Will J

Love this one.. I'm thinking about doing a similarly proportioned thing with a laptop screen background.. not for any particular purpose! Looking forward to seeing more!

Beautiful, love the '84, how was it made?

Love the lighting, very welcoming! PS we visited the Helston railway last summer and were very impressed.. not the biggest railway out there, but you make such a good job of what you have.

Subtle, beautiful!! I keep meaning to pick up one to represent a preserved loco, which would need weathering 'the other way' to increase the shine... a sort of weathering I suppose..

I was keen to get some old 'Can'n'dish' style 'prints' for my pigeon van conversion to park the two together and see how they compared.

The process was:

-Paint the bare brass with grey etch primer. (the etches come with separate lower panels, useful if you want to go crimson and cream, though a bit of an extra task if you are doing plain teak or maroon!)

-Paint the whole thing with bright yellow paint. (more of this later) This was a Halfords spray can.

-Paint over the yellow with a light-beige shade of enamel paint.

-While the beige is still a bit tacky, dry brush over with darker reds/browns in a haphazard style to simulate the wood grain.

-This model is to be a freshly outshopped restored carriage (loosely modelled on '7960' on the SVR though the door position in the kitchen area is wrong... doh.. shouldn't have owned up to that, nobody would have noticed..) but if it was to represent a more work stained example, I'd have run a black/ brown wash all over it.

-Finally, sand the whole thing to expose the bright yellow on the raised beading between the panels, this really finishes it off nicely.

-Finally-finally, varnish the whole thing a bit too soon and enjoy the slightly crackled texture that bloomed on the right hand side of the picture. This sort of thing is hard to control, but gives the model (which is only an approximation anyway) the right kind of textural feel.

How about a WW1 protected Simplex?

 

You can pretty much stick whatever chassis you like under that because nobody will see.

So many ideas! But that one is high up on the list...

Had been lost for a name until I rediscovered Mwng!

Hi Mikkel, first plan is to create a slightly 'impressionist' version of ALCO 'Mountaineer' using a Minitrains Baldwin 2-6-2 as a starting point. It will have 3D printed elements to complete the illusion. Watch this space!

I am also tempted by 'Lilla' from: http://www.shapeways.com/search?q=robex&type= who also supplied the small carriages.

All good fun!

Hi Ian, it is a tricky thing to get right. I'm fairly handy with a paintbrush, art wise, but anything I have ever attempted always looks like a painting attached to a huge billboard at the back of the scene. The way I have got around this is to deliberately continue the 'scenic' elements, foliage, colours, textures, up the back scene effectively blurring the boundary between the model and the vertical picture. The only thing I tend to simply apply as paint is the blue of the sky. This has worked well on victoria bridge, with its heavily wooded background.

Very nice! I am enjoying getting into Minitrains based 009 locos. Somehow the shiny flywheel does not offend my eye too much but you can always have fun hiding it. My latest project is with the short cabbed Baldwin, creating an approximate Ffestiniog 'Mountaineer' cab around it, which more or less hides the motor and 'wheel. 

The L&B carriages look great in blue as well.

I like your style... I can never convince myself that I'm ahead enough to quit.. Which tends to be a viscious circle!

My bet is some gloss green paint and a Henry face!

Excellent, I'm looking forward to seeing one nicely converted to a 'mainland' version, I'm sure you will make a good job of it. I'd been wondering myself how it would look without the buffers and presumably a less shiny coat of paint!

Does the face remove easily or is it part of the main cast smokebox, I'd guess this would be a big clue to the likelihood of a standard Bachmann version. I'd love them to do a 'Duke the Lost Engine' but it seems Duke hasn't been translated to the modern CGI series... so I'm going to have to build myself a Prince or Palmerston. As I'd mentioned in the product thread, it would be nice if they would do one of the Corris derived characters.

Looking forward to seeing progress!

Little Pannier Tank (N Gauge 1501) plus totally inappropriate LNER / Great Northern carriage set... the joys of modelling 'modern steam'!

And its my train set!

Ah, you underestimate the time taken to ink in all those tiles...... Actually I'd been scribbling them on since Friday evening. One thing I must to is some proper careful maintenance of my older models. One thing I noticed on Foster Street was how beautifully your Minitrix Ivatts ran... wheras mine (the one with the Dapol facelift to the smokebox) runs like a bag of spanners. I'm guilty of concentrating on the 'arty farty' elements of modelling to the expense of the mechanicals...

....do you have any hints and tips or oiling routines to keep these old machines singing happily?

Back to modelling, now doing the roof on my weighbridge tea shop for Arley.... and painting a little square carriage Ffestiniog green, ish....

Mikkel, there is an idea, I wonder if a visitor can drop in to their home premises on the way to Corris or somewhere like that. Next job for the evening, measure up 'Gerald' the giraffe!!

DCC all a bit of a mystery to me (usually making do with an oval of track and some scenery!) -but thank you for the heads up Re: Thurso which I had managed to miss altogether, the first three posts were very interesting!

Hi Andy,

Big thanks again for the invite, a lovely perfectly proportioned show and I'm glad to hear the fundraising side of it went so well. Hopefully one or two of the new books can reflect something of the spirit of the show and include a train or two! Your whole team were excellent hosts, I even managed a bit of Christmas shopping at the talylyn railway stand. The raffle prize of tickets to the donington Grand Prix collection will be much appreciated too!

You had a very chatty audience who all showed a great interest in my 3d printed work. It was also nice to be operating next to foster street making up a little n gauge corner.

Looking forward very much to exhibiting... The victoria bridge blog has been quiet of late but I have been preparing more additions so I can run a mini branch line gala.... Stretching reality a little there will be a dean goods visiting from Swindon for the day. With the floorplan still to be confirmed, is there any chance of victoria bridge being next to foster street- as I am very keen to have a closer look!

Absolutely beautiful Mikkel! I have always loved that era of gwr saddle tanks, it makes me want to concoct a mini-me version for a similar n gauge pannier chassis!

Modelling relatively obscure prototypes can be a frustrating business, but it is always fun and a refreshing change when a new body/ off the shelf chassis concoction just 'works' so well.

Excellent presentation on the flyer, gives me some ideas! The photo works well too, makes a micro look altogether pretty big!

Should have my paperwork with you later this evening!

Wow, I hadn't realised, always handy to have a show neighbour with a tame 'flying pig' to trot over the bridge as an escapee.

I'll be sure to bring any LMS stock I have finished!

Hi Andy,

form on the way.. on top of my 'to do' list!

Looking forward to the Weston on Trent show!

OK, will have a go along those lines, in fact I have lots of people so I can try a few approaches and see what sticks!

PS. agreed on the cars, see extra picture on the bottom of the post (all N Gauge!)

Funny you should say that Bernard, I have an oddly scaled 200th scale Mini that would look nice on the road at the side of the track. The choice of 220th scale is purely to make use of commercial Z gauge figures etc....

Hi Andy,

it seems pretty good, with minimal shrinkage, though it depends on how minimal your idea of minimal is....

The CAD model has a length of 66.04 mm, the model measures 65.89 (with callipers)

The CAD model has a width of 21.68 mm, the model measures 21.45 (with callipers)

I'm not sure whether Shapeways give the dimensions a tiny boost pre-production to keep things accurate, I suppose it would be quite an easy thing to automate if the effects of the casting process were predictable. The fractions of a millimeter involved are not going to be visible, but of course affect the fit of small interlocking parts, I am going to try some printed small gears which will test how well the brass parts perform in a more 'engineered' application.

One thing I noticed was that the same Kato chassis fits snugly in the plastic bodyshell, but had to be 'encouraged' more forcibly to fit into the void in the brass version. This might have to do with the shrinkage, but remember that the plastic version is also much more flexible which is probably the bigger factor!

Edit: decimal point in the right place in the dimensions!!