TurboSnail

I'll get round to it, at some point! People painting is one of my least favourite jobs and I'm a bit low on stock at the moment.

A Manning Wardle Class O belonging to Messrs Logan and Hemingway, doing some final test running after completing the contract to lay the track at Guilford Colliery. The livery panels should really have incurved corners, but that's quite tricky to do neatly with this type of transfer. L&H specified open cabs on a lot of their locos (on safety grounds), so I've left off the 'diamond' canopy from this model. I also haven't modified the chassis yet (other than shortening it and repainting), but hopefully will add a flywheel to it at some point just to tame the high gearing the Hornby Terriers come with. The tank is full of lead and the bunker with that 'liquid lead' stuff so it weighs enough.

As occupied by a Peckett B1, a Sentinel and - presumably waiting to use the steam supply from the gantry - a Hawthorn Fireless

I thought about going that route, but by the time I'd added up the cost of all the bits needed to make a running tender it was approaching £40 before postage, a whole loco secondhand wasn't too much more - and I can use the loco chassis for an S Class and hopefully get a few quid back by eBaying the loco body or just strip it for spares such as buffers, safety valves, cab fittings etc.

So much for a quick project - but my factory diorama has progressed to a point that I can call it finished and stick it in the display cabinet. I think I'll add some more details later down the line and possibly do some more weathering, but I'm happy for now and can tick something off the ever-growing "to-do" list. More pics to follow once some things at the other end of the scene have finished drying.

I found a good excuse to start another project by picking up a cheap C Class at the Alexandra Palace show - a well-used example with glue marks, some lining missing and apparently a few running issues. All I really wanted from it was the tender, which will get repainted at some point anyway. I'll be able to find another use for the chassis and it seems to run ok on a 9v battery, so I'm sure I'll be able to fix it up. The tender, with a minor modification to the electrical connector, couples up nicely to another Bachmann chassis (and it runs so the wiring must be the same). I will need to add some tender pick-ups, as the loco chassis only picks up off the drivers. This is likely to be quite a long-term project, but my hope is that this will eventually become the proposed SECR Atlantic - when the first batch of D Class locomotives were suffering from corrosion and priming issues, Wainwright drew up plans for an Atlantic in case the D Class could not be made to work satisfactorily. Water softening solved the issues so the Atlantic never advanced. I have a basic line drawing from the RCTS "Locomotives of the South Eastern and Chatham Railway" book, but haven't tracked down anything better yet - if further drawings are unavailable I might fill in the details using D Class parts as they seem similar.

With my old Anycubic Photon having given up the ghost (screen glitches meant it wouldn't print properly) I had the choice of repair or replace - normally I'd go for repair, but I've already done this repair on this printer once before, and technology has moved on so much in the 5 years or so since it first came out, so I have now replaced it with a newer model. The print shelf is looking a tad smarter now! I'm not planning on upgrading my tupperware though... Some of the first things to be printed on it were some bits for the diorama, including this pipe bridge and the flanges and valves for the pipework (the pipes themselves are aluminium wire). I'm pretty happy with it so far - it's not streets ahead of the old printer in terms of overall part finish, but there are noticeably fewer errors in prints, less warp and it's much faster.

Suggestions always welcome - bit late to add any more to it, but it is a bit more varied to the eye than to the camera. One of the issues of my modelling space is that in winter it doesn't get much natural light during the day, which makes all my photos come out a bit dingy if I don't wait for the next day!

I was reminded why I don't weather things very often - the left end wall of this building ended up with some obvious black streaks from the weathering powders. The back wall isn't great either but I can't really do much about that, the end wall is small enough for me to attempt a repair. The photos show, in order - first attempt at weathering, painted over with mortar colour, coloured back in, and second attempt at weathering. It's still not great but better than it was, at least. I was planning for some 3D printed bits to go in while doing the ground cover, but my printer has finally given up the ghost, so this project will be on hold for a bit while I replace that.

Showing the overall layout - I've got a few more bits to print out and the buildings need weathering before doing the ground cover

I build too many locos. Well, if such a thing is possible. But in the absence of space for a bigger layout, I'd like somewhere to put them on display rather than hiding away in boxes. I've got a display cabinet but it's a bit dull having locos against a grey background, so I'm challenging myself to build a few small dioramas this year. Hopefully this a) is easy enough to complete, being relatively small projects and b) distracts me from making so many locos! The first one is underway, and is meant to represent a fairly generic industrial site, with an old brick building one end and a later extension at the other. I've got a few doors and windows to add before putting the track in - which will be home to my Barclay 0-6-0 and Hawthorn fireless locos... and maybe the recently announced Rapido ones too! I'm already being distracted by thoughts of what the next display could be...

One of the more recently completed locos, a Howard petrol shunter - I've got plenty of long-term stuff on the go and wanted something I could do in a day, so this fit the bill nicely. Nice simple enjoyable modelling without having to work out why everything doesn't fit properly!

I'm not familiar with how they make those resin cast buildings but I suspect the cost is largely tied to the physical size of whatever moulds they have to use, coupled with (and this is pure speculation) probably lower expected sales numbers. While I've 3D printed a lot of locos, I've never got fully on board with it for buildings, not sure why. I prefer to use plasticard sheet around a card shell, but do use 3D printing for some details like doors and windows. However, it's less fun when, as I did on Friday evening, you dig out your stock of plasticard for a weekend project and discover it's gone brittle and now shatters at the slightest touch of the knife! The Slaters thick stuff is fine, as is the SE Finecast sheet, but whatever this other brand is is now virtually unusable.

It's a bit of a mix up, this loco - I combined a 14" and 16" Barclay a while ago to make a Grant Ritchie 0-4-2ST, which I still haven't completed. This loco uses the leftovers from that project, so it's a 14" with some heavier-duty elements. The cab is a 3D print based on "John Howe" at the Ribble museum, the chimney is a spare from the Grant Ritchie project, the bufferbeams are extended with plasticard and the dumb buffers are offcuts of oak. I still need to add some brass cab spectacle frames, but I haven't had the etches for that done yet. I wanted to use this loco as a test for further home-made transfer experiments, this time using clear paper instead of the white backed I had used before. That meant I needed a relatively light colour body - it's slightly less garish in person! The lining and lettering were again based on "John Howe" and came out ok - the yellow lining suffered a bit, but the stronger colours came out fine. There is some silvering in places, but not too much and hopefully will become more or less invisible if I ever get round to weathering it.

I made a few tweaks to the Ruston 44/48 kit prior to re-release, so felt I needed to test build another one. Done in a few hours over the weekend, I now have the Heinz version (green - with the bigger radiator header tank) to go with the "as-built" (blue) version I made a few years ago when I originally designed the body. A fun little quick build, as opposed to some of my projects which can go on for years... more on one of those later.