sleeper

It's as near to 00 gauge as I can get, bearing in mind the image I'm working to was the original image that I'd worked out as being 6.6mm-1ft reduced by about 40% thus making it 4.4mm-1ft. In fact compared to a Dapol kit built pug it's not far out. I used Microsoft paint which isn't the most sophisticated of programs, so it's only approximately 00. Unfortunately I don't have a better program on my computer. Maybe I need to spend some of my pension on something better, but which one, is there an all singing all dancing piece of software? Maybe someone can recommend something.

Some of you who've been following this blog will remember me having problems with uploading photos due to the post getting too full, it's why I only post a few photos with a bit of text, because it becomes a nightmare once the thing crashes, so in this case less is more, if you get my drift. So where was I? Once all the 'rivets' had been punched I stuck the 0.25mm layer on to the 1mm layer. Some will have noticed that in the last picture the layers are marked 0.5mm. Originally I had planned to use 0.5mm but I subsequently thought it would be too flimsy and so cut out four of them and laminated them together, making 1mm. I made a box structure between the two sides and added the sides, while the glue on this was setting thoroughly I started on the top pulley wheel. I cut two brass discs 5mm in diameter from a scrap of brass etch, soldered a 3mm wide brass washer to them then soldered both halves together. This I drilled through with an .08 drill and pushed a short length of 0.6mm brass wire through. I drilled the jib 5mm from the end with an 0.8mm drill and threaded the wire through both sides. This was the top pulley, I added another brass washer each side fixed with superglue then cut the wire and filed flat. Surprise surprise the wheel still turned after gluing The next thing was to reproduce the gear wheels on the sides of the jib. The Ideal would be to use a couple of gear wheels from a clock mechanism, you know the ones that spin back and forth, but after scouring Ebay I only came up with dealers offerings and 25grams of wheels at £5 cost with no guarantee I'd get the right thing seemed a little too chancy so I thought I'd have a go at making something . Hmm not for the faint hearted, they took nearly all day and I'm not sure they pass muster, the smaller one definitely isn't too good. To make them I cut a sliver off the end of a bit of 15mm copper tube, filing it to reduce the thickness further. Using a brass axle bush as a hub I soldered 4 lengths of brass wire on to it for the spokes and trimmed them to fit inside the copper 'ring'. All too fiddly! I kept dislodging the previously attached spokes when applying the iron but finally I got there. It's not too bad but up close it isn't good so it may well get changed yet. I soldered on a short length of 1.9mm brass tube, drilled the side of the jib 2mm and inserted the assy the other half is a 1mm diameter brass nail/pin. that side was drilled 1mm and the nail entered into the tube and fixed with super glue, thus making a shaft for the gearwheel. Enough of the chit chat, here's the pictures:- The start of construction fixing the sides to the base with the rest of the box section in the foreground The competed pulley wheel awaiting installation into the jib The larger of the two gear wheels in detail The top pulley fitted, the length of wire is just to prop up the end of the jib the weekends progress . see you in part three cheers for now

With the 1308 Lady Margaret on hold awaiting nameplates I thought I'd get my next project underway. For some time I've been researching the Foxfield Railway's preserved crane tank loco. Affectionately known throughout its life as "Dubsy" but never actually named, this locomotive was built by Dubs and Co of Glasgow in 1901 and delivered to the Shelton Iron & Steel Works in Stoke-on-Trent. It remained at Shelton Bar throughout its life. "Dubsy" was originally coal fired but was converted to oil firing in 1962. This modification prolonged the useful life of the locomotive, but not by much as it was taken out of regular use in 1968. Purchased for preservation in April 1970 by two members of the East Somerset Railway, "Dubsy" was not moved to Somerset until 2 September 1973. The oil burning equipment was removed in 1977 and "Dubsy" returned to service as a coal burner, giving almost nine years of continuous service at Cranmore on shed pilot duties and a lot of lifting work, as the East Somerset Railway was constructing its extension to Mendip Vale. Withdrawn from service for overhaul in 1986, this was never carried out and eventually the owners offered it for sale to private owners at Foxfield to reunite it with ex-Shelton locos. I thought it would be good to get the crane built as that seemed to be a bit more complicated than the rest, probably because it is unknown teritory for me. I did some calculations similar to those on the last project using a couple of side-on shots so the foreshortening was kept to a minimum, again using the only known dimensions, the wheels, and applying the same formula I obtained the scale of the photos. This time though I came up with several different answers, so I had to keep checking and re-checking. This time I tried re-scaling one of the pictures, the scale of which was approximately 6.6mm-1ft which meant loosing around 40% to make it 4mm-1ft. [1.76 scale.] I used Microsoft paint to reduce the image, then printed it out. It worked, the measurements in this photo more or less matched my calculations. I know, some of you may cringe at the term 'more or less' I suppose some time I'll have to work to working drawings but with my current level of skill near enough is good enough. So here's the first pictures :- This is how she looked in her pre-preservation days On the left is the two photos with the scale measurements marked on them, top right is the reduced photo to be used for templates etc. The said photo with the crane jib cut out and used as a template for the sides rails shown here cut out ready to be laminated together I bought this tool for a few centimes, it's some kind of piezo type current generator when you plunge the button on top it sends a current through the terminal on the side. It makes an excellent center punch seen here being used to punch the rivets into a 0.25mm layer of the jib, this was then stuck on the outside of the 1mm layer. You can just make out the effect achieved, later photos will show the effect more clearly. More later in part 2

I got my tin of Humbrol Matt varnish out today to dull down the smokebox and cab roof on 1308. On opening the said tin I found it had separated, the same as my Humbrol Satin varnish had done previously, rendering it as 'dodgy' to use in the airbrush. I applied it with a brush instead and when it dried it looked somewhat streaky, so not good. Afterwards I applied 3 coats of Johnson's Kleer or Klir as it's called here in France. Today I thought I'd try experimenting with Klir Matt a la Sleeper. I have an idea I read somewhere that mat varnish contains talcum powder, or some similar substance. I bought a tin of talc together with a packet of women's stockings for straining paint [honest]! well I did get a strange look from the girl on the checkout I mixed a little of this with the Klir and painted it on to a black Plasticard strip previously coated with Klir, it dried mat. I was concerned that as the mix was so thin in consistency the powder might congregate in clumps. I needed something to make the Klir more gelled, similar to acrylic varnish, I decided to try PVA. I mixed a little drop of PVA into it and painted another strip on the test card, it also dried mat but there was a slight improvement in cover, however viewed at a certain angle it was fine but viewed straight on it contained whitish elements which to me weren't acceptable. I then left out the talc and mixed Klir/PVA only, at a ratio of 4 parts Klir to 1 part PVA and applied to the test card, not bad, slightly mat. I painted this mix onto the cab roof of a Dapol pug I'd finished with 2 coats of Klir. I then made up a mix of 2 Klir -1 PVA and painted over the roof again, bearing in mind the possibility of an accumalative effect due to the previous coating, the result was more mat and not too bad really. I took 2 of the photos with the Jewelers Loup and 2 without, see what you think of the results of the tests, if indeed you can tell the difference from a photograph. 4-1 mixture 2-1 mixture 4-1 mixture 2-1 mixture What do you think? comments and suggestions welcome cheers for now.

Hi everyone, I've done some more detailing on this model, coal in the bunker,front and rear steps added, vacuum pipes, 3 link couplings, oh and leaf springs made and fitted. The coal in the bunker is plastic stuff made by Peco. The front steps are metal ones cut from the RTR bogies I used for the Double Fairlie, the rear ones are for a Jinty they come from an etched set I got from Mainly trains. Vac pipes from Markits, Slater's 3 link couplings. I made the leaf springs by cutting a strip of 0.25mm plasticard approx 1.5mm wide, cut into 20mm lengths, drilled 0.5mm through the center and threaded onto 0.45 brass wire bent 90 degrees on the end and secured with Superglue. I cut each section down by around 1mm each end so that each section was 2mm smaller than the one above. I then drilled the top leaves each end 0.5mm and pushed through the same wire bent over square for the mountings. Both outer wires were then trimmed flush with the bottom leaf, the center wire was left longer to go through the running plate, then trimmed flush underneath when the glue had set. I had another little play around with the Jewelers Loup for the detailed photos, they aren't perfect by any means but at least they're closer up than the camera on it's own would achieve, here they are :- The rather overlarge whistle made from a Biro pen nib The etched brass steps bent up and soldered together I've just received an email from Steve at Lonely Planet that the artwork for my nameplates has been done so hopefully I'll receive them by the end of the month. more when they arrive cheers for now.

Thanks guys for the info and links. I've looked on Wikipedia and found this history "The Liskeard and Caradon Railway was exceedingly successful while mineral extraction boomed, but it was entirely dependent on that traffic and when the mines and quarries declined, the Railway followed. From 1909 [the year that Lady Margareth was built] the railway was worked by the Great Western Railway, but its days were already numbered, and it closed in 1917, its track materials being removed in aid of the war effort." So it looks like the handrails need to be green as Mark states, a bit of a pity really because other than the brass handrails it's quite bland, maybe when I get the named and number plates they'll brighten it up a bit.

Thanks guys for the kind words of encouragement. Aberdare. Jim I'm glad you've got your scratch builders hat on now, go for it. The shots through the Loup were purely random, I erased more than I kept because they were too out of focus. you can see on one shot the side of the cab is blurred but the inside is in focus, just need to get the distance right. N15 class I hadn't thought about static being the reason for the dust in the paint, good point. maybe the paint swirl over the plastic builds up the static, some kind of grounding strap required? 46444 Hi Mark, thanks for the comments, I spent some time reading through your blog, you're certainly a dab hand with the weathering. Regarding the handrails do you think they'd look better painted green to match the body or brass coloured? Mikkel The problem I had wasn't apparent when uploading the photos and attaching them but afterwards. When previewing and submitting the post there were no photos just Icons, which, when clicked upon didn't do anything. I tried posting them one by one in a separate entry - no problem. It was due to me trying to post too much content at once, a lesson learned for the future. Thanks for the offer of help.

I've learn now, you can't add too much content into these entries, the poor old RMW server won't take it, so in future I need to split it up more. I'm sorry if it's spoiled your reading of this blog. Hopefully future entries will be 'as they happen' making for shorter entries the last few have been posted in retrospect making for large files of text plus numerous photos.

I've had considerable problems with posting photos but when I posted them to the test area they came up ok [ called Murphy's law] or something like that. Right in part 5 you'll see 12345 listed where the photo's should be here they are in that order:- 1 2 3 4 5 Shhh it seems to have worked. Conclusions drawn? I talk to 'kin much!! TTFN

I've applied the paint to this model now. I started with Railmatch GWR loco green but on inspection the finish was p!$$ poor so I rubbed it all down again with wet and dry [used wet] and then re-sprayed it with Humbrol No 3 Brunswick Green, not my favourite colour an not 'olivy] enough for my liking but who's to know what colour this loco's first livery was? I haven't been able to find any info online about this one. I guess as it was a one off and scrapped early on [1948], it's slipped under the radar. Anyway back to to work. On applying the second coat of paint the finish was much better, Previously I'd stood it across the supports but I think this caused turbulence in the paint stream, so the next time I didn't stand it on the wooden supports in the same way. I placed just one support in line with the body, this helped I'm sure. I then hand painted the smoke box/chimney, running plate, cab roof with matt black. The paint on the buffer beams is a mix of Humbrol No 174 red satin and a dash of Humbrol No 113 red/brown matt. This mix toned down the very bright, unrealistic red. The heads of the buffers are done in Humbrol metal cote. When the paintwork was dry I fitted the brass handrails and knobs, slightly more tricky on this one. The hand rail has a bend downwards into the running plate. Using Superglue I had to fix a knob on the verticle face of the tank first, no problem I used a short length of 0.45 brass wire to orientate it parallel with the corner of the tank, but then came the slightly more tricky job of glueing in the other three. I bent the hand rail wire at a right angle and trimmed it just over-length, threaded the three knobs on applied Superglue to the hole nearest the front of the tank fiddled the knob into the 1mm hole, easy, but the next two holes are only 20mm apart so as I progressed along it got tighter and tighter which meant having to bend the wire more and more. It all went ok and the hand rails are quite straight, no kinks. I made the whistle from the head of a Biro with a short length of 0.8mm wire bent 90 degrees inserted, fixed with the good ol' Superglue. This and the safety valve were picked out in brass coloured paint. I had a dodgy moment when I was fixing the offside handrail to the boiler, I threaded the knob onto the 0.45 brass wire and glued it in position, snipping off the tail and glued it into the hole nearest the tank. When it came to gluing the other end into the smoke box it would not go in the 1mm hole. Eventually with much juggling it went in,[ not forgetting I was using Superglue], I discovered I'd buckled the wrap around the smoke box which is only 0.25 plasticard due to the small circumference. In trying to pull the dent out the knob pulled out of the hole! That's it! the whole thing is ruined! after all that work too!! but fortunately I'd pulled out the dent, so after a good scrape with the scalpel fresh glue all was well, phew! just need to touch up the matt black on the smoke box and all's well. Enough rambling on here's some pics :- 1/ 2/ 3/ SORRY i CAN'T POST ANY PHOTOS HERE BECAUSE THE POST IS OVERLOADED SEE THE NEXT ENTRY FOR THE PHOTOS THAT SHOULD APPEAR HERE, My camera is a Cannon 2 megapixel, Quite old in terms of technology now and it definitely doesn't like close ups. As an experiment I placed my Jewelers Loup over the lens and here's the result 4/ 5/ FOR PHOTOS SEE THE NEXT ENTRY [5A] This one shows the roughness around the doorway due to turbulence caused by the roof overhang and the door edging. Some of the detail inside the cab. The gauge was 3mm brass rod cross drilled 1mm, cut off approx 2mm from the rod with 0.8mm wire bent at 90 degrees and glued in, painted brass colour with white face. There is a regulator handle in there too out of view in this shot made from 1.5mm brass tube with bent 0.8mm wire arm, So that's it for now, the finnishing touches will be in part 6 see ya then . TTFN

Jim [aberdare] I hope my blog helps to give you inspiration with your forthcoming build. Mark [46444] Hi Mark, Thanks for the kind comments again. It only seems like I work fast, in reality it's not like that. The entries for these last three projects have all been made retrospectively. I took these photos as the models progressed. They were originally posted on another well known railway modelers forum but they failed to arouse much interest there, largely I think because it seemed to me that the members were more interested in 'playing trains' than building models. At first I was hesitant to post on this forum due to the high degree of knowledge and modeling skills exhibited, but now my own skills have improved slightly I thought I'd 'have a go'. So future blogs will probably be at a more normal pace. Steve at Narrow Planet does seem very helpful, he emailed me concerning the DF plates just to make sure he had the right info. Gwrrob Hi there, Thanks for the kind offer, I already have three photos, the one I've used for this project is of the pre - GWR rebuild I also have two copies of the pro-rebuild photos. From what I've seen most of the kits are based on the updated version, only one kit build photo I've seen depicting this earlier version.

I assume you meant to say 'filled' ? if so, in the photo of the prototype the space under the boiler appears to be filled in, there's certainly no daylight showing through. I've been able to find very little data online relating to this loco so there's a certain amount of guess work involved. Another contributing factor is that this being my first ever scratch build I'm more concerned with ' how it turns out' than if all the rivets are present, that can come later as my skills progress [hopefully ascending].

Yeah I've checked out several articles with images and it should have black plates with the GWR livery, and yet Jackson Evans who's plates I used make some classes plates in black only and some in red and black. In this case they supplied either, in my ignorance I happened to choose red because the original paintwork was done in red. Funny old game rivet counting! Anyway thanks for pointing it out, I'm not going to be altering it because I don't want to ruin the paint job. On the other hand I could possibly fix black plates over the top, hmmm maybe!

I made and fitted the buffer beams, generally filled and cleaned up the body, finally giving it a coat of primer to highlight any faults. These were rectified and the primer coat proper was applied Well that pretty well brings this blog up to date, The loco is now in the paint shop. It was coated with 2 coats of Railmatch GWR Loco Green but that didn't look too clever so I rubbed it all down with wet and dry and resprayed it again with Humbrol #3 Brunswick Green and it now has a really good finish. I'm just hand painting the smoke box, chimney, buffer beams, etc. When I've made some more progress I'll post it up. cheers for now.

Next I attached the boiler, smokebox, built up the tanks etc despite ordering a white metal chimney I made one from 5.5mm plastic tube with a drawing pin head [ pin removed] filed to size, upturned and glued on top with superglue, topped with a sliver of 5.5mm tube. The bell shape made with Squadron Green filler as per DF. I made the dome from plastic wrapped tube and filler. The safety valve cover was a plastic one from a Hornby detail pack mounted on a base fashioned from plasticard filed to conform to the curve of the top of the boiler as was the chimney and dome. I then added some detail inside the cab and painted it prior to fitting the roof. At this stage I fitted the rear of the cab and fitted the structural member of the back of the bunker, on top of which I fixed the skin made from 0.025 plasticard rolled round the tube of a cotton bud and glued in place, left to cure and then trimmed with a scalpel Continued in part 4

I then made the cab front, again using my hole punch to great effect for the front spectacle windows. I made the smokebox subframe in the shape of a tee and cut out the front and rear again from a card template fixing these together with poly cement and leaving overnight to set properly. I then wrapped this with 0.050 plasticard At this stage I might add that I later found out my mistakes made here when I tried to fit the chimney. I drilled down through the center of the smokebox to find the subframe central member right in the way and it had to be gouged out resulting in a not too neat hole for the chimney to fix in to My attention turned to the fitting and securing of the chassis to the base. I drilled up through the rear of the base 2mm and secured an 8ba nut over the hole with 2 part epoxy, then used a 32mm x 8ba brass bolt cut down to 20mm to fix the rear of the chassis, the nut being concealed inside the bunker. The front I secured by self tapper through the chassis base into a block attached to the underside of the base plate which sat inside the chassis frames I've been having real problems with uploading photo recently so I'm limiting my entries now, sorry. Continued in part 3

Hi Mark, Thanks for the positive comments they give a lot of encouragement. The nameplates aren't readily available as far as I know, at least on all the model shop websites I've checked, but lonely planet do custom made plates and I have a set on order with them together with sets for the Double Fairlie in one of my previous entries. I'm working on the next instalment now by the way. Hi armchair modeler, If you look at the title of this blog it says ' my contribution to recycling old bits and pieces'. That in a way answers your query. That's not to say I will always recycle bits, I have a fancy for building a brass kit but my skills aren't up to being successful as yet. Brass model kits are very expensive, indeed the one you mention is

I first saw this loco on Google images, its character appealed to me together with its somewhat unusual wheel configuration, only found in locomotives built in the late 19th early 20th centuries, indeed this one being designed and built in 1902 by Andrew Barclay sons &Co. On doing further research I found out it was built for use on the Liskeard and Looe Railway which was taken over by the GWR in 1905 where upon 1308 was transferred to Oswestry and latterly worked from Machynlleth shed from where it was scrapped in 1948, a great pity, being the only one of its type built and would grace many a preserved railway now. It underwent changes by GWR in 1929 and was fitted with a new boiler. Compared images show the different pipework associated with the new boiler, some slight change to the bunker/footplate area and the nameplates re-positioned higher up on the sides of the tanks. here's the link to the Rail UK website giving details and a picture http://www.railuk.info/gallery/notes/getimage.php?id=2176 If you troll through these images you can see the different photos comparing the two https://www.google.com/search?q=liskeard+and+looe+railway&hl=en&tbo=d&rlz=1C2RNNN_enFR363&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=Q-XyUIGEIKrA0QXgs4DgAQ&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAA&biw=1280&bih=685&nbsp So, after finishing the paintwork on the Double Fairlie [DF]and waiting for the lining sheets etc to arrive I got to work on a scratch build of this particular loco. I might add that several kits seemed to have been produced and photos are available in the above link. First came some sort of drawing or plan, well I couldn't find any plans available so it was down to re-sizing the print out I had. The only dimensions I could find were the wheels which were 48" driving wheels 31" leading wheels so using the 48" I measured the driving wheels in the photo this measurement was 25mm 48" divided by 25mm = 1.92 1.92 = 1 inch so 12 inches = 6.25 Scale of photo = 6.25 /1 I then proceeded to take all the measurements in the photo, [which was more or less side on with minimal foreshortening] and convert them to 4mm scale by dividing by 6.25 and then multiplying by 4, the resulting measurements were written on another copy and these were used for the build. Perhaps not for the purist but good enough for me I intended using one of the Hornby 0-4-0 chassis rejected from the initial trials with the [DF]. These had been shortened and modified but were still perfectly serviceable and were subsequently lengthened and fitted with spoke bogie wheels,again discarded from the DF project.So, lets see some photos. This one shows the re-calculated dimensions marked on a photocopy, these subsequently had to be adjusted slightly due to the wheel base of the chassis being larger than the scale measurement on the drawing, there was no way out of this and added approximately 5mm to the overall length This one shows the elongated chassis [front] with the bogie wheelset mounted underneath by two brackets made from some spare brass electrical contact strip, attached with 2 part epoxy. I then cut out a base plate from 0.010 and 0.050 plasticard laminated together for greater rigidity made a template from card for the cab/tank sides using my trusty 1 hole punch for the cab windows, I used this as a pattern for the actual parts cut from 0.010 and attached the first side to the base plate using Humbrol Poly Cement. It was after the adhesive had gone off I realized despite being quite clearly marked that I'd attached the cab at the wrong end of the base plate! Not wanting to destroy my work so far I opted to re-cut the base and fill in the other end so putting right what was wrong. I used a short length of 16mm copper tube as a former for the boiler. I used 0.050 plasticard making several turns each secured with poly cement this served twofold, one, it added rigidity and two, increased the diameter to 18mm as per the drawing measurement. I then cut away the underside to make the required space for the can motor to fit into. to be continued

I bought a rather dilapidated castle arts/ Gaiety GWR 57xx pannier tank model for about £4. It was in quite a sad state, the drive gear on the axle had come loose so although I got the motor to turn it couldn't transmit any power to the wheels. The body for this model was sold at one time on its own so that it could be matched up with a RTR [Triang/Hornby chassis. After a lot of faffing around I eventually acquired a suitable chassis for it and I modified it to accept the same method for fixing the body to it. The existing paintwork was then stripped, all molded detailing removed, the unrealistic safety valve removed, handrail holes drilled and the re-sprayed in Railmatch GWR green. So here's what I started with:- And after the paint was removed the areas where a Patina had formed due to to chips out of the paintwork were clearly visible these were removed after rubbing down the body with 400 grade wet and dry paper:- The original motor assembly shown below had some remarkably fine wheels fitted in contrast to the crude connecting rods which were just brass strips held in place by small sections of wire insulation pushed over the crank pins:- I filed out the cast-in detailing and marked out and drilled the 20 odd holes for the handrail knobs etc which was a pain in the backside with a pin vice drill in the Zamac metal body :- I removed the ugly cast safety valve and gave it a preliminary coat of Humbrol No1 matt primer to see where the bad bits were. I then filled the stamped in GWR seen here :- I decided for some reason to fix the handrails prior to painting, largely due to avoiding getting superglue all over the new paint I think. I cut slots from the footplate to accept the machined brass steps and these were fixed in place with 2 part epoxy :- After filling and sanding the final coat of primer went on :- I then turned my attention to modifying the standard Triang 0-6-0 chassis, using parts cut from a picture hanger,bent to shape and fixed to the chassis with 2 part epoxy again, seen here :- The whole chassis was cleaned with acetone and painted with Humbrol 27003 bare metal I think it's called, the motor had new brushes and new feed wiring connected, the original buffers were retained, they were cleaned and repainted seen here :- After re-spraying the body with several coats of Railmatch GWR Green with the handrails picked out in a brass colour, I made up the colour for the buffer beams with a mix of Humbrol rust, red/brown, yellow and crimson, fixed a plastic brass coated safety valve, Jackson Evans etched number plates, Pressfix transfers and this is the end result. Good for a few more years.

RJS thanks for pointing out that inaccuracy, I stand corrected, the offending edit has now been removed.

I did at one point consider doing an 009 layout based on the Festiniog Railway but when I compared this 00 body with the bogies on an old N gauge class 42 'Hermes' there's no way it would have worked, the wheels on the 42 are only 7mm and the body would have 'bottomed out' due to the dropped middle section being too low. Maybe the terrier chassis could work. Give serious thought to the width of the running plate if you do it cos there's a big difference in the width of an N gauge chassis and the average 00 gauge body.

Hi, Thank you guys for the kind words of encouragement, Looking back on photos of this project I can see that the wheels look somewhat 'chunky' to say the least, I'll have to get it out and have a look at it in reality. The wheels I used were the old Triang solid spoke ones not the daintiest I agree. When I'd completed this project one of my regrets was that I hadn't filled in the cut out at the base of the tanks as you suggest SR, looking at photos of the prototype the bottom of the body carries through in a straight line. It wasn't so much my imagination that spawned this model, I didn't know what make it was, I hadn't seen another one [on Ebay, which was my main source of info back then] untill someone on another Forum suggested it was based on a 'USA Switcher' So I did a Google search and bingo, came up with a photo of one of this class that is preserved on the Bluebelle line, and on which this model is based. Further research then came up with a copy of the original plan and so this project was born.

As I said before I had shelved this project with no great desire to carry it on, however after a couple of months I was able to look at it in a different light. The bogies I'd tried to use were completely wrong, the scale was all wrong too. In height it was ok but in length it was way too long, something like 8 scale feet too long. This was largely due to my trying to use the RTR bogies, something had to be done. With nothing to lose I proceeded to hack the thing to bits. I had to lose something like 32mm from the length. I managed to achieve about a 28mm reduction overall. Firstly I cut off the smoke boxes and then lost some 5mm from both boilers, I lost another 5mm from each pair of tanks and around 8mm from the central section between the two cabs, all I had left was a pile of bits that somehow I had to fix back together fairly seamlessly. I managed it successfully, to my surprise it all fitted back straight and true. I then proceeded to fill and prime the joints and generally make good ready for painting. I made up and added some detail inside the cab and hand painted it before fixing the roof on. I made this by laminating two layers of 0.010 thou plasticard bent by putting them in a jar inside a saucepan of water,heating it and allowing to cool.I then fixed first one in place and then adding the next layer held in place by matchsticks and rubber bands. I omitted to say about making the chimneys, I made these from 1.5mm plastic rod fitted inside 3mm plastic tube fitted inside 5mm plastic tube [i think} topped with a blank disc that came from using a hole punch on 1mm plasticard finaly finished off with a sliver of 5mm tube. I achieved the belled out effect using Squadron green filler and rubbed them down with 400 grade wet and dry, holding them in a battery drill. This assembly was cut to length,then inserted into the stub of chimney already cast into the body, the joint blended with more filler. The whole thing was then given a coat of primer ready for painting. While I let the primer go off properly I set about making some different bogies for it. I'd given up on motorized ones, they were to problematic given the limited space inside the body, I could have probably used something like a Tenshodo or Black Beetle to power it but at this stage in the build I didn't know how it would turn all out, I could easily have knackered it with a poor paint job or something so a cheap alternative was to use two steam engine bogies which just by chance I had in the spares collection. I cut off the front steps, removed the mounting bar together with the wheel sets. I made the cylinders using roughly the same technique as the chimneys, fixed them in place and wrapped them with 0.25mm plasticard I ordered replacement 10.5mm bogie disc wheels from Mainly Trains, these were fitted and to me looked the bizzo, albeit no coupling rods were possible. I made an extension to the front of the chassis that I drilled and fitted with a re-shaped plastic buffer to vaguely represent the prototype. I cut out two mounting plates for the bogies drilled them 2mm and with 2 part epoxy I glued on 8ba nuts to the inside face, ready for an 8ba fixing/pivot bolt that would go through the hole left from the original mounting arm rivet in the bogie. I made up the distinctive round sand boxes with the same method as the cylinders/chimneys, hand painted these and the cylinders to match. The body was painted with a French make of paint which isn't really true to Merddin Emrys's livery as it was [ it's now been painted black] but I went with it because by now the project had gone on too long to go back and strip it, with all the inherent problems that that might have caused. I lined it using HMRS pressfix LNER lining which were as-near-as the real thing, again this was a potential hazard because I'd not done lining before. So here's the result, I'm quite chuffed really, it's an improvement over the USA class project, not perfect by a long way but better. The prototype Merddin Emrys I've ordered some etched nameplates from Narrow planet who make the sets for the FR shop in Porthmadoc, these won't be ready until some time in January. The smoke boxes have been given a coat of matt varnish and the vacuum pipes are fitted now. See ya later.

As I was browsing the internet one day I came across an article written by someone on the subject of locomotive wheel configurations which featured a photo of a Double Fairlie and I was quite taken by it as I'd never seen or heard of one before. I decided I'd like to try to make a model that represented the prototype in the article. Here is one of the many pictures I subsequently found on researching the project, it's very atmospheric I think. It shows a Double Fairlie back in the days when the Festiniog Railway was little more than an industrial line, prior to its closure. For those of you that are unfamillier with this loco more info can be found by clicking the link below :- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairlie_locomotive On my initial search I found some photos and measurements which would enable me to get started. The very first thing that struck me was the resemblance to the 0-4-0 101 Holden tank engine of which I had one chassis in my spares box. I managed to get another cheaply, together with two spare bodies, Hornby's Connie and Terry. The initial Idea was to mount these back to back with their chassis making the two bogies, which would be mounted inside the bodies in similar fashion to those on a diesel loco. I made up two mounting plates, cut both bogies down in length adapted them with brackets made from plasticard so that both bogies were articulated. Despite only a very brief description here all this took a considerable amount of work, I made up a bridging section and joined both bodies together. on conducting trials I found this design was unworkable, it derailed on the first bend due to insufficient clearance inside the bodies for the width of the 0-4-0 chassis where the can-motor was mounted, so it was back to the drawing board. Prior to this discovery I had started to make the necessary alterations to the bodies such as cutting off the cab roofs, re-profiling the cab front panel, filling in the round window openings and cutting out new square windows, re-positioning the domes, removing all the cast in detailing, etc. After it was revealed that it didn't work I put it aside, as by then I had begun to think it was taking over my life and i was heartily sick of it and needed a change. Here's some pics of the alteration works :- To join the two halves together I needed to fix a sole plate bridging the two, I also made up and fitted the fireboxes that run between the two boilers. All this had to be done before any test runs were possible, so as you see a considerable amount of thought and work had already gone into this project. No wonder I was pig-sick when it didn't work out. In my next entry I'll show you the continuation of this saga. see ya later.

I bought 3 damaged body shells on Ebay one was a dock authority shunter, one a Hornby detailed Castle [Neath Abbey] which I repaired and fitted with minimal alteration on to a 4-6-0 Hornby chassis. The third one was a cheapo Lima 0-4-0 'international' loco, they come in a train set. So this is how it started out :- This is what I was aiming to represent :- These USA class engines were ordered through the US Army Transport Corps during the 2nd World War from the Vulcan Ironworks in the USA . Amazingly over a hundred made it across the Atlantic despite the best efforts of the German U-boats. After the war most were shipped to the continent to replace loco's destroyed by allied bombing. The stock of aging steam locos in Southampton Docks was in need of replacing and the USA class was found to be ideal to cope with the very tight radii of the lines within the dock area, so 14 were obtained by the Dock Authorities and saw several years of service there. When they were eventually replaced by diesels they were transferred to departmental duties on the SR,none of them did much mileage due to a tendency for the axle boxes to overheat after a short distance, some have been preserved. I needed to fit this to an 0-6-0 chassis rather than the incorrect 0-4-0 used by Lima. The short 4-6-0 chassis stripped of it's front bogie bracket proved ideal as the wheel spacing is somewhat closer than the 0-6-0, of course the driving wheels were much too large and were substituted by those from a triang 0-6-0, the 4-6-0 coupling rods were re-utilized. I made up a bracket from plasticard and attached inside the rear of the body, the front fixing was made into the plastic post coming from under the boiler. I set about cutting the steps and skirt from the rear of the cab, the bell, head light and the overhang of the roof was removed too. I then blanked out the forward windows, raised the height of the tanks, and fabricated two cylinders from plasticard. I attached the latter to the underside of the boiler along with a buffer beam. I made up the rear dome from plastic and attached it where the bell once was. I then did a base coat of primer to see where the bad spots were, these were corrected and another coat of Railmatch acrylic primer applied, it all started to come together at this stage, seen here. d I followed this with two coats of Humbrol coal black No 85 acrylic satin finish and then started the detailing work, handrails, buffers, etc. The prototype has a steam pipe that runs back from the boiler to ?, at that time I knew not where, so I made it simply disappear back into the body, I now know it goes into the cab. Finally I applied the HMRS pressfix transfers which, weren't entirely successful due to me following their instructions for the height above the running plate and failing to spot it was too high thereby clashing with the bottom of the cab windows, hence the difference in height between the 'southern' and 65 And there you have it, my first project, when I have time I'll post some more. see ya later.