checkrail

A mixture of stuff from all the usual suspects: Shire Scenes, Langley, Dart Castings. Barrow is Coopercraft, luggage I think free in one of the mags, brass GWR benches from Shire Scenes I think. Just had a search for the lamps in SS, DC & Langley sites but afraid can't find 'em just now. (Great products but very difficult-to-navigate and user-unfriendly websites with rubbish 'search' facilities.) I do remember they were supposed to be street lights and not platform lamps, and that they came in sets of 4 plus one bracketed lamp for above a door or similar. They have white metal posts and tops, but the lamp casing is a fold-up brass etch. That was fine, but sticking the little irregularly shaped glass panes cut from the clear plastic sheet provided using the etch as a template, proved beyond me. But one thing I'm learning in this game is that if the optimum method or solution eludes one's skills there is (1) nearly always a feasible workround, and (2) at normal viewing distances most people won't be able to tell. So I bought a pack of the crummy old green Merit (now Peco 'Modelscene') gas lamps, put their clear lamp mouldings in my new lamps, and binned the rest. They're too small to fill the whole casing, but as I said - from a distance .... John C.

Hi Richard Thanks for kind comment. The six signals on the main line (up and down home, starting signal and advance starter) and the branch home signal are from fairly heavily modified Dapol items. More details can be found in a thread I started in August, entitled 'Improving Dapol GWR signals', in the 'Permanent Way, Signalling & Infrastructure' section of this forum. I've been wanting to try some similar butchery on the long awaited Dapol bracket signals for the branch platform, but there's no sign of them yet. (Every year at Warley I'm told, 'Next spring'.) The branch platform looked a bit bare, especially for photography, so I fettled a couple of non-working signals from Ratio kits, shortened for platform mounting and with the addition of some indifferently soldered wire safety rails. They're intended to be temporary. (But they said that about income tax.) Barrow crossings are merely plain plastikard, scribed to represent planking and glued in place with plastikard support below as needed. They're painted with various layers/washes until I got the colour I wanted. Precision Paints 'weathered wood' and 'track colour: weathered sleepers' were involved I think, as was Humbrol 29 'dark earth'. Now and then I have to touch them up after vigorous track cleaning! John C.

On a more practical note, I couldn't do this in this instance, as the passenger stock is 'handed' - hook at the down end, loop at the up end ....... ..... but I suppose I could turn whole trains round. So I'll mull over this good suggestion. John C.

Yeah, but you're not as lazy as me and you probably would have re-painted the droplights, applied the roofboard printing and seat number boards, and weathered the underframes, on the other side of the coach! Ssshh! - don't tell anyone. John C.

The local train proceeds towards Plymouth. The loco will eventually become 'Broome Hall' (I have the plates ready) which I've seen pictured running in this area (Laira loco I think) in the 1930s with a 3,500 gallon tender. It's a Bachmann model of preserved 4965 'Rood Ashton Hall' made for the Shakespeare Express train pack. I bought the set and sold the other vehicles on. Finally, a couple of shots of the Castle (soon to be 5000, 'Launceston Castle') heading off towards the tunnel with the up express. John C.

An Exeter to Plymouth stopping train (or Newton Abbott - Plymouth - take your pick!) approaches Stoke Courtenay in the charge of a small tendered Hall as the up express heads east. This stopping train on occasion brings forward the down Paddington - Earlsbridge through coach for detachment at Stoke C. This train (like the others for that matter) is crying out for a toplight or two in the mix. (I have cunning plans ....) John C. .

Passing trains. While I've got the camera out, and before I get back to work, here are pics of a couple more 'tarted-up trains'. First up represents a 5 coach Castle-hauled up express, roof boards reading 'Paddington, Exeter and Plymouth'. On occasion in my alternative 1930s world this picks up the returning Earlsbridge through coach at Stoke Courtenay, making it 6 coaches. No 70 footers I'm afraid, but there are lots of pics in the pre-war albums of short expresses like this, with a ragbag of coaches inc. clerestories (though I'll admit that roofboards on the latter were rare by this date). Often I guess they might be relief trains or extras. As usual I'm aiming for atmosphere and impression using what the trade provides. This train gave me a bit of trouble in that the trailing bogie of one Hornby Collett kept leaping off the track at the same point. I checked back to backs; I checked track and check rail gauge; I checked that the gangways weren't throwing it off (I temporarily removed them); I swapped the Alan Gibson wheels in case they were loose or wobbly on their axles: I checked that the dummy vac and steam hoses weren't interfering with the coupling; I checked that they weren't too closely coupled (unlikely, as they sailed through the inside track of Peco curved points without problem.) A big SNAFU. Those of an engineering bent would have got to the bottom of it, but in the end I just swapped the whole bogie for one on a similar coach in a different train. Since then neither has given any trouble at all. Weird. John C.

Hi Dave Glad you like it. Basic colouring is Halford's grey primer, with various tones of brown lightly sprayed, washed or dry-brushed over, rail sides painted with Lifecolor 'sleeper grime'. . See post 105 on this thread for further details. (Other details re track, inc. 00-SF aspects, in posts 68, 74, 90, 93 and 95.) John.

Not quite. I don't normally need to propel a whole rake on my roundy-roundy, but I've just backed a 6 coach train out of the fiddle yard onto the main line over the inside track of Peco curved points. On straight track the gangways seem to reach maximum compression just before the buffers touch, after which the propelling is done by the gangways. On the sharpest curves the inner buffers are indeed touching - but one would expect them to, otherwise I'd have been able to get away with coupling the vehicles that little bit closer! John C.

Coming on really well now. With the stock placed as it is - branch train and through express - one begins to get a proper 3D perspective of how it's all going to look. Will be following avidly. (But what's that partially obscured train lurking in the background? Looks suspiciously like Thomas with Annie and Clarabell.) Here's to good sleep and good modelling time. John C. My layout: STOKE COURTENAY, 4mm scale 1930s GWR junction station. See layout topic.

That's useful. Thanks Rich. Funnily enough, while driving home from Staples the other day with my roll of black paper I was musing about possible materials for the covers, and black bin liners came to mind. Seems someone had been there before me! (And a quick calculation suggest that one bin bag might make 2 or 3000 gangways!) John C.

Hi Chris The road surfaces are actually nothing more than painted plywood. I used the 1.5mm ply which was left over from the curved backscene. Paint was from a tub of cheap light grey matt emulsion, mixed with some browns from matchpots to give a sort of dusty look. I know we all perceive colours and textures differently, but I aimed for a pale and rather neutral look. I also think it makes things look bigger. Pavements outside the station and under the rail overbridge are from Slater's Plastikard paving. I couldn't face the prospect of cutting and applying this all the way up the curving and inclined station approach so opted for a cinder path - Carr's ash ballast on top of thin card, with kerb stones from plastikard. I think texture can be overdone, especially when you think of the scale distance between your eye and the layout you're viewing. It's easy to make things look too 'busy' on the eye. I started off 4 years ago covering my platforms with the finest grade of emery paper I could find, on a (quite expensive) long roll to avoid joins. But I painted and repainted it so many times until I was happy with the shade (and to cover up splashes from ongoing track and S & T work) that its texture all but disappeared and I might as well have used cartridge paper. At first I was disappointed, but then I realised I'd lost nothing! There's one exception: the country lane/cart track shown below which crosses the bridge masking the westbound fiddle yard entrance. This was done using Treemendous earth powder, with a ridge of static grass applied down the middle. Have so far resisted the temptation to have a horse & cart coming round the bend! (Whoops! To the left of the bridge you can just see the pcb join where C & L track meets Peco Streamline in the fiddle yard.) John C. .

Sure Rich - but close ups are cruel! There's not much finesse about my coupling arrangements, though at normal viewing angles and distances they're not noticed. First two pics show connections between two Hornby Colletts. The gangways were from a number I bought via eBay 3 or 4 years ago, under the name of 'Great Little Gangways' - a cottage industry sort of supplier I guess. Can't find them on the web now, but they can easily be home made from folded paper and plastikard end boards. The paper BTW is folded in two parallel concertinas, rather than being interlinked in a slotted criss-cross pattern as in the MJT versions with brass ends. I find this works better for me. They also have a canopy strip of very light fabric which is glued into the inner end only to allow for flexing (though it does tend to ride up a bit in service. I attach the gangways to the coach ends with double-sided Scotch tape so that they can be removed easily if I need to shorten them or make other adjustments. As I've said recently in another thread one of the good things about the new Hornby coaches is that its easy to remove the moulded plastic gangways while leaving the gangway suspension arms intact, ready to nestle on each side of the new paper gangways. When it came to the old Hornby clerestories I used the Keen Systems replacement coach ends with floating end plates, because they carry a representation of the scissors mechanism characteristic of older coaches of this sort. Two pics below. Some careful adjustment was needed in the cases where coaches needed to be uncoupled from rakes, e.g. for through coach detachment. I use small Bachmann T/L couplings with the Brian Kirby modification for remote magnetic uncoupling. This requires vehicles to be closed up a little to take the tension off the couplings and allow the hooks to rise. There was a bit of a trade-off here between having gangways too slack and seeing daylight between them or too stiff causing the vehicle to be pushed along the track by the gangway before the coupling had a chance to come out of tension. It wasn't insoluble, but I've just bought some rather lighter, thinner black paper to experiment with my own home made gangways. John C.

Thanks gentlemen. I'll keep 'em coming. Only the other day I was reflecting how, with the digital revolution in general and sites like this and gwr.org.uk in particular, even the most permanent of layouts (like mine, screwed into loft floor, walls and rafters) can now go on a sort of permanent virtual exhibition circuit. I know that keeping up with layouts I admire (ANTB for one) has become one of life's dependable little pleasures. So if people like sharing my stuff that's great. John C.

And here are the last few pics as the train heads west under the overbridge towards Plymouth. (Tail lamp is from Modelu. I'm eventually going to replace the gangway end boards with ones with integral lamp brackets.) John C.

.... and there's more! The coaches are semi-permanently coupled by simple wire hooks and loops, with the same 0.8mm brass wire being used to fashion a crude representation of vac and steam heating pipes. Coupling is as close as I could get allowing for the fact that the train needs to negotiate the inside curve of Peco curved points in the fiddleyard - think that's about 2 ft radius. So on straight track buffers are about 3 or 4mm apart - not ideal but best I could manage. It also needed careful adjustment of the gangways before the train was derailment-free. But having never built a train with corridor connections before I'm delighted by the sinuous way it weaves round the curves, looking all of a piece rather than a collection of individual vehicle rattling around independently.

... and here are a few more. John C.

Phase 2 of the Stoke Courtenay project, 'Tarting up the trains', is now under way, although there are still one or two Phase 1 layout details to complete, e.g. signal box interior. As ever my aim is to use anything suitable the trade provides to achieve a recognisably GWR main line atmosphere insofar as my skills and time allow, so not everything will necessarily be totally correct. But none of it's going into a glass case or a museum! It's been a while since I posted any pics on this thread, so here's a sequence showing a recently outshopped train, representing a Star-hauled Wolverhampton - Penzance express, traversing the length of the layout. Coaches will be immediately recognisable as a mixture of Bachmann and Hornby. The latter have had their rather vivid scarlet droplights repainted, while all have received paper bellows type gangways, roof re-sprays with Lifecolor roof dirt, and some Lifecolor frame dirt dry-brushed onto the underframes. Roof boards are from Sankey Scenics. The restaurant car is an upgrade of the old Hornby Railroad H33 vehicle grafted onto a new Hornby Collett underframe. There's plenty of good recent stuff on this forum about enhancing this model - seems a very popular conversion. (Not surprising really as for RTR GWR catering vehicles it's the only game in town.) There's still work to do. Although 'Knight of the Grand Cross' now has lamps (Modelu) it still needs crew, real coal and dummy screw coupling. Brass name & no. plates are to hand, but not yet applied. I'm going to post the pics in batches - there are 17 of them. Hope they are of interest. John C.

Thanks for this very useful tip. Hadn't heard of Xuron snips until now, but will get some. They sound ideal for all sorts of things. Your pics show how much difference just a roof job (plus buffer heads and gangways) can make. Good stuff. There's obviously a lot of 'Railroad' stuff out there that's not going to waste! John C. My layout: STOKE COURTENAY, 4mm scale 1930s GWR junction station. See layout topic.

Thanks for the link to your Swansea MRG article. Great stuff - wish I'd seen it before I started! It makes me think that I should give the SE Finecast glazing units a go, though I've read that they can discolour over time (?) Corridor connections on the H33 are the Keen System ends with their floating end plates, but were I starting again I think I'd saw the gangway ends off and just use conventional folded paper bellows types with Plastikard ends as on the adjacent coaches. Re underframe: I already had a sacrificial spare in that I'd bought an extra Hornby Collett to see how easily the body components came apart (for removing glazing to repaint the garish scarlet droplights, and to remove gangway ends). I expected I'd do serious damage finding out, but not so. One can even take the gangways off but keep the gangway suspension arms in place ready to embrace new folded paper gangways, so well done Hornby. Nothing I produce is ever gonna go in a glass case, but my finished H33 looks passable within a train I think - pics below. 'Layout coaches' in Tony Wright's phrase. (By heck! That down platform starting signal went back on sharpish. And looks like someone's burgled the signal box and nicked the levers.) John C. My layout: STOKE COURTENAY, 4mm scale 1930s GWR junction station. See layout topic.

Very nice conversion indeed Tony. By coincidence I came across it just as I was finishing a much more perfunctory and less ambitious H33 makeover - like yours inspired by Westerner's recent RM article and his more detailed account on this forum. I was in my usual 'lazy man in a hurry' mode, and kept the original sides - as my period is late 30s I can just about get away with it, and the printing on the most recent incarnations of the 'Railroad' version is beautiful, whatever the model's other shortcomings. Like you I replaced most of the roof detail, and added wire handrails to the ends. The latter were replacements from Keen systems - I found it difficult to saw the gangways off the Hornby ends without removing half the steps as well. I also repainted the brown droplights and the table tops. The finished body was then grafted on to a new Hornby Collett underframe. This worked quite well with a bit of cutting and filing, and provided nicely detailed bogies. Unfortunately it also left me with a continuous footboard, rather then the 'below doors only' arrangement of the prototype. I'll have to invest in a very narrow & sharp chisel to remedy this, but I'll live with it for now. Like you I added Comet gas cylinders, and had similar fettling to do to fit them. The only thing I don't like about the exquisite Hornby finish is the silvered grab handles. I've tried to touch them in with brass colour but my skills just aren't up to it - I can get gold paint on anything except the b***** handles. Ah well. (By the way, your paint finish is great.) I admire your perseverance with the door hinges. One of the things that has deterred me so far from brass coach kits, though I guess when time allows I'll bite the bullet. John C. My layout: STOKE COURTENAY, 4mm scale 1930s GWR junction station. See layout topic.

Agreed. Fantastic! John C. My layout: STOKE COURTENAY, 4mm scale 1930s GWR junction station. See layout topic.

Your last few posts took me right back to those happy (?) days a couple of years or so ago, crouching on the hard chipboard floor under the baseboard in the dark while trying to solder wiring and install point motors. Great when it's finished. I've found Cobalt point motors to be very good indeed, especially in their latest incarnation as Cobalt IP Digital. Easy to set up, very reliable, almost silent in operation, and with lots of switching options. I haven't actually screwed any to the underside of the baseboard, finding that they adhere perfectly adequately with Halfords double-sided foam tape. Makes them even quieter too. The hardest part was offering them up from below, squinting upwards into the light and trying to get the actuator wire into the hole in the tie-bar (or in my case the vertical piece of brass tubing soldered to the 'on edge' pcb tie-bar) before the top of the motor made contact with the Halfords sticky pad. Pointwork looking good. Look forward to keeping up with your progress. John C. ​My layout: STOKE COURTENAY, 4mm scale 1930s GWR junction station. See layout topic.

Best views yet of that great footbridge. Trains nice too of course! John C. ​My layout: STOKE COURTENAY, 4mm scale 1930s GWR junction station. See layout topic.

Anglian, The station buildings are from Timber Tracks kits, the main one being based on that at Tetbury (rather a different type of station). I first saw its mate, the island platform building, on Brian Lewis's stand at Warley a couple of years ago. My heart leaped as I realised that it could well be the answer to a prayer if (fingers crossed) it would fit my already built and fixed (and slightly curved) platform and track layout. A brief email correspondence with Brian re all the critical dimensions showed that it would - cleverly Brian had designed it to allow for the fact that most modellers would be working to the minimum permissible platform width and clearances. The kits - from laser cut ply and mdf - are well designed, and satisfyingly complex and enjoyable to put together. They were finished in the manner recommended by Karl Crowther, by painting all over with a sandy colour for the mortar then adding the brick tones by dry-brushing, a technique then new to me. This needed several applications until the final brick colour emerged, a good match with the supplied finish of my Kernow Models/Bachmann signal box. The buildings sit in a recess cut to their exact footprint in the plasticard paving sheet which covers the central part of the platforms, avoiding any tell-tale gaps. All in all I'm very pleased with the results. The kits also included some exquisite laser etched GWR poster boards and signs ('Gentlemen' etc.). I'm afraid my skills weren't up to painting these (white on black) to a standard I could live with, in spite of several attempts, so I used printed poster boards from Sankey Scenics and others, mounted on plasticard backing, and printed out most of the other various signs using the GWR font available through the GWR e-list group. The bridges and tunnel were scratchbuilt (unusual for Mr Impatient here) from various thicknesses of plasticard and inscribed stone sheet, being based loosely on those seen in various GWR photo albums - especially M F Yarwood's 'Window on the Great Western'. The one shown below, masking the down end fiddle yard entrance, is based on one near the top of Hemerdon bank. The next one is similar to one at Thornford Bridge Halt between Yeovil and Weymouth - in fact the elliptical arch was traced from the actual photo in the book as it was reproduced there as near as dammit to 4mm scale! When building this I found that Slater's stone sheet could easily be made to represent curved stone courses by slicing and laying a maximum of two courses at a time. The rail overbridge is freelance, but based on photographs in said albums, and uses Ratio/Wills 'vari-girder'. Finally, the tunnel mouth is based on pics of the Severn Tunnel in 'The Great Western Railway in the 1930s' albums but not quite as big! . John C.