Johndc120

We’re usuning Exactoscale fast track bases which you then slide the rail through, you have to chop the webs out on the outside of the curves and just be careful on the joints as it can look a bit like a curve of straights.

we fix ours down with eco stick but just a little bit wet so you have a few minutes to play with it and even any kinks

john

4 hours ago, Andy Keane said:

Love the work on the Hall. In my case the only tender loco light enough for Helston is the Earl (Helston was a yellow route) so I too have aquired a Bachmann model, though I am not sure if I am brave enough to take the airbrush to it yet! My excuse will be to use it to run summer specials.

Also thanks for the details of the paints - I can see why you wanted a heavy duty airbrush to do all that work - it has set me thinking, what with Christmas approaching and fifty feet of track to paint and ballast!

regards

Andy

ps - does your point rodding actually work?

But airbrushes are brilliant but useful for very different purposes, I also have an Iwatta high line HP-PS which has a 0.2mm nozzle which is then great for really fine work but I hardly use it. 
 

no it’s just for show, I’ve tried to get it spot on to scale and at that size it wouldn’t stand up to being used

john

An excuse for a Hall!!

modelling a country branch terminus usually prohibits the use of 4-6-0 tender engines, which is a shame because I do have a fondness for a Hall. 
 

luckily I’ve found an excuse, this being our ballast train, as can be seen in the picture below. on this service a standard hall can be seen propelling some catfish wagons as they drop a section of fresh ballast.
 

Gloucester had several halls allocated during august 1955 but one of particular interest is modified hall 6985 ‘Parwick Hall’ seen below is our period looking very grotty!!

Completed in feb of 1948 she was one a few to have received the experimental livery of lined GWR colours with ‘British railways’ hand painted in GWR lettering as per her sister below!

the only slight change to this being the addition of the smoke box number plate added during service 

so now I have an excuse, time to go and buy one!!!

this is a Bachmann modified hall which has been stripped and repainted 

The next jobs are to add the lining and plates before I can put all of the detailing back on and start wearying it down, I don’t want to have it quite as grotty as it was on the prototype, but still want it to look in loved

1 hour ago, Andy Keane said:

John, this is really very impressive. Am I correct in thinking this is all done with airbrushes? Also can you say what brand of primer you use and if you airbrush on the priner as well?

thanks

Andy

Thank you Andy, yes it is all airbrushed, I’ll give a full break down of the paints used. 
for the primer and the main base coat I used a spar max GP-35 trigger action brush, it’s much more comfortable for spraying large areas and is capable of delivering large quantities of paint over quite a wide spray

all of the detail work was then done with an Iwatta Eclipse HP-CS which although it has the same nozzle size (0.35mm) it has a narrow cone of spray

the primer used was Vallejo grey surface primer 74.615, this was only used for a half coat to provide a key, if you do a full coat you will end up using a lot of dark brown to fully cover the light grey

the track brown which will be the same which I’ll use for ballast weathering, this is Vallejo German camouflage black brown 70.822

We use 2 colours for rust, Vallejo game colour dark fleshtone 72.044 and Vallejo game colour filthy brown 72.037. For the rail and chair rust it’s 3 parts dark 1 part filthy and for the rust wash which then goes on the sleepers next to the chairs it’s 3 parts filthy to 1 part dark. This light rust is also very good for new rail. 
 

I hope that helps a bit

This is the section across the bridge, it’s a good example of how heavily we have rusted the track. Once the ballast is in and we weather it, the rust will be toned down a lot 

7 hours ago, Mulgabill said:

Thought I'd give you a clue!

 

 

Answers on a postcard - ah those were the days.

 

TONY

 

Oooh I recognise that! Haha

It seems ages since I did my prototype and after a lot of rework particularly on the mechanical workings on the base Can finally say it’s to a standard I’m happy with. 
 

Seen below on a friends layout who has fully finished it including hanging the block on the chain. I’m really happy with the way it hangs

If anyone is particularly after one then give me a message and I’ll be happy to do one for you

john

Last week I managed to thread all of the 0.45mm wire for the fencing of the cattle dock. Fitting nickel silver wire instead of the plastic recommended in the kit really improves the strength and it should survive a knock or 2

Just now, 5BarVT said:

That’s what they all say.

;-)

Paul.

It’s the way to get it past management! Little does she know as well as some playmobil stuff for him I also have a few kits stashed!!!

After a few busy weeks working on a garden railway for my boy (still WIP) I’ve finally had time to do some more on Elmore.

In particular the cattle dock which is now nearly fully assembled apart from the 5 posts on the front to back runs where the wire needs to be sprung into place, also lots more wire to be fitted which I have just ordered

the tedious job of adding the raised brick detail also continues, the first pen is now all fitted and I’ve just done the first few in the second. At some point soon I’ll also have to think about lamp positions too.

3 hours ago, Graham T said:

Hi John, thanks for the comments.  I agree that the Wills rodding is overscale (and fiddly!) and I'm sorely tempted by the Modelu version.  But I'm going to resist ripping it up and starting again.  If I did, the next thing would be to re-do all the trackwork.  Then the baseboards...

I would tend to agree with you, carry on as you are and maybe that is something for future layouts, I do think the Will looks good when buried in the ballast etc but as I said just avoid having to many rods together

regards

john

Hi Graham, 

slowly catching up with this thread thanks to Paul linking my page to it. lovely work so far.

a fantastic effort so far with the rodding. the wills rodding is very good although a bit fiddly as it's quite short lengths.

my biggest advise with the wills rodding is to rationalise it a little. it is quite overscale when you compare it to the real thing and modelu's efforts which is pretty close to scale. this is most noticeable when you have many rods together as it gets extremely wide with only a few rods. if you just miss a point or fpl as you go down the run it can look a bit better even if it's not 100% correct. 

I happened to do a comparison for someone else which is the photo below of the wills vs the modelu. 

hope this helps and keep up the good work

regards

John

Moving back over to the station area, We have started to install the cattle dock. We are using the ratio dancing to make our pens which are unique in shape to our layout. Instead of the plastic rod we are using 0.45 nickel silver wire

the floor of the cattle docks was very rarely flat, especially on bricked surfaces the animals could have problems standing up if they laid down. To help them get grip often there were patterns of raised bricks, we have started this pattern off in the corner of the first pen. It’s definitely going to take a while to do them all

Some of the smallest bits take the longest! This has certainly been the case with the brick platform surface. It’s taken quite some time to get it to fit into all the corners! So this has been all the progress this week

18 minutes ago, Mulgabill said:

 

Should you be thinking of selling any more, please may I join the queue?

I’ll message you now

john

30 minutes ago, Mulgabill said:

 

However, can you say a bit more about the 6 ton crane. They were so widely

used in GW goods yards, and I need one for my layout, based on Helston.

Thanks Tony,

Here’s some pictures of the 6T yard crane, it is the same as the Helston one. Same as the 1T it’s one of our 3D printed items with then a few extra details added in nickel silver. It’s rarely seen in model form so it was something we definitely wanted and as you say they were pretty common place.this is the second version as I originally designed it from photos and a bit of guess work for the drive mechanism. After sharing some photos of the original one of the Pendon lot kindly shared some drawings and detailed shots of the workings

I have sold a few and this was one to a friend Barry Sargent who has done a nice job of painting it

Progress on the engine shed and crane today

firstly on the shed, we’ve added the edging strips and brick walling to the platform, the verdict on the platform top is still out at the moment, I am possibly thinking of a brick platform top. 
 

Also more progress on the crane, I had to modify how it was printed to get some of the detail to come out fully and it worked much better this time. We’ve added the bracing wire to it and that has made a huge difference. It’s nice to compare it to the prototype which is the one at princetown, it’s not perfect but hopefully a good representation.

swung out over the track it sits nicely over the centre of the track

It fits through the doorway nicely with plenty of room for the load

swung over the road access it sits nicely over the centre of that

and then as per the photo it can be stowed out of the way fitting snuggly into the corner

as a comparison the 1T of the shed and the 6T yard crane, the plan is to have both of these linked to servos so if the point is set for the other siding for any length of time the cranes will swing out over the track

it's just a little bigger than the 1T which I've just done

No problem at all.

you mention you're after a 6T, is this the sort of thing you're after???

A touch of progress this week on the goods shed, this has been held up with lack of CAD time for finishing the goods shed crane. Finally we can say that it’s 99% there with the design and we’ve got a test print off. (a few alterations needed to the way it’s printed)
 

the prototype is a GWR freestanding light goods shed crane, capable of only lifting 1T it was very limited it what it could do but anything over this would use the yard crane. 
 

now we have the crane we can now check the size of the platform so the crane when swung out ends over the centre of the tracks. Oops it was 10mm too big so it’s had to be trimmed down! 
 

15 hours ago, Nick C said:

Isn't that more of a modern thing? The more traditional method, I thought, was a foothold set into the front of the platform face. 

Now you’ve said it I tend to agree, maybe just some brick steps low down to assist getting up rather than a full set of steps

A nice bit of progress once again on the platforms, all of the 2’ x 2’ slabs are now stuck down, We have now started on the fully paved surface infront of the station building, it does appear a bit strange swapping the orientation but we’ve got plenty of photos where it’s like this.

On the main platform face we have added the brick face and the 3 extra layers to build up the over hang. The face of the end of the platform has now been added which now ties in the end loading dock into the platform. We are considering a set of metal steps down between the buffers for access.

Lastly work on the edging of the cattle dock and the brick floor has gone in, we need to now add some of the raised bricks in the floor to help cattle stay on their feet

Note the correction to the gates on the trackside, thanks to @Fishplate for pointing out the error in my ways!!

So this week, time has mainly been taken up with chopping a couple of sheets of 40thou plasticard into tiny little pieces, these will make up paving slabs.

This was done using a proxxon mini table saw to produce strips and then a proxxon cut off saw to then chop the strips into individual slabs

GWR paving had a lot of variation across the periods but we are going for the edge slabs using 3’ x 2 1/2’ laid lengthways along the platform. For the uncovered section of the platform it was common to see extra rows of 2’ x 2’ laid lengthways behind the edging slabs, we have gone for 2 extra rows before then having a gravel infill. In front of the station building it was common to have a fully paved surface, usually of 3’ x 2’ slabs but this time laid widthways across the platform, this is what we will model.

The edge slabs were also thicker being sometimes up to 6” in depth, to give the impression of this depth we have stuck a second layer under the slab where it overhangs the edge of the platform

At 12mm long we have made 115 to cover the 4’ long platform and have a few spares

To fix them to the platform we first stuck a few temporary slabs in at the correct distance to the rail, the edge slabs can then be stuck onto the platform using a steel rule as a guide.

once all of the edging slabs are in the front edge is lightly filed to neaten the edge, the paving slabs can then be added behind, this is the first bit of the uncovered platform going in

at the moment we still haven’t quite finished the 2 additional rows, hopefully next week we’ll. finish this and get some of the fully paved section done as well.

Some shots of the platform back on the layout

A possible alternative for the cattle dock, this one has the pens equalised is size but also slightly bigger by pushing the back up against the edge of the raised section, I think this looks better