HonestTom

More from the Port. Here are all the PLA wagons so far. All except the van and the wagon with the tarpaulin-covered load are Dapol, based on photos, many of which were kindly supplied by coline33. The other two wagons are educated guesses. Both are based on preserved ex-PLA stock, but as there were no photos of them in PLA livery that I could find at the time, I made the livery up using photos I did have as a rough guide. If you get close enough, you can also tell that I didn’t have a number for the van. The wagon with the packing cases is painted with a darker shade of red than the others - Citadel’s Khorne Red. I do not know what a khorne is, but apparently it’s darker than Vallejo’s orange red. If I do any more PLA wagons, which I almost certainly will, I may well come back to this colour.

Actually, here are my banana vans. They’re Dapol, with a paint job by myself. I wasn’t brave enough to do the wagon posters, though, so those are from Sankey Scenics. From normal viewing distance, you can't tell that the lettering doesn't quite say "BANANA" but is generally more along the lines of "BVIVIWI"

Hi Steve, many thanks. The red was actually Vallejo orange red (I think? I'll check when I get home). It may be a little light compared with the real livery, but the only contemporary colour images I've been able to find are in this video at about 2 minutes in. I think in reality, the red may have been a little browner, but not quite so brown as the Oxford wagons. I have a few other wagons in the works, so I might experiment with different shades of red. To be honest, though, I tend not to stress too much about getting wagon colours dead-on, as the various effects of age and weathering, lighting conditions, the fact that the works may only have been approximating the shades themselves and the reliability of memory mean that the "correct shade" for wagons seems to have been a largely theoretical concept. If you look at any colour photo of a goods train, you can see a whole variety of greys and browns, even when the wagons are nominally all the same colour. In fact, I recently completed a rake of banana vans where I've deliberately painted them different shades of brown.

The Hornby dropside wagon isn't a terrible match for a Lancashire and Yorkshire example, at least body-wise. The Triang closed van, the ex-Trackmaster one, has a body that is remarkably similar to a L&YR closed van. It needs the roof modifying and a sheet rail (?) added to the doors, and of course the chassis needs replacing, perhaps with a Dapol 9-foot example. See here for photos. And there's the old Hornby Hull & Barnsley van, but I've never seen any photos of the prototype to enable me to comment on the accuracy of this. Once again, it should fit pretty neatly on to a Dapol 9-foot chassis.

If I didn't know better, I'd think it was some Emett-esque flight of fancy. Great job!

I've never even heard of this loco before, but reading about it, I'm amazed I've never seen it modelled before now. It's such an unusual, characterful loco and makes a nice change from the endless parade of Glyn Valley tram engines (pushes GVT project out of sight).

That would be pretty cool, although I envisioned Beszel as being more Eastern European in feel (I've not seen the TV series, only read the book, so I don't know how the Beeb did it). I'm thinking along the lines of Russian or East German prototypes from the 60s and 70s still at work, while the more economically advanced Ul Qoma has state-of-the-art modern trains. You could include something like a customs point, or platforms at different levels, or even track of different gauges. Maybe you could have a cross-hatched bit with mixed gauge track, say Beszel using metre gauge while Ul Qoma is standard. Or perhaps even an entire cross-hatched station, with figures dressed in two different styles studiously ignoring each other, only reading one of the two train indicators, only looking at some of the adverts. Two lots of ticket inspectors with two queues of exiting commuters. It's funny, I never even thought about the rail aspect of that setting, but now you've got me thinking... I recently read up on the canonical information on the Hogwarts Express and all I can say is that while J K Rowling certainly knows her mythology and folklore, her knowledge of railways is not quite up there. The official explanation for the Hogwarts Express is that in 1825, wizards saw the potential for the new railways as a means of getting children to Hogwarts and in 1830, they stole the Hogwarts Express from Crewe Works. Apparently the muggle workers were very surprised, which I suppose they would be, having arrived at work ten years early. Personally, my "headcanon" (to use the Internet fandom terminology) is that the Hogwarts Express came along later in the 19th century or early 20th century, when there was a decent railway network for the wizards to take advantage of. It doesn't make much sense to use a train to get to Hogwarts before there's a railway for it to run on. If the locomotive is a Hall, then it's been magically enhanced in some way so as to be able to make the whole journey non-stop and also not to foul the platforms in Scotland. While we only see the train at the beginning and end of term, it runs at other times throughout the year to bring supplies to Hogsmeade and perform any other transportation duties for which the Floo network, broomsticks or airborne motor vehicles are unsuitable. There's a shunter at either end of the line and at least two main line locomotives. In the first book, Hermione mentions going to the front of the train and talking to the driver, which suggests to me that the locomotive has a corridor tender - if this is taken to be the case, then it would make a lot of sense for the Hogwarts Express to be hauled by an A3 or A4, which presumably the Minister for Magic was impressed by while waiting for the Express at King's Cross.

Or green tissue paper.

That's the sort! Many thanks, I'll give it a shot.

You might try Noch's range for the long leaf plants. For the algae on the river surface, an idea that springs to mind is the old style of scatter material - the dyed sawdust type.

Hi all, I've found myself somewhat stumped by Hornby's PO wagons, the short wheelbase wooden frame private owner ones from the 90s. I'm trying to remove the bodies, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how they're attached to the chassis. There are no fixing lugs or screws that I can see. Does anyone know how these things go together? Thanks in advance.

I'm almost certain the 0-6-0 and 0-4-0 clockwork Thomas had the same body - certainly they look identical to me in photos. They devised an 0-6-0 mechanism for a revamp of the range, but as far as I can tell, the body is identical. I can't imagine that Hornby considered it worth the cost of a total retool. One pitfall that now occurs to me is that the body does have a hole in the splasher for a key, so the ex-Great Race push-along Thomas may be the one to go for. Also watch out for the 0-4-0 electric Thomas, which Hornby produced for a battery-operated set. It's a pretty bad model of Thomas and just not a very good loco generally - firmly aimed at the toy end of the market. Why they didn't just put an electric chassis under the clockwork body, as with Percy, Bill, Ben and Toby, I cannot imagine. Now I come to think of it, I wonder if the electric Toby mechanism would fit under the clockwork Thomas body?

I have a suggestion that may be a little off the wall, but it always seemed to me that the Hornby clockwork Thomas was a far better match to the TV model than their electric model, and I also think it's a better match than the Bachmann one. As I see it, the major faults are that the whistles are painted on to the cab rather than separate fittings and the face doesn't have moving eyes (but is, again, a much better sculpt than the electric Hornby or Bachmann versions). They used the same bodyshell for the push-along model that came in the Great Race train set, and it can be obtained pretty cheaply second hand. If you don't mind the lack of moving eyes, it seems to me that the main issue is the whistle. I don't know what's commercially available that's a good match, but as the body is self-coloured, you could probably remove the painted-on version with T-Cut. I should point out that I don't know how well the Bachmann chassis would fit into the Hornby body, so this whole idea may be foolishness incarnate, but it's a suggestion.

Don't know a scale use, but when a vital yet tiny component pings off my model into the darkest recesses of the room for the third time I swear this thing is cursed, it's quite therapeutic to pop the bubbles...

The great attraction for me is the "I did that" factor. One of the projects I have in the works consists of marrying a Hornby Railroad Class 08 body to a Lima chassis. Will the result compare to the current super-detailed Bachmann or Hornby versions? It probably won't even come close, but at least I can say I have something that's my own work. Price is also a factor. For instance, Heljan do the Park Royal railbus, but there's also a very venerable Dapol kit. I like the Park Royal railbus, but it's not really what I would consider an essential model for any of my current layout plans. I'd rather put the cost of the Heljan version towards something more essential. Therefore, my railbus is a Dapol kit on a Lima chassis, the whole thing costing less than £20. Having just found an old Bachmann 03, I'm planning on doing something similar with a Silver Fox Class 05. Finally, there's the question of patience. I'd like an LSWR road van for my Port of London Authority layout, and I have no doubt that the Kernow version will be a superb model, but apparently it's not even being tooled until this autumn. However, the Smallbrook Studio one costs a pound less, is easy to assemble and is available now. Either way, I'll have to repaint it, so I'll be getting the Smallbrook one.

Alright, time for some freelancing. This was my attempt to turn the old Triang brake van into something a bit fancier. Modifications consist of a chimney made from styrene tube, handrails made from staples and a few bits of styrene strip just to disguise its origins a bit. LD stands for London and Dockland, the freelance company that, in my fictional universe, was formed from an amalgamation of the North London Railway, the East London Railway and the London and Blackwall Railway.

What I like about these is that the modifications to the Bachmann diesel and Percy bring them very much in line, stylistically, with the fireless engines. It makes them look like they've all been modified by the same workshop.

Here’s a quick modification I did. Basically I wanted to see what would happen if I put an old Triang 16 ton mineral wagon body on a newer Hornby chassis and gave it a go with the old paintbrush. I’m actually quite happy with the result. I know the basic model is crude and under scale length, but as my original plan was to use it on a very short micro, the reduced length was a bonus.

Hi all. I thought it was about time I started one of these things for my various bashes, repaints, modifications and other such fun things. To start us off, here's something from my current project. It's a Dapol 5-plank wagon painted up into Port of London Authority livery. This is a very low-tech job - the lettering is by hand and the weathering is done using a wash of watercolour, a brown watercolour crayon for the rust and some black eyeshadow from my local pound shop. I have a couple more PLA wagons about to be rolled out - I added loads and I'm just waiting for the glue to dry. My current project in the planning stages is a Port of London micro-layout, having been inspired by explorations around the Docklands on foot and by rail, and given impetus by a gift of a PLA-liveried Janus shunter. More to follow shortly...

I was recently introduced to something called Nuln Oil (Gloss) from Citadel. It's a kind of black wash that dries shiny, and I find it pretty good for the greasy spot on wagon buffers.

This is why I really hope Bachmann takes over the UK Thomas licence from Hornby. I can think of a dozen uses for the Percy chassis alone.

Does anyone do a 4mm Spider-Man figure? There's your solution.

I've always rather liked the Madder Valley because, for all it was freelance, it had a feeling of realism. I actually bought a couple of Aherne's books second-hand recently, partly because I just liked looking at his work. One that recently inspired me was Peter Denny's Leighton Buzzard. Specifically, I was very impressed by the standards of modelling he'd achieved despite having no access to the range available to modellers today. In turn, it inspired me to get more into repainting and scratchbuilding, which I'd always found intimidating.

I remember when I was a kid, I thought my second-hand Triang L1 was the best thing ever, and had no hesitation running it alongside more modern models. I think the same could be said for a lot of kids and others on a low budget who are prepared to ignore the shortcomings for the sake of a cheap addition to their incipient fleet. That being said, prices have gone down on a lot of them. I remember in the 90s, when there was precious little Southern and detail standards were lower, the old M7 would regularly go for the thick end of £100. These days, £30 or less is not unusual at swapmeets.

I tend to be a fairly impressionistic modeller. My view is that if I can look at a model and can't spot anything wrong with it without consulting reference material, then it's fine. So something like a Triang Princess, with its stubby body, moulded detail, solid wheels and crude livery isn't something I could live with. However, I'm told that my Janus is not quite right for that particular livery, and that's fine - I can't tell what the problem is off the top of my head, but it's still a nicely detailed model that looks fine alongside other modern locomotives. No doubt if I compared it to photos, I'd see what the problem was, but I'm happy with blissful ignorance.