45609

Cheers Craig. Paul are you having html trouble? Best get in to see the doctor

Hi Mark, Thanks for the compliment. The straights are done with a bow pen with corners brushed in with a fine sable brush (an 00 size Windsor and Newton series 7). My primary bow pen is from a Kern set that I picked up off Ebay for about £15. The pen needed a lot of honing and polishing but it now seems to be working well. This loco will actually be staying very clean as it is a OO gauge model that I'm building for someone else. However, the K1 is not really that alien for me as I'm an Eastern fan at heart. I do have my own Bradwell K1 in the cupboard along with numerous other products of Messers Gresley, Thompson and Peppercorn. I'm also a big Midland/LMS fan and being on the Barrow Road team makes building locos of those companies the main priority over the next few years. Having said that Thompson B1s were frequent visitors to Barrow Road in the 50s and 60s so I'll be tackling one of those in the medium term as well. Cheers.....Morgan

The last few days have seen me tackle some BR mixed traffic lining on a Peppercorn K1, made from a DMR kit. Consistency of lining is always a tricky job and it takes me a while to get into the swing of it. Also spending so long looking at it close up tends to make me overly critical of small blemishes and defects. Frequent breaks and viewing from a distance help keep things in perspective. The attached photos show where I'm up to on the loco body. The tender is not too far behind. After this is finished Robin's crab will be getting similar treatment.

Hi Mike, I won't be painting this one but I am following the Ian Rathbone recipe with my own paint jobs now. In brief, the top coat on the 8F was cellulose sprayed through my Asturo gun. IIRC paint mix is at least 3 or 4 part thinners to 1 part paint. I intend to post a more detailed commentary on it in due course. Cheers....Morgan

The title of this entry is sure to get people looking. Sadly forum management would not approve so you'll have to put up with these photos instead "Lining by L Goddard, 1981"[/i]. We weren't sure if Larry painted it as well but if he reads this perhaps he may recall? Now stripped of her clothes the Patriot is booked in for a BR lined green paint job and light weathering with Ian Rathbone later this year. She will emerge as either 45504 "Royal Signals" or 45506 "The Royal Pioneer Corps". Given her current state of undress shouldn't it be "Lady Godiva"? In the meantime Robin has entrusted me to give the loco a once over and repair a couple of locations where the solder has let go. As with the other 2 locos the standard of construction by Richard Hersey is truly awesome. It has real finesse but is also quite fragile in places. Some reinforcement and reflowing of the acessible soldered joints has been necessary to make them into robust layout locos. As far as I know Graham Warburton always kept them in a display cabinet and when you take a look at the last photo I can understand why. Other jobs on the Patriot whilst in at SLW have been to install a DCC decoder (a Zimo 621) and fit AJ couplings front and rear.

Thanks Jon. The glass had just been emptied of an appropriate liquor. Your comment has reminded me that I must build a small photographic diorama and, of course, I will provide more detail on the paint and equipment I use in future postings. Watch this space. Cheers.....Morgan

Hi Dave, Lovely looking loco and great to see some of the construction pictures. I'm glad I'm not the only one that goes a bit mad on detailing and pipework. It might take a long time but I've always thought that the litlle things really contribute to the overall character of the finished loco. I also enjoyed the story about why you like the Caprotti 5s. It is 8Fs, Black 5s and B1s that do it for me and reflects all the time I spent at the preserved Great Central Railway when I was a teenager. I would exchange loco cleaning duties for footplate rides from my uncle when he was driving. Not sure the 'elf 'n' safety brigade would allow it now. Cheers....Morgan

Mostly to confound Mike and save him from turning blue here is a quick follow up to last night's posting. 48079 rolled majestically out of the SLW paint shops at the weekend sporting her shiny new BR livery following an intermediate repair. As some of you may notice the buffer beams still require a coat of red paint but the apprentice called in sick yesterday. Enough of the story. In actual fact 48079 is a rather beautifully scratchbuilt P4 model of a Stanier workhorse. It is owned by my friend Robin (a.k.a Barrowroad) and I'm sure he would be happy to tell a little more about it's heritage. It was acquired in LMS black livery and had a number of areas where the underlying metal was peeping through. To grace Barrow Road (the layout) it needed to be put into BR black livery so the best long term option was a complete paint strip and repaint from bare metal. Robin and I carried out some exploratory work, in an unseen area, with a variety of paint strippers to establish what type of paint had been used originally and how easy the stripping was likely to be. The only substance that removed the paint rapidly was Nitromors Craftsman paint stripper (the low viscosity stuff in a yellow can). We concluded that the paint was probably cellulose. Robin was also confident to press on with using Nitromors because the builder of the loco had told him that it was all metal and fully soldered construction. So after her investigative visit to SLW 8079 went away to be returned at a later date......naked!

Maybe. If you keel over Paul has volunteered to give you the kiss of life.

As an opening play on words it is perhaps sensible to "gloss" over the myriad reasons why I haven't posted anything on my Blog for nearly 2 years. So moving on.... A few weeks ago I completed the construction of a spray paint booth in my garage using the left overs from the kitchen installation I completed over the winter months. Obviously with a few grands worth of new worktops, units, tiles etc... I was not keen to continue my habit of spray painting models in the kitchen. A 1.5 metre length on worktop was cut in half and routed to size to form the main work surface and an undershelf. A couple of cheap B & Q table legs support the front edge and Contiboard sides, back and roof give the structure rigidity. A couple of brackets are also used at the top to secure everything to the wall. The roof has a 2 foot long fluorescent strip light and an extractor fan ducted to the outside wall of the garage. Since the photograph above was taken I have added a hanging rail inside the booth so that models can be hung up to dry off. I have also purchased another compressor and Asturo spray gun for a more serious attempt at painting future models with cellulose paint from the gun rather than the acrylic rattle cans from Halfords. So there is a little starter. Over the next few posts I'll show and explain a few of my early attempts at painting in the new facilities although I will say that after a hesitant start I am now getting some very pleasing results. More soon.....

Ah Mike, being the captain is one thing but you need to be backed up by a rivet counter like me as your Number 1 and even the cabin boy (Paul) has a keen eye for the stuff you can't see. Cheers...Morgan

Agree with Ivan on that one. Long handrail knobs generally look wrong. Alternatively, in the past, I have used Alan Gibson shoulderless handrail knobs. Use a suitable thickness of card to set the handrail stand off from the boiler and smokebox whilst soldering in place. A very neat build of a handsome locomotive by the way. I've been following your blog with interest. Cheers....Morgan

I went home with a selection of Dulux colour cards yesterday. Trying to find a match for BR maroon is a devil of a job.... but at least the floor tiling in the hallway is nearly finished.

[sigh].....Foyled again!

"Ming".......I meant "mind"....damn fingers

Hi John, Looks fantastic and well done getting to the end of this rather difficult road. Am I right in thinking that early on these locos were painted black? Ming you they look much better in a nice coat of red paint. Cheers....Morgan P.S. The wheels in the one I made were Romfords but were changed for Sharmans

Hi John, Looking very nice. Glad to see you won the battle with the chassis. It should be straightforward from here. Cheers...Morgan

Hi Rob, I trust you won't miss a vital detail. A cloth hanging off one of the pulled levers. Being serious, the box interior looks fantastic. A real credit to you. Cheers....Morgan

Hi Nick, I've been following your progress on the Johnson tank with some interest as I built one of these pretty little tank engines over 10 years ago. A picture of mine is posted here.... http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php/gallery/image/4768-craftsmanscratchbuilt-johnson-0-4-4t/ It seems you have gone down a very similar route to me. Considering it's age the brass parts of the Craftsman body are very nice but as you point out the chassis and castings show their age. I too replaced the chassis and boiler fittings with Gibson parts. My chassis was compensated with twin beams (adjacent to the frames) on the driving wheel axles and a central beam rocking one bogie axle whilst the other is fixed. This was at a time before I got into springing and CSB's. If doing another I'd go that way. When you mentioned above about the tank fillers being flat I had a sudden panic that I'd done mine wrong. I used the kit castings with some added detail. However it seems the locos fitted with condensing apparatus had a different filler. Phew! To answer a couple of your questions. 58047 was numbered 1303 by the MR in 1907 and was carried through LMS ownership. Prior to 1907 I believe it was number 1649 but this is assumed by comparing the number series in Table 1 (page 4) of the Wild Swan book of these locos. Regarding builders plates I used a suitably sized oval plate from a Mainly Trains etch of wagon detailing parts. There is no legible text on it and it looked about the right size from study of photos. If you wanted something more accurate then Guilplates would probably be able to help. Looking forward to see how you get on with the chassis. Cheers...Morgan

Robin, That's looking brilliant. I trust you will be bringing it along tomorrow evening? Morgan

Hi Mark, Very nice pictures even if I do say so myself. It perhaps should be noted that the Black 5 rostered for this turn started to smoke (not in a good way) from the tender just before departure. Therefore the 8F was quickly substituted by the shed foreman to ensure the train left on time. Thanks again for letting me run the train and best of luck for the weekend. Morgan

Hi, Just a short note, whilst I sit waiting for yet another flight half way around the globe, to say thanks for all those that visited the stand over the weekend to talk about this fantastic project. I hope that you all got something from the demonstrations and were inspired to go off and further your own modelling endeavours. This is the first time I've done a demo and I have to say it is probably the most rewarding experience I've had at a show. Thanks also to Robin for putting up with our constant leg pulling about all those 10 coach trains that need to run up and down the layout. Thanks to a bit of impulse buying I am now trying to figure out what to do with 7 pairs of LMS coach sides. So come on Rob how's about that big fiddle yard? Cheerio.....Morgan

Brilliant work there John. I love the little Shamrocks in the barge boards Cheers....Morgan

I believe DMR kits have a brass L1 kit under development at the moment. However I have no idea when it may be available. There is always the old ABS white metal L1 kit as well but this should be an interesting "kit bashed" way of making an L1. Good luck!

Some really nice work Darren. I will be following this Blog with interest. The GCR/ROD 2-8-0 is one of favourite locos. Cheers....Morgan