Fastdax

New Loco Here's the latest addition to Offerston Quay. It's a late-BR-crest unnumbered version from Rails of Sheffield (my local model shop). I put in a Paul Chetter sound file on a Zimo decoder, plus a twin speaker enclosure and a whopping big stay-alive capacitor array, all from Digitrains. I plan to turn it into a push-pull equipped version, number 47480, and run it with a pair of Ian Kirk coaches. See my Workbench thread for more details.

Control Panel My control panel (such as it is) had a 5-lever Brassmasters frame controlling the 5 points via a Megapoints board. I now have 2 signals as well so I put together a second lever frame from an identical kit that I scored from ebay many moons ago. The new one is on the right.

Thanks Dave, that's great. It's the first photo I've seen with a hint of the electrical connection alongside the shorter vacuum pipe, presumably for allowing trailer-to-loco bell communication. I know that by the 50s the mechanical whistle connection had been removed.

Probably more like LMS than Midland. I'm thinking of the Diag. 1790 Period II Brake Third driving trailer which became extinct in 1964 according to Jenkinson.

That's a shame as I was planning on converting my BR late-crest unnumbered Dapol Jinty to 47480 and fitting push-pull gear (Connoisseur or Griffin?) to have it shuttling my (uncompleted) Ian Kirk Midland Push-Pull set. My layout is set in 1962. Perhaps Rule #1 will have to apply here! Where did you find out about the detailed history of 47479, if you don't mind me asking?

Apologies if this has been covered here, but wasn't 47479 one of the push-pull fitted Jinties?

Factory Gates I made the gates and finished them firstly to represent old, weathered wood. The bottom edges are a bit ragged where rot has set in. Blackened brass pins represent round bolt heads. This was followed by a coat of Chipping Solution and some BR Maroon acrylic. When the maroon was just about dry, I rubbed gently with damp cotton buds and scrapers to flake away some of the maroon where sunlight would have attacked it, exposing the bare wood colour. Here's a station cat's eye view of the result so far. I will spot some rust onto the bolt heads. I'm not happy about the patchiness of the brickwork so some vegetation may appear, to hide the worst of it.

These are Ixion fire irons:

More Factory Wall This is how I create a brickwork effect. I rub white DAS modelling clay into the painted, dirty-washed and sealed brickwork (sealed with Testors spray matt varnish). You have to smear it in firmly, then wipe off the excess with a damp cloth. The more you wipe, the less remains in the mortar courses. It can leave a pleasing (to me anyway) random patchwork of mortar. Some is well-pointed, some has fallen out altogether. A final wash of dirty black tones down the bright DAS mortar. In the following picture you can see the sort of effect that this produces. I knocked up a little plaque with carved initials (a mashup of my initials!) on. This is 0.7mm square nickel-silver rod (7mm scale point rodding) cut, bent and soldered to a scrap of brass sheet. I attached it to the keystone, filled the edges with Milliput and painted to match the rest. Narcissistic perhaps, but a formerly well-to-do Victorian factory may well have had a bit of grandeur about its railway entrance. The gates will be considerably more time-worn. Here are the bits which I'm starting to build the gates from. 1.5mm black plasticard forms the backing and coffee-stirrers make scale 9" planks. I built up the back with more black plasticard to the level of the arch liner, to give me something to attach the gates to. More soon.

Factory Wall In my usual "no plan - whatever I feel like attacking next" mode of working, my eye fell upon the bare bit of plywood that acts as a sight-break at the left-hand end of the layout. Here's an old picture, taken before cobbling and ballasting that area: My eventual aim is to build a fiddle yard to connect to the middle of the three Inglenook sidings and this will need an exit from the scenic part into the FY proper. I decided to build a gateway in the ply wall, as if it leads to a private siding in a factory. The first step was to cut an arched opening big enough for any potential rolling stock, plus a safety margin. I clad the ply with Slaters brick plasticard. At this point I must show you a happy discovery I made - Mister Sticky's Fast PVA glue from Eileen's Emporium. The bottle says it contains some solvent as well as PVA to make it grab and set faster than regular PVA, which it certainly does. However, to me by far the best property of this glue is the wonderful smell! To me, it smells just like this: and takes me right back to the 1970s. So either the glue contains bubble gum, or (much more likely) the bubblegum contains truckloads of the same organic solvent as the glue. (No connection here - just a happy and probably slightly solvent abused customer!) Anyway, back on track I used Mister Sticky's finest to fix mountboard stones to the brickwork face and the inside of the arch. A strip of 5mm foamboard along the top of the wall will do for cap stones. Rather than plain stones, I wanted to represent the type of "edge dressed" stone you see in these parts, where the outer few inches are dressed flat and level but the field of the stone is left rough. I masked off the outer edges of the stones with thin Tamiya masking tape and stippled moist DAS clay onto the rest. After drying, sanding and a basic coat of paint, you can see the sort of effect I'm after: A bit of highlighting using dark weathering washes and dry-brushing of a lighter stone colour and here's how far I got: I also painted the bottom few brick courses to represent engineering blue bricks.

Great stuff Paul. Very useful to see where you have added bits of plasticard to the lower body.

Great stuff Paul. Thanks for all the pictures. I hope to get my Hymek onto the workbench in the near future and I'll do the same to the bodyshell as you show here.

Teaky - we need pictures of your new manspace! :-)

Wow, good catch Paul. I bet others have made that mistake. Thanks for preventing me doing something stupid. Actually I already have this etch and I agree that it's a vast improvement. I looked at the etches and there are indeed four full-size window surrounds. So one will need cutting down for the small window. Good luck with the shelf! Pictures please ;-) Cheers.

I dug out the PRMRP scarf of whitemetal castings and there are four of the same (large) window frames. (Sorry for the reflections). So one needs cutting down to fit the small window and one needs fitting to an enlarged window aperture by the double doors. Looking forwards to some pictures.

Looking at my Hymek, yes there appears to be plenty of meat at the front of the "shelf" to file away. The cab windows will have to be glued in and the gaps filled first, which means the cab interior is inaccessible from the outside so I was going to cut out the floor and bulkhead. I didn't know JLTRT did a cab interior. I emailed Laurie a few weeks ago and got a list of their Hymek castings, but no cab bulkhead or desk was mentioned. I sourced a set of resin castings from Peter Clark to do the job instead. These seem a bit rough but probably a lot cheaper (£25 + P&P) than JLTRT. I hadn't noticed the wrong side windows. Thanks Paul - I will take a good look now. Re nameboard brackets: luckily mine will be a very early Hymek as I want it to run on my 1962 layout and only the first few had gone to service by then. Chassis subframe: I hadn't got that far in my planning! It seems like a good idea if it will help with removable cab interiors, speakers etc. I was going to carve away as much of the blue plastic as I can, then assess whether I can fit the cab floor/bulkhead units so that they are removable. There should be a huge hole underneath each end when the bogies are removed but making the central section unbolt would be a good move as well. Please keep us posted on your conversion with pictures! Cheers, Duncan

By the way, there's some really good cab end detail shown in this YouTube video: Duncan

Thanks Paul, I do have that book as a reference. I wish it had more detail shots instead of the solid line-up of front three-quarter pictures, but it's nice to have such a wide range of photos to hand. I know how it is! BTW, are you intending to put a slope on the "shelf" under the front windows? The Tri-ang has an almost horizontal shelf here, but the real thing looks to have about a 30 degree downwards slope. Duncan

Thanks for this, Paul. Very useful! I found I had some 4mm scale point rodding, which is square nickel-silver wire 0.4mm thick and also the 7mm scale equivalent at 0.7mm thick. I'm intending to try one of these to portray the guttering above the windows. By "opening out a bit in each upper and lower outer corner" do you mean that you made the windows wider by removing material from (what in a car would be called) the "A" pillar?

Ditto but using a spot of rubbery contact adhesive (applied wet and allowed to set in situ).

Cab Details The Deeley Dock Tank kit had a half-assed hearted attempt at the cab boxes. It supplied one small rectangular box to support the handbrake column whereas the prototype had two larger boxes with rounded corners - one for the handbrake column and one as a toolbox and somewhere to keep the spare gauge glasses. On the right is the whitemetal box and on the left are the two plasticard replacements I knocked up. And in place in the cab: I can't think what else I have to do to this loco ,,, apart from sound, lights, paint, decals, weathering, crew, coal ... :-)

Sorry David - brain fade! I did correct my post when I realised. Interesting. The lamps do look good. Thanks.

Looks great Jinty! I have a couple of questions: Where are the lamps from? Isn't it a bit of a pain to have to select the brake van decoder and switch its direction every time its train changes direction?

Another vote for mixing a batch of lead shot with epoxy. I found that "diver's lead ballast" is quite fine-grained lead balls and cheaper than the stuff sold specially for weighting models.

Many thanks George!