Adam FW

More wagon weathering, but more recent this time, only a couple of weeks old. I decided I wanted to experiment with texture paints and dry brushing so bought a pot of citadels typhus corrosion. I started out with an GWR 6 wheel brake van which I’d already repainted black and another 16t wagon I applied the texture paint lightly to the brakevans metal panels, wanting to make it look like something worn out and uncared with rust blistering through the paint in patches. Meanwhile the 16t wagon got 2 heavier coats in larger splotches both were then dry brushed, they are awaiting weathering powders and I need to repair one of rails on the brake van which got snagged on something

very nice, do you have any photos of the installation? I have a modified Hornby J94 with a different tank set up so I'd be interested to see how the electronics fit before taking the plunge as mine may have to be a bit different Also which of the HM7000 sound files did you use?

More of my old modelling, this time wagon weathering. before exhibiting my layout for the first time last month I realised that although it looked grubby and industrial. The effect was lost with my pristine wagons. Starting with 5 steel bodied wagons I decided to rectify this. 3 of the wagons already had some factory rust effects but they looked bad. In the first image below the one on the left is original and the right is after me adding rust and coal dust effects with powders and a tamiya weathering set trying to tone down the rust splotches the other 2 wagons are these 16T slope sided wagons which were pristine. The final wagon for now is a kit built ratio gunpowder van. This one came with preprinted sides which was nice. The weathering is supposed to be a bit more subtle than the previous ones as I doubt a gunpowder van would be allowed to deteriorate too much. This has some light rust effects using some texture paint and dry brushing, but predominantly has been made grubbier with black and greys

I agree the real loco wouldn’t haul much but it would have been nice if this model could haul a second wagon so it could attempt some light shunting. I haven’t made the stl available anywhere and I don’t intend to sell this one as a kit either, it was a nightmare to print and relies on too many specific and hard to come by components. I do have plans for the 3D files though. I’d love to scale it up to 7mm and have the fly wheel rotating, working gear driven axles and some moving valve gear. The model is good enough for it to scale up and still look detailed I just haven’t had the will to do it yet

Another bit of my un-posted modelling work from the past few months. I designed, printed and built a 4mm scale Aveling and Porter Sirapite on a custom 3D printed chassis a couple of years ago now, it's never been very good at anything besides looking good but I'm very proud of it. It is only driven on the front axle, and the rear axle no longer has pickups as they dragged too much. Only 2 pickups meant it ran horribly, so it gained a match truck with pickups from a Hornby Ruston. It now had 6 pickups but had no power to pull anything beyond the match truck. Well I finally had a chance to work on it and get it running well, tweaking the pickups, cleaning it and oiling it and it was faultlessly running laps of my club's OO layout. It remained feeble, but it worked, had vastly improved slow running performance and people loved seeing a tiny loco being dwarfed by the small wagon it was hauling Then it got knocked off a table in the clubroom and broke into many pieces: the picture above may not make it look too bad, just a broken running board and a missing buffer. But the smokebox is in 4 pieces, held together only by bent wire, both front and rear buffer beams had snapped, the boiler and smokebox had separated and 2 of the 3 body to chassis mounts had also snapped. Both sandboxes had flown off and couldn't be found along with one of the buffers. Thankfully the chassis and drivetrain came out unscathed Gluing all the broken bits back together and it looked like this: Thank goodness for brittle 3D printed resin, there was next to no deformation of the bits so most joints were clean. I then printed out some new buffers and sandboxes, painted them, glued them on and did some touch up painting: with the exception of the join lines on the running board I'm pretty chuffed with the repair job. hopefully I don't have to do this again

With Dubsy looking much improved with some crew added my open cab locos really needed some love as well. Firstly my Neilson 0-4-0 ogee tank based on the High Harrington Ironworks loco and running on a Hattons Barclay chassis, this is a chunky 0-4-0 loco Being a completely cabless loco installing the crew was much easier than on the crane tank, the big backwall was also beneficial as the crew are glued to it as well as the cab floor. My final cabless loco is good old Corsair a freelance Manning Wardle based off Aldwyth and Sharpthorn and running on a cut up Terrier chassis. I think this was the 5th ever loco I ever designed and built and a big step up over my previous work acting as a test bed for a lot of my 3D printing ideas. Since I last posted on here it's been DCC fitted which frankly made it uncontrollable (acceleration was far too fast) until I tweaked the CV settings. As with the other locos this is fitted with Dart Casting white metal figures I think they look pretty good together

Another quick project from my posting backlog is my Dubs crane tank, affectionately known as Chubsy, because to make it fit the Dapol B4 chassis I had to make it a bit bigger than it's basis dubsy would be. A while ago it suffered some damage in transit and jib broke in half, an easy super glue repair and it was good to go again which was vital as my layout is built to fit Chubsy, so it was regularly used to gauge clearances It then got to appear alongside some Railway Mania kits on Bob Edwardes' stunning M Shed layout at the Yate model railway show, dwarfed by Bob's own quayside cargo cranes But something was missing, firstly some beautifully painted Dart Casting white metal loco crew figures: And then some etched Dubs builders plates from Light Railway Stores to finish it off Although not much use on my layout, this model is regularly sitting pretty with it's jib posed on the canalside siding, or shunting wagons of pit props around

Thanks Dave, It's not a Sharp locomotive, it's actually a Rennie 2-2-2, and is a 3D print I designed. The story behind the loco is that my layout Erebus Pit is partially themed around the Franklin Expedition with lots of small and not so small nods to it. That loco is Croydon, one of the most likely locos used as an engine aboard HMS Erebus or Terror to make them early steam ships (more info here: http://erebusandterrorfiles.blogspot.com/2010/07/archimedes-and-croydon-engines-of.html ), and here it sits abandoned as the old pit engine with bits missing. Eventually I will print another which will run on the layout, but I didn't have time to get that up together but did have time to make a scrap one on a frame instead and I'll be posting more about both on my workbench thread at some point

Onto the next bit of the modelling backlog, back in December I bought a job lot of whitemetal lorries, A complete painted Thornycroft, A painted but damaged and incomplete Foden 6 wheel steam lorry and an unbuilt 1911 Daimler. The Daimler is still unbuilt as I don't have a use for it The Thornycroft meanwhile was filthy, but it was well painted even though it's GWR decals were peeling off. So step 1 was to clean it, then take off the rest of the the peeling decals, touch-up any damaged paint resulting in one lovely little lorry The Foden was more involved. It was missing the complete front axle assembly, along with it's chimney, the cab was bent and like the Thornycroft it's GWR decals were coming off. So I 3D printed some new bits, fortunately I had another whitemetal Foden which didn't need it's front axle as I'm converting it to RC (more on that another time) and I used it's wheels and chimney to measure up and design replacement 3D printed parts for the six wheeler. I bent the cab back into shape and redid some of the paintwork I printed off quite a lot of spare front and rear wheels for the Foden as they may come in handy for the RC one, but some have now been painted up and placed as scrap near the narrow gauge track on my layout

That might be where I borrowed it from, we were both at the Nailsea Model Railway exhibition over the weekend operating my layout, the green saddle tank Perseus is one of his few DCC fitted locos so it had some good running on Sunday with the Sudrian takeover he instigated.

It has been a very long time since I posted anything on here and I’ve been doing a lot of modelling over the past few months, it’s just mostly been restricted to my layout and I haven’t felt that enthused about posting on rmweb for some reason. So I think I’ll dump a load of modelling updates over the coming weeks, a mix of new 3D designs, 3D printing, some early attempts at weathering and work on the layout Firstly the big SCOW Bagnall Railway Mania kit. This was never supposed to be a full working model, just a test bench to see if the valve gear etch was correct so the cheapest J94 chassis around was used for it. Then it became the first full build and never ran well with constant gear skipping and many awful noises. So I bought a newer chassis and swapped the gears and motor over. I also redid the strangely routed wiring which went under the gears and now it runs brilliantly. I was going to swap wheel sets as the newer locos have smaller wheel flanges, but the axle setup was different and seemed to lack the sprung middle axle so that can wait for another day It was also sadly damaged when someone picked it up from the smokebox end of the tank which wasn’t screwed down and snapped the bunker off the cab, which was screwed down. That damage has been patched but it needs a coal load added to hide the join line and finally here it is on shunting duty on my layout this past weekend

Both myself and @Corbsare now recovering from the Nailsea show. It was a brilliant experience bringing my layout along to its first exhibition and it was great to meet and chat to so many people interested in what we had done and quite a lot of modellers who had made some of our Railway Mania kits and even someone who had built up the daunting big Bagnall. Neither of us took many photos but here’s my pair of our new Avonside kits Erebus and Terror, now lined and named, along with a wagon with custom Bodgit and Scarper decals designed by corbs.

Well it’s been a knackering weekend but I’ve just got back home from exhibiting my colliery layout ‘Erebus Pit’ for the first time at the Nailsea show. A massive thanks to @Corbs for lending a hand along with Chris, Bob and Richard. Well done to all involved, it was a well attended, well organised and friendly show with lots of great layouts I didn’t take many pictures as I was so busy but here’s a few shots as things were winding down before closing.

I should have posted this a couple of weeks ago but life got in the way, I have now restocked @Corbs with a new batch of the 0-4-0ST Avonside prints after the first one sold out much faster than we expected (thanks to everyone who ordered one). In addition to the first prototype build with a golden, rounded dome I have also built up a second loco body kit with one of the alternative dome styles and smokebox handrail locations. This dome is one of three included with the kit, and has a flat top with heavily sloped sides. For this build I also added some RT models cast whitemetal detail pieces and a toolbox taken from one of the Railwaymania Manning Wardle kits I designed some time ago. The 2 locos side by side The final dome style uses the same safety valve as the slope sided dome, but has near vertical sides similar to this loco: https://preservedbritishsteamlocomotives.com/avonside-engine-co-works-no-1973-rrm-3-dora-0-4-0st/ This is it on an older CAD model.

It's all brush painted but applied over sprayed on grey primer, nothing fancy I normally use Wilko's stuff. This loco was a painting experiment for me which worked but not the way I was expecting. I thought I'd try out some of the citadel contrast paints to see how they worked on loco models as they're supposed to flow into crevasses like a wash but they really didn't work well on the large flat panels. So the black bodywork is Citadel contrast Black Templar, the running board, cab roof and smokebox are Citadel contrast Black Legion (I may have those 2 colours back to front) and the brown cab floor is Citadel contrast Wyld Wood. The red is Citadel Mephiston red and the gold is Citadel Retributor Armour which I darkened with a bit of black or brown paint. The buffers and hooks are black mixed with a bit of silver to give a metallic sheen. All the other colours are just Vallejo paints I had to hand. This loco may have also got a coat of clear matte varnish applied, I honestly don't remember but it's something I normally do As I mentioned earlier the contrast paints really didn't work as I expected they were blotchy and didn't like the flat panels so needed lots of coats which lost the contrast effect, I do like the clearly defined different shades of black/dark grey but that could have been achieved using other paints with less effort. The other citadel paints worked great though, Mephiston Red and Retributor Armour have been my go to red and gold paints for a long time now.

When I built the prototype kit I forgot to take a full photograph of all the bits laid out before painting but I hope this gives an idea of what all the pieces are including the handrails which I’d already cut to length and glued the knobs on to. not shown are the 2 alternative domes which are included in the kit (one of which closely matches what is on the locos you posted links to) and the different style of safety valve which goes along with them. I don’t plan on producing a welded tank design at the moment unless we decide to do a specific loco that requires it at a later date.

I don’t think Dapol have released the livery artwork for their 0-4-0ST Hawthorn Leslies yet but they had these handy print outs on their Warley stand showing the livery options. It does say on the bottom of one of the sheets that these are artwork evaluations, so they may not be final

pretty much everything left to do to the Steam Elephant CAD model now is beneath the skin, and is waiting on a parts delivery to measure bits up so this is how it will remain for the time being Since the CAD for the loco has stalled up I've decided that the Steam Elephant needs some rolling stock so started modelling a basic Chaldron wagon, this is based off a drawing I found for an Coal Wagon from Shildon works and is a completely new CAD model vs the 4mm chaldron I did some months ago the one design has now been detailed with bolts and rivets, and then adapted into 3 variants, the middle one simply has a raised top section whereas the right one one is based on the same standard chassis but thickened with a slope sided body, this is based loosely off a chaldron on display in Shildon. all 3 look rather good behind the loco, I just need to figure out the couplings and choose the axle bearings for the wagons and they'll be ready to print I might also make a few other wagon designs based off the same basic structure, I'm thinking a tipper wagon and a flat bed to start things off but I'm open to suggestions, I saw a nice design for a dandy wagon, but I believe they're for gravity trains so it probably isn't suitable to go behind the loco

Cheers Keith, the trackwork is something that's given me pause for thought as well as I'd like to make a little layout to go with the loco, ultimately I think laziness will win out and I'll use off the shelf O gauge items rather than custom but making the trackwork this loco will run on look older than the RTR offerings is something I keep considering. For powering the loco, I'm pretty set on it being RC, I don't want to make a compensated chassis to give it good pickup since the real loco is unsprung, I hadn't considered simple battery power. Hopefully your Pen Y Darren tramway idea comes to fruition, it'll be good to see

Recently I've been working on a side project of mine away from the Railwaymania kits, I've been interested in early locomotives for a long time but they don't transfer to OO gauge very well IMO, they're too small, delicate and fiddly to get the exposed motion working nicely so I've decided to jump up to O gauge to model an early steam loco. There's a wide variety of completely different early locos to choose from but I decided to make my life difficult and go for the Steam Elephant, an 0-6-0 gear driven loco of which there is very little period information but a replica was built for the Beamish museum which I've based the model off Finding much info out on this loco beyond the cylinder size was suprisingly difficult, but I was lucky enough to spot a drawing of the loco on display at Beamish, it was a bit out of date with the wrong chimney and a few other detail differences but it is the basis for most of my model which started out by roughing out the main features in CAD before I add details ready for 3D printing. individual areas were then detailed after studying various photographs and videos of the replica loco, starting with firebox and boiler backhead This was then developed with more frame detail slowly working forwards along the boiler, cylinders to the large chimney and the water tank On the underside I haven't fully figured out how I'm going to provide drive or secure the axles in place, but I have modelled some of the gear train which will transfer drive to all the wheels and cranks Next up I added more detail to the motion and it's support structure, the vertical slide bars are going to be made from brass H section, braced with wire, the connecting rods, crossheads and pistons will be fabricated from brass rod and sheet meanwhile the wheels and axles are going to be from Slaters with custom printed wheel centres

I really need to get around to doing a write up for the Bagnall standard 18'' build, in the meantime here's a video of it in action on the rolling road, there's a bit of wobble with the middle wheel set which I hope to improve. It's been decorated with decals @Corbs designed and shows the loco as the scrapped no 402, often erroneously called Valiant. And here it is shunting on my colliery layout next to another RailwayMania kit, this time the Manning Wardle 0-6-0ST, Adjutant Another video I took, this time of Kyle Humpries build of the kit running on his Magram Moor layout, somehow he squeezed smoke and sound into the loco, very impressive And here's the 2 locos together

Now the kit is on sale with Railwaymania I can finally post about what has to be my longest running project. As some of you may be aware the first loco model I ever designed and printed was Bellerophon The second loco however has not been posted about because it was decided to make it into a Railwaymania kit which has been stuck in development hell, so I kept it under wraps. But now that the kit has been released here it is, my second ever 3D printed loco design from a few years ago, the big Industrial Bagnall 18'' standard, Vulcan. The basis for the model is a Dapol/Hornby J944 chassis, for this build the only change was removing the original body and cab, cutting down the cast weight in the tank and adding external cylinders and valve gear from a Schools class. This particular model is riddled with inaccuracies, designed entirely during lunchbreaks at work and only using a few images from google, it has the wrong buffer beams, the rear windows are oval, the steps are wrong, it uses Schools class valve gear but because shapeways wanted so much money to print the thing it did push me to buying my own 3D printer. Basically it's a mess, but I'm really proud of it and it opened my eyes to home 3D printing. The basic design has now been completely redone, detailed and improved upon to form the new Railwaymania kit (the red loco below) which I'll go into detail on at a later date

Bank holiday Monday was an hectic but enjoyable day for me, I spent the morning at a car show in the Forest of Dean and then the afternoon at the Bristol Harbour Railway getting in the way of all the volunteers and blagging some cab rides on Portbury and Henbury Henbury was running on the last of the 'clean' burning Russian coal, Portbury was trialing some Polish coal and was constantly producing clouds of dark grey smoke. I had no idea different coal could look so different in the bunker (one was much rougher and duller) and burn so differently Besides having a nice day out on a railway and bothering trainee fireman @Corbs there was a reason for heading down to Bristol, it was a chance for Portbury to meet it's miniature replica, Portbury. This is my test build of the Railwaymania Avonside 0-6-0ST kit in 'storage condition livery', it was nice to show it off to the loco crews as most of them were well aware of the kit but hadn't seen a built one before. Hopefully I'll have an IW&D livery one to bring down in the not too distant future

Recently I've been putting quite a lot of time and effort towards my layout and had a chance to lay the upper section of track which is oo9 narrow gauge. I currently only have one oo9 loco, a Bachmann Skarloey which runs really nicely but being from the Thomas range, it has a face on it. Taking photos of the layout I was getting annoyed at having to hide the face behind scenery, not very subtle So a replacement was needed, this is simply the smokebox door off my Neilson, scaled down to suit, 3D printed and glued into place after removing the original face This was OK, but since I got Skarloey I wanted to make a whole new body for it and thought I could make something along the lines of the Ffestioniog's Manning Wardle loco Nipper, a Dundas kit already exists of this loco but I didn't want the cost of buying that to hack it about to fit a different chassis so decided to make my own I started by measuring and then recreating in CAD the Bachmann chassis Then I roughed out the body to get it to be the right size and shape and added the details like rivets and trimmed back the bits of the RTR chassis that needed to be removed careful surgery was needed to trim down the diecast block on the chassis to fit Nipper Version 1 didn't quite fit right and the front running board was warping so version 2 gained a bit of length and the addition of some covers to join with the oversized cylinders on Skarloey having done quite a few test prints and always printed a spare incase I broke the test piece cutting it free from the support material I ended up with quite a few spare bodies, perfect for some paint trials. In the end I chose the second one, a purpley red from Citadel called Gal Vorbak Red The fit to the cylinders isn't perfect but I'm happy with how the loco turned out especially for a quick little project, a nice improvement on Skarloey with much more detail. I think it's crying out to get some lining though, perhaps gold to match to match my freelance OO Manning Wardle, Corsair

I was at the Statfold Barn model railway show this weekend, a very good event with some excellent layouts on top of the narrow gauge railway and museum there were lots of layouts but a real highlight for me was Knowles Hill Colliery. Not only was it a well made and interesting industrial layout but as part of the fleet they had one of the Railwaymania Avonisde 0-6-0ST loco kits that I designed. It was great to see some of my work out in the wild.