resounding NO as the "elephants foot" has completely obliterated the brick detail. Middle: as my laser's kerf is approximately 0.2mm, this piece also has 0.2mm gaps between bricks. Hardly any filler has stayed in the gaps. The photo makes it look better than it is because of the very low sun producing nice shadows. Bottom: a test with different gap widths. Starting at the top row of chamfered bricks, left to right two bricks at a time the gaps are 0.3; 0.4; 0.5; 0.6 & 0.7mm. Then below that, top to bottom two courses at a time the same sequence of gaps. From this I picked 0.4mm as the gap to use on the next test piece. I printed two copies, the lower one having a small amount of texture applied to the surface of the bricks. It is not very noticeable though, so probably not worth the effort. These are prior to applying the filler, to show that I haven't flooded the gaps with paint but neither have I worried too much about getting some paint in them. The filler has been freshly applied here. I'll leave it to fully dry and set then give it a brush over to clean the excess off the brick faces, but I think it compares quite well with the mortar on the laser cut pieces.
    12 points
  10. Manchester London Road (when it looked like a proper station):
    12 points
  11. Another Jenny in full flow, gliding through the building site that will be Hurstmonceux. Apologies for the rather sick making camera work, as the focus on my phone tried to keep up. This Jenny was built from the kit that Chris mentions above, which makes up as a very nice model. Power is in the tender, which has a HighLevel diesel motor bogie with an extra axle squeezed in. No need for an exaggerated mountain of coal. The Jennies lasted well into the 1870s (one made it into the following decade), by which time the wooden boiler lagging had been sheathed in iron and the axle driven pumps had been replaced. Best wishes Eric
    12 points
  12. So, a wee update. Bit of a jump from the last pic but I’ve almost completed the body. There are still a few details to attach and some of the bits are just balanced in place for the photo. All soldering is complete and de-greasing is done, so a bit of filling, glueing and painting to follow. Then I can finish off the chassis, which to be fair I should have done before getting too carried away with the top half, but what the heck. Sometimes you just gotta live life on the edge!
    12 points
  13. When providing images for a magazine we photographed Alloa with among other things a low angle lens with a min aperture of f43. This was used for close ups but also allowed good depth of field but actually worked too well at times with the very long exposures giving clarity to a bus win an over bridge 30 feet away making the picture look unrealistic! Cameras were Nikon bodies and all lenses Nikon but Canon Fuji or any of the other big names will all do similar lenses. We were fortunate in that we had access to the camera bodies and hired the special lense needed which cost wise was surprisingly reasonable. However..a decent camera phone will often give you exactly what you want without any of the expense and it can be slotted into areas where a dslr wont fit. Nikon D90 and stock short zoom f22 @ 0.5 sec showing reasonable dof. Again Nikon body but at f29 @ 6.5 secs. Layout is 34ft long and far end in pic close to 30feet. Finally a pic using the iphone and not even my later iphone X with the better camera but a 5S. The ability to get the phone into places where the big cameras can't go is a huge advantage as is its ability to auto compensate for low light and gives decent dof as long as you hold it steady.
    12 points
  14. So, a sort of summary of the project so far with regard to the objectives I set myself. I mentioned at the beginning of the blog that I wanted to go a size bigger than 1/76 but perhaps without some of the restrictions of 0 at 1/43.5. Something easier to see and use in my dotage. A couple of photos for comparison. 1/50 does give me a bigger chunkier model, essential since I wanted to use off the shelf batteries and radio gear. I doubt I could have got them into anything smaller and still had fully open cabs. Even with 20 mm track it doesn’t feel small. It will happily negotiate a 600 mm radius curve since it has axle hung traction motors. The buffer / coupling design means it can operate with wagons at that radii. If in the fullness of time if I end up with a 1/50 layout it won’t be large, so that gives 1/50 metre gauge a distinct advantage over O gauge, and possibly over the more scale varieties of OO. I am pleased with the remote coupling system. Again, looking to my dotage with failing eyesight and short arms do I really want to be messing about with 3 links ? Ok, I accept that the buffer/coupling system might be a bit overscale and not to everyone’s taste but for my purposes I shall put operability over appearance. I could even fit a bigger push button to the controller for it if I have to. Availability. If I am going to play with 1/50 th for some time then I don’t want to be stuck with special stuff becoming unavailable. None of this “I must buy all of these locos before they sell out” sort of thing. Well, since it is all scratch built using basic materials we will be in serious trouble if they can’t be got. I have also made a lot of jigs to help with future projects. Cost. I have no idea what my financial future will be in these uncertain times but I have a nasty sneaking feeling affluence will not be a part of it. I have spent about £60 buying stuff, perhaps another £30 or so for material I had in stock. Oh, and £8 for a hundred figures So, let’s call that £100 for about 4 months of fairly intensive model making. Less than £7 a week in real terms. Ye cannae get a fish supper for that these days. How far I go with all this will depend on time and resources. My main interest is still Kelvinbank, but we shall see.
    11 points
  15. Dammit, this stuff looks so tempting. TBG, I think you're employed by the model aircraft business to infiltrate the railway modelling hobby. I hope they're paying you well because it's almost working. If it had a copper-capped chimney my last defences would crumble.
    11 points
  16. Here are some photographs of the finished main station building.
    11 points
  17. Thanks folks! I have these two shots of the front. It’s nearly done but you can see in the second image the Grange Road Bridge still needs painting, railings, weathering and setting in place.
    11 points
  18. Hi. This will probably be my last comment on this subject, as I have suffered enough high blood pressure when I've thought about it. As if by magic, this is what Waterman and his company have done to my £455.00 ; yes you did read correctly, attached is a scan of the cheque I've received of the Receivers of Just Like The Real Thing, for the princely sum of £0.47. So much for the empathy that Waterman says he has for all things railway !! Don't think I need to say any more................ So I won't.
    11 points
  19. Thank you very much, Nick. That Archer's photo is indeed quite a sight! BTW, Paddington have been in touch, asking why on earth there has been no mention of the company's own Pantechnicons. Here is an 1894 specimen. Tempting subject for a scratchbuild.
    10 points
  20. Nice work Mike, I had thoughts of doing a similar thing but it would have been a distraction for me. It is useful that the drawings survive, as you know I have used Fusion to draw up High Wycombe in the broad gauge although I drew the entire site up in 4mm scale. Doing the basics of buildings takes time but adding all small details and textures takes ages. One of the original building at Paddington as seen in the illustrations matches the goods shed at Taplow so I think they are contemporary and are the same. David
    10 points
  21. This is Steve Flanders's Broad Gauge Intermediate Station based on the circa 1850s proposed plans for Cheltenham Station. The NRCA were the source of the plans, but they were such a mixed up old lot of different amended versions it was difficult for Steve to tell what the GWR had actually intended for Cheltenham. Sorry for the none too clear image, but the station model is so darn big it was difficult to take a decent snap of it. It does give the idea though that a model of Paddington could be possible. I couldn't help noticing though that some of the drawings the NRCA had of the original station were more holes than drawing so it could be a wee bit of a challenge. Turned the shadows off so you can see better.
    10 points
  22. Thank you Simon, and I will. I'm trying to limit the length of these blog posts a bit, so will do a separate one on recent experiments with paint and weathering pigments. It's rather crude and not without problems though! Thank you Nick. The carriage scene is something that I look forward to making, inspired by photos such as the one below at Truro. That, incidentally, is of another and better known GWR station design style of this period. I actually like this style better than the Westbury/Newbury style, and initially considered transposing the Winchester variant to Newbury. But I eventually decided that the other design was more appropriate for the Berks & Hants extension, where Farthing is located. Thanks very much Mike. I will have to disappoint you on the interior details though, as I'm hoping I can get away without them! I very much admire the interior details that others do, but I'm trying to cut some corners as I have bad experiences from the past of getting stuck with overly ambitious projects. And I have my weighbridge hut below in recent memory - none of the (admittedly sparse) interior details are visible from the outside, despite windows on two sides. So I'm hoping that if I put up enough interior walls to block views and light I can manage without interior detail. But I would be interested to hear what others have experienced in this regard with larger structures.
    10 points
  23. Many thanks Andrew. This is the second 1854 class to join the roster at Farthing. No. 1897 was allocated there back in the early 1900s, sporting a saddle tank.
    10 points
  24. Raffish, my new English word of the day 😀 As for his suit, I was looking to break the monotony of brown and dark grey suits and found a photo of James Inglis inspecting facilities at Fishguard ("Edwardian Enterprise", p.23) . He is in a very light suit, cream or sand, so I copied that - no other comparison intended between the raffish type and this very reputable engineer. Yes the Henley photo is not your average commuters. In fact I have been wondering whether the middle class - which began expanding in the 19th century - could generally afford the very elaborate dresses we see in representations of Victorian and Edwardian fashion such as that below. Source: Extract from a longer timeline, made from historical fashion plates etc. Widely shared on the web, original full images on Imgur here.
    10 points
  25. Aye , the wagons in that Dunblane train almost look as if they have wooden wings over the axleboxes. Strange, and perhaps they are ex SC rather than Caley. Here is a photo of the ballast plough. Made about 15 years back, Basically scribed styrene with 10 thou slaters rod in a groove to look like the half round beading. A bit rough, but ok from a passing glimpse. The footboard has distorted a bit and it could do with a number plate.
    10 points
  26. My version; no.1425 in brown complete with dodgy lining and wrongly place garter crest on the PBV:
    10 points
  27. Not so rare. You can tell it's the brown scheme from the lining and the cream cab insides: RCTS lists all the brown 517's. Most if not all had full cabs and outside bearings to the trailing wheels. Most were probably also autofitted at some time. PS: just the clarify, the lining on green locos was 2 orange lines whereas this has only one. You can see that around the cab the lining is edged in black
    10 points
  28. Many thanks Bill and Nick, glad you like it. Looking at the photos I think the fencing needs some weathering. It's rather stark and black. I considered low walls instead, which would have been pleasing from some angles. But that would also have been rather forbidding, and the fencing has a nice "filter" effect as per Reading's Vastern Rd yard.
    10 points
  29. Ok, a very harsh closeup. Not perfect, but better than I could do by hand.
    10 points
  30. “No, not the perway hut, all you burn is cut up sleepers, think of the creosote” ”Goods office all you got is coal, think of the sulphur taste” “oh,..er...?” ”got it! lose some hardwood packing out of the breakdown van!” ”brilliant! oak smoked!”
    10 points
  31. This evening’s test was to see if Little England would actually pull six cast white metal 1st class carriages on a level road, and... “Oh ye of little faith”... it did! But, (and there’s always a ‘but’), it would only do it bunker first and the gears make quite a racket! I also need to adjust the spring loading on the front axle as the wheels slide a bit. Perhaps a weighted collar around the axle would help. For the sake of BBC style balance, I also tried my 0-4-2 on the same rake and it strolled quietly away with them like they weren’t there! I love that engine..!
    10 points
  32. That was taken at the west end of Burngullow sidings, at the old slurry loading area. This was abandoned in 1990 when it was replaced with the new slurry plant, which consisted of a covered slurry loading shed and a covered tank wagon washing shed. 'Images of Industrial & Narrow Gauge Railways - Cornwall' is a different book. Maurice produced another book titled Cornwall Narrow Gauge through the middleton press. You might be able to find a copy through amazon or ebay. With regards to how the dries operated, I have attached a photo of a scale drawing of a cross-section through a typical dry as a visual aid. As you can see, the dry was built into a hillside, with the settling tanks at a higher level on the right, and the tracks at a lower level on the left. This was not the absolute rule as some were built differently, and there were variations in the difference of height, but this is generally the way it was done. The area with the piled clay was known as the "linhay", pronounced linney, and the raised section beside it was known as the pan. The total section width of the building would typically be in the region of 35' to 55', with a total length (for standard gauge rail served kilns) of 210' to 350', however non rail served and narrow gauge served kilns were typically smaller, sometimes only 100' to 150' in length. The settling tanks "behind" the dry would be approx 7' deep, circa 40' wide, and as much as 100' in length, their length being perpendicular to the long axis of the dry. Note that "dry" and "kiln" can be used interchangeably, with their official name being "pan kiln". A "hypocaust" style heated floor ran the length of the dry, made up of brick flues on 18" centres spanned by special porous pan tiles - this was the "pan" and it would usually be some 9' to 18' in width, 18" to 24" in depth, and usually approx 12' shorter in length than the building. A furnace house at the "fire end" would consist of one grate per 4 flues, and this was usually housed in either a lean-to or gabled structure, it's floor often being level with the linhay floor, but sometimes slightly higher depending on the steepness of the hillside the dry was built on. At the opposite end was the chimney, generally 10 feet in width at the bottom, tapering to 5 feet at the top, and around 75' in total height, with two thirds of it's structure being of stone, one third brick. Between the chimney and the pan flues would be a damper, simply a large steel sheet operated by a lever or counterbalanced rope. The damper would be used to strike a balance between keeping heat in the pan and drawing draft for the fires. Too much damper and the fire burns weak, too little damper and you end up with entrained ash dropping out of suspension in the flues. A periodic maintenance task with dries was to lift up the pan tiles to shovel out ash, not a pleasant task. Clay slurry would be piped to the feed end of the settling tanks, which was the end furthest from the dry, and allowed to settle. The doorways between the settling tanks and the dry would be boarded with so called button boards, which possessed holes for placing corks. The cork holes would remain unplugged as the tank filled, allowing clarified water to flow out into the drain gutter inside the dry. As the tank filled, the cork 'buttons' would be placed in the holes, and so the next board up would allow the clear water to discharge, thus the tank would build with settled clay. Once this process finished, tracks in the settling tank allowed settled clay to be trammed into the dry from the settling tanks in the small wagon pictured in the diagram, which would be positioned on the travelling bridge and moved to the appropriate spot along the pan. Here it would be dumped out and allowed to dry. Moisture would typically be drawn through the pan tile, such that both steam and smoke emerged from the chimney. Once dry, the pan would be shovelled off into the linhay below, where it would sit in piles to await loading for onward transit. The drop-off between the linhay and the rails was usually known as the loading edge or wharf, and it's depth generally depended on the type of wagon or type of packaging being used. For instance with casks or bags, it was usually preferable to have a loading edge height of 4' above the railhead, as this put the linhay floor level with the wagon floor. But in the case of lump clay, a loading edge height of 6' to 7'6" was preferable, as this put the linhay floor level with the top of the wagon. By the 1930s many of these pan kilns had been adapted to work with filter presses. The process of shoveling wet clay into wagons and then tramming them into the dry was known as a "muck wagon kiln", but when a press was used they were known as "press kilns" or "press house kilns". These presses, usually a pair contained within a structure called the "press house" generally located centrally among the settling tanks and against the back wall of the dry, consisted of circa 100 approx 4' square cast iron recessed plates hung on an I-beam girder suspended between two cast iron bulkheads. The plates, dressed with filter cloths, would be mechanically or hydraulically pressed together to form a watertight seal. Clay slurry would then be pumped in to the press plates by electric centrifugal pumps from the settling tanks at pressure. Each plate had a hole in the centre through which the slurry could move from plate to plate until the entire press was full. Clay would then build up in the space between the two cloths as pressure increased, with filtered water on the other side of the cloth leaving the plate through drain holes at their bottom corners. Once pressure reached a certain point indicating that the press was full, the pump would be stopped and the feed valve closed. A drain valve would then be opened, allowing the unfiltered slurry in the centre of the press to escape and return to the settling tanks. Once this cycle had been completed, the press would be opened, and the "filter cakes" would be dropped down onto wagons waiting beneath the press. These wagons would be run inside the dry onto the traversing bridge and dumped onto the pan, with the cakes to be broken up into smaller lumps. The former doorways leading into each settling tank would be bricked up, and pipes would run from them inside the dry to bring settled clay to the press house. The clarified water would be skimmed from the tank using a contraption known as a "banjo", this consisted of a pipe in a T shape, with the head of the T having a slot through which water could enter. The banjo was fitted on a pivot so that it could be raised and lowered using a rope on a spool, and the operator would watch for the colour of the water exiting into the gutter to make sure he hadn't lowered it too far. Since the clay tended to settle uniformly across the floor of the settling tank, men would be tasked with "shyvering" or "poling" the tanks - this task involved using a long pole with a flat blade at the end to "push" the settled clay toward the drain. This was an arduous task which had to be conducted in all weathers. This settled clay was usually pumped to a smaller tank immediately next to the press house, and it was from this tank that the presses would draw their feed. Within the linhay, by the 1950s sometimes small front end loaders were employed. Usually this would be a Muir Hill LH1. Some dries had a conveyor belt bringing dried clay up to a bagging machine, which was a big hopper with a screw conveyor beneath it - a bag could be slid over the end of the screw conveyor, which could be run until the bag was full, greatly reducing the amount of time it took to shovel clay into a bag. This stuff is possibly a bit ahead of your intended era. I would strongly recommend looking into the Gothers Tramway (pictured below) and the Hendra Tramway, the details for which can be found in Maurice's books. The dry in the picture is 250' x 45', but a much smaller one existed at the Gothers complex a mere 150' x 38'. There were several rail served dries in the Bodmin area apart from just Wenford. You are correct that they are not well documented, but I do believe Maurice Dart mentions them in his East Cornwall Mineral Railways book.
    10 points
  33. Hi Al, I do indeed Not a Buffalo, but a 2021 class saddle tank. I built it with a rigid chassis, which in retrospect was a mistake. All my other locos have sprung compensation and run much more smoothly because of it. The plan is to fit some Slater's sprung hornblocks, but I need to source some split coupling rods from somewhere. Hopefully it'll be ready for Telford!
    10 points
  34. Well, I have an update. The fascia contains the lighting and forms a separate unit, it will sit on top of the layout. I also wanted it to hold the fiddle yard when transported or stored. The fiddle yard sits within a compartment on top of the fascia. It is retained by way of an interference fit and does not require any fastners. Rob.
    10 points
  35. This is a later shot of the same vehicle, taken in 1920. Smaller wheels with thicker spokes have been fitted, and the sides are now straight. There are a couple of drawings in Janet Russell's "Great Western Horsepower". She implies that the GWR made different types of these, but it is also possible that the drawings show the same van in different configurations. The best drawing says 8 ft high (and a bit, not quite legible). Tony Atkins GWR Goods cartage Vol 1 also has one of the drawings, although quite small.
    9 points
  36. Some interesting info above, thanks gents. I was a bit confused to see this photo, as I thought the original furniture store at the Pantechnicon was long gone by this time. But apparently there was a Pantechnicon Ltd company that traded right up to the 1970s. Source: Getty Images, embedding permitted.
    9 points
  37. If you want a Union view on horses per vehicle - from one of my wife's ancestors. I find the presence of angels around carmen an interesting touch.
    9 points
  38. Many thanks, also for that link - an enlightening read. I did not know about the Victorian colour explosion, it has made me see the pregrouping liveries in a new light. The "Decadent young woman" is superb, and I notice her yellow book! Ah, very nice. Jonathan I think the Shirescenes version is your best bet if you are looking for one to go in a train (although it is currently sold out). The Gem/John Day kit is so tall that I think it might be out of loading gauge, even with the roof boards folded down. So I clearly need another lower one if I am to fulfill the company's promises! Thank you Nick, some very useful info there. The HMRS images sound like gold, very tempting! Here are some shots with different numbers of horses, it seems to have varied with the needs an capacity:
    9 points
  39. I notice the sign-writing does say 'London Bath and Bristol by Rail', so I think a Road Van Truck is called for. It looks a very striking model, Mikkel. I expect Bailey & Sons were in competition with Knee Brothers of Bristol, who were already in the business, back in Broad Gauge days. I suspect you have been economical with the truth about your negotiations with UNBRIDLED - I'm sure I heard comments about 4 horses for a fully loaded wagon. A couple of chain horses should do the job: Mike
    9 points
  40. Indeed it does and I've done very little detailing so far. The good thing though is that once the basics are in place, one can go on adding details as much as one feels like. I have a lot to lean still about rendering and your results are inspirational 😃 Very close indeed if you wish! I haven't done very much detailing yet but here's a view from the Arrivals platform with 'Vulcan'. It's great fun moving around to seek new angles 🙂 Eventually, the carriage shed and other building should be in the background. As I said to David, I've a long way to go in learning the possibilities with this software. Another potential application is to use it for planning the layout/diorama that I hope to build 'one day' Mike
    9 points
  41. I have just laser cut windows for my station building the glazing bars are 0.2mm thick while the main frames are .7mm
    9 points
  42. Thank you all for the greetings, congratulations and condolences. I never know quite how personal to be on the internet, but on the other hand we are not robots. The Brio set is our son's and I got it out for his son to play with. He's still a bit too young, so I can have fun with it in the meantime 😄 I took the opportunity to do some servicing on the locos. After 15+ years in storage one had a weak electrical joint and another needed a bit of work on the gears. Now all fixed. The mechanism is very simple but they work well enough.
    9 points
  43. Here's a bit of fun, and probably some procrastination as well. This is the current contents of my 2-4-0 sketches directory. There are a good few more to come I reckon, which is rather intimidating. The main takeaway, of course is how all GWR locomotives look the same... I think at the moment I like the appearance of the 111 early best.
    9 points
  44. Reckon this is about as good as I can do on the Bicycle for now without going mad(der). Been a bit of a struggle this one. Think I'm going to give myself a break before tackling the next.
    9 points
  45. Thanks Chris, that led me down a rabbit hole. I came back up a few months before the railway strike, namely in January 1911 during the siege of Sydney Street. Judging by other photos this is Metropolitan police, with no spikes on the helmets as you say. And Churchill again. Caption: Winston Chuchill at the siege of Sydney Street, 3rd January 1911. Source: Wikipedia.
    9 points
  46. Just a couple of update pictures. A slighty alternative view of the Fowler showing a stronger sunlight streaming effect and one of the front of the North Screen taken from the overbridge.
    9 points
  47. Many thanks Matt! You have a good point regarding the horses' imprint on their surroundings. I am currently adding some strategically positioned manure, so that should help a bit. I hadn't considered their hoof marks, though. It may be too late for this layout, as they should perhaps be imprinted while the groundcover is still wet. Will give it some thought. Good idea to add some straw. I like a relatively uncluttered look, but a lot can be indicated with a few bits in the right place. A proper manure pit will be built on the adjoining module that I am planning. I very much like that photo of Arthur Challis. I'm afraid coal merchants have been a bit marginalised at Farthing so far. Even the single coal trolley present has been shamelessly re-purposed! But I have a vague plan to build a whole layout/module just for coal merchants. There is a very tempting and modellable photo in GWR Goods Services 2A, showing Slough's extension mileage yard. It includes two grounded vans and a grounded coach + lots of coal bins. Great stuff.
    9 points
  48. Meanwhile, back at the shed...... last night I wrestled with making no less than three cones and a round tube which played havoc with my arthritic fingers..... Pondering about using a screw fixing to keep the boiler attached to the bogie...but at a later date. There are a myriad of lost wax boiler parts to be fitted later. I`ve decided to push forward with making the un-powered bogie and the Railmotor body completed before super detailing when all the complex parts have been made.
    9 points
  49. The valve gear is small and there is not much wriggle room for errors. Pleasingly the kit etches are accurate and if you take time enough a satisfactory mechanism is easily achievable. The gearbox is a simple fold up etch and fits the bogie innards very well.... The kit provides some lovely front axle bearing castings to help with the tightness of space behind the slide bars. All in all a very enjoyable build so far. This kit is for an` experienced` modeller.... now there`s a funny thing. `Experience` well you can be a modeller of 40 years plus and have achieved one experience or you can be a modeller of one year and have achieved 40 experiences. I would say that if you feel confident and competent and not scared of soldering then this kit is for you.... Now back to Dave and his Sherton Abbas layout where a Steam Railcar would fit in nicely.... An enjoyable interlude at Sherton last seen by me at ` Telfords End ` while I return to the shed........................
    9 points
  50. I've been experimenting with my home made lighting rig (see my Folgate Street Blog) I made from an old over head projector to see how the lighting effects being planned might work out. I've sprayed on a bit more black to enhance the filthy state of the screen. Painting and cleaning the Screens wasn't too regular in the 20th C and they appeared much filthier prior to 1936 when it was last cleaned and painted. I'm clearly going to have to think something up if I want to create a more mottled, sun beam type effect when the model is completed. I'm thinking of using a layer of white paper over the top with various pinholes and openings here and there. This will all have to wait for now whilst I finish the layout.
    9 points
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