Daniel W

A good choice, I suspect that this prototype may be the most sorely missed from the (seemingly) defunct Slaters 4mm range.

The Halfords's primer does give you a real safety net if you are not a very thorough airbrusher (like me).

Just a quick Blog entry with the painted and lettered wagons from the last entry. Smiths instanters have also been fitted. These wagons will be going into storage and receive weathering at a later date. Catfish ballast hopper : GWR Herring, although I am modelling LMR, quite a few of these were transferred north around 1960, hence my justification for its inclusion! The two Grampus wagons, I seem to have done a rubbish job of painting the inside of these, fortunately this only reveals the Red Oxide primer. The etched plates from 247 developments are also rather nice. These were all painted using another of the lifecolour black shades, I believe it was 'Worn Black'. DW

Since my last blog entry I've been busy building more kits for departmental wagons, first up is a Cambrian catfish, I found this one to be slightly easier to build than the dogfish, probably due to the more simplistic nature of the prototype: I did however manage to break the solebar whilst preparing for the whitemetal buffers, something that is surprisingly easy to do. As you can see its also received whitemetal axleboxes, this is mostly so that I can model the variations in axleboxes on the prototype, however it also helps with building a square chassis as can be seen here: Extra brake rigging has been added between the shoes etc. Next up are a couple of Parkside Grampus, the LMR received no vac-fitted Grampi (?) so they've been converted to unfitted using bits from a 12ft chassis kit. Whitemetal buffers, etched safety leavers and tiebars are also fitted to both wagons. The first was fitted with the solebars from a chassis kit which has split axleboxes: The second uses the kit solebars, but whitemetal welded-type axleboxes as the kit ones are not suitable for unfiitted examples: Due to the peculiarities of the Parkside sprue system, you actually get enough enough parts to convert two wagons if you use the kit solebars for a second one. Lastly is the new(ish) Cambrian kit for the GWR type Herring: Due to the one piece chassis, it producing a much better runner than the infamous Dog/Catfish, but in some ways it is a trickier model to build. Partly this is due to the method for fitting the hopper, which comes down to lining it up with the chassis detail and 'eyebaling' it. If you get it wrong (like me!) the end supports don't fit properly and will have noticeable gaps on the joint with the hopper. Squadron putty comes to the rescue, hopefully some weathering at a later date will hide any lasting flaws. Handrails are really not my forte. The other complexity is provided by the incredibly convoluted GWR ratchet brakegear, Cambrian have actually done a very good job of rendering this and the 'destructions' go into the sort of detail that would previously have been left to the modelers own initiative. This shot shows the the brakegear and hopper supports fully assembled in a fairly crude manner by yours truly.: I still need to add some more rigging originating from the cranks and ratchets at the end, this will be done once the wheels are added again. These will all be finished in standard departmental black with straw lettering, the plan is to paint the next batch of wagons in Gulf Red, including another Catfish as I will be needed quite a few of them and from looking at photos roughly 50% seem to have been turned out in red. DW

I'd like to see Oxford tackle the 'Sole' type ballast wagon, as far as I know it has never been produced as a kit, although at one point Cambrian were listing this as a possible future item. They were however quite common, long lived and well traveled in BR days.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/D-S-Models-DS-452-Midland-Ballast-Brake-Van-Etched-Whitemetal-Kit-/111950959909?_trksid=p2047675.l2557&nma=true&si=9ahptCTLWNOugzEUP84lzvw3PNw%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc Not knocking the seller here, but how is it that so many buyers cannot use google. London Road Models sell the same kit for £22.

The projects from the previous blog have now been completed, painted varnished couplings added etc: The transfers for the Trout are assembled from various bits of a Model Master sheet, hence the wobblyness, although the number is accurate. The Cambrian Dogfish and Chivers Tunny have been painted using one of the the lifecolor black weathering paints, I believe it was 'Dirty Black', I wasn't sure about it at first, but in these pictures it looks quite effective. I'm also almost done on re-numbering this Flangeway Mermaid: I actually had a fairly easy time getting this apart, I found it unnecessary to slice the rollers away from the body as they seem to just clip unclip from the chassis. The weight also came free without a fight. I have to admit that on a technical level it is a nice model, but there are some real inaccuracies. Namely the W-irons and brake gear position, as far as I can tell the model represents a GWR example that was converted to vac brakes by BR. I had thought about modifying it to represent a diagram 1/575 like the Cambrian kit, but upon closer inspection this would be trickier than I thought. I do have a couple of Cambrian ones that look like a much more accurate model, although no doubt they are a tricky built. Incidentally the end chains will be replaced with the closer to scale chain that Cambrian use on their kit and supply as a standalone detailing component. Last but not least is this Hornby Shark, originally in olive Green, for some bizarre reason Hornby refuse to produce it in black (the most common livery carried), instead opting to realise shadow franchise and EWS models. Presumably these are good sellers: Anywho, this thing has turned into a bigger project than expected. Originally this was going to be a straight forward mask up and repaint, but I wasn't confident about merely painting over the existing paint work. As can be seen from the pictures the handrails etc have been taken off and the whole body has been stripped, apart from the ends which slide out. The lookouts are cleverly made from clear plastic to ensure flush glazing, I have glued them in using Humbrol Clearfix and will be masking them up again. The leaning guard is going to be added to one of the verandas for a bit of extra detail. Obviously are fairly large amount of masking and painting will be needed, although nothing too fiddly. I did manage to damage the door handles and side lamp irons when removing them. Replacement irons will need fabricating, I will probably replace the door handles with some (inaccurate) turned Markits ones. Hopefully the end result will be worth the effort, after this I still have plenty of kits that need building, the main problem is choosing what to build next!. DW

I've been modifying a couple of RTR ballast hoppers for a future steam era LMR engineers themed layout. First up is a Hornby Trout, the model represents an example built for British Railways by Metro Cammel, the plan is to back-date it to a Leeds Forge example built for the LMS. All livery has been removed with T-cut, although the build plate also needs to be taken off and swapped for a Mainly Trains etched example. The buffers have been replaced with the correct LMS examples from Lanarkshire Model Supplies. The channels on the hopper body do not run to the top on the Leeds Forge hoppers, so plastic shims have been added to fill this in, the second from right one needs replacing. The axle boxes are also wrong for an LMS hopper and also for an LNER one. They should look like this: The shape is similar, but no one makes a cast example from what I can tell. I have sanded off the BR (E) writing and reinstated the rivet. I may add the LMS lettering at a later date using etched letters. The underframe is fairly self-explanatory, interestingly the brake shoes have a little recess to add rodding to them. Next up is a Heljan Dogfish, this was originally an olive green example: The body has been soaked in superstrip, although I still need to remove the electrification flashes. The springs and axleboxes have also been removed and will be replaced with chunkier cast examples. Brake rodding on the underframe again, smiths couplings need to be added. As the title says I have also been building a cambrian dogfish: Traditional wonky handrails, footsteps have been replaced with fabricated plastic strip ones. Whitemetal buffers are fairly standard for me, I've also modeled the vac piping next to the solebar. Not pretty, but it looks right from the outside. Apart from a few tweeks, these are ready for painting/varnishing and transfers. DW

Coal and ballast wagons in the same train!? What heresy is this?! Thats not prototypical at all!

At least you managed to get the body square, my last build was one of the cupboard door 16 tonners and I managed to end up with one of the corners sticking right out! God knows how I managed it, although I suspect that fitting both ends to the floor first caused everything to go a little wonky.

I wouldn't worry too much about the triangles Barry, a lot of the wagons seem to be missing them in the steam era.

The 24.5 tonners look particularly good Barry, lots of coal grime!

The Gulf Red on that Dogfish is very bright, nothing that a good bit of weathering won't fix I suppose. I do like that Heljan managed to include the pipe above the solebar though. What is your general opinion of the Heljan Dogfish relative to the Cambrian kit Mark?