sleeper

When I lived in East Sussex there was a shop in Pevensey Bay just like your one, I like the terrace of houses too

Excellent Peter, excellent. A lot of very complex and well executed masking gone on there, a superb job, just as I imagined it to be. Well done mate.

yes that's great Jason thanks

Jason The page brought up by that link didn't seem relevant to my original query, maybe I've missed something, but the forum it was contained in looked very interesting if maybe a little too advanced for me at the moment, I joined anyway. Now what page was I on, 3 I think, back to work!

Thanks Beatty It certainly does, is this project going to be the subject of a separate thread? I'll be interested in how it develops so post a link on here if anything changes.

Forgive my ignorance but in the image above, is it the assembly seen earlier with laser cut MDF partitions and sides cut from plastic card in the silhouette? You talk about using Romark and Troply, is that the laser engravable plastic and MDF respectively, marketed by Trojet? could you please qualify.

Mike thanks for the prompt reply and the advice. I had done that before but wondered if it could be stopped 'at source' I wasn't aware of the memory thing though. Presumably you have to save your work for the image to be memorised. thanks again. Roly

When I click on the rectangle icon in Inkscape and open up a rectangle on the page it always has rounded corners and is filled with colour, I can't find what is causing it or how to correct it. Can someone help me with this please.

Hi Mike Previously I had no knowledge of Inkscape whatsoever and I've only just started on this 'course', I'm finding it really informative and interesting so thank you for taking the time to post up such clear concise instruction. I'm only on page 2 at the moment but already I can do things I couldn't do before. Thanks again. Roly

It's looking a bit 'piebald' at the moment but I know, I can see it in my mind, what it will look like shortly. Nice one Pete.

The two coats of Acrylic paint made a difference to the roof, making it harder and filling the course grain of the Balsa. Next came the base plate, I made this from 2mm thick plastic card with 2x2mm strips of angle along the sides to which I glued some T shaped strip to replicate the base in the photo. Next came the bogie frames, these I cut from Slaters plastic card but the top section I cut from some French card which is softer and more 'bendy' than the British card, this enabled me later on to spring the side frames apart to fit the axles in place. I added some detail to represent springs, axleboxes and pick up bars, drilling the side frames and attaching the bars with wire bent to 90°. I attached the bogies to the base with 8ba nuts and bolts, the nuts set into the base with Araldite. This how it looked prior to painting to be continued

Yes I agree to a point, the only minor problem being they're made of steel whereas the deodorant cans are made of Aluminium which is an easier material to work with. I'm a bit sceptical about cutting one of the steel sirop cans with the Dremel, I've visions of sparks and splinters of metal flying off, but yes I certainly think they would be long enough.

I've a couple of things to talk about in this blog. One is about my recent acquisition of a 12 volt mini drill. I bought it from a seller on Ebay it cost £9.95 and came all the way from Turkey post free! how do they do that? I've had stuff shipped from China for nix too and yet some sellers in the UK are asking anything up to £35 yes £35 for a coach that cost a tenner, who's fooling who here? Anyhow, here's a picture of it and this one shows the spec I attached it to my trusty H&M controller so I can vary the speed depending on what I'm doing with it. here's a link to it, just a word of warning it took 3 weeks to arrive, partly due to the seller not posting it for 6 days and partly due to the French snail mail, (cos the French ate all the snails) usually 5-6 days http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/291036914684?_trksid=p2060778.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT The second thing I want to show you is my ongoing search for suitable material to make coach roofs. If you remember in my last scratchbuilt project, the GWR mink G van I used an Aluminium roof that I cut from a deodorant container see here http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/1250/entry-14283-mink-g-van-1/ The orange fruit juice I buy here in France comes in a rather sturdy plastic bottle and I've had an eye on it ever since I first bought it to do something with the container, seen here. Like the deodorant tin I stuck masking tape lengthwise and traced an outline using the aforementioned alu roof as a template. I carefully cut this out using the Dremel, the new drill's Coletts were too small, I had to really crank the speed up compared with the Alu, it's pretty tough stuff. The edges of the blank were pretty rough with a considerable burr on both sides, partly I think to some heat being generated by the faster speed. I set to work first with the scalpel trying to scrape it off, that only removed the fragments but not the burr, so next I tried a needle file with limited success next I got out the big Bars***d you know, the one you keep in the shed and filed off most of it. I said this material was tough! Finally I finished it off with Emery cloth, running this all over to make it opaque ready for priming. Generally I would say this took longer to shape than the Alu and the latter is much more rigid but the plastic has the advantage of it being able to be manipulated into whatever curve you require with suitably shaped stiffeners maybe here's some pictures This is the blank as cut from the bottle These are the tools I used The bottle masked up I gave it a quick coat of primer just to see if I'd completely removed the burr, I can report it looked ok So that concludes my experiment with plastic other than Evergreen/Slaters etc for now, I can't remember if I mentioned in earlier posts but I cut some strips from an Alu beer can and laminated them together with contact adhesive, 2 layers were ok 3 would have been stronger. Because of the limited length of beer cans I'm thinking of putting two blanks end to end and sticking another layer across the joint with one blank cut in halves either end to make a longer roof the joint could be filled. I'll let you know when I've drunk the beers cheers for now

been there done that

Hi Jason, I've been plodding through the 33 pages of this thread for the past week and finally I've reached where we are now. I'd like to say a big thank you for the knowledge you've passed over to us and also a thank you to the guys who've risked damage to their machines in order to see what its true potential is. I'm taking delivery of a Portrait on Monday and I'm looking forward to when I will be able to use it, but first the learning curve with Inkscape. I once did a Metropolitan Metro Vick, (the link to that blog is somewhere below) in card with a balsa wood roof, it's surprising how sturdy it was when finished, but what a pain cutting out the various openings and louvres by hand. I'd like to return to that project and get it right this time. For similar reasons I've fought shy of diesels and coaches in the past, it seems now the future is much brighter, thanks again guys. http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/1250/entry-12114-my-metro-vick/

Hi WS, Thanks for the compliment regarding the weathering, unfortunately I didn't provide any hinges to the doors which I now regret and might just add prior to the final varnishing. In my next blog I'll be showing off my newly purchased 12v mini drill, with which, hopefully, I will be able to rout some slots out beside the doors to insert some scraps of brass in to represent hinges, and then some rust streaks as you suggest. The rust patches on the strapping is done with an eye make up set I bought in the local supermarket, I got some strange looks from the women around the checkout. Sadly my Fench wasn't good enough to tell her it was for my hobby!!! The wheels have been weathered with the same colour as the underframe, you can just see this in the 2nd picture down, but I didn't paint the flanges because I didn't want to inhibit the free running, so that needs to be done. One ot the remaining job is to file back the brake shoes slightly as they bind very slightly on the 14mm wheels fitted.

Well at last it's finished, well as near as. It has now been painted in GWR freight grey and weathered to what I think it might have looked like. On checking online I had a lot of guidance on the state of some wagons when in service, on refering to some of Paul Bartletts work some wagons were virtually falling apart, I didn't want to overdo the weathering to that extent though. See what you think, I've ordered a sillhouette portrait vinyl cutter from Amazon which is due for delivery on Monday, I'm hoping if I can learn the computer design thingy (inkscape) it will help with the scratchbuilds I'd like to do but don't because of the complexity of cutting out small detail by hand. So watch this space - but don't hold your breath! I've edited this post to include the photos of the van with added door hinges cheers for now

I might have mentioned in an earlier blog that I was also putting some plastic wagon kits together. While the Mink G van is awaiting a slot in the paintshops I've posted a couple of photos of the Ratio bogie B passenger van I'm doing, alongside the Mink G, which has now had the body painted and the decals fixed. When it's been varnished and the underframe paintwork finished I'll post it up. I find the Ratio plastic kits go together reasonably well and (this 'B' vans bogies aside), are quite therapeutic to work on. I haven't gone in to the actual building of the kit as it's all standard stuff, but as it's now near to completion here's a few pics of it to date This is the body/underframe with all the brass detailing parts attached using Humbrol Satincoat varnish as an adhesive. You may have seen in earlier posts that I've used a jewellers lupe as a macro lens over the lens of my camera to take close up shots, hence this round picture. It shows the detailing to the front. I tried using the etched handrails supplied with the kit but they were just too flimsy so I bent up 0.45 brass wire instead, first though I drilling a hole with a 0.4 drill bit to provide a tight fit, I then dropped a blob of superglue at the back. This final shot shows the body coated in Halfords red oxide primer, prior to this I primed it with some primer specially for painting plastic car parts, it is clear and dries in minutes. I got it from the French equivalent of Halfords called Roady, part of the Intermarché group, no connection. More news later guys, cheers for now

Hi Adam, I've followed this post with interest and you are to be congratulated on the range you've produced to date. My only reservation is that you have chosen to model the bodies based on relatively expensive and obscure chassis, for example the L&Y pug & the Electrotren 0-6-0. Why wasn't it possible to have made a body to fit the cheap and cheerful Hornby 0-4-0 chassis? there must be hundreds of those kicking around and cheap too. This is merely a thought, please don't take it as aggressive criticism.

Ray, as always a very concise and well prepared article. I'm well impressed with your neat control panel wiring, being an ex plumber I know full well you have to think well ahead if you don't want to end up with a bunch of spaghetti in the airing cupboard!

I'm sorry this blog hasn't been updated for so long, but work on the house has taken priority, so the only modelling done recently have been a couple of Ratio Vans. 1 is an LMS ventilated van the other an SR 28ton bogie 'B' luggage van and a Parkside Dundas 'vanwide' kit. The two small vans were a doddle and a pleasure to build, the SR 'B' van was a bit of a pig with lots of fiddly bits making up the bogies and I'm not happy that I've got them right even now. Another thing I wasn't happy about was the ride height, the buffers were much too high, I finally found I had read the instructions wrong and perched the side frames on top of the solebars instead of dropping them over the solebars to rest on the bottom web, so I had to cut the body free and re-fix it properly, fortunately the glue parted fairly easily so no great damage has been done. Well on to the Mink G, If you read blog 3 you'll find that I was contemplating a brass chassis for this van, well ,I obtained one from Brian Morgan Design who specialises in GWR, it arrived shortly before a friend arrived from the UK so no time to do anything but have a brief shoofty, it all looked terribly complicated especially as this was my first excursion into brass kit building apart from some brass bogies on a 51L wagon, oh that's another one I've done recently, all these are awaiting the paint shop. After returning from a trip to the UK I finally got stuck into it and my first problem was that the instructions were on DVD ALL 72 PAGES OF THEM!!! In PDF format which was fine except that good ol' windows 8 didn't want me to print them off, anyway to cut a long story short I managed it on a windows 7 computer but as the info contained therein is general for all 27 models I had to determine which sheets I required. All due respects to Brian Morgan his designs are brilliant but so, so intricate, especially for a first timer named Quassiemodo, (yours truly) I ended up hurling the instructions across the room and figuring it out myself. The compensation didn't happen! mainly because the bit that the guitar string springing was set into wasn't square with the axle line although the box that it was mounted in was, one of the brake rods didn't seem to fit anywhere so I made my own adaptation with 0.5mm brass wire, (rivet counters?- tuff get over it)! I managed to adapt it to fit afterwards but it's not true to prototype. After all this gassing you're expecting some photos, well I took some but they're all out of focus for some reason however they'll give you some idea. The chassis is in the paint shop, painted, as I speak so no chance of re-taking them I'm afraid. The body was first given a coat of Halfords' red oxide primer, followed by a top coat of grey enamel that hopefully resembles GWR grey, so when the lettering is all finished I'll post some final pictures here's the progress to date. This is the base together with the sliding bearing retainers that ended up being soldered in place This is the guitar string springs in their holder The finished chassis ready for priming with an etch primer Finally the painted body, in GWR freight grey? I'd welcome any comment/criticism on the shade of grey as appropriate to GWR freight grey

You said right at the start of this post that it was a GRRRRRRRRwestern engine, I see what you mean now!

what a difference a coat of paint makes I have felt that with this particular project you have sometimes had difficulties compared with the others, but again well done Pete.

It seems to be a Harris designed kit, the date on the etches is late 90's I think. The website was last updated in 1999, do they still produce kits, or are they gone now?