BelsteadLane

im surprised they didn’t put that livery on a shed. Makes more sense rather than having it on a 90!

Wratting Road gained another Bachmann 90 over this week, 90034 in DB branded DRS livery, big thanks goes to squirrel rail once again. Done a fab respray and detail work that can’t be faulted and it’s probably the best repaint of 034 out there. Just need to get her coupled up to some AGA mk3s or my pretendabellio to model her 2015/2016 hired in services to Abellio Greater Anglia.

Proud new owner of Jerry’s 90034 which is a stunning respray and knocks spots off any other respray I’ve seen of this particular 90! Every last detail was picked out. A true beauty that’ll stand out running round my layout. won’t be long until it’s running round with some AGA mk3s and the pretendolino behind it! Huge, huge thanks again Jerry!

Another Bachmann 90 joined the Wratting Road fleet this week! A lovely respray of 90034 in DB branded DRS livery. A flawless respray of a flawless model with every last little detail correct. Top job once again goes to squirrel rail who I’ll highly recommend once again. 90034 will be ran with my AGA mk3 sets as well as the pretendabellio as per 2015/2016. Had word the other day that my AGA set will be done by Christmas so I better get cracking with my pretendabellio!

I made a second mock up of the bridge template that’ll be for the scratchbuilt bridge. I took my time with this one, and tested things like how thick the walls need to be and done any double checking with measurements. Everything was cut to measurements I recorded from the first template so this is a pretty accurate representation of the structure. The only thing that’ll be different is of course the brickwork! It’s still a little rough and not 100% as it’s card board but I’d say it’s a good 95% there and that’s good enough for me! Testing all the clearances! Plenty of room for the walls and the proposed pantograph/wire height is spot on. While I was at it, I thought I’d quickly lay down some celotex and other bits to get a rough idea on the height of the road and surrounding terrain. This gives an idea on how the scene will look when it’s finished! I want to add to the bridge a little bit more yet and I also want to make a mock up template for the smaller bridge that’ll be going alongside it. Once that is done, I’ll be pretty much ready to start the final build.

Been planning the next term of events to happen on the layout which will involve my first ever scratchbuild. Always a daunting term to hear and I always used to hate the word but thought I’d test myself and do some proper modelling for a change. this will involve building a road over rail bridge and the bridge I’ve chosen is this one. Google Earth street view can be a godsend! This bridge is just outside of Norwich, literally just before Trowse Junction (where the Breckland Line diverts from the GEML) if you’re travelling out of norwich. The road over the railway is Bracondale. I like the design of the bridge, as well as the surrounding area, particular the smaller underpass section, the whole area gives plenty of scope for a scene and atmosphere on top of road and in the underpass. Plenty of ideas brewing in my head but let’s not get too ahead of ourselves just yet! I have absolutely no experience with scratchbuilding but I am feeling confident and want to push myself. Spoken to plenty of people who have given me lots of tips and advice. Tonight, I set apart a very rough mock up of what the bridge would look like. Or at least the framework side of things. its only made out of 3mm cardboard and didn’t take long at all to knock together but it’s a starting point. The final structure will be made out of mount board and cladded with plasticard. I certainly havn’t made it easy for myself. Having it on a bend wasn’t an intention but it can’t go anywhere else without satisfying me. Besides, I like the idea of having it a funny angle to the track rather than perpendicular. Getting the ole under the bridge won’t be too much of a challenge either but it required some research and outside-the-box thinking. Came to the conclusion, a bit of modellers licence will be required due to the tight bends. But the end result should still look half decent. I will need to scratchbuild six structures of this design to which I found on a different thread. 3 to go on both ends of the bridge over each line. The drawing belongs to Clive Mortimore. I breathed a sigh of relief when I found these! The ohle wires will lower as they get closer to the tunnel as per reality so nice low pantographs will be seen and will look great in photos. Can’t go to low though just in case! Used some cars just to test and get ideas on how wide I want the bridge for the road and pavements. One thing I like about the positioning is how it breaks up the curve. Hopefully, some realistic photos can be taken down low and the bridge can hide the bend a little so it doesn’t look so tight. as you can see, I also painted my backboards. as of now, I’ve taken all the measurements I need from the mock up, changed some about and will make up another rough mock up but use the measurements I got so it gives a much better, accurate look of how the bridge will look. Once I’m happy, I’ll get the materials ordered and make a start!

90034 is looking stunning Jerry. Hopefully won’t be too long before a pretendabellio will be being hauled or shoved behind it

it was meant to be a surprise!

no problem, won’t be for a while yet anyway, it’ll be when I’ve at least done the modifications to one of the buffets. Needs the windows on one side correcting as well as the roofs so once the cutting about has finished and it just needs the transfers, then that’s the earliest I’d get rid of it. I’d happily keep hold of it anyway until my whole set is finished including the branding.

cocktail stick and white spirit was used to remove the virgin logos. Good luck finding them, some pop up on eBay every now and again. I’ll be selling one of the buffets in the future so if you still want some, let me know.

Something I did make a start on this week is my Pretendolino DVT - turning it into the Pretendabellio DVT! It’s a simple matter of removing the virgin branding which I’ve done. I also modified the lighting clusters, filling them in and then painting the whole mould a dark grey colour - in real life it’s almost black but the light from the phone camera flash makes it seem much lighter. I drilled out the night time light too for future proofing if I want to add night time running mode. I need to fit new lights as Abellio fitted 82126 with LED lights featuring bi directional marker and tail lights. Hopefully, I will have hold of something very soon that’ll be able to accomplish this! Ive emailed railtec about the decals so hopefully will receive a responce as I need the AGA logos for the whole set as well as AGA lettering and numbering for the coaches.

Hi Jerry, we’ve been speaking over PM so much, I forgot you commented on the thread! Thanks for the kind words though, will be getting in the greenery and ground cover and surrounding scenery before the detailing will be going in.

Nothing exciting happened on the layout this week, unless woodwork is your cup of tea! work was horrendously busy this week so I wasn’t able to start anything major. But I managed to spend this afternoon fitting the remaining backboards outlining the boundary of the scenic section. I filled in any gaps between the boards with polyfilla and will leave it go off end will paint them up tomorrow. A bit of work will be going on in the scenic break area as I need to do a bit of rearranging and altering til I’m happy! That’ll be a job to do soon. There will be a road scene going in and I need to scratchbuild the two bridges I’ll be installing so once those are at a complete stage so I can make the surrounding foundations and scenery.

I'd recommend Squirrel Rail and TRS Trains. Squirrel Rail can be found on this by simply searching him. TRS Trains is on facebook. Both done work for me I was happy with and i'm a fusspot!

That’s both canopies now fitted back onto the fuel points and I wired up the lights too then as well. I threw another 1k resistor on (they come with one already fitted) to bring the brightness down a tad but I may swap it for a 5k at some point. The area already looking atmospheric which I like! The fuel point road had its extension fitted too, need to file down one of the rails as it isn’t quite flush yet. Two class 66s can now squeeze in the area.

cheers will shame the two rails are a couple mm too close together

The fuel point road is now fully installed, I’m very happy with it! Its made using rail and chairs from C&L fine scale. The rail is code 75 bullhead and the rest of the layout is standard code 100. Surprisingly, it doesn’t look bad at all next to eachother. The other option was code 82 but after seeking advice, code 75 seemed the most sensible option - I’m sure it’s not prototypical but in this scenario, I don’t care as options were limited! It was either this, or try and botch it using code 100 and modifying the sleepers on standard track. I did debate finding someone to 3D print me some code 100 rail chairs but I’d already bought the gear from C&L. I always intended on doing this for the fuel point rather than just have it normal ballasted track. It’s not like it at Ipswich so it won’t be like it on WR. And it makes it a little different to everyone else’s layouts. But boy, it was very time consuming and I take my hat off to the EM/P4 modellers who are fully dedicated to hand building all of their track! after reinstating one of the fuel point canopies, I gave it a full test run with success. 66418 being the test loco and officially the first loco to enter the fuel point. There’s also JUST enough clearance between the loco roofs and the canopy I just need to make a couple or small extensions so I can fit two 66s in the area and then they will be finished. At least these won’t take nowhere near as long

90046 will be an interesting one Jerry! It ran lacking its smaller bodyside logo between 2007 - 2014. I was surprised at how long it did as I only thought it had been a couple of years! The annoying thing with the Freightliner Racing Green 90s is that the Freightliner logo on the fronts are larger than the ones on the sides of the cab. Not sure if we’ve talked about this already over PM, it just makes it awkward as there’s no decals available (yet) that are actually the correct size! I’ll be contacting railtec eventually as I’d like to have all three of the racing green skodas but I can’t be having them wrong! If you’re in a hurry to shift it, might be worth contacting precision labels and get him to make up the correct decals - if you want them too be correct that is!

thanks Pete. when I see some decent sized layouts and then hear the owners say how they built it in less than a year, my mouth drops! I’m trying to make the most of second lockdown being at home - I’m normally away over the weekends but the two lockdowns we’ve had means I had to stay home but this of course means more modelling time! This speeds up the build which is always good, so to waste several nights is quite annoying. But I just wasn’t feeling like doing anything at all. The layout is two and a half years old now - coming up to three years old if you count the original track plan! So sometimes I feel like I havn’t done a lot but I do what I can when I can! I’d love to model a real location, but the places I want to model, I’d need a big big space available I’d love to model Norwich or Ipswich - the latter you’d need a warehouse for if you wanted to include the station and marshalling yard. Being an intermodal fanatic, I’d model the yard before I’d model the station! Wratting road isn’t big enough for a real location to be effectively modelled but I do take lots of ideas and inspiration from real places in East Anglia. This gives me something to work from and aim towards, I can look at it and know whether or not I’ve got it right! I personally don’t strive for ultimate accuracy (unless a class 90 is involved somehow ) but I do work to a fine margin - I can normally see if something is a couple of mm out/off or maybe even <1mm if I’m working with much finer things. Tolerance is important in such small scales but I do take my hat off to those who get every little detail spot on! anyway, thanks for the kind words.

Thanks James! Facebook is what I’m most active on to be fair, I sometimes still forget I’m on rmweb now ha! Cleaning under the overheads I wanted to keep as easy as possible to minimise knocking/breaking anything, the track cleaning wagon is perfect, works wonders and completely minimises the risk of breaking the ohle - only risk is if a derailment occurs but it ran faultlessly on both lines when I tested it so *touches wood* I should never have a problem with it. I can just leave it running round the layout while I do other things which is always good. I suppose it’s not worth while or harder on a layout like Wells Green TMD as it’s not a circuit/loop so cleaning with a wagon becomes a bit more hands on as you need to keep an eye on the loco pulling and shoving it around the place! I still need to test the wagon on the reception road and electrified siding but I doubt there will be any problems. I hardly use it at the moment (the reception road) but will do once the facility area is more or less complete so I can have proper movements happening in the depot. cheers! jack

thanks Phil!

Havn’t posted in a while, I didn’t do any work on the layout last week due to things arising in my personal life but this week, I continued and I’ve made pretty good progress. The concrete hard standing is pretty much finished, although I may continue to work with it a little as there’s a couple of places I’m not totally happy with. But for the most part, It’s how I want it. I wanted it to be fairly smooth with some small imperfections in places so once I was happy with the sanding, I moved onto painting. This was done by first using Plasticote Suede as a base colour: I then used watered down grey paints making sure to use different shades of grey and used my finger to help blend them together. It took the paint a few days to dry but once it was dry, I lightly sanded places I wasn’t happy with or I thought could be better. The dust that forms when sanding can be smudged back into the filla with my finger and this will change the tones if needed and improve things. Here’s how it looked on its second day of drying. and here’s how it looks now after sanding when fully dried and smudging in the dust. very pleased although im not quite sure about the dark around one of the fuel points so may try and lighten that up. I’m also undecided about the ‘ring’ next to the inspection pit. Could pass it off as a near-recent patch up, But i also can’t help but feel that it looks ‘in your face’ random and rather sloppy. The big difference in shade surrounding it makes it worse so I think some more experimenting will be needed. the pit is more or less finished now, I just need to add the grated walkway flooring. I blended it in with the hard standing as best as I can and the inside was hand painted using different mixes and shades of grey again for variety. Then weathering washed were used just to add a bit of streaking and other weathering.

Superb work as per usual Jerry

Hi and thanks Jerry. Most pictures of 90s I looked at did feature black/dirty horn grills across the board. As in all the liveries I have. Although funnily enough, 90042’s didn’t seem to get as dirty, either that, or they done a better job of keeping it clean! Thanks for the chassis bits. Let me know when you plan on doing them!

The pretendolino is definitely one of the best and one of my favourite liveries the mk3s carried. It was very eye catching and a very good mix of colours.