James Harrison

Thanks! 

Hopefully I'll be getting back to the abortive plasticard D6 at some point in the near future. 

Thank you- up until now I've never really got the GNR/ LNER teak quite right.  It's one of those things that (counter intuitively) works better using gloss paints than matt, I think. 

GCR teak on the other hand is easier, as every colour postcard or painting I've seen of it looks closer to mahogany, or certainly a very dark brown- hence the darker finish on my GCR carriages than on this. 

I have three of these Ian Kirk/ Coopercraft kits- this, a buffet car and a corridor compartment third, all bought via ebay.  I have had direct dealings with Coopercraft in the past (bought 4 sets of LNER bogies) and got good service from them, but I have seen the thread with the supply problems detailed, which troubles me somewhat- I'd be rather unhappy if I had a choice of Hornby or nothing (save scratchbuilding) when it comes to Gresley stock.     

The dull background allows the lighter detailing in the lining to be more obvious.  It's quite a subtle thing but makes a huge difference- the tank sides, for instance, have pretty much the same lining as the tender on my 11B/ D9.  Yet it stands out more on the tank engine than it does on the tender loco. 

Thank you!  It looks even better now that the proper apple green shade is coming in. 

Thanks!  I think the plan this evening will be to start on the LNER apple green livery.  I'm kicking myself for not buying 'Valour' the week after I bought 'Lord Faringdon', as 6165 wore GCR green right up to 1926. 

Just realised- this is the model before I did the last bits of lining today!  I bought some new paint pens and re-did the slightly dodgy tender panel, added the white wheel rims and the loco number plates. 

Thinking about it I really need to sort out the glazing to the cab windows. 

A few of them I bought via ebay, however I have found it cheaper to go to a local art shop (my current red, black and white pens came from Spectrum in Birmingham).  

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/UNI-POSCA-MARKER-PC-1M-PAINT-GLASS-PEN-BULLET-TIP-1-0mm-/310330443388?pt=UK_Crafts_DrawingSupplies_EH&var=&hash=item484122c67c  (this is just the first ebay link I came to)

A word of caution however- although closer to scale, I wouldn't recommend going for the extra fine pens.  Because the paint flows through a fabric wick via capillary action, the smaller the pen the easier it clogs (I found this out by unhappy experience).  Once clogged the temptation is to press harder to clear the blockage- which merely results in paint going everywhere.  Hence I go for the 'fine' thickness rather than 'extra fine'.  This produces a line of around 1mm in thickness.  Perfectly good for LNER red lining, the white/black and white/black/white lining is a little more effort but if I phase the work I can overlap the lines to get a decent approximation of thinner lining.  

Thank you!

I painted the handrails on the mogul this afternoon and luckily the kinks in them don't stand out quite so much now.  I've placed an order for some 0.45mm brass wire from Eileens Emporium to try next time so we'll see how I get on with that on the D9. 

Speaking of which, I was hoping to do some more on it this weekend but I decided to concentrate on the mogul instead (because if I don't compllete it before getting too much into the D9, it will never be finished- there are a couple of Airfix kits on the build shelf that are testimony to that!)

Thanks!

The handrail is a little wobbly, though nowhere near as bad as the photo looks (it'll look better once painted, I hope). 

I am getting better with the hand-drawn lining- the paint pens are a really useful tool (and fairly cheap too from art shops). 

I've managed it; eventually I used a thin strip of paper which I rolled up then slowly unfurled over the splasher, having covered it (the paper) in UHU glue first.  I then worked it over with some model filler to catch the little cracks and tomorrow, once this has set, I'll take another piece of paper and some more filler over it to get a fairly strong laminate.  A bit of a throwback to my early modelling technique but it's worked quite well this time around.   

Both thin brass and heated plastic sound good ways to get around the problem in future though, the difficulty is that I didn't this time have a former of the appropriate size to form the curve against.

The cab too has seen some attention this evening, the roof and the top of the cabsheets have been sculpted into each other by coering them in filler and then filing down to a smoother finish.  

Tomorrow, or the weekend, I'll be finishing off the splasher tops and adding new boilerbands and fittings.   

Thank you!  I'm happy with the overall shape of the cab but of course it needs some more fettling, filling and filing before it ooks presentable.  I'm debating at the moment how to do the tops of the splashers, as I don't think my 0.4 or 0.5mm plastic sheet would be able to form the curves. 

Certainly a lot neater than my attempts at brush-painted lining! 

Looks very good!  How are you doing the lining?  Is it a transfer, paint pen or '?' ?

Thanks guys!  The drawing the model is based upon is in Tuplin's book, "Great Central Steam" (one of several 'interesting', shall we say, neverwazzas illustrated).  The idea with the model is to use the drawing as a basis but then also to generally follow Robinson's aesthetics from the 1910-1922 period, hence the continuous splasher.  One thing that keeps striking me is how much the model looks like a smaller version of the B6... 

Mikkel- I'm sure Churchward wouldn't mind how I've mangled one of his locos.  Robinson was a Great Western man too, after all...    

A pair of my favourite locos!  (I've got four of them myself- the Bachmann Butler Henderson, BEC D11 and a pair of Jaycraft D10s).  Really nice job on the weathering. 

Thanks!  Having found out last night that "City of Lincoln" did end up in GCR green- from August 1922 until at least January 1923- this morning the hunt is on for appropriate nameplates. 

Thanks!

We shall see when it arrives!  The hardwork has been done in any case- it's in one piece and not in bits in a box....

Thanks!  This one is very close to being a scratchbuild- there are a few parts from RTR locos (the firebox, front end of the running plate and eventually the basis of the tender, and of course the chassis, valvegear and cylinders)- it's good practice for the Sam Fay I keep telling myself I will build one day!

As the book is OOP and dates back to the 1960s, I shouldn't think there would be much of an issue with copyright.  I'll check up on that and if all seems clear I'll upload some scans. 

Yes!  It's a 2-8-0-0-8-2, but not as we know it.... rather an 0-8-2-2-8-0 with the pony trucks merged into a single bogie below two tank engines back to back.... a real monster....

I'm planning to do a couple of side-on shots when I've finished the full rake of four.  It'll hopefully look that bit more impressive then...

As for the pacific, I think a B12 chassis (gosh, I use an awful lot of those....) might be useful for the wheel spacing and diameter, with a stretched version of the B4 for a body. 

I think the mogul might possibly leapfrog everything else on the 2014 programme somehow.

I'll merely say this.  I've bought a 43xx and have an old Dapol Schools in bits somewhere (the Schools has a boiler of the same diameter and length of the Directors).

Ooh yes.  Not helped when I experimentally had a fiddle around last night and found that if I lower the body, the motor fouls the boiler...