PeteN92

Platform down and the carriage sidings painted I posed a few items of rolling stock. Overall it's coming together View from the buffer stops In the yard World's end Frank Thanks again Pete

My order from 247 developments has arrived. I managed to get the remains of the previous chimney out and have fettled the white metal casting. Currently it's just placed on but I will need to attach it securely probably with some green stuff or filler get it all sat nicely and fill in the gaps left from it being damaged. I completed the spray on Sir Archie. The green was touched up and then the black was completed on the tender as well as places I had to rub down previously where I wasn't happy with the finish. After a blast of satin varnish the loco is now curing in the sun out in the garden. Cheers Pete

The last couple of days have been spent doing odds little jobs while I've been painting the other platform face. Im still not happy with the ground cover so in some places I've added more das clay up to the sleepers and other places I've used sand to ballast them more. There's still some places to be done before I paint over again to blend it all in. Frank has had the top of the engine release lever painted correctly and I've also painted the point levers in the yard white as per photos that I have of they yard. I've joined the concrete platform to the brick platform for the back side of the station so as to show that it starts earlier. The next board where the station will continue will have concrete platforms to give the impression of the extension that took place. The canopy will go as far as this board and I should be moving onto that once I've got the platform in situ. It just needs one last spray of cream to weather down the bottom bricks and will be fixed into place on the board. Cheers Pete

Finally completed both tangmere and Salisbury today. I've added crew and the detailing pack to Salisbury, I need to still find some steps for tangmere and add the rain cover between the tender and the cab. Both locos in time will need weathering. Lining Tangmere's cab proved to be a challenge as the transfers I had from fox were too small. I'm not sure if it's because it also had the shield on the cabside. I ended up having to use my model master lining and after much swearing I used 4 corner pieces on each side to make up the cabside lining. Salisbury was much more straight forward as I just needed to add the straight lines to the side of the cab. I've modified the Hornby driver to sit on the cab seats as they come in the bag sat on a box. I've run out of paint thinner so am waiting on an order once that arrives I'll be back onto working on Sir Archibald Sinclair and once the parts arrive for the M7 I'll start work on that too. Cheers Pete

17 squadron Unknown batch renamed to taw valley I'd say maybe 17 squadrons is possibly slightly further back but when I move the bogies about as well as try to take the picture square on it seems to affect my perception of it ?? I guess you could drill out the hole in the bogie mount to slide it back slightly. The bogie mount is screwed in solid anyways and these bogies on the rebuilds tend to have a lot of slop in them so I can't imagine it would do any harm to stiffen it up a bit Cheers Pete

Quite often the images Hornby put up are computer generated. This might mean that they differ somewhat. I've got a rebuilt west country and a battle of britain to hand and both seem to be about the same as yours the cut out in frames for the wheels seem to all line up on yours and mine. Have you checked you also have the correct tender with yours? As you can read earlier in the thread the wrong tender was originally sent out with royal observer corps and Hornby had to make replacement ones ? Cheers Pete

A little bit more progress for today. With the first platform face I had no issues with cracking or the DAS modelling clay sticking to the plastic platform faces. This second one I've had no end of problems. Possibly it's because I made the layer of clay thinner this time? I've had the plaster crack as well as come away from the platforms so I decided to patch it up and then glue the clay onto the plastic bases after keying the surface this finally managed to work and I've now completed the scribing on this platform. I also glued down the curb edges in the station forecourt and will need to fill in the backs up to the level to finally get to pavement height. I can then use this to base where I need to bring the station buildings up to. Cheers Pete

Any chance of some pictures of the loco right way up and upside down to get a better idea of what's going on ?? Pete

Wow that's a wonderful piece of history you own there and very useful for me, thanks for posting it. I'll go ahead and amend my diagram. Cheers Pete

Plans and planning I mentioned in my previous post that I had got hold of a copies of the station building plans. I cropped and resized the images by using my 4mm to the ft scale ruler as well as the measurements on one of the drawings in order to convert the originals to the size I will need. As previously discussed all of the drawings differ slightly from reality so things such as windows and door ways will need to be swapped around. I will only be the shorter part of the station that included the refreshment room and booking hall, the rebuilt waiting rooms and porters offices would have been in the part that I have to omit. In order to give the impression of the two stories I will cut a hole in the baseboard where I have crossed out and set this part of the board down to the lower floor of the building. The rest of it will sit at baseboard height but you will never see that. Only the end wall will be seen so it will give the impression of the end of the plateau the station was built on. I'll then build the staircase down as well as the slope itself. I had found a picture on the internet that someone had hand drawn of Ilfracombe box and having checked it over time and again I had missed the fact that it said it was copied from railway modeller August 1970 so I managed to find a copy off of eBay and there you go Mr P.A. Brown had written an article and drawn the pictures of the box. I have again scanned in the drawings and rescaled them so I now can work from them to scratch build the signalbox. Finally I have also been working out the lever frame from the track diagrams that I have of Ilfracombe. There was a 50 lever frame with a number of spares. I have had to omit a couple of levers where I have changed the layout of the shed but for the most part it's not far off what would have actually been there. The descriptions for the levers are my interpretation of what they would have controlled working from the diagram so in reality may have had different wording. This diagram will be useful for me when building the signal box interior as well as planning the rodding runs out of the box. Cheers again Pete

Having sound fitted one and then subsequently dropping it i know my way around them pretty well now. This is my 4th one although I sold the previous long frame one on. I'llprobably do the same with this one but should be a nice little profit hopefully. I tend to do a few mods to the M7s as they don't pull anything near what they should do. If you need any help with yours let me know. Cheers Pete

So I gave sir Archie a final spray of green yesterday and I may finally be happy with the colour....I had a look at the tender and still wasn't happy with it as I'd had to rub down a patch a couple of times so it was now not a smooth finish. Finally I fully stripped back one side and reprimed it ready for another crack. I'm happy with the rest of the loco now, although I need to touch up the black in a few places. Today I set about mostly completing Salisbury my lining from modelmaster turned up so I was able to the other cabside numbers and the lining on that side. Now all that is left to do is the lining on the other cabside and add the 72a shed plate and it will be complete. I purchased a Hornby M7 off of a Facebook seller this week for a bargain price as the loco has cosmetic damage. It's a good runner however and having got a couple of these myself and taken them apart multiple times I reckon it could get it up to scratch. The chimney had been snapped off and blutacked back on so i chopped that off and will source another from 247 developments. The rear bogie had also become detached there should be a round peg that has a rubber nut within the chassis to attach this but they've both gone missing. I decided to use a 10BA bolt and glued it onto the bogie. I can then use a nut to fix the bogie back onto the chassis. As you can see an assortment of parts I had after disassembly. It seems to have lost the cab roof at some point as the front spectacles are missing and a new roof has been fashioned. It needs a little trim to fit better and I'll try to make it copy what should be there better. The loco also came with wire hooks for couples the back one had broken away so was easy to remove the front however is set pretty solid and the black gunk is pretty hard so I'll have to look into how to remove it. The gunk is also stopping the spring buffers from working. I'll order some new parts for the loco and hopefully another pigs ear of a loco can become something much more appealing again. Cheers Pete

Work has continued on the station forecourt this week. I've managed to get hold of the original SR drawings for the station and the redesign which took place when the station was upgraded. I purchased the digital license for them from the network rail print archives which is a very interesting place to look through. From these drawings I realised that none of them were actually what was built... However by using the measurements on one drawing and the scaling the other as well as looking at reference photos Ive managed to get a scale layout for the main station building. More on this to come.... Once I knew the station building size it helped me to reconfigure the forecourt. I ended up cutting out a bit and also reinforcing the whole thing with another layer of plaster bandage so that it was rock solid. Next I put on a layer of DAS clay. Once that had dried I've added the base layer of pva and sand then have it a spray over with grey primer. The various layers of paint will be added and then rubbed down to give a look similar to the yard but I may create a bit of variation. I've also completed one of the platform faces this week. I sprayed the top layer of bricks in humbrol red brick then put a wash of cream over the top to get into the cracks. The middle line through the platform was painted cream over the brick colour to get a further variation. The bottom part was spray cream then I used the brick as well as a brown colour to highlight some of the stones. This then had a light mist of cream again to tone it down. The platform edges were painted by hand in white to make them look weathered. This platform was measured up for clearance and then stuck down with contact adhesive and left to dry. One down and one more to go. Cheers Pete

Hi David I painted him years ago and have kept him in the spares box since. It was definitely with citadel colours because I used to do Warhammer 40k. https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/searchResults?N=3815391097+2401632303+2041751774&Nr=AND(sku.siteId%3AGB_gw%2Cproduct.locale%3Aen_GB_gw)&Nrs=collection()%2Frecord[product.startDate+<%3D+1588702860000+and+product.endDate+>%3D+1588702860000] That's the link to the games workshop site maybe from eyeballing it the celador blue ? I know that I dry brushed black over it afterwards hope that might be of help to you. Cheers Pete

Out comes the paint pot again... If a jobs worth doing then it's worth doing twice or three times. Yeah you'll be waiting a long time of that's the case haha Pete

I mean I do have some spare ones However the mechanics of that may be a step too far. I guess in theory you could put it onto the same switch as the crossover points so they all work in unison, the hard part would be getting Frank to pivot and the lever to move in the frame ? Cheers Pete

Well my day job is pulling them at Wokingham signalbox so I couldn't be skimping out on putting in all the levers and point rodding on my model railway could I ... Pete

After removing Frank and the ground frame I re added the extra lever and painted that black, cut down the original lever and painted it brown and then constructed the housing around the frame from plasticard. Once all this one done I re attached the extra plate that had fallen off and added a foot to it for support made from a cocktail stick. All that was left to do was the put it back in the opposite way round to what I had before and voila. Cheers again Pete

Cheers jack so far the humbrol acrylic seems to be too light. I've got the enamel version on order. Railmatch Brunswick is pretty close after a couple of coats however interestingly I tried railmatch southern stock green and that is also very close to some of the Hornby models. Mixing to the two railmatch seems to be about right but I will continue experimenting before giving Sir Archie a respray. In the mean time however I have been busy chopping my other Bulleid Pacific's in order to get the correct ones for my layout. I started off with a model of Wilton which has a cut down tender, battery box and Speedo cable this therefore dates it to the 60s onwards. The model depicts it during the later years when it worked the Somerset and Dorset line so I knew I'd need to rename and renumber. I also had a model of tangmere this is the early version where it has a high tender with raves, no battery box and no Speedo cable. My plan therefore was to swap the tenders to give tangmere the later cut down tender as well as giving it the battery box and Speedo. What I hadn't realised until recently was that the battery box is a separate fitted item that if you can get a scalpel behind will come off. Tangmere now with Wilton's battery box. To get the Speedo cable on tangmere I had to swap the two locos rear driving wheels I found that a longer spacer was provided on the loco with the Speedo and if you just took it off there would be slack on the rods. This wasn't too tricky to do however in the process I managed to sheer off one of the nuts a careful dab of super glue fixed this however I won't be taking Tangmere's rear drivers off anymore. Tangmere now represents her condition from 1960-1963 when she was based at Salisbury shed and there are a couple of photos of the loco on the Ilfracombe line around this time. I need to update the lining on the side of the cab to the later style still but I will do that in time. 34002 Salisbury was an Exmouth junction loco for a large portion or her life so made the ideal candidate with the parts I had. She will be in this condition which represents 1954- 1960. The plates were gently prised off using a scalpel and replacements from model master were purchased as I wanted to compare them with fox transfers offering. You also get the waterslide transfers for the cabside numbers as well as the shields. These were stuck on then gloss varnished into place. The real ones would be enamel so a gloss finish will look good. Out came the tcut on a cotton bud and cocktail stick to remove the smokebox door number. As well as the cab lining and cabside number. I decided to leave on the west country class scroll as I then had a guide to go from with the plates. First part on and only a little touch up to the paint work will be needed. One side complete bar cab lining the smokebox door plate has also been done. I'm waiting on an order of plain lining and some 72A shed plates to complete the model and will continue on the other side soon. Cheers Pete

Ahh that explains why some photos have two and obviously the later ones once the box was closed has just the single one for the point. Looks like I can reinstate the extra lever and paint them up appropriately. Thanks for the info. Cheers Pete

Work has continued with the platforms once the clay had dried. I copied the pattern i had drawn out from the photos onto the surface using a pointed file to make grooves into the surface. First was the bricks. And then the rough stone at the bottom of the wall. The front of the platform complete. So I tacked it down onto the baseboard and took a few shots with it in place. I'm pretty happy with how this one has come out. I've still got to paint it as per the photos so will use a brick/ brown colour and then wash a cream colour for the morter. Finally I'll pick out some bricks in different colours. I've also got the other side to do which is much longer and even though you won't see it once it's in I'll know it's there. Cheers again Pete

I know what you mean I model the southern and the prospect of a black 5 with fitted sound is a tempter among a bunch of others on there haha Pete

Indeed quite a collection lots of variety, I just picked up a Bachmann 3mt for £65 so I'm a happy man. Cheers Pete

This book by the 2mm association is very good at explaining how to plan rodding runs accordingly as well as explain how it all worked it's deffo worth a purchase if your interested. I've used it so that I can plan my rodding runs on my layout. Cheers Pete

Today I've made some more progress although i have been somewhat limited as we have a power cut for most of the day. The electrician's have now made a mound of earth about the same scale as what I've been building on the layout it seems. In my previous posts I had started work on the platforms however I had forgotten a key feature of Ilfracombe was that the original platforms are made from stone and brick and that the ends of the platform were made from the concrete pre cast platforms that in real life came from Exmouth junction further up the line. Where the release crossover is it's still brick so I ordered some more peco plain platform edges and went about sticking them together and cutting out the sections for the rodding again. Speaking of the point rodding I today gave them a coat of silver paint to give them a galvanised steel look and then put black over the stools and hinges where they would be greased in real life. I'll probably give them a little bit of weathering further down the line. My plan with the smooth platform edges is to ads a thin layer of DAS clay to them and then scribe the brickwork onto it once dried. Having studied my collection of photos the two sides seem to differ slightly. It's also worth noting that the concrete extensions seem to start at different points on each platform face which I can only assume was because one side may have needed replacing. DAS clay applied on one of the sides and it will be left over night to dry. I'll have a go at this one first to check that this method works then try the other one ( it's also really tedious work laying down all this clay). I plan on scribing these patterns into each of the platform faces and will then paint them up. Thanks again Pete