25kV

I believe they're all scrapped, after many years being stored out of use. But would be happy to be wrong! Pic by John Stein on Flickr.

"Which of us d'you reckon will have the shorter working life?"

I'd say the feline stubbornness is ultra realistic! 😉

<tangent type="headcode"> On the subject of headcode panels vs liveries, here's one in the opposite direction - 83012 managed to retain its four-digit headcode panel while wearing InterCity Executive livery, albeit that the blinds themselves were often wound to "white" or had come adrift. Not bad for 1988. 😉 Photo by Albert Murray on Flickr. </tangent>

I poured the gloop into a plastic tub deep enough to submerge both bodies, and have been able to reuse it after leaving with a lid on it - fumes weren't very potent from this particular brand, so I assumed they'd be ineffective. The dissolved paint obviously stays in the stripper, but it still seemed effective second time around. I don't know how many uses one might get, though there are a couple of YouTube videos that suggest multiple times for similar products, if kept sealed. As it's been a few weeks since I last used it, maybe I'll drop a couple more bodies in and report back!

To remove paint from a couple of die cast loco bodies I tried out Bartoline "Paint Predator" recently. This was off the shelf from Homebase, and doesn't appear to be too toxic from the package labelling. Before, during, and after. (See this comment for what was going on here.) The bodies were submerged in the gloop for about half an hour, which lifted the majority of the paint, before being scrubbed with a toothbrush to loosen more. Another half an hour shifted all but a couple of stubborn corners, which were easily poked out. Rinsed down with plenty of water afterwards and left to dry.

One final view on the test track, just to prove it does actually move under its own power! 😉

It would also have established the operating pattern for when the Mk4s were introduced, and HST power was not an option. I remember the 47 drags - usually Generators - back in the early 1990s. They made quite the contrast with the then brand-new 91s/Mk4s was quite something - you could even make out the D numbers under the paint on a few of them!

Thanks! The 105 is very lightweight, and was basically just floating - the trailer cars are fairly weighty, so it's not very surprising!. Seems much happier now though, with a few more g over the powered bogie.

Matchbox Digression In the opening post of this thread, I mentioned the origins of my fictional railway network: at around eight or nine years old, a schoolfriend and I created an imaginary railway on the closed line between Chorley and Cherry Tree, and used our joint collections of Matchbox push-along die cast locos and stock as the operating fleet. At the time I noticed that the flangeless wheels were just about OO gauge, and at a pinch, you could balance a loco on OO track... but they'd fall off at the first hint of motion. Even back then I toyed with the idea of somehow fitting OO gauge wheels so that they could be pushed along on my model railway, however it was not within my means to make such modifications at the time. One might argue that it still isn't, but... The Matchbox "Rail Freight" diesel was issued in metallic green and later yellow - these somewhat rough examples were selected to donate their bodies to science, along with a third that my dad had presented me with as an amusing retrospective gift a few years ago. And the experiment? Motorising two of them - one for 009, and one for OO. First things first, the bodies were drilled apart, and dunked in some gloop to strip the remnants of paint off. While that was going on, I scoured available motors/chassis, and Halling of Austria seemed to offer the easiest option with their Vario V3 bogie. Two of the underframes were selected for attacking with a Dremel, making a slot sufficiently wide to fit the barrel of the motor through. As it happens, the built-in struts on the motor bogies were a perfect height to rest the underframe directly on. The wheelbase is about 2mm shorter than the Matchbox original wheels, but it's not obvious behind the cast axleboxes. OO and OO9 motors fixed in place with a spot of superglue, and underframes given a bit of matt black. And that's as complicated as it gets. I've not messed with couplings yet, except to add a temporary wire loop for the 009 model. The bodies were given an initial coat of paint, then stripped off again when I didn't like it, and started again. Here's the 009 body, which also had the raised chevrons filed off both ends, and a bit of plasticard added to the front radiator to form a whisker-like bit of styling. It's a little chunky compared to the other 009 locos and vehicles, but fits through all the infrastructure, and hauls almost anything. Meanwhile, the OO bodies received a couple of different liveries. Back in the day, my friend and I created classes 18 and 19 for our fleet under the BR TOPS numbering system - the 19s were distinguishable by their wasp nose ends, while the 18s never had this feature. So for tradition's sake, and to feel like a kid again, 19016 was hand painted into Humbrol No 3 (the usual for our fleet back in 1980) while the other body has become the first class 18 to receive "North Central" black and silver. 😉 Classes 18 and 19 are not shunters in the official North Central numbering system, but in this instance, I'm going with tradition and happy memories. Of course, I only have one powered OO underframe, but therein lies the fun part - having drilled the bodies off in the first place, they can now be slid off and swapped onto the same powered underframe in a couple of seconds. Here both locos speed past the Class 22 construction project. More of which will be coming shortly! </digression>

Argh! Best laid plans and all... Despite having tested the railcar up some fairly steep gradients, it wasn't possible to combine gradients with curves on my test set-up, so upon arrival at Little Langdale, the first ascent of the hill resulted in a lot of wheel spinning and not a lot of forward motion. Even without the "bonus" trailer car, things were not moving on up. In addition, the driving trailers kept jumping the rails at a couple of spots where the first radius curves had been laid a little too tightly - slightly kinked at the joins. This meant the bogies, which were fine with unkinked first radius curves, were reaching their rotation limits under the bodyside skirts, and derailing. So the whole train returned to the workbench, where the outer corners of each trailer bogie were carved off to give an extra few degrees of swing inside the skirts. Meanwhile, the motor car was dismantled, and extra weights added over the power bogie. Following another test run this morning, the railcar successfully made several circuits running with just the two driving trailers (this had been the original intention anyway, so no huge loss to run as a two car set). It can just about make it with the extra trailer, but struggles a little at the top of the hill. Anyway - here it is in its new home: Passing the stone circle as the rubber-tyred version of the railcar stops to set down tourists. Pulling into Elterwater station. The trailer car gets a spin out behind Prince! And finally, just to prove it just about can, the whole set up by the quarry.

This is definitely a scene from Dr Who, "The Green Death".

Those were lurking in the back of my mind when I was trying to decide how to "style" the vehicles as 1950s-built. Albeit in my case not repurposing buses, but seeing what might happen if a coachbuilder was to build railcar bodies in a similar style.

Wow yes - there's a similarity! Though I would say the Pier trains look more like cut-and-shut Blackpool Coronation trams! 😉

Excellent subversion there!

Going Around the Bend With the replacement underframe in place, the cabless trailer now swings nicely on first radius 009 curves. Uh oh... Painted into a Corner Because the bus bodies were moulded in clear plastic, I was reluctant to dunk them in anything to remove the existing paint, just in case the glazing took a hit somehow - especially since I wanted to keep the printed window frames and cream window pillars of the existing bus paint schemes. So after various methods to remove the printed details on the bodyside came to nought, I decided to thoroughly mask the windows, and spray white primer across everything below them (bus upper, plus scratch-built lower), then top-coat with Ribble Bus Cream. My first mistake was to use a trick I'd seen elsewhere, of lightly painting along the masking tape edge with the colour one wants under the masking tape (which in this case, was the same colour I wanted outside the masking tape). So I touched in a line of cream, left 24 hours, discovered it was still sticky, and waited again. Eventually it seemed to have set - but it probably hadn't, as the primer spray reacted with it, causing it to curl and fragment, leaving the bodysides in a horrible mess (prediction #1!). I left everything a couple of days to set, then sanded it all back, trying not to catch the windows in the process - though now the bodysides were much more uneven than I'd started out with. I also ran out of primer, and the "next day" delivery of more seemed to have taken a week to arrive until I happened to look in the garden tool box outside the front door to find it had been stashed there by the postie some 6 days previous. The primer went on OK this time, followed by a brushed coat or two of the cream. This is the state of play with the masking tape removed, prior to painting the roofs and raised bands. BUT. If you look closely, you'll notice that in a couple of places, the cream below the windows has literally peeled off the primer as the masking was removed. More areas flaked off shortly afterwards. So pop went my ideas of masking over the cream, using a darker spray primer for the roof and bands, and spraying everything green. After removing the worst of the peeling cream, I repainted it by hand again, and hoped for the best. Curiously, the cream only peeled from the primer on the areas from the bus bodies - my lower body extensions did not suffer in the same way, so I can only conclude some kind of weird over-smoothness to the upper body plastic, that caused the primer to also somehow be over smooth... I have no idea. Anyway, having noticed that the lower body wasn't peeling, I felt confident that I could mask the cream down there ... and eventually just went ahead and masked both sides of the waist band. Naturally after painting it green and removing the masking, vast areas of upper body cream also peeled straight off again. 😐 By this time I'd stopped caring, creamed by hand for a third time, masked the lower band, painted it green, and then reverted to childhood and simply hand-painted the roofs without masking or priming. Fortunately Humbrol No. 3 is still the best, and covered in a couple of coats. Unfortunately during the earlier priming, some of the white had escaped under the masking and deposited itself on the glazing. Various chemicals and processes were tried out to remove it from the windows, which successfully removed the printed window frames, but not the primer overspray. So this was chipped off with the tip of a knife, but naturally left a mark and some misting of the glass. So now the paintwork has reached catastrophic mess proportions, meeting prediction #2! Apparently no black lining pens exist north of Dundee, so the missing window frames were put back in using a very fine brush and a nearly, but not quite, steady hand. Fortunately silver lining pens do exist, and thus the silver frames and silver lining below the roof could be reapplied where necessary. Drawing a Line The silver lining pen was additionally used to add a silver line under the windows (a styling feature of the Roadmaster bodywork), and to paint the windscreen dividing strips. Despite the masking between cream and green stripes on the lower body, leaks had occurred, and some amount of unevenness was obvious on all vehicles. Some delicate touching up led to an ever decreasing circle of overpainting with green and overpainting with cream until madness began to set it. Eventually my rational brain told me to stop and be happy with it. It is not going to be perfect, so just move on. All Aboard! Interiors were attached to underframes, drivers added to both driving trailer cabs, and a guard to the motor coach cab in the middle. I printed out some decals, which eventually worked reasonably well - glad I made twice as many as I needed... (Please pay no attention to the masking disasters.) And with the bodies stuck onto the underframes, the railcar was declared "done". Shiny! If it were for my layout, I'd probably run over it with some semi-gloss varnish, and add a bit of weathering, but it's not, so for now at least it's going to be very shiny and new. Sadly, it's not as neat as I'd anticipated or hoped, but such is life, and once it's over on my dad's railway, hopefully the more egregious rough edges will disappear into the scenery. The plan is to take it over this evening, where a couple more photos will no doubt be taken and added here.

While I spotted one of your buildings in a "realistic models" thread last year, I somehow have completely missed this and your other thread since then! I've lived up here since '93 and so this is all very familiar - fantastic models, totally capturing the GNSR look and feel. Aboyne station is phenomenal. Seeing the Dyce-based signalbox (now sadly demolished as part of the re-doubling and resignalling) reminded me of one evening back in 1997, waiting there for my train home, when a southbound log train pulled in opposite and paused to wait for the northbound to pass. A bloke walked onto the platform, pointed at the logs, and asked me, "Is that going to Aberdeen?" I looked at him quizzically and said, "Well, it's going in the direction of Aberdeen but ..." "That'll do," he quipped. At that moment, the signal cleared for the single line section (oh great - my train is gonna be late), and he jumped off the platform, crossed the nearest track, clambered up onto one of the log wagons as it started to move, and sequestered himself between two of the log stacks. "I really wouldn't do that!" I yelled - he just grinned as the train accelerated. I jogged down to the signal box, ascended the many stairs and knocked. The signalman was somewhat surprised to have a visitor, but I let him know about the unofficial passenger, and left it to the railway authorities to take any appropriate action. And that's my story about Dyce signal box. 😉 I hope none of those stacks shifted!

Yep - and at the moment, there are a few ScotRail liveried ones thrown into the mix too! 😁

I've had a pile of supers delivered this morning - thanks to recent posters in this thread for finding out the sizes and giving them a try! I probably won't modify the set I've completed (gangway relocation for the oil-drum cap), but it will hopefully make the next set much easier to fix up. 🙂 👍

You definitely need to find these and post! I also almost never painted aircraft kits! I'd sometimes add the waterslide transfers, and very occasionally would add a stripe or something to the bare plastic, but that was usually the extent. I'll add my own Airfix Mk2 D thing at some point. I'm not quite sure what it is, but it deserves an airing here. 😉

In its first period of operation, it tended to run with a rake of HST Mk3s, rather than loco-hauled, often with a buffer-fitted power car at one end and barrier/generator BG at the other. A couple of examples from Flickr: (Michael Barstow) (BillAtkinson2)

Before the Mk4s were in traffic this was a common formation. If I recall correctly, the HST power cars were set up to operate in multiple with the 91s, rather than just providing ETS, leading to some spirited accelerations!

There are at least two threads for our most realistic models and scenes, but how about one for all those crazy bits of modelling we've done that would alarm the purists? I know - all model railways are unrealistic to some extent through their nature - curve radii, length compression, you name it, but this is for the more egregious examples. Share anything where realism has gone out of the window - where you've never sought it, abandoned it entirely, or just never attained it despite your best efforts. Show us your favourite Rule 1 moments, your model railway anachronisms, your geographical mislocations, your weathering gone mad, your spurious paint schemes, kitbashed conversions, scale discrepancies, project disasters, insane undergrowth, cat incursions, fantasy creations, foreign interlopers, six-track single-bore tunnels, or even just silly photos you've taken of your stuff in unexpected or unlikely situations ... In fact anything railway-model-related that you've made or run or combined that is definitely not realistic, but which makes you smile and adds some fun and enjoyment to the hobby. Stuff you wouldn't normally post in any "serious" topics about your layouts or workbenches. 😉 (But please do link to your serious threads too, for academic cross-referencing purposes.) To get the wheels turning, here's an icon of the 1980s clogging up the 2'3" pointwork at Elterwater shed in 1956. (I'd taken my weathered Class 370 pair to show my dad last month, and his 009 layout was the only place to lay it out. It would have been criminal not to grab a shot or two.) Followed by a very fine attempt at modernising a Class 101 unit, from earlier in my lifetime - my painting skills knew no bounds in those days (I'd run out of rub-on regular sized numbers, so the vehicle ID, "M99999" was applied using headcode-panel numerals towards the rear - very stylish).

There was a side view in MRP Profile 7, but also this in Marsden's "The AC Electrics" , the caption for which suggests that a SR-style 2-digit headcode system was proposed for a period. The mock-up is from 1957, and its Southern counterpart appears to be lurking in the background. 😉

The original intent (at least according to a wooden cab mock-up, built before the locos themselves) was to have the route indicator in the middle window, class 302-style, and a flush nose below.