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Monday night at the club gave us a photo opportunity, to photograph Andy's cracking kit built GNR C12 on the layout and four of the Howldens I have 3d printed up for the layout, only another three to build!! Thanks kevin some great shots of the layout, still lots to do, but nice to see a bit of progress.

Looks like a cracking line up Mark, Sadly it is a little too far for me :( , as I especially wanted to see Norwich Central, I don't suppose you know if they are exhibiting this layout anywhere else in the future? Many thanks Rob

Some pre Teaked photos capturing the process used to teak these coaches. Halfords matt yellow primer 1 to 1 mix of Vallejo Orange Brown and Bright Orange for the base coat thinly applied over the Matt primer yellow Some panels picked out in a slightly darker shades and lighter shades for that varied panelled finish, and with a coat of pledge clear floor polish sploshed over the top ready for the oil paint. After this I will use a medium flat brush and lightly wash some Vandyke Brown oil over the top of this to create the graining effect. I keep working the grain until I am happy with the effect, the beauty of oil paints are you have a long working time, and should you not be happy you can remove it with thinners or turps and it will not destroy your acrylic base layers below. For the full explanation see Mikes excellent thread below detailing the process he uses, and the one of which I have adopted for painting these coaches so thanks Mike for sharing :)

Cheers James, and yes I have been some what slack on the ole 4mm stuff lately, as soon as i do I will ping you sir, I still want to have a crack at those LCDR coaches as well at some point, as they look lovely! But as soon as i finish these im going to get cracking on the LBSC 6 wheeler Billinton's all being well.

So another coach to add to the mix, not quite half way yet, but have added a 6 compartment third to the mix. I have also thanks to Mike's keen eyes fixed the teaking on the beading that runs along the roof channel. Next up is the 6 wheel full brake, followed by a 5 compartment third, 5 compartment comp, and a first class lavatory coach to complete the rake. The lovely Mr Ian MacCormac has sent me some fantastic transfers for these coaches I can't wait to apply they are absolutely fantastic so thanks buddy I owe you big time! Im wondering also whether I should run a gloss varnish over these Howldens, out shopped they would have been very shiny indeed, they will need weathering down a bit, once the transfers are on.

Mike apologies only just noticed you had posted these fantastic pictures of those lovely LNWR 6 wheelers, they are indeed a thing of beauty, absolutely stunning work. I can't thank you enough for sharing, and very inspirational! I will never be able to achieve this standard of finish in my life time, but is so good to have something to aspire to, and strive to work towards. I plan to make some LNWR 6 wheelers at some point in my lifetime, but I suspect they will be the very last thing I attempt as that livery amazingly intricate and involved to paint, but is one of my all time favourites. Cracking stuff thanks for sharing Cheers Rob

Cheers Mike, so a bit more Teaking to do then :)

Finished the lav comp yesterday for the time being, besides transfers and coupling hooks that is, plus a bit of subtle weathering once the transfers are on. I took these two coaches down the club last night to test on the track curves and points, and was kindly informed we now need a rake of 7 instead of the 5 coaches I had initially planned for the club layout!!!! Good job im enjoying painting all this teaking! Hoping to document Mikes fantastic Teaking process with the Third im putting together next.

hello folks I thought I would post some shots of the wall mold we have made at the club, and the corresponding cast sections for the layout above. It took us a wee while to completely get to grips with casting if completely honest. None of us had done any casting before so good old Youtube is where we turned to gain knowledge! The first few attempts weren't bad, but not marvellous either if I am totally honest, and we found we had a lot of trapped air bubbles in the resin resulting in quite a pitted final effect once the wall section had set. But literally by accident and more for economic reasons as the first lot of resin we acquired for the job was quite expensive, so we trialled a more cost effective solution and invested in a 5kilo tin of water clear cast resin from CFS as we have near 30 of these wall sections we need to cast off for the layout! This resin takes a lot longer to cure, I would say on average over night and the section sets solid, as opposed to 15mins beforehand for the more expensive quick setting resin we used previously. This slower setting resin allowed us to chase out the air bubbles once we have poured into the resulting mold, it doesn't take long around 5 - 10mins of chasing them out with a small wooden stirrer run across the bottom of the mold to release all the bubbles, and the result gives us a pretty faithful cast from the original section we made as the master. Here is the silicone mold we made Resulting casts from the above mold An earlier test section I painted up.

Next up im hoping to work on this Lav comp, which is slightly longer than the other coaches I have planned in the rake

Thought I would start a thread to document my progress on building a rake of GNR Howlden coaches in 7mm for the club's layout. Having had a stab at some GER 6 and 4 wheel coaches I wanted to try something a little different and a bit more ambitious this time as it involves practising some lining techniques, previously not required on the varnished GER stock I built. So I built the CAD models well over a year ago for the Howlden 6 wheel coaches, but at the time didn't have a printer large enough to realise them in 7mm, and since building the GER coaches I have certainly learnt a lot in the process of making them. So I have revisited the CAD models since then, the geometry needed cleaning up in places, and I have added some details and fixed a few mistakes, of which im sure there are probably many more ;) so starting with the GNR 3 compartment brake third I have split this up into separate parts to print off. The buffers, vac pipes, and some handrails. the body, solebars and roof are all separately printed, and assembled once painted. I have put this one together as I was keen to get one coach to a reasonably finished standard to see what was involved. I still have the transfers to sort out, but will show more in progress shots of the Lav comp I am currently working on. Apologies for any duplication I currently have in my workbench thread in 3d printing. The teaking is the school of Mike Trice, so kudos has to go to him for his excellent method of applying teak to models. More to follow soon as I build the rest of the rake Cheers Rob

Agreed with PhilH it is one of those each to their own, and what works in their experience! But to answer some of those points Phil quite rightly points out. I drain my tanks because I don't print every day, and I have screen protectors on my screens incase of spilling resin, which wipes away quite easily with some Isopropyl alcohol if I do spill the odd drop removing the vat. I often prefer to drain the vat and check for the occasional bit of debris or stuck print to the FEP, which does happen from time to time, especially on the larger printers. As a result I have been cleaning my FEPs regularly after every print, with Isopropyl alcohol, and then using a coat of dry PTFE spray on the FEPs to help reduce any chances of the print getting stuck to the FEP. I don't use this on the smaller printers, or medium printers, just large printers as I find this more of an issue! Trust me large printers are a different kettle of fish I have found, you are dealing with much greater suction issues, and having both the M3 Max and Phrozen Mega I find you need all the help you can get, and dialling in the correct resin settings is crucial to getting successful prints, and even then it is a bit of a luck ;) Cheers Rob

Cheers Ian, good to hear from you, hope you doing well? And that is fantastic news, your transfers are outstanding sir :) They made my GER coaches can't thank you enough. I have been having a bit of a printagheddon with this stuff these past few months, however I think im starting to understand the finer nuances of using these larger printers, so will have a go at that LBSC Double ended brake again for you next week, I do have a partly printed Stroudley brake for you as so will try to finish that off too.

I drain and clean my VAT after every print, and have started experimenting with some dry PTFE spray on the large printers due to excessive suction forces from the larger prints. I find the smaller, medium size resin printers are absolutely fine as long as you angle and support the prints well enough!. But back to the topic in hand I find keeping a good clean FEP, and filter my resin after every print helps to keep things mostly in good order. But its whatever works for you and your workflow!

Finally gotten round to painting up my 7mm Howlden, only another 5 to build :)

Some Water/river tests I have been working on for the Clubs layout Oakbourne

Thanks Delta_Who So I create the bricks/stone individually as a section of wall in 3d, then place them on the models and cut them to fit, after which I export the stone work into Z Brush and sculpt into them a little, adding in any damage or texture to the stone, but it is very subtle. Hope that helps, it is a bit of a long process, but worth it for getting the extra detail I find.

Separate little diorama I knocked up for the corner of my dads MR a few years back, he wanted a church, so I 3d printed this. It is a bit rough round the edges in terms of 3d printing technology advancements today with resin printing, but wasn't bad for an ageing FDM printer at the time. Anyway church of Lower Grampton. Service has just finished, and a couple of locals are catching up whilst the Vicar talks to the usual lingering candidates! Sun streams through the trees in the morning Old Bob has just finished paying his respects Shot from the tower front, showing the drystone wall that runs alongside the track bed

Not quite in the railway modelling arena, but i thought I would include it as im hoping to start printing this next week in 1/56th scale for a large diorama board im building. It is a real church in France, Saint Mere Eglise, however I have created a fictional ruined version for fun, and visual interest as it will hopefully be the centre piece for my board. Looking forward to getting back to printing some scenery again! Excuse the school boy error of the roof truss cutting across the rather high internal arch. Something i need to fix :)

I agree it is such a shame we have lost so much by the blip now, that most threads sadly don't make a lot of sense without the images

Next 7mm loco all being well will be this L77 (N7) number 1001 in GER Blue.

Great Eastern Third six wheeler to go with this little Buckjumper, hopefully when my printers are not playing up I will print some more coaches to go with this third

Some earlier images showing the 3d print just primed

I figured i would consolidate my 3d printing and modelling efforts into one thread now, and just update this rather than my several threads I seem to have kicking around the halls of RMweb. So I have finally gotten round to finishing off the S56 in 7mm, this is my first loco build, all besides a chip and loco crew! I hope to improve my lining skills as I move onto the next project, primarily built for the exhibition layout that the ESMRC are currently working on. The body currently sits on top of a Dapol 7mm Terrier chassis, and screws directly into this chassis using the Dapol screws. I am hoping to add sound at some point, along with finishing off the 6 wheel GER coaches to accompany this little loco. A fun project to build, I am now hoping to start work on a L77 (N7) number 1001 in GER Blue all being well, so providing my printers aren't all throwing wobblers which they appear to be these past few weeks I hope to get cracking on that next! Strange how you can be printing along all fine an dandy and then Boom! Sorry Printer says No! exact same settings as before, but now its having none of it..... Some kind of 3d printing Voodoo is all I can put it down to! Cheers Rob

Those coaches are indeed absolutely cracking!