pete_mcfarlane

I've not done much modelling over the summer, mainly due to being busy at work. But recently I'd finished off a few projects, and attacked my pile of unbuilt kits This plywood shockvan is a Red Panda kit bought off eBay, although they now seem to be back in to production again. It's been painted but unlettered for a while, so a burst of activity saw it finished. The later shock wagon square markings were done using the white lines that come on the HMRS wagon transfer sheet. These were used to form squares which were in-filled with white paint. The stripes on the end were hand painted - the ends are so filthy they hardly show. Another long term workbench resident was this Slater's MR van - a pretty standard build of the kit, with ABS buffers and brake gear. It had a spot of extra rivet detail added from plasticard scraps. Two more lurkers are the Parkside GWR open (left), and a David Geen LSWR meat van (right).The Parkside open was built straight from the kit as a fitted diagram O15 with sheet bar. The Achilles heel of this kit is the sheet rail - it relies on a flimsy plastic moulding at each end, and I've broken both ends during painting. It's currently being stuck together with superglue and will have a tarpaulin fitted to give it extra strength. The Geen LSWR van has featured in this blog before (a long time ago). It's a nice whitemetal kit, but I struggled with the brake gear - I found the etched components too flimsy to I substituted MJT brake shooes and parts from a Mainly Trains etch. After several years of being banished to a box it's progressing slowly again, but still isn't finished. The middle vehicle is a Chiver's SR meat van. This was bought off eBay a couple of years ago and built over a week and a half - I found it very straightforward to build although the ends were a bit flimsy and easy to bend if you are cackhanded like me.... I did replace the etched brake gear with some more robust looking ABS parts. Both meat vans will be finished in SR livery. Another EBay purchase is this D&S Chatham third. It cost me £30 about a year ago, which goes to show that these kits don't always go for stupid money. A very simple build, like most of the the D&S kits I've built. Built as per the kit instructions, with some extra detail to represent an electrically lit example (as best as I could, given a lack of decent photos). It's based on a loose Third that lurked as a strengthening vehicle on the Hythe branch in the early 1930s, and judging by the R W Kidner photo of it at Sandgate ,was probably best avoided if it turned up in your train. If I can track down another of these vehicles, they'll go quite nicely with a Branchlines brake and a suitable ex-SER loco. There's a lovely photo of a SER B class, two Chatham 6 wheel coaches and a SER brake at Dungeness in the 1920s I'd like to replicate in model form one day....

Progress slowed over the Summer and Autumn, mainly due to me being busy at work. But I have managed to finish the E2, which has been lurking part finished in my box of abandoned projects since the late 1990s. To recap, this is a stretched and lowered Hornby body on a scratchbuilt chassis. It runs very well, which isn't bad for my first scratchbuilt chassis. As you'd expect for a model that's been worked on for years, it's not quite up to my current standards in places, but I'm very pleased with it. And it looks like an E2, unlike the Hornby original which looks dumpy by comparison. I'd quite like one of the extended tank E2s, but I'm not sure if I can face building another one this way. It was very hard work! Also based on a Hornby RTR model is this M7. Unlike the E2 this modern model required next to no work at all - the main additions were the buffers (Gibson sprung ones to replace the weird Hornby originals), new screw couplings, and a renumber as Brighton's 30055. The various end pipes were from the detailing kit that came with it. The trickiest bit was curing a spot of distortion at the front end, where the Chinese lady in the factory didn't stick it together properly. This required a spot of Mek Pak to put right. It's weathered as per photos of the real thing which show that the boilers got quite dirty, but the tanks sides were kept fairly clean by the shed cleaners. This was done with thinned Valejo acrylic paints and a paintbrush. I must finish my Maunsell pull-push set to go with it.

This was going to be a quickie - back in March. Now 8 months later one of the shunters is finished. It wasn't even repainted - just some touching up, followed by new numbers (of the 'wrong' type for this livery as per the prototype) and a spot of weathering. The glazing was cut by hand from plastic sheet, and looks very good, but was a real pain. I ended up doing one window an evening over about two weeks. It looks pretty good in my opinion. The 03 is still not ready for painting.....

I think that proves that some people will collect anything. Great advert by the way: Random use of apostrophes - check. Random Capitalisation Of the First letter of Words - check. Confusion over when to use their, there and they're - check. Venting annoyance - check. SHOUTING - check.

And they've included a photo of the real thing, for comparison. I also like the way they didn't take the glazing out before painting it yellow.

I think they've tried to recreate the battered look that these wagons got when loaded by mechanical grabs - especially when used by the engineers for spoil. There was an article in (I think) Model Rail years ago on how to do this with a heat gun. But, as usual with eBay weathering, it's not been done very subtlety.

I stand corrected then - I've only ever seen it from passing trains. It's a bit of a landmark, like the Lightning F2A that spent 30 years rusting by the A1.

Staying with overpriced plastic kits, how about Ratio GWR 4 wheelers for £18.50 from our old friend Gostude? Hattons do these for £8.

I think the legendary Manea van (which was there when I lived in Cambridge over 15 years ago) is a BR design. There used to be a four wheel SR van in Mainline freight blue in New England yard at about the same time, which appeared to still be active but I've not seen in on recent trips through Peterborough. Are there any of these still still in departmental use? The models look really good.

The Airfix Bond Bug ended at £410. That's a bit silly.

£100 and counting for a half built Jidenco Paddlebox. We're doomed, doomed I tell ye!

I'm not sure if they've fully grasped how capitalism works. They should put up enough of their own cash to at least get the project off the ground and have something to show to potential purchasers. At the moment it sounds like they've had a 10 minute phone call with somebody at Dapol about how much the model might cost and then fired off a press releases.

Looks goodn - keep us informed of progress.

I can see a business opportunity buying ancient second hand models off ebay, airbrushing dirty grey/brown over them and then reselling for a mark up.

Does it come with a 4mm scale Jacques Cousteau?

How about this - £60 for a Wrenn R1 repainted in a strange imaginary Southern livery with the wrong number? I'm slightly confused by this.

Rare = I've not seen one before

That's a good bit of work. I've used the GWR battery box castings from 247 Developments on my two Comet GWR coaches. The real thing was hung under the coach from supports at each end and has a big chunk of daylight visible between the top of the box and the solebars. This is one of the distinctive features of these coaches and the 247 castings replicate it, unlike the Comet ones.

The C class were an uprated version of the London Chatham and Dover B2 class, and not based on a SER design. The O1 rebuilds look vaguely similar because they were rebuilt with standard SECR parts, which were based on LCDR practice.

I've decided I'm going to model the LMS instead of the GWR. But I've got all these GWR locos ...... I know, I'll repaint them in LMS livery!

It's been six weeks since the last update, and not much had happened until today. I now have the shell of the cab finished - it still needs the clerestory and some beading. It was a surprisingly difficult to get right, and the curved section where the roof blends in to the sides are mostly solder rather than nickel silver. These locos had their cabs cut down in Southern days to allow them to work over the Eastern section - some of them were allocated to Tunbridge Wells West in the 1930s. Here's the current state of the loco. I will finish this, but maybe not in time for the deadline....

I also don't entirely understand the logic behind their extension to the mainline station. They make no attempt to connect with the EMT services, which isn't good on a Sunday when EMT only run every 2 hours.

I'm not sure about the Leicester part of the line, but large chunks of it in the Vale of Belvoir are still walkable. The GN &LNW joint railway is fascinating, if rather unsuccessful, railway system. Leicester Belgrave road itself seems to have ended up with just two trains a day to Grantham. Wikipedia have some of the timetables, which show just how slow the trains were on this line!

Luckily I don't have much furniture in the room, so it's not so much of a problem to go hunting for dropped bits, plus my floor has a slightly rough wood grain surface which seems to help slow bits down. I managed to retrieve the same lamp iron from the floor twice last night.

I do my modelling in a room with a laminate wood floor, which makes finding dropped bits a lot easier. Even the retaining nuts for Alan Gibson crank pins can be found. I have to agree with the comments about Ebay weathering. Especially heavily weathered coaches - the sides of coaches tended to be kept clean so the typical approach of spraying the whole model dirty grey just looks awful. I think these abominations spring from the tendency to copy other models rather than the prototype.