sleeper

Hi, I've been looking through your posts and I like a lot of what you're doing, I think your weathering skills are great. I remember building those balsa wood models when I was a kid and seeing them getting wrecked when they hit the deck wrong, painful! I use Evergreen (made in USA) plastic angle strip for the corners on wagons and I have a cog on a spindle from out of an old clock, several different ones actually and I run this up the inside of the angle strip and that makes a row of dents which look like rivets from the outside. There's a company called Archers in the US that produce resin rivets on a sheet, similar to the transfers you just float them off onto the model. They have a web site http://www.archertransfers.com/index.html there'.s a video showing how to fix them. They are a bit expensive, especially if you're in college but apparently you get a lot for the price. Hope this helps

Hi Frank I've just bought the greenhouse, reading the assembly info I liked the way it builds in layers right from the base upwards. Suggestions? that's a difficult one as there are now quiite a few people doing these download and print card models. Really it's a matter of doing something different to the others. I think one of my main turn-offs with some of the others is the cheap almost cartoon like graphics, realism is key I think. Texture sheets and small accessories are always useful. Good luck with it Frank, when I've completed the model I'll post it up, oh a gallery of customers builds and kit-bashes on the website would be good. PS have a look at my 'bags of space' blog (link below) that could be a future possibility.

I started adding some detail, first the doors, here's where I realized my second mistake , I'd forgotten about the doors and made the body 1mm too wide. This was because I didn't want too much overhang at the sides of the roof and so the faces of the doors are outside the edge of the roof. I may have to fit another plastic roof over the top of the aluminium one with a larger overhang at the eaves. . I cut the 'T' bar strapping to size, adding an angled cut-off on the ends and fixed these onto the ends of the body, these then had to be filed down as they were too deep. For the riveted corner straps I used 2mm plastic angle and formed the rivets by running a cog wheel from a clock mechanism that I keep in the toolbox for such occasions. So that's the progress to date, the body is nearing completion, I'll soon have to be thinking about the under-frame and getting the bits in to make it, A nice etched chassis would be good, there's a guy called Brian Morgan that does an etched under-frame for this at £12.50, tempting! Edit. As there's only a couple of photos to post up I've edited this page I cut up and fixed the strapping to the already marked positions, and made some vents for the ends, they're only a representation because the sides were simply too small to attach successfully. When this was completed I was quite chuffed with it but then I realized I'd made it 3mm too wide!! so after much procrastination I got the razor saw out and cut it lengthwise down the middle and then removed the surplus to bring the inside width to 28mm. Then I just had to stick it back together accurately which went fairly well and fill the joins. I re-cut the joints between the boards, so we'll see what it's like when I've primed it. My final job was to add a couple of pieces of lead to the floor inside. Here's the pics I'll post some more pictures up when I've done some more to it. See ya later! i

With the roof sort of sorted I turned my attention to the building of the body. After experimenting unsuccessfully with scribing planks in to plastic card I settled for using tongued and grooved boarding from the wills 'scenic series', seen here. The next photo shows the sides cut from a Wills T&G sheet and in it you can see the roof section (third from left) with the plastic card attached I stuck the sides to a floor panel and left it overnight to cure before going any further. Unfortunately I discovered later when I had attached the ends that it was all too tall, I had made the floor full width but the floor panel should have sat inside the sides the photo isn't very clear but it shows what I mean. I made and fitted a partition to add stability while I cut the floor section off, the piece of white card inside is 2mm thick to create space for the floor panel inside the walls, when fitted it will be sitting on the floor. The floor came away easily, surprisingly I managed to get the cutting knife in between and remove the floor, I reduced the size of the floor and re-fitted it, cleaned it all up and marked out the positions of the doors etc and scribed in the planks as the doors were to come from a 0.5mm plastic sheet whereas Wills's ones are 1.5mm In the next post you will see the start of adding detail cheers for now

Whenever I throw any packaging into the re-cycling box I think ' now I wonder what I could make out of that', and so it was with the item in the photo below. I thought I'd have a go at cutting one of these cylinders into a strip that could be used as a roof on a coach or wagon. Now before you all jump on me and say ' you aren't supposed to puncture aerosol cans, yes I know what it says on the tin but if you are wary and you know what these cans contain you need have no fears. Some aerosols contain a plastic bag with the product in but in this case (deodorant) as it is a clean product there was no plastic sack, however you need to make sure all the pressure has been released before cutting into the aluminium can. I wore safety glasses throughout the operation as an extra precaution. First I measured with my calipers, the width of a Ratio covered van that I'd just completed opened them a further 3mm and then locked them at that measurement, next I looked for a vertical line on the graphics, there is usually some vertical mark,in this case the edge of a block of text, I stuck a strip of masking tape along that line, put one point of the caliper against the tape and with a craft knife marked the inside of the other point both at the top and bottom of the can. I then stuck a second strip of tape along these marks and the section was now ready to be cut out. I used a small coping saw I have with a very fine metal blade and made two cuts cross ways at the top and bottom of the section to be cut out, it's immaterial whether you do this first of last, it makes no appreciable difference. Next with a dremel fitted with a diamond slitting disc I gently cut along the inside edges of the tape, taking great care not to let the disc jam or jump about, at one stage it did judder and it caused a small buckle in the edge which luckily I managed to dress out with one of my copper bender slides and a light hammer. Just take it easy and don't force anything, aim to keep the revs at the same speed a when the dremel is free running. I set mine at half speed. The section of can was just over 125mm in length, not long enough for a carriage roof so I had a look on wikipedia and came up with the GW Mink 'G' general purpose covered van, these were 30ft long, 120mm in 00 gauge, just right. I rubbed all the printed surface off with rubbing down paper, cut it down to size and was left with this I cut a piece of plastic card to the inside measurement of the van body, chamfered the edges and stuck this with superglue on the chamfers up inside the roof panel. it is now ready to fit to the body when built. In the next post I'll show you how I went about making the body. cheers for now

This has been a fantastic blog, thank you very much. It has reminded me of my long distance trek across the Pyrenees 14 years ago

Some time ago I bought a brake van body because i could see a certain resemblance to 'Toby the Tram' hence the title of this blog. I did some research on steam trams, gathering together a collection of images and articles on the subject. here's a photo of what I broadly wanted to achieve I don't have a photo of the original body but here's one soon after I started mucking around with it some time last year I fitted some half panels to the doors, filled in the place where the duckets would have been fitted, added some 0.25 clear plexiglass for the glazing and cut away the underside to create an aperture for the motor seen here I then started making up the chassis by cutting out the side frames which I clamped together and drilled out 4mm holes for the 1.5mm brass shouldered bearings and fixed those in with superglue, using a length of 1.5mm rod for alignment. It was my intention to use 12mm romford bogie wheels on 1.5mm axles. Next came fitting the frame spacers, again using 2mm plastic card similar to the frames. I intended to use a spare can motor from an RTR Hornby 0-4-0. I bushed the cog down with some plastic tube inserted the axle through the bearings and cog using carfully filed down bearings as spacers and super glued the cog to the axle with bated breath in case the glue ran into the spacers/bearings. Thankfully I got away with it, although the assembly ran a little tight due to me allowing insufficient end float, but I suspect that will ease itself with running in. I didn't take pictures of the initial stages of construction but here is the chassis with the running plate fitted and the can motor retainer in place. Later on I'll show you the next stages of the project.

So here's the model with it's final coat of Matt black acrylic paint brushed on, it's now got a chimney. These trams sometimes hauled a tram car behind them, very similar to the horse drawn trams but also similar in appearance to the later electrified trams that preceded these steam trams. I'll leave you with the rest of the photos of this build. This is only loosly based on any original because to tell you the truth I didn't think it would ever get to fruition, if I'd known I'd have stuck more rigidly to a prototype. It could do with some sort of livery, maybe a number and just maybe a tram car to pull behind it, but that's another project cheers for now Roly

So we'd got as far as the chassis build, I worked out what sort of aperture to leave in the base so the worm on the shaft of the can motor would poke through to engage with the drive gear.The original metal retainer was too long for this body so couldn't be used, but I used it as a pattern to determine the angle of entry for the shaft and made up a motor bed/retainer assembly from 2mm plastic card and added 0.25 shims untill the worm engaged with the gear satisfactorily. This was quite a trial and error operation and took some considerable time to get right. I was then faced with the task of how to secure the motor as I was unable (and unwilling) to use the monstrous Hornby wire clip from the original. I tried a rubber drive belt that came with a set of plastic pulley wheels this sort of held it but allowed the motor to slip sideways with the inertia. I finally settled for a strip of circuit board drilled either end and secured at right angles to the motor, through the base by 2 - 8ba x 30mm brass screws, not the prettiest sight but effective.I didn't take a photo but in the picture below the red line indicates the path of the screws. Next came the electrical pick ups, these I made by soldering Phosphor bronze wire to a square of circuit board saved from a cannibalized computer. I cut a slot trough (as I thought) the copper layer to separate the two sides, this was super glued under the central frame spacer. Time for a test run! urh! doesn't work? wonder why?! I immediately thought it was because maybe the romford bogie wheels weren't insulated but on examination I found they were. That eliminated I turned my attention to my solder connections I re soldered all these to no avail. After messing around for ages I tried enlarging the gap in the circuit board pick up connection and finally cut right through it, problem solved, it worked, but with the combination of the light weight chassis, metal wheels and an ancient Hornby controller the drive wheels just spun, fine if you want to do bleach outs but with a steam tram that wouldn't look too prototypical, I'm sure. Here's the pick up gubbins Now the running gear was sorted it was time to attend to the bodywork, I made 2 fixing plates inside the body to screw in to through the frame these pictures tell the rest of the story. I used Halfords red primer which showed up all the blemishes, these were rectified and primed again. You may have noticed the appearance of a 'cow catcher' on the front, I made this by bending 0.8mm wire to 90° and glued them into a strip of plastic. I trimmed all but the 2 outside bars 2mm shorter and drilled the front buffer bar to accept the 2 longer bars, the whole thing was glued to the front. Well that's all for now, I'll post the final pictures up when it's all finished. cheers for now.

Mark and Kevin, thanks guys for the kind words

I like that job it looks really convincing, well done

Phew! I had to dig deep to find this blog, way down the list as it's been some time since my last waffle. Time for a nice cuppa I think. Which reminds me why I dug out this blog. I've been pretty busy of late with one thing or the other and concequently no modelling has been done so here's a little something to keep this space alive. This :- I've often thought about what could be done with these cartons once emptied as they're made of nice fine white card, just crying out for something to be made out of them. I opened it out carefully and as they're only tacked together with spots of glue here and there the flaps and sides were hardly damaged. I thought it would make a large warehouse/goods/engine shed and at around a scale 40ft x 33ft, a nice size. so I started marking it out so it had large windows down one side, a personal door and large sliding doors on the front opening. This done I set about cladding the walls? I wanted a brick base around 4ft high and corrugated iron for the rest of the structure. I planned to use material from Wordsworths models collection designed by Mike Martin and available for free download from his website. I originally hoped to get the complete structure from the one box but found I needed extra card for the roof panel which I attached to the roof sub-panels. here's a picture of the opened out box, marked out and partially clad :- I downloaded enough copies of Wordsworth's 'line side huts sheet 3' to provide the windows and stuck those to the panel I had previously cut out and mounted these to a frame so as to make the window recessed, same with the personal door next to it. For the inside of the windows I merely drew out the frames with black marker on a white background, this gave the impression of light coming through from outside. Once this was done and most of the corrugated iron cladding was fixed I glued up the 2 rear corners and then finally the 2 front corners, first cutting an access panel in the floor so I could press down from inside when fitting the roof and gain access to clad the flaps once fixed. I then added the pre-clad roof panel and touched in where any white card was showing, adding a little weathering here and there. I mentioned making the roof panel from extra material and this was obtained from a box of biscuits from Lidle's, the box had a predominately green finish and so I cut out four panels, laminating them together to make the 2 main doors which I suspended from a length of handrail wire using some plastic handrail knobs I had in the box. This is how it looked when I had finished, not the most glamorous of buildings but just an old rough tin shack. so not bad for next to no cost, maybe one day when I get round to doing a layout it might fit in up the back somewhere. cheers for now Roly

Excellent James, It's just a pity you didn't show a full side on shot so we can see what the end result looks like, any chance? Roly

I did say I was no authority on diesel shunters! I can see what you've said now, you meant the bend isn't square to the sides

Hi Pete, I'm no authority on these diesel shunter's but looking at the third picture down it looks as though the sides of the fuel tank enclosure (I presume that's the middle one) are cut off at an angle purposely to give the top a slant similar to the other two 'boxes' so that the rain runs off, it just seems strange why this one should be different to the others. Could it be the level topped box on the other (right) side is wrong? Roly

a very nice layout Ray. Is this part of a larger layout? Image 6 shows another line going under the very low looking bridge (which I suspect leads nowhere) but leads me to wonder if this is part of a larger layout. Would it be possible to give us some idea of the dimensions of the layout as shown in the diagram? The picture showing the signal box and water tower together certainly shows up the difference between Scaledale and Scenecraft. The Scenecraft signal box looking much crisper and more realistic than the scaledale offering, although the price of the Hornby one is probably more 'realistic' In all some nice work there Ray and typical of your attention to detail, thanks.

Hi Folks, It's been a while now since I last posted anything in this blog, largely due to having resumed work on the house renovation, realising that if I didn't do it no other bu@@er would. Apart from that I recently took my half yearly trip back to the UK. I had recently bought a French Senior Citizens rail pass which gives me 50% off of SNCF fares so booked 4 months in advance for Eurostar. I was very impressed with the TGV, very comfortable, smooth and quiet too. Eurostar looked a bit jaded by comparison, but what a quick journey 12 hours from door to door and I arrived as fresh as a daisy (well almost). The time taken included a 2 hour stopover at Victoria coach station, the total cost £120 return. While I was there I went down to south Wales by train to see friends, on my return early Sunday morning I saw Nunny Castle waiting in Newport station with a train of mk1 carriages in tow. I travelled down to East Sussex via St Pancras again where I caught the HST to Ashford it was the Javelin, wow! it accelerates like a javelin too, very, very quick. I recently bought this on Ebay:- I believe it to be a J72, it's white metal kit built and I think it could have been made by Nu-Cast, there is an X04 type motor fitted but far smaller, with a squiggly pattern on the top plate, seen here :- According to Wikipedia some were in LNER Apple Green which would look quite nice and Some later ones in BR Black. I would be grateful if anyone could verify this and if so were they plain black or lined. When I get some time to myself I'll do a decent paint job on it, it'll need stripping first and as it's fixed together with glue I'll have to be careful, can't just dunk it in brake fluid. It needs some pick ups and wiring to the motor fitted to make it a runner. more later Regards Roly

I admire your foresight Pete and how you seem to spot the forthcoming problems instead of just blindly following the instructions. How did you go about forming those curves on the bonnet edges so evenly?

That's looking superb now James, well done. Puts my scratch built card version to shame. I'm tempted one day to do a better rendering, one day.

With the base and body complete all that remained was to paint it, I had used a maroon coloured card for the body but I now think that is the wrong colour it should be more of a red oxide colour I think. here's how it looked when I'd finished it This was the original photo and below is my Diorama to replicate it That's about it really, apart I suppose from this little fellah if you look at the original you'll see him down on the rails between the engine and train, He can also be seen driving a pug in one of the dubs crane blogs. Regards Roly

I stuck the two halves together then made some floor sections of the right shape fixing them inside to brace the sides. I cut glazing strips from a perspex shirt collar stiffening strip which comes with most new shirts, I stuck these in with superglue. The cab rear panels are not correct as it is possible to see right through the prototype but they added rigidity and don't forget that this was just for a photoshoot so detail wasn't too important. Next I traced around the body and made a template for the roof which I made from Balsa wood? The first layer was 2mm thick and smaller than the template by 1.5mm to fit inside the body sides the 2nd layer was 6mm thick and the same size as the template. These were glued together and left to cure. I shaped and contoured the roof, sanding it first with course and then fine sandpaper, I coated the whole thing with a couple of thick coats of grey acrylic primer to harden it up. As you can see it wasn't a perfect fit but never mind eh!! to be continued

Well it's been a while again now since I posted anything, due in part to awaiting a coach kit to arrive from Comet Models and a very smart kit it is indeed, I hope I can do it justice when I come to assemble it as it will be my first brass kit build. Two other reasons for my absence, one I've started work on the house renovation again after some considerable time so I now have less time and even less energy for the models. The other reason is because of a spate of electrical breakdowns, in a five week period my computer, printer, hair clippers, freezer, and internet modem all packed up one after the other. The modem was rented from the ISP and they only ever supplied cheap rubbish makes, this was the 4th one I'd had, and the last I've gone back to France Telecom now, whome I hope will do better. So I haven't been online for a while. Anyway, back to the Metro-Vick, 20 of these were built in the early 1920s by Metropolitan Vickers of Barrow in Furness for the Metropolitan railway. They replaced an earlier design which had a central cab and were called 'camel-backs' the new design being more powerful. They were withdrawn from service in the early 60s. Only two have been preserved, one is in the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden and the other, Sarah Siddons is in private ownership. Some time ago I entered a competition in which one had to make a Diorama replicating a painting or photograph, so I chose to reproduce a photo of a working MV taken at Rickmansworth station some time in the 50s. This is the story of the build. I did some drawings to work to and the photo I worked from just happened to be nearly to scale.I first made a master template drawing and made two copies so both sides would be identical I cut out the window openings and round the complete sides and then mounted them on card of the right colour I marked a sticky label into 2mm strips, cut them out and overlapped them by 1mm and cut them into 9mm square panels, I painted them to match the card and fixed them in place. the grill panels cut to size and painted to match I cut some strips 2mm wide for the side mouldings, around doors and windows etc, marked out the panels and glued them in place. When I'd finished it looked like this, these strips were later sanded down to soften the edges and reduce the thickness slightly continued in part 2

Hi James Sorry for not replying sooner, my internet connection has been down AGAIN!! and I have been in the process of changing my ISP I'll try and put the metro-vick project up in my blog. http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/1250-the-sleepers-workspace/

there should have been a picture of one of the original metro vics attached to compare. but the picture hasn't displayed I'm sorry. I am very interested in this entry as I scratch built one from card once and it will be good to see how it turns out. I think KH1's idea is a good way to lessen the impact of those oversized mouldings, if a little tedious given the amount of panels