railroadbill

10 hours ago, MikeOxon said:

what he said (and I hope it's not rude 😄)

 

Mike

Happy Christmas and a good New Year.

Glædelig jul og godt nytår

Been interesting to follow your high quality modelling! Look forward to more in 2024!

A further comment, one thing I realised was telling the story was the contrast between the different groups, the railway workers, the soldiers and the first class passengers walking the tracks. Very effective placing of the figures, and also their painting.

Spot on!

Ace modelling and very interesting thought provoking story. Great stuff!

16 hours ago, wenlock said:

Thanks RR Bill, it was my first go at painting wood grain , so I’m particularly pleased that you think it looks good🙂

 

The kit supplies rigging thread which you just thread through eyelets that are formed as part of the plastic mouldings then after tensioning secured with a drop of cyanoacrylate glue.

 

 

Thanks for that, I've been having problems rigging a 1;72 tiger moth with EZ-line, fiddly in that scale. Did once build a large scale Sopwith Camel, a Keilkraft rubber powered one when I was a teenager,  a rather tail heavy design to fly properly though. :-)

Very impressive wood effects, and also the metal effect (cowling, engine etc) looks very realistic.  What did you use for the rigging, or does that come as, say, moulded rod?  (You said you'd added the turnbuckles from tubing).

Very good idea with the magnets, especially for small details like the fence.  Also the brick arches look very realistic with the weathering.  Great stuff, as always.

Look forward to seeing it painted. Unusual to see a ww1 u boat kit as well. Believe they were built with a flat deck as they were surface ships that could submerge a bit, whereas ww2 subs had a much stronger pressure hull for deeper diving.

This looks good. The worn camo has come out well. Had an airfix one long ago. An interesting aircraft. I've read that a further problem from the ones mentioned above was that the aircraft had a high landing speed for the time and needed a long runway. Therefore it couldn't be operated from all RAF bases.

Thanks for the camera info, Ray. I've got a couple of Panasonic Lumix cameras, one a bridge camera, one a compact, been playing with the settings to get the best depth of field.  Aperture priority mainly and setting aperture to smallest value.  Also tried my rather old Nikon dslr  where the aperture can go down to f32, but the newer cameras have the edge. One problem is the layout is in the loft and there is no natural lighting, so lighting is another experiment!

cheers

Bill

Excellent Ray, that's very useful. Your pictures do show how well detailed the models are, the valve gear and wheels especially. It's a pity that some models have had the assembly problems that you've showed.  Your blog shows a lot of potential problems to look out for.

Your pics of the locos are very good, you get a good depth of field, I'm experimenting with that at the moment. 

Also the video shows how well they run.

I've only got CoN so far, my one didn't have any problems (apart from top lamp iron missing) and it looks so good that it's had a lot of running since I got it!

Bill

These joints seem to bend a little, so good with non-rigid plastics.  Sort of stuff that isn't polystyrene so contacta and equivalent doesn't work, also plastic weld won't quite get the material to join.   Superglue ok but gives  brittle joint so on a part that can flex like this Bachmann component the new stuff works fine as it gives a slightly flexible join.  It will gap fill but needs to be in line with  the u/v torch to work.. Expensive though so only for difficult and small joints.

Reading your comment I was going to say that it wouldn't be much use for planks as they would need to be glued underneath, but then I read your comment again.

I had (still have) the Ivo Peters books on the S&D in the 50s and 60s, which are in black and white of course.  Should be able to tell livery from the lining, but that's usually disappeared under a layer of dirt on the locos in them...  "Somerset and Dorset line" by R C Riley has a pic of 75027 double heading 34041 near Chilcompton, but both locos look completely matt black...

I'd be alright now as I have the RCTS BR standard classes book on the 4-6-0s which says that 75027 was painted green at Swindon in May 1959. It was allocated to Templecombe February 1960.

The Bachmann one is quite an improvement on the original Mainline one.  My old one does get an occasional run though.

Excellent stuff, some nice locos and the weathering works very well imho, I really like 75027.

Many years ago, in early 1980s actually, being an S&D fan, I renumbered a mainline class 4 to 75027,  lined it, added coal, sprung buffers etc. I went to great lengths to research what colour the loco had been when on the s&d, and in all the colour pics I found it appeared to be black. I saw the preserved loco on the Bluebell and it was green.   All the photos I had seen showed the loco in service so dirty that it looked black. So my model (that I've still got) represents the loco with early emblem as it originally was on the western region in black...

ps the old tractor hiding away behind the parapet is a good touch.

Looks really good with the etched plates, they do add that extra bit of realism.  The Jubilees look very nice, did you add the finer boiler lining on Kolhupur? 

Ace stuff.

(Like the signal box as well).

I'm encouraged by your comment that you can't have too many locos!

Those machine tools look really good. My grandfather was a design draftsman in a small engineering firm, and they remind me, as a young lad, of being shown round the factory where he worked.

The interior shot of the shed looks very realistic.

Just been looking at your pics of your completed model, really fantastic result there! Great workmanship.

That's excellent. Ray.  Really good video of the loco with the chocolate and cream mk1s.  The close up pics are very clear as well. Heljan locos run well imho, seem to have a feeling of weight to them.  Matching paint colours never seems easy to me,  especially BR loco green, and LNER apple green being particularly difficult.

Some good tips, especially using Dettol as a paint stripper.  Also the smoke box numberplate "1"  transfers on the underframe boxes.  And the liner pen discussion.

The 3-d crest is a good one, plus bigger name plates, adds a lot.

It's tempted me to go and run my 2 Westerns, (both maroon as that's what I remember!)

Just come across this,  superb workmanship and great end result. It's very interesting how many details changed between original and later condition locos. Lots of good tips there, liked the archer rivets for example.

Thanks for oil advice, Ray. These locos really hadn't had much running, so i felt just a smidge of oil on the axles would help to get them running freely, particularly as the plated axles on these old split frame models are often reported as having the plating wearing out. One reason for leaving them for occasional running, but your blog has now inspired me to use them more!  Bit of TLC and they can run more reliably than I remembered.   Mechs are all a bit noisy, especially compared with a recent loco like say a Hornby Star, that runs very quietly.

Also these are DC, but that's ok with the layout in DC mode  which it seems to be more often at the moment. Perhaps I'm just going retro. :-)

The mainline bodies for the standard 4 look good, in fact they were used by Bachmann with updated chassis, it took the  Hornby one to be better, and that was quite recent really.

Also by going through the box with the Scots in it, I came across  the couplings I was looking for, for the CCT vans I made, so that was very handy!

Cheers,

Bill

Nice cockpit, with the wood grain effect, and the seat and seatbelts (the buckles look realistic).

Hi Ray,

Following our earlier discussion, here are my remaining working Mainline split chassis locos. They've spent most of their time in a display cabinet but get a run every now and again.  Because I'd done some work on them, like transfer boiler band lining on the tender locos, I kept these.  Must be about 40 years old now.

I just put a drop of Peco power lube (elecrolube as was) on each axle (plus valve gear/coupling rod  pins), does that sound best way to go with these? 

Mainline Std class 4  renumbered as 75027, sprung front buffers (!) ,  screw link coupling,  coaled tender.  the gap between tender and loco is small on these, does look better as mentioned above.

J72, this has a replacement Bachmann branded chassis with the worm drive "flywheel" motor, the original chassis just didn't work at all well.  Screw link couplings and coal in bunker.  Ran very well round layout when tried out today.  (The GWR vans are from Coopercraft kits which were my first lockdown project). The  loco came from Guy Norris in Covent garden in 1979.

Mainline 22xx. This  has the original pancake motor chassis.  Hasn't had very much running for years so plated axles should be ok. 

2 rather tatty Scots I was given as part of a bartered bundle of stuff.  Came from a layout  owned by the late uncle of a friend's wife, so it would be rather good to get at least one working. They've been in the bottom of a spares box for 20 years or so.  The top one was a reasonable runner but has valve gear damaged on one side with missing rods. I couldn't remember the other chassis, which is complete but without bogie,  working at all but I've just managed to  coax it into life.  There should be enough between the two to make one working chassis and get loco running again.

If I make any progress with these I'll post on a new entry of my blog.

cheers,

Bill

On 17/05/2020 at 21:48, Silver Sidelines said:

 

Its a challenge and if something breaks you can usually find a similar model on eBay that you can use for spares.  That in itself is a whole new interest.  Bachmann technical department sells the nylon isolators / axle joiners for their split chassis models.  Peter's spares (and others) sell the equivalent bits for Mainline and Replica models.

 

As to the Airfix Castles they were great.  I have a couple of their tender drives fitted into much newer Hornby Counties.  They seem to be indestructable although I could never work out why some were so much noisier than others.

 

I shall wait to hear more.

 

Cheers Ray

 

 

 

 

Ray,

Didn't realise you can still get axle isolators to repair split chassis, that could be an interesting project.  The old split frame  locos I've still got that run from time (class4, 22xx that were renumbered, coaled etc. for an SDJR set up) haven't done enough mileage to wear excessively, but I was given a couple of old Scots that need overhaul some years ago. Temped to dig those out having read your blog. I've got a  J72 that's on it's 2nd chassis, with the worm drive can motor, that runs ok.  Gear train noise is one of the worse characteristics of the pancake motor ones, imho.

I bought a number of Airfix 4Fs around 1980-81 during the recession then and after Airfix had gone bust and they were being sold off really cheap. Coal in the tender, renumbered to SDJR ones and tender drawbar shortened (I agree that does improve appearance of tender locos). Also painted the chunky driving wheel rims black. Having done all that I was of course loath to dispose of them later.

More recently I've had a couple of them running again, and what I'm finding is that after a lot of running they just run smoother and quieter. Look ok crawling round the layout on a long freight train.  i read somewhere that the Airfix tender drive was designed to have an operating  life of  400 hours or so. I've also had an Airfix castle running, wasn't very reliable when i got it years ago, but with some TLC and just letting it run, it's now settling down very well.

cheers Bill

Thanks for that, all is explained!  Talking of weights,  I've now got a Revell Shak MR3 (not yet started but instructions read!) and your suggestion about doubling their suggested nose weight will be very useful.

Looks good, those tracks are very effective.  What are the metal? tubes fitted inside the hull?