Ian H C

MOK 8F in Scaleseven. As photographed from an imaginary over bridge in the Colin T Gifford style.

Haven't been here for a while. Work and life getting in the way and all. Here's another new project, and quite a big one by my standards. An 8F in S7 from the MOK etched kit. I won't do a step by step account, there are a few excellent blogs out there already. I'll just post a few pics now and again and explain some of the things I encounter and choose to do differently. The first model railway locomotive I ever had was a Dublo 8F. The first serious railway book I ever owned was London Midland Steam in the North West by Bradford Barton, with some splendid photos of 8Fs. Some of my favourite Colin Gifford photos feature 8s. I have a soft spot for 8Fs. In spite of modelling in 4mm for many years I've somehow managed to not build an 8F. Having recently taken an interest in 7mm S7 and built a wagon or two I thought I ought to build a loco. I came across the MOK 8F, so why not? I've been stuffing notes into the piggy bank for a year or so and now I have the kit, a motor and gearbox and the wheels. No excuse not to get on with it now. The wheels are the Slaters set in S7 from the Scaleseven Society, complete with crankpin set. These wheels differ from the usual Slaters offering by having steel threaded inserts for the crankpins. Seems like good engineering. I thought I'd start by getting the wheels set up before I get on with the chassis. Blimey! Disappointment on day one! The wheels don't run true. I checked them all and some are better and some worse but none of them run true. They all have some lateral wobble and some have a bit of eccentricity. I don't think it's a case of sending them back because I think it's a limitation of the manufacturing process and the design. Having had a bit to do with injection moulding design I'm expecting that the relationship between rim and axle insert depends on accuracy of tooling and the cooling distortion of the plastic when it is free of the moulding tool. I have an old set of Slaters driving wheels from an aborted 0 Gauge 9F project from years ago. I checked them and they're just the same. I also have a set of AGH wheels from the same project and they run true (to eye at least), so it is possible. Looking closely at the Slaters design I guess they've decided to make quartering easy and compromised the fundamental ability to run true. There really isn't very much to locate the wheel perpendicular to the axle. Just a tiny land outside of the quartering square. I doubt that many Slaters driving wheels run true for these reasons. If I'm wrong then do let me know. What to do? The wheels look good cosmetically, and I don't know where else I can get a set of 8F wheels in S7 that look the part. I've read online that flattening the back of the wheels on a surface plate with wet and dry will put the back of the rims and the back of the axle insert on the same plane and reduce the run out. I've tried that and it does help a little on some wheels, but not enough and not on all wheels. Two options occur to me: tweak the wheels by hand to reduce the run out by essentially distorting them back to where they should be, or boring the wheel centres through 3/16"and using a telescopic axle. If anybody has any experience of either of these remedies then please leave a comment. Thanks. i think this project is going to take a while...

I get most of my acrylics stuff, Vallejo, AK, Mig etc from eModels.co.uk. The basic acrylics are not expensive, and of course we only need a limited palette of black, brown, grey, dirt. Emodels today - Humbrol enamel tinlets £1.89 vs AK acrylics at £2.07, Vallejo acrylics at £2.21. They're a whole lot easier to use than enamels as well. Once you've tried acrylics of this type I'd be surprised if you stay with enamels for very long. The oils can be any artists oils, some have finer pigment than others. You'll only need three of four oils. I use Abteilung 502 oils and solvents, again from tank world. I'm quite freestyle using the different types one over the other. Never had and problems with reaction or incompatibility. For a whole load of technical info and inspiration check out the AK Interactive website. I guess tanks and trains don't usually mix but there's a lot we can learn from our military modelling pals. And thank you for the range of chassis Mr Newitt. Long awaited and much appreciated. You've no idea how liberating it is to simply dump the whole Parkside chassis sprue in the bin and lay some perfect etchings on the bench (or maybe you do). Got a load of hoppers and vans to build next. Don't suppose you fancy doing similar for 7mm one day?

Painting and finishing. Quite few stages to this, and it takes some explaining. So here goes... Once upon a time painting was by hairy stick; black underneath, grey body, decals, and maybe a rinse with dirty thinners for weathering. Brushes got ruined poking matt black enamel into remote corners of the chassis and the enamel thinners gave me a headache. Can't say I enjoyed that part of the job. Martyn Welch's landmark book on weathering, the availability of many more good colour photos in publications and online, some of the remarkable work turned out by railway and military modellers in recent years and the availability of a whole range of painting and weathering products based on acrylic paints has changed all that. The painting and weathering challenge is more a part of the creative process now, and I find it more enjoyable. There's a downside though, painting and finishing requires a bit of planning, uses a greater variety of equipment and material and takes longer. I think the end justifies the means. I'm going to try a paint technique borrowed from military modelling, 'chipping', to have the rust coming through the paint on the body. The principle is that the body is under painted with the base rust colour, a layer of chipping fluid is painted on top of that, then the grey body top coat on top of that. The chipping layer effectively reduces the adhesion of the grey to the rust layer beneath and allows some of the grey to be 'chipped' or worn off to reveal rust beneath. The idea is to create the effect of patches of rust showing through poor paint, that is almost impossible to do by brush. Overall primer first, and I'm using rust coloured acrylic primer from AK Interactive. For chipping to be successful we need the base layers to stay stuck to the model when we distress the top coat. The primer needs to go on a clean surface. The model has had a final session in the hot ultrasonic tank and any remaining finger marks are removed with a wipe of IPA. The primer is applied by airbrush in a few thin coats. I effectively spray outside in the doorway of the garage/workshop. It's a good day for spraying acrylic today; little wind, cool and damp. The acrylic dries slower in these conditions and has less tendency to clog on the tip of the needle, but it takes longer between coats. In the summer when the air is warm and dry you can work at lightning speed with acrylics, one coat straight over the other, as long as you keep the needle clean. —— The primer has dried overnight and it's time for the chassis and undergubbins to be sprayed a filthy sort of black. I'm using acrylics for all of this. It's earth brown and rust red with a few drops of black. No need for masking since the airbrush is accurate enough and a little overspray on the lower body won't hurt at this stage. Then it's time to over paint the primer with the base rust colour for the body. Examination of colour photos shows that well established rust is very dark brown, certainly not a red rust. AK Interactive have a shade for just that purpose called 'chipping colour' and it looks about right to me. The inside of the body gets the same treatment. I add a drop or two of rust red at the end to produce a little tonal variation to the base layer. Off to a warm place to dry. --- There's some mottling over the base rust using a small piece of kitchen sponge and some red/brown colours; Vallejo Flat Brown and Orange brown. This creates a little texture, which will help when we come to rub off the top coat, and some variation in the rust colour. --- When that lot is thoroughly dry it's time to spray on the chipping coat. I'm using AK Interactive Worn Effects. This should produce a fine wearing away of the top coat with mostly small rust patches showing through. It's a colourless coating that is airbrushed on in a couple of thin coats and left to dry for around an hour. The top coat is sprayed on the body over the top of that. There's a lot of nonsense around BR freight grey and some far fetched shades that claim to be accurate. I have a couple of test strips with most of these greys painted on. Comparing with a variety of period colour photos, none of them seem right to me. The best match I've found is actually one of the acrylic primers that I use, Vallejo acrylic-polyurethane Surface Primer 73.601. It's far from an exact science of course, and weathering will alter your carefully chosen top coat anyway. --- The top coat is left to dry for about 40 minutes before we start to distress it. The top coat is moistened with water and can be scrubbed away with a variety of tools to reveal rust underneath. On this model I used an old toothbrush, an old stiff bristled paint brush and a cocktail stick. Have a decent photo or two to hand and use them as a guide. Initially scrubbing and stippling with the toothbrush takes paint off edges and texture, so the sponged rust texture starts to show through first in tiny speckles. If you work at those areas a bit harder then larger patches of rust are revealed. The cocktail stick is used to poke away in the corners where the brushes don't reach. When the rust is how you want it rinse off the debris under the tap and leave it to dry. --- There's some work to do with a small brush to touch in some rust patches that were missed, and there's some black/brown to add in areas that accumulated a mixture of rust and coal dust, typically around the bottom side doors and the lower part of the end door. There are a few bits of grey overspray to touch in on the chassis, and it's still quicker than masking! Time to add decals and markings before further weathering. The end door diagonal stripes are officially 2-1/2" wide, that is about 0.8mm in 4mm scale (and just less than 1.5mm in 7mm). All of the waterslide decals I've seen for these stripes are far too wide. You can cut a decal to width carefully, and then it's a pain to get on straight and in one piece. I find it easier to lightly scribe the outline of the stripe onto the paint with a ruler and the tip of a 10A scalpel blade. Painting carefully inside the scribed line with a loaded brush lets the paint flow to the line. Nice and neat, and it's easier to weather a painted line than a decal. I don't use pure white, I add a little grey to tone it down. Note that the position of the stripes varied. Officially they are supposed to point to the end door hinge line rather than the top corner of the body panel. Photos show that some went to the top corner anyway. The 24-1/2 ton yellow triangles are done in a similar manner using photos and features on the body as a guide. The yellow triangles seem to have faded significantly in use, some of them almost indistinguishable from the grey body in a black and white photo. Bright yellow won't look right on a scruffy wagon. I've used a sort of pale buff yellow for the triangles. Black number patches are painted on in black with a touch of white to kill the absolute blackness. Decals are from Fox. I'm building a 1/115, and from Larkin the number range is B281150 to B282149. The Fox sheet allows me to make up B281193. Tare seems to vary a lot, which is surprising for a a bunch of wagons to the same design. Maybe variations in steel plate thickness? Anyway, the closest reasonable tare weight on the Fox sheet is 10-5. Many of these wagons had allocation instructions on them - 'To work between xxx and xxx' sort of thing. Larkin lists the known initial allocations, and a few more can be made out from photos. Seems like these markings were not always respected and not always maintained once the wagons had strayed from the original working. Some painted over, some altered, some just left to disappear under rust and dirt. I've added a mostly disfigured legacy allocation from the ModelMaster 4698 wagon markings sheet. Waterslides on with no problems, and smoothed on with Micro Sol. Incidentally Fox recommend application to a gloss surface but I've never had any problems on matt. There'll be a coat of varnish on over the top to hold the whole lot together anyway. There are a few arcane shunters' chalk marks added with a grey /white and a fine brush. Best I can do but they're not entirely convincing. Scope for improvement here I think. Anybody know a better method for adding chalk marks? Rusk streaks go on next using artists type oil paint and solvent. Tiny blobs of rust reddish rust colour are placed on some of the rust patches using the tip of a fine brush. Once they've dried for an hour or two (they don't actually dry in that time, they just be come a bit less mobile) the rust streaks are added by dragging down from the blobs with small brush moistened with solvent, in this case an odourless turps substitute. Because the oils have a very fine pigment and don't dry quickly they can be messed and tweaked with almost ad infinitum, and can produce very fine shading. They can even be completely wiped off if it all goes horribly wrong. Take care to make all the streaks vertical as any gravity defying streaks really stand out. Some rust chips are applied by brush to the white stripes and the yellow triangles and rust streaks are added to make the markings become part of the wagon livery rather than something sitting on top of it. There's a lot you can do with oils, but here the technique is confined to simple rust streaks and staining. Again, this technique is borrowed from military modelling. --- Some more work with the airbrush to finish off. I've added a black/brown haze in areas where coal dust collected and didn't weather off too quickly, typically in corners, round doors and beneath the top coping channel. There's a bit more earth and rust around the chassis and the lower edge of the body. Finally a very faint overall coat of the black / brown tones it all down and brings the colours together, rather like a filter. When that lot is completely dry I apply a coat of ultra matt acrylic varnish (AK Interactive Ultra Matte Varnish) to hold it all together. Finally it's done! It took about as long to paint and weather as it took to build. Looking at the final photo I should probably have been a bit more restrained with the brown / black shading but overall I'm happy with the result. Unfortunately it makes my much older 24-1/2 tonner look a bit pants! --- There's still one more thing to do, add a load of coal...

I wish you success. I think just surviving for another year might be a bigger challenge for us all now the lunatics are running the asylum. Heads down, keep modelling. At least it isn't making then world any worse.

Well that's different and interesting. Just a thought - with those early locomotives with no mass and hardly any driving wheels, and whitemetal rolling stock, isn't tractive effort a bit of a challenge?

A Stanier brake van from the Slaters kit. BR unfitted brake van from LMS diagram D2068. Number M731497, one of the last brake vans built to this design. Built in the period 1949-1950 and entered service with the M prefix under British Railways ownership, so it says in LMS Wagons vol 1. Mostly standard Slaters but I've added the label clips to the body near the verandah ends where most vans seemed to have them, and I changed the curved rain strips to the straight type. There are etched works plates left over from another kit; wrong number of course but, who can tell under all the muck? Paint is acrylic and some oil for weathering all held together by a coat of acrylic ultra matt varnish. Decals are from Fox. Turned out to be a bit of a bogey project. I bought it years ago from Ace Models in Launceston when I lived in Plymouth as a first look at 0 gauge. Didn't get finished and ended up in a box under the bed. It was rediscovered recently but it isn't a practical conversion to S7 from the stage of assembly I'd got to. Too much faff and carving to move axle guards, brake shoes etc. It sat on the workbench taking up space for a few months until l decided to complete it. Not a favourite but it turned out OK in the end. No use to me as 32mm gauge 0F, so it'll be on Ebay shortly. Everybody needs another brake van, right?

Here's a small project for the Christmas break. A BR 24.5 ton welded steel mineral wagon to diagram 1/115 in P4. I built one of these years ago when I was starting out in P4. It was pretty much pure Parkside with compensated W-irons wedged underneath. Time moves on, and the Rumney Models etched chassis kit designed to sit under the Parkside body offers a much better solution. I'm building an early 1/115 with 1' 6" spindle buffers, oil axleboxes and single door springs. The kit makes provision for the later 1/118 with double door springs, and alternative buffers and roller bearing axleboxes are available from various suppliers. One Parkside kit PC04 and one Rumney chassis kit B.21. All the Parkside chassis mouldings go straight in the bin. The end door gets some handles from 0.3mm wire. The moulded features on the underside of the floor are cut off and filed flush. Then the body takes a few minutes to put together. There'll be some detail to add later. The basic chassis is a simple, accurate fold and solder. The dimensional accuracy comes from the etched parts, not the care taken in positioning parts for assembly. Good design and very easy to get an accurate chassis. There's a little fettling of the body to fit the body supports on the chassis. Two minutes of minor surgery with a scalpel. Starting to look the part already. ------- A few hours at the workbench today; wheels, bearing carriers, suspension, solebars, door springs and body supports. A hint when adding the solebar overlays. Be sparing with the solder. You don't want to block up the tiny holes for the locating tabs for components fitted later, like the body supports. I've done this before on a Rumney chassis and it's a pain to rectify. With clear holes and properly fitting tabs it is easy to add all the fiddly little parts. I'm using Ultrascale wheels with pinpoint axles in this build. I prefer to use the Exactoscale parallel bearing axles these days, but I don't have any, and being impatient I'll use what I've got to hand. The bearing cups are four matching ones from a collection of various bearings accumulated over many years. For something you'd think was a standard component there's a lot of variation. I've chosen bearings that appear to have quite shallow cones as experience suggests that deeper cones require more spacing out of the bearing cups in the bearing carriers. With bearing cups straight into carriers there's too much side play. A single half etched washer, thoughtfully provided on the Rumney fret, under each bearing cup does the trick. The axles seem to find the right ride height with a straight spring wire, which is merciful as there's no faffing around bending all the wires to match. A properly sprung chassis for less effort than it takes to fit compensation to the Parkside chassis. Easy. ------- Into the more challenging stuff now. Took a good few hours to get the brake linkage together. I appreciate the simplification from the single fold up brake shoe and linkage but l still find it difficult. There are fewer parts but overall it's no easier than the legendary Masokits etched brake gear. Doesn't seem to get any easier the more you do either. Maybe it's just beyond my competence threshold! I deviate from the instructions here. I find it easier to build the brake linkage with the cross shaft in place. -------- The dog beast has had his walkies on a bitterly cold morning wrapped in freezing fog. It's not walkies so much as cyclies. He's trained to run with a bike, so I get a few miles of off road cycling and he gets to run free, chase pheasants, jump in every mire in Derbyshire, stick his nose in every hole and finish up with a swim in the river, from which he emerges nearly clean. He loves it, and my duty's done for a while. Dog snoozes in front of stove and I'm back at the workbench. The brake levers and lifting link go together nicely. It's easier than it looks. The axle boxes and springs are whitemetal castings from Wizard Models/51L. The prototype seems to have had 8 or 9 leaf springs fitted so I'll need something chunkier than normal. BR split axleboxes BRC019, BR heavy duty wagon springs BRC042. Very clean castings requiring a minimum of fettling to fit the chassis. Incidentally Mr Wizard, thank you for sending them so quickly during the Christmas period - first class service and much appreciated. They are fitted to the chassis with medium viscosity cyano after cleaning the mating surfaces with isopropyl alcohol (IPA). Adhesives really do work better on a clean surface. Buffers are from Lanarkshire Model Supplies (LMS), 1' 6" spindle buffers, steel buffers and spindles cast into whitemetal housings. LMS whitemetal castings really are of the highest quality. I didn't think you could cast whitemetal as cleanly as this, but these guys can. Nearly as good as an injection moulded part. Hard to believe? Give them a try. Buffers are fitted using a rapid epoxy. That gives a couple of minutes to tweak the buffer alignment as the epoxy sets. Couldn't resist dropping the body on for a photo. -------- Coming next - finishing the chassis, some additions to finish the body, painting and weathering.

Anyway, here's a question for 16 ton experts. What is the difference between diagram 1/108 and diagram 1/117? I'd always thought 1/108 was exclusively unfitted and 1/117 was fitted. According to Larkin there were fully fitted lots of both diagrams. And from photos they look identical.

I grew up in Long Eaton and remember that bit of Toton. In those days you used to be able to sneak through the perimeter fence and wander around amongst rows and rows of stored 16 tonners and hoppers. Wish I'd had the gumption to own a camera back then.

It's railway modelling, but then again it isn't quite. I'm a great fan of Colin T Gifford's photographs so I thought I'd have a go at 'doing a Gifford' on some 7mm models I've been working on. Evening drawing in at a country station. Old hand and new recruit contemplate a wagon that's ended up in the wrong place for tomorrow morning's shunt. You could almost run a caption competition for it couldn't you? "Well young 'un, if tha' wants to move it then tha'd better find the pinch bar". It's a composite of 3 photographs. One with wagon and figures, one with distant landscape and sky, the other with foreground grass. The wagon and figures are 7mm. The figures are from Modelu and the wagon is from the MMP kit for the diagram 1/108 mineral wagon in S7 (though who can tell?). I'm starting out in S7 and there's all my 7mm stock in one photo! There's almost as much time faffing with Lightroom and Photoshop as there is modelling. Well, not quite. As somebody who doesn't have much room for a layout (certainly not in S7) this is an alternative. It's more like military modelling. Small scenes, dioramas, snapshots of everyday life on the railway.

Well, congratulations! who'd have thought that started out as a Lima prairie?

Does he now? A Bradwell 21 ton body for a Parkside chassis. and Rumney now does a 21t chassis for the Parkside body. I wonder...

You'll have noticed from the frequency of blogs that a lot of projects are getting completed while I'm on summer leave. Apparently one's quality of life is increased by doing lots of things you like. In which case I'm right on it. Here's another long term project brought to completion. The side tipping wagons are from the splendid RT Models etched kit. The Hunslet 50t 325hp diesel hydraulic is from the Judith Edge Kit, which I bought at an exhibition in Burton some years ago. I designed and built my own chassis and gearbox for this in order to get a P4 compensated chassis with the drive line completely out of the cab. I can just see this lot storming the tip road. Lurching and swaying on the shonky track with a plume of black diesel exhaust trailing behind. Although for storming you really need a steam loco. Couldn't help noticing that Judith Edge do a 16" Hunslet as well. Another new project?

I'm on summer leave for a couple of weeks. Time to decompress and do some modelling. My instinct is usually to start a new project, but I have a number of things on the workbench that I thought I'd better complete first, like the Bradwell kit for the Charles Roberts NCB hopper. So here it is complete. The NCB transfers are from on old Kemco sheet, but I note that Fox also do a sheet for NCB now.

Following on from the entry about modelling and 3D printing some springs and axleboxes for a Stanier brake van, here's the end result, a scruffy, well travelled unfitted van. It'll look just right waiting engine and brake in the colliery sidings. The brake van was built from a Pocket Money Kits brass etch (PMK 00/31) that I acquired a long time ago. There are RTR Stanier vans available now, but I enjoy building things more than buying them. The springs and axleboxes are a distinctive feature on these vans and I think the Modelu printed springs and axleboxes really look the part. The etched kit is quite old school in its design but goes together well enough. The castings for springs, axleboxes and buffers are serviceable but lacking detail. There are some compromises like the verandah corner posts that should be solid timber but end up as angle section on the etch, but not very noticeable. There's no provision built in for compensation or suspension, so you'll have to work that out for yourself. But you get a flat floor to work from, and I used some MJT compensating W irons that fortunately came out at exactly the right height. The buffers are from then Lanarkshire Model Supplies range - Wagon Buffer B013, 1'6" - 1'8 1/2", 13" head - and these really are excellent white metal castings. The handrails are a fiddle. The holes etched in the body for the handrails are oversize for scale diameter wire (0.3 mm), and it really is very difficult neatly soldering thin wire into oversized holes. Also some of the holes shouldn't be holes where the handrails are fitted to the prototype with small brackets. I filled the holes and made some tiny brass brackets. I'm not entirely sure which diagram of van this kit is supposed to represent. It's either D1919 or D2036. The difference is in the duckets, D2036 being a little wider. The model measures up over the buckets as closer to D2036, but the duckets look more like D1919 in proportion. I decided it was a D2036 and chose a number accordingly. You'd not have known if I hadn't told you! Overall, I quite like the result. If I can find another of these kits I'd like to build on with the external diagonal strapping that some of them acquired in later years. After all, I have plenty of springs and axleboxes now.

I think this will be the last entry on this subject, having started back in February. It all got done within a year, which is good going for me. Here's the picture of the finished model. In the end the salt weathering didn't work out very well. A lot of the salt crystals come off during airbrushing, so for any decent rust pattern you need to start with lots and lots of salt. Much more than you'd think. Because of that it's difficult to create the pattern you want. It's kind of random. Plus there is a lot of salt to clean off afterwards, it gets everywhere. In the end I went back to the paintbrush to create the base rust pattern and then added some airbrush over the top. I'll practice with the salt technique because I can see it has potential for some effects. There are also other techniques from the military modelling fraternity that might be worth a try, such as chipping. Having studied a lot of steel mineral wagon photos one thing that is apparent is that the rust effects are varied, and typically not just a few blobs and streaks of a uniform red brown colour. A fair proportion of them have the kind of pattern I've tried to represent here. There are patches of old rust that are a very dark brown, these are well defined and can be applied by paint brush. Around them there is often a kind of black/brown haze which really needs an airbrush to apply. I'm not sure what the haze is, corrosion spreading to surrounding paint, coal dust adhering to to the area. Don't know but it is a distinct and common weathering effect. And very little red/brown rust. The colour of rust is dependent on the chemistry of oxidising iron and that changes with time and environmental exposure. It often starts as an almost yellow deposit, darkening through orange/browns, darker browns and in some cases ending up as a deep purple/brown. Some of the lighter oxides stain the surrounding paint, often getting washed down in streaks by the rain. One other thing I've noticed in 7mm is that texture starts to become important. As it happened the legacy of the salt weathering left some texture (aka mess) that fortunately added to the effect. Since I paint mostly in acrylics there days there is the option to add some acrylic resin putty to areas of paint to create some subtle texture. Almost finished - the brake pin chain and one of the top flap pin chains need to be replaced.

It's a funny thing wonky track work. One of my interests is industrial railways. I remember Iain Rice's track modelling advice in one of his books 'look at a good photo of your prototype track and model what you see'. I've found it more or less impossible to model track work with as many kinks, dog legs and dips as typical industrial track work. Check out NCB in South Wales - Dave's Honley Tank dog leg is modest by comparison. If that's not maintained to main running line standards then it's not unknown. Leave it in Dave, it has character!

Fits and starts. After a determined and productive period of modelling earlier in the year real life (work, gardening, hospital appointments (not mine), dog, keeping air in bicycle tyres, more work etc) has seeped back in somewhat and I haven't spent as much time at the workbench. Modelling has been happening but it's not been much to shout about. The S7 test plank - since the last entry on the subject I've got bogged down rather on the brick retaining wall. Getting the wall built was easy enough. Getting it painted turned out to be a test of character. Started off well enough. I painted the base colours for the engineering bricks and the red bricks with matt enamels. Then I made a mess of the mortar courses. Trying to run a mortar coloured paint into the grooves didn't work well and I ended up with some avant grade paint effects. Then reading up about painting bricks (after the attempt you'll note!) I discovered that I'd have been better scrubbing the mortar into the grooves first and then dry brushing the bricks over that. I found an old tinlet of approximately mortar coloured paint and applied that, only to discover that what I thought was matt turned out to the glossy side of satin when dry. Great, shiny mortar! Gave it a break for a few days to let the disappointment wear off. Then to dry brush the bricks, except that's more difficult now because the enamel brick colours won't dry brush as easily over gloss. Pants! But press on. I also discovered that where I'd washed some of the brickwork sheet joints with solvent to merge the gaps I'd managed to wash away some of the brick relief so there wasn't as much texture to dry brush. The only option was to paint those bricks individually. Double pants! That's 1.5 metres of 7mm brickwork to laboriously dry brush and pick out the missing bricks. At this point the excitement had worn off and the creative impulse to make a quick test track was well buried. I also found that the layout of the work room and the amount and direction of natural light meant that it was getting more and more difficult to see properly to work on it in the evenings as I worked from one end to the other. Finally got the chance to take it outside in the sun at the weekend and complete the brick painting. With just the basic colours it sort of shouts, so I've started to tone and weather it down so it will sit in the background visually. It's not as good as I'd wished but I can probably live with it. I'll post some photos when its finished. The 7mm MMP 1/108 kind of stalled at the painting and weathering stage. The experiment with salt weathering promised much but didn't work out as expected. Some military modellers get great rust effects this way, I need to practice more. So I'm back to my usual technique of painting on the rust pattern from representative photos. This portraiture takes a while on 4mm stock, and it takes a whole lot longer on 7mm stock. I do a bit when I'm in the mood and It's getting there. Again, I'll post photos when there's something presentable. I have some decals for it now as well. The 4mm 3D printed springs and axleboxes from Modelu have been fitted to the Stanier brake van. The brake van construction is complete and it's now in primer. The 3D printed springs and axleboxes really look the part and although they are relatively small details it makes big difference. The character of the Stanier brake van is captured very well. Somehow I managed to miss some noticeable gaps in the soldered body around the duckets. Goodness knows how I didn't see them when I was cleaning it for paint, but the primer showed them up straight way. They've been filled and it's waiting for me to rub it down and repaint in places. There was an interesting diversion to evaluate several shades of grey paint to see which best matched BR freight grey. There are some right funny shades of grey masquerading as BR grey! I'll post the results some time. I have some more parts to build the P4 Impetus Hunslet15" but that's about to be overtaken by a new project - an 8F in S7. That'll make a blog or two at some point when I actually get started. Yes, 7mm is addictive, but I don't think it will displace P4 from my life completely. I'll wander from 4 to 7 and back again as the mood takes me. Another great way of starting more projects and finishing less! I've joined the Scaleseven Group and I've applied to join Western Thunder because there seems to be a bunch of accomplished and knowledgable 7mm folk in that group. Apparently my request is being considered by moderators. Obviously they're particular about who they admit. I guess they hold long meetings in darkened rooms to review applicants

Third photo colouring of sleepers? Mostly by accident. And a bit of Photoshop. Old timber tends to grey, and old sleepers do too when the creosote is leached out. They are C&L plastic sleepers. They are moulded with a representation of wood grain but I though it appropriate to add a bit more texture, so scraped the surface with some very coarse abrasive paper. Painted a basic mid grey and then I thought I'd be clever and apply some shading by airbrush. Wasted a lot of time spraying delicate shades of this and that before realising it wasn't worth the trouble. Fortunate accident came with the second attempt at the darker ballast. I'd given up being precious about the sleepers and just blasted on the unholy mixture of PVA, black powder paint and gritty sprinkles. On wiping the ballast mixture off the top of the sleepers I found the black had penetrated the abraded wood grain marks and the patina of grime added a silvery grey effect. Good result by accident. Oh, and I pumped up the contrast a bit on Photoshop to make it look more dramatic and gritty. Yes 7mm is addictive. I'm a long time 4mm modeller and fancied a go at 7mm. Doesn't take much to get you hooked it seems. Having dipped proverbial toe with MMP 1/108 kit I've decided against reasonable caution and restraint and I'm planning the MOK 8F in S7 as my first loco project. Head first. The brickwork. Yeah, the b****y brickwork. There's a story for another blog entry...

Nice work Mr Barry O. Y'know the photos might show them off better without the strong backlighting. Or just open up a stop or so?

Having torn up the old 0F test track, thoughts turned to creating an new length of track in S7. The idea was simply to find a suitable plank and lay a length of straight track to run S7 stock along. Well, I did find a plank, sort of, and then things spiralled out of control. After a few minutes with the table saw I had a 1.5m length of 18mm ply which seemed like a good start. Considering the weight of some 7mm stock I thought it might be a bit bendy when supported at each end across the workbench. So I screwed a strip of oak veneered MDF along the back to stiffen it. I though it might be nice to ballast up the track so I could photograph some stock (if I ever get any made that is). The stiffening back board suggested it might become a brick retaining wall to provide a backdrop to the scene. That was the end of the quick test plank. Here's progress so far... Woodwork in grey primer. Pleasant to work outside in the sun while spraying ballast everywhere. No need to vacuum afterwards 8-) A bag of old 4mm ballast, some sieved ashes, a few teaspoons of powder paint and a sea of builders PVA. Not the appearance I was aiming for, too brown. Try again tomorrow... That's more like it. A backwater dead end ballasted with ashes, clinker and assorted dross. Could do with a bit more fine material but it'll do for the plank. A vaguely plausible retaining wall was sketched up and some Slaters English Bond plasticard ordered. Arches would have been good, but too time consuming. There's acres of brickwork here and I hadn't realised how time consuming it was going to be. That's the price you pay for acting on impulse! Basic wall made in soft wood and fitted to the backboard. Then another happy afternoon in the sun fitting the brick sheets over it all. And still no track.

I eventually got around to modifying the CAD model to increase the size of the rubbers. Output the STL file, and back from Modelu came the first 'production' batch of springs and axle boxes. There was a tiny bit of fettling to fit them to the brake van model. The axle box and springs were modelled to exact prototype dimensions. Well, as exact as the original LMS drawings - who knows what adjustments or liberties were taken in the real world of 1920' - 1930's manufacturing? I wouldn't be surprised if there were some compromises in the design of the brake van etch either. Anyway, they fitted easily enough and, to me, they look the part. They'll look less startling when painted. Overall a most interesting and productive exercise. Very happy with the end result. And thanks to Alan at Modelu for making the technology accessible to all of us. I'll be doing more of this, and probably the next project will be to model up a family of typical BR wagon axleboxes. It is usually assumed that they all look a bit like the split cast steel RCH oil 'box. There are some different types, some very different and some subtly different. There are at least two variants of the classic split cast steel box with slightly different casting shapes. There is a split cast steel type with distinctive weight relieving (I guess?) recesses cast into the spring seat. The common and ugly fabricated square box type with flat front cover. A boxy looking cast steel version with a pressed front cover. And just for fun I fancy a front cover 'box with the cover hanging open and exposing the axle end. And that's just for the 'standard' 12, 13, 16 ton stock. There's heavy duty and special axleboxes. And then the varieties of leaf spring to match. Combined with the Rumney underframes and some kit bashed Parkside bodies there's not much BR common wagon stock that can't be accurately represented now. Then some of the LMS hardware. Some choice Midland springs and axleboxes. There are a few LNER 'boxes that would be nice to have. The GWR seems to be well served by the trade already, and anyway the Swindon design language always seems a bit mean spirited and Edwardian to me, but that's just my engineering neurosis. 4mm and 7mm. You could do some cracking stuff in 7mm this way. Dream on... there's already a huge list of projects to get stuck into.

Steel minerals and painting. What finish was applied to the inside of the body when new? I've seen B&W photos of brand new 16 tonners at a rolling stock exhibition (Marylebone?) taken from an elevated viewpoint that shows what appears to be a black finish inside. Not sure if that was the real production finish or just shiny black for the exhibition. I'd take a guess at some kind of black bituminous paint. any ideas?

That's rather brilliant. Congratulations.