TurboSnail

Good, because I've made a little bit of progress on that front... I tried painting the roof by hand, but couldn't get a finish I was happy with, particularly around the birdcages, so they're spray painted. Which resulted in a slightly weird colour scheme (I think the vertical bars on the birdcages should be body colour) but I'm happier with that than having an obviously poor paint job. Now need to think about how I'm going to do the glazing (inc. droplights) and interiors.

A bit more work done on a couple of locos - the Manning Wardle O has a bit more paint, some weight and couplings added, the Peckett finally has cab steps and some paint touch-ups and is waiting on me to decide a name for it

And the other Bank Holiday project - swapping a new gearbox into the Manning Wardle Class O. It's now more slow!

I haven't, no. My library is somewhat understocked, especially with respect to carriages as I didn't think I'd be interested in making any, I don't have a layout big enough to run them for a start. I don't know what changed, but I guess I am making them anyway!

So... which do we prefer? It's beginning to look like I'll have to fill in the rest of this rake - which begs the question, what formation to use? I'm going to aim for a 4-car rake, which may be a bit short to be prototypical but I have limited layout space and construction time. So what do I put in the middle? I have drawings for the following: 5comp 2nd Family saloon 2nd class saloon 4comp 1st I think there would have been a 5comp 3rd to a similar design too, but I don't have drawings for that. I'm also considering a 4comp 1st/2nd composite. The brakes are both three compartments, one second (the one with more lighting) and one third. So I need to somehow balance the right amount of 1st, 2nd and 3rd class with those options! I've realised I may end up with a bit too much coaching stock after this exercise, so I've cancelled my Hattons' Genesis pre-order - these ex-LCDR coaches won't be as well finished, but I think the colour and the style will be more accurate, so I'll save myself the money.

Back from a week off, and back to the ex-LCDR coaches. A third-class brake has joined the second-class, and hopefully later today will be able to show the comparison of paint colours!

The PCB arrived like this - I got it made by a PCB fabricator and I specified white silkscreen over black solder resist, over the copper layer. I did consider wiring the points in the "route setting" style, but didn't think it was worth it for this layout as it would only change the lower run-round and save one switch.

The wires soldered on to the switches fine, I just don't think those switches were well designed/built at all. I took one apart and it had a little plastic thingy in it that appears to have been doing the centre-ing for the actuator. It looks like it was made in some kind of heat-resistant plastic, but obviously not enough as it had melted a bit out of shape - my soldering iron is not temperature-controlled, so I may have got away with it if I had a lower temp iron. The control panel is a PCB (one of my many roles at work is electronic design) and actually has tracking on the back for a CDU, although I didn't use it in this case as I ended up just buying one. I'm a big fan of using PCBs for non-electrical purposes, they're reasonable tough and I like the finish and look of them (the 'Rule One' rulers sold by Railway Mania is another of one my designs in the same style). The only issue here is that the size is limited to 100x100mm to keep the cost down - not a problem for my small layout!

A Peckett B2, bashed into approximately a Peckett B1 - new cab, bufferbeams, chimney, toolboxes, tank front handrail and still got replacement steps to add. Pictured with my other Peckett-bash.

Over the weekend I had a go at a Peckett B2 to B1 conversion. It won't be perfectly accurate but I'm pretty pleased with it! Modifications include: - replacement cab (with new handrails) - replacement bufferbeams and buffers (wooden beams in place of steel) - curved tank front handrail - new chimney - additional toolboxes - will get replacement cab steps at some point, but not done yet

The wiring is finally sorted! The dodgy switches were replaced, and lots of troubleshooting done to solve a few issues: Point frogs going dead (tidying up the wiring with a staple gun had pulled some of the wires out of the terminals!) Isolation sections not working (rails wired to the opposite one they were supposed to be, so locos ran backwards) Short when running locos over points (incorrect wiring so loco wheel shorted between the rail and the point blade) Dead sections in points (solved by adding additional wire droppers in so no longer reliant on point blade contact - thanks @BlueLightning for the tip on that one) Onto the uncoupling system next, then I think the under-board work is done and I can go back to finishing off the scenery.

Hi Ray, From what I can work out, the red/teak livery was a sort of half-repaint of LCDR stock, which my 4-wheeler is, but I don't fancy trying to replicate the teak! I like Humbrol 67 (Tank Grey) for the wartime grey locos - some would say it's a bit dark, but most sources say that colour aged to almost black, so I think it's a good imitation of 'clean, but not brand new'. I think I prefer VW Urano Grey for the later wagons, but I'm still undecided on what the earlier shade should be - some photos seem to show it being very dark, but some written sources imply it was lighter than the later shade. Jury's still out on that one!

Agreed - the trouble with car colours is it's hard to tell from the label on the can, and photos in all sorts of different lights with different levels of fade after being outside for however many years. The Phoenix colour seems to be quite dark, so I'm also considering RAL 3005 and RAL 3007 as options. I'm trying to avoid Phoenix as I much prefer spray painting and I don't have an airbrush - also not too keen on working with lead paint if I don't have to!

Calling on the college of experts - does this resemble the earlier SECR carriage livery? Personally, I think it's a tad too bright, and a bit pinky, but I don't really know! The guidance I have says 'dark red, slightly darker than Midland maroon'. This is Ford Burgundy red - I may also try Ford Pepper red or Tamiya TS33 to see if they're any better, if anyone know which of those may work! Or any better suggestions!

A T Class is on my list of stuff to model at some point - how far off is the chassis? That would save me a lot of faff if I can use an RTR one EDIT: answering my own question here! The J72 is 4ft 1.25in wheels on a 13ft 8in wheelbase, the T Class is 4ft 6in wheels on a 15ft wheelbase - so to scale, the J72 wheels are about 1.75mm too small and the wheelbase is about 5mm too short. We'll all have our own answers as to whether that's an acceptable compromise or not! (For the record, I think it's fine - would someone notice if you didn't have the two side-by-side? Probably not)

Work in progress. These modern RTR locos come apart into a lot of bits, don't they! There are probably about the same amount again not in this pic...

Some progress has happened, but slowly! The control panel went in, isolating sections, points and reverser got wired up... then it turned out three of the point switches were jammed solid. I wasn't soldering them for long, but it was long enough to melt the innards, so I need to order new ones and replace. They were very cheap, so I'm not entirely surprised they were rubbish!

This one was actually done before the black Lowca - as it was the first test, I deliberately tried to keep it fairly simple. All the lining has to be drawn in CAD, so I didn't want to spend hours on it in case it came out wrong! Having said that, it's grown on me since I applied it, it's much easier to see the imperfections when you're doing it. My review on the livery is: I think the yellow lining is a little bit too thick I could have left a slightly larger black border (but only slightly) The red printed ok, and I'm really happy with the colour match to the chassis paint, but on close inspection you can see how the printer (inkjet) has mixed colours to achieve it - the black on the Lowca is much more solid The black is also much easier to touch in where the ink rubs off (over rivets etc.) So I think we may be seeing another black loco at some point! And I want to try one of my SECR locos with this method of transfer too... The sticking point being that I have to wait until I visit my parents again - it may be a sign of the times that I own a 3D printer, but not a 2D one!

Here's the other transfer experiment loco - a Robert Stephenson ogee/piano tank. The transfers were also ok on this, though much harder to cut out, but I don't think my livery design was quite as good on this one. For whatever reason, it just doesn't quite look right to me? I might just be being overcritial of my work again.

I've looked at doing this - it's a bit too tall to fit to scale in the Barclay fireless, but if you were prepared to make the pressure vessel bigger, it could be made to work. The other issue being that the front of the motor and boiler on the Peckett will stick into the cab on the Fireless, but again, not insurmountable. Peckett also made a fireless, so the wheels and cylinders would be the correct type for that! I think people have made fireless locos out of Pugs too - the chassis is about the right size, and I think the motor might fit if it could be rotated 90°. EDIT: Gibbo beat me to it!

Thanks - it fits a normal Terrier chassis, but this one's been modified to take a flywheel, so hopefully will perform a little bit better. The livery is printed on large transfers, using plain white inkjet transfer paper. Everything inside the white lines is ink, not paint, part of the reason for using black being that it's an easy colour match between the ink and paint. The transfers were applied over gloss black Halfords spray paint. The outer lining is white, so that I don't have to colour in the white edges of the transfer paper. I've got another loco I tried it on too, which didn't go quite as well, I'll show that later.

I've been threatening to make one of these for a while, must have finished the CAD about a year ago! A Fletcher Jennings/Lowca Class D (I think) - there are a couple of bits wrong with it, but as it's so long since I did the drawing, I can't remember what they were, and it looks good enough to me. Done in an experimental livery, this loco would have been swiftly renamed around 1914... Snowdown never had a Lowca, as far as I know, but I needed to pick somewhere local to the layout! Still needs coal, a crew, whistle, some weight and some hefty weathering.

Another wagon rolls off the production line, this time a D1419 van - I've based it on the 1874 Ashford-built ones (I think) without roof vents. It's fairly small compared to later wagons! Needs a few painted details picking out, and transfers - the normal ones I use are too big to fit correctly in the panels!

I say scrap in a slightly facetious way - I'd much rather they were available somewhere to see like this than actually being scrapped. Some were definitely beyond help though with the amount of bits rusted away - still useful as a modelling resource and for historical interest though.

I accidentally paid a visit to Threlkeld Quarry whilst the steam gala was warming up on Friday, I was expecting one loco in steam so was pleasantly surprised to find four! If you're into stuff that anyone in their right mind would call scrap (and I mean this in the nicest possible way!) then they have yards and yards of it, all over the place. Ideal for someone who's got a narrow gauge layout in the pipeline, I've taken loads of photos for detritus inspiration, and some more close ups of a BEV to revise my CAD drawing slightly.