TurboSnail

Unfortunately my phone camera is a bit rubbish, but having built far too many locos for a small layout, I'm finally catching up on some wagons too - another D1328 joins the roster. Still haven't nailed down the correct shade of grey!

That's a great find - it's been years since I've been to the KESR so I'll have to visit when I'm back in the county at some point.

Certainly seems Mr. Burr was a bit of a character from what I've read. The layout is based around a colliery that he would have had 'interest' in too, so that fits! This is the clearest info I've found so far, and is by no means conclusive: "The initial carriages for the EKR were purchased from the K&ESR railway that was discarding them as it re-equipped with steam heating and electric lighting. From KESR records it seems the sold carriages were patched up and despatched from June 1911 onwards. One third class carriage was sold in the second half of 1912. The 1913 accounts record the sale of carriages to the value of £210 and this may well be the settlement of account for the carriages supplied. All but one seem to have kept their brown and ivory livery for some time." Taken from the Col. Stephens Society: https://colonelstephenssociety.co.uk/rollingstock topics/ekr carriages.html The layout is nominally set in 1912, but I don't really work to that precise a timeframe due to the difficulty of nailing down exact details and not wanting to beat myself up for getting things wrong. The next question, of course, is what sort of lettering/numbering did they have! I suspect I'll just have to make this up, so I'm inclined to go with "Third" lettering in the door panels and leave it at that.

Thanks for the info folks! I'll go for a darkish brown and the closest thing to ivory that I can find in my paint stash. I'm planning a 'close enough' kind of model of the EKR coach using a Hornby third as a basis. IIRC there were a few early on from 1910 before passenger services officially started (I think in 1916?). Including a few of ex-KESR ones, a couple of which were in turn ex-CLC ones. (I'm not at my PC at the moment so can't check the Col Stephens site!)

I've done further research and still managed to come up with nothing! However, I did find this statement, which I think is worth enjoying (taken from the Wikipedia article): "Tilmanstone Colliery had its own fleet of motley and disgraceful coal wagons (one job at the colliery was to check that returning empties still had floors). There is a strong rumour that several of these were buried in the waste tip"

A question for those more knowledgeable than I (i.e. virtually everyone): What was the KESR coach livery around 1910-ish? And what Humbrol/Revell etc. colours would be useful to represent it? The only info I can find on it says brown and ivory, but I only found one source of that. I'm looking to represent one of the 4-wheel coaches on the EKR, which remained in KESR livery for a while.

Just to hop over to a wildly different era for a second... The R/C van has some fantastic transfers, courtesy of @Corbs. Certainly holding up better than my painting skills!

Spent a good chunk of yesterday colouring in this building with pencils - bit further to go, then touch in the window sills and doors, then the scary task of darkening the whole thing with spray paint! Also, being a bit of a chump, I forgot to check it fits the layout as my track has changed slightly since I did the template - turns out I need to chop a bit off the back to make it more low-relief. Oops...

I've managed to locate some motivation from somewhere (I'll probably lose it down the back of the sofa again soon) and have made some good progress on the layout (see other thread!), but things are moving on the bench too. Here's a very grey photo...

Got the dead tree painted and a bit weathered, tried to blend it into the ground cover too. These little scenes across the layout are starting to look like I hoped they would!

I've had a go at bedding this building in a bit, with some plant-type things around the base (I'm not botanist, so let's just call them weeds) and an attempt at some green streaks from the roof, and mossy patches under the trees. There's one bit on the side that's very unsubtle, but other than that I don't think it's too bad, considering I've not done this sort of modelling before!

SD No.3 is indeed the one I was going for, though I notice I've missed off the lower tank handrails. I couldn't possibly comment on whether this might end up becoming a proper kit... that's up to Andy to decide! The loco was drawn up using the dimensions/drawings from Trojan, as from what I could tell they're very closely related designs. I may even have modelled Trojan first, before deciding I'd prefer the larger tank type on my layout...

Thanks Ray - but this is the 4mm version! The print lines on this one are very slight, only really visible through the camera. I gave most of the surfaces a quick sanding before painting and that seemed to do the trick, so clearly I didn't quite get the tanks 100%!

Scenic work has started! A basic ground covering is down over about half of the layout, and some trees have sprouted up. All needs a lot more work and experimentation to blend it all together, but it's a start.

Having recently been complaining about not having much motivation, I've managed to do quite a bit in the last week or so! I'm really quite pleased with how this one has turned out, the chassis doesn't run brilliantly but considering it didn't cost a lot I'm not too worried. I'm now considering making another in Full Wainwright... Still needs some paint touch-up on the wheels, brass wire details, varnish, transfers and a decent weathering.

Project hopping as usual, the Avonside progresses! Done bar weathering, so hopefully I'll be able to sum up the courage to tackle that soon.

Something odd is emerging from the works...

I'm still struggling to motivate myself to do any physical modelling, so I did a lot of messing around with CAD over the weekend and came up with this rather odd thing. Thinking of something along the lines of a mining or Rail Mail loco! That's a Bachmann Wickham Trolley under there, I picked up a cheap one when I realised it didn't have to be treated at two separate vehicles, the wheels and wheelbase are the same on both trolley and wagon, so I'm hoping it'll make a reasonable set of 7mm narrow gauge bogies!

Based on the Manning Wardles supplied to the Royal Arsenal. However, they were 18" gauge and outside framed, I've gone for inside frames since 16.5mm gauge is closer to about 2ft 4in, I think. I'll make a detailed version at some point, this was more of a proof of concept and to help me visualise the stock size, since I haven't worked in 7mm scale before.

And naturally, I've found another distraction! O-16.5 anyone? Some of you may know I've got plans in this scale, and I've done a quick sketch and print of a loco to get more of a visual aid which I can use for thinking and planning it. It's all very well looking at things on a screen or on printed 2D sheets, but having something to scale really helps. I think I want the layout to be fairly ambiguous in terms of both time period and region, and I'm going for very small, lightweight locos as it'll be a minimum space layout. The industry I think will be a largish fabricator and machine tool company, which might tie the date down a bit - let's say 40s/50s so we can have both steam and diesel (and maybe electric!). Any thoughts on loco/wagon prototypes I could go for? I don't want to build loco kits at this stage, I've got plenty of OO chassis already, so I'd like to use them if possible - this Peckett chassis is pretty close to a couple of prototypes in terms of wheel diameter and wheelbase!

Spot on, it's an Avonside - I think, though haven't been able to confirm, that it's a custom version of the SS. "Desmond" at the Llanelli is the main example, though I think it might have had a twin with an open-backed cab, as pictured below, identity unknown (it could just be the same loco with modifications). I've used a drawing for the SS to model it, the differences from the standard SS being the tank length, the tank rivet patterns, some of the smokebox features, the dome and a very slightly different cab side sheet. I've also CAD modelled the standard SS but I'm not sure I'll actually build one of those. Incoming ramble on 3D printing - hopefully this explains a few things! On the printer front - I don't know! Certainly won't be available at the hobbyist level for some time, as Edwardian says, the stepping issue is related to the screens used. Alternative pixel or laser-based methods of curing resin require much more expensive equipment to do, the laser equipped Formlabs Form 3 is over £3000 and still only a desktop unit. However, it can be improved from what I get, particularly on this loco. The worst stepping is on the surfaces closest to vertical/horizontal in the printer, so you have to trade off between surface quality and taking an age to print. The same goes for layer height settings, halving the layer height gets a better surface but takes twice as long to print. It can also be affected by things like layer cure time and several other settings - unfortunately, given the age and unreliability of my printer, I have to run quite aggressive settings to make it work, so the stepping on some of my prints from about a year ago is better than I get now. Having said that - 10 minutes with some 600 grit sandpaper is usually good enough for me. The models I'm building at the moment are never going to be perfect, but I'm ok with that, it's a good chance to improve my skills relatively cheaply. When I have the space and finances, I'd love to get a small mill and lathe, machining was by far my favourite course at secondary school and university. But for now, it'll do!

A B3, isn't it? Like the Mersey docks ones. I've thought about it, I think I've got a drawing somewhere, it's just never been high up my priority list as the CSP kit exists and looks good! I'd have to find a good chassis match too.

I've had a bit of a thing developing for SECR grey recently, despite it being outside of my modelling time period - possibly because it's so easy to paint. Obviously the sensible answer to this is to model up to 1924 instead! I know there was a reason I limited it to around 1912(ish) (with occasional sessions in the late 40s) but I can't remember what that reason was. I now have some more loco number transfers on the way from Fox, they're not 100% accurate to my eye, especially the 2's, 6's and 9's, but they'll have to do. I'll just have to pick numbers that don't use them! In other news, I've just test printed another industrial loco. It might take you a second glance to notice that it's not a Peckett... Unfortunately I've been having a lot of issues with my 3D printer of late, reliability, glitches, bits not working, horrendous print lines on the vertical faces (believe it or not, this loco has been sanded a bit and still looks stripy) and I think it's coming to the end of it's life. To be expected from a cheap Chinese item, I suppose - this one took 6 attempts to print successfully between random glitches and ironically, the fan overheating. Still, for some reason I really like this loco, the Peckett chassis doesn't quite have the right pattern wheels but it's otherwise pretty good dimensionally. And has a nice open cab so I can get some detail in there!

Progress is still slow, but there are projects ticking over... the Manning Wardle Q is shaping up nicely! It almost runs well too, the gears are a bit noisy as usual, but since adding pickups it's gone a bit lumpy - I suspect they're limiting the sideplay on the middle wheelset, so it doesn't like corners as much. You might also notice that I've abandoned hope of doing the full Wainwright on this one. (and yes, the chimney is wrong for this livery, but I like it so it's staying!)

It's to scale (or as close as my eyesight will let me get with a ruler) with a custom chassis and drive to the front wheel - the N20 and crown gear combo will be familiar to you! It's got compensation on the rear axle (way too much, actually) and most of the motion is brass rod, tube or strip. The rods are 3D printed ones that I was planning to use as templates to make proper ones from brass strip, but they haven't broken yet so I'm leaving them there as an experiment to see how long they last.