Graham T

Thanks, I'm glad I did it. Just wait until I start tearing up the whole layout to make way for Chuffnell Regis Mk II...

Thanks Rob, I'm reasonably pleased with how it's turned out. Still need to straighten one of the buffers if I can though. I'll reserve comment on your innate strangeness or otherwise!

So, teeth were gritted, loins girded, and fingers crossed. Some delicate prying about with a number 11 blade managed to remove the mis-shaped levers, and I bent up some new ones (probably still in the wrong shape!) This will have to do now. Time permitting I'll try to give it a coat of primer tomorrow.

Now look what ewe've done...

That does look great - must keep telling myself that I don't need one! I do wonder about the size of that lamp though?

That B-set does look superb, but it's about twice what I'd comfortably pay for a coach. I'm not saying they aren't worth it (excuse the poor English), just that it's more than I would want to spend. Also, I'd be terrified of handling the things in case I broke something off! A bit like the AS Manor. And finally, they would make all the other stock on my layout look glaringly inferior...

Thanks for all the helpful tips. Still haven't quite made my mind up whether or not to go for a re-attack...

I might give it a go... It will bother me otherwise! Silly mistake to make, down to rushing for the finish line when I should have been looking for reference photos.

Well that seemed to stir things up! Thanks for all the comments. Honours got to @Tortuga and @Compound2632 for the best answers 🙂 I did indeed put the crank in the levers at the wrong place, and, although they have been trimmed, they may well still be a tad too long. It is indeed supposed to show Morton brakes. I assembled them with superglue, so am a bit wary of trying to remove and redo them as I think I might well do some damage. So I'm thinking of leaving them as they are, and trying to remember not to make the same mistake with the next kit...

I've now finished building the van, but realise I have made an error. Can you spot it? I'm not going to try to fix it on this model, but will have to bear it in mind for future kit builds...

Hope you can sort it out Neal…

I can understand point one, not so sure about the second though…

I thought I'd dip into the stash of wagon kits for a change. This is the Cambrian LMS 12 ton van, D1828, and it's a bit of a curate's egg to be honest. As you can see there's some nice detail on the van body, but there was a lot of flash in places, and some of the mouldings were, frankly, a bit cr@p (a couple of the axleboxes actually had holes in the front of them...) And it's made out a rather weird, soft, flexible plastic. Also, why do kit makers insist on having the ring on the buffer shank as a separate piece? They are a real pain. Same thing with separate headstocks, it would seem a lot more sensible to me to have them moulded in one piece with the ends of the van. Anyway, here's how it looks so far. Brakes detailed with brass etches from 51L, metal buffer heads added (a couple of which need straightening), and a large chunk of lead super glued inside, to bring it up to about 30g. Forgot to mention, wheels are from Alan Gibson, I think. As ever, photos show up the howlers that you didn't spot before. I can see I will need to apply some filler here and there too, and not just to the axleboxes ...

A busy day!

Thanks Rob, just the ticket!

Perhaps unsurprisingly, black brake gear and rodding underneath a black tender is not the easiest thing to photograph. But here's a stab at it anyway. All the gubbins have now been painted. If you look closely you can make out the rear brake hanger on the right of the tender, and the rods in the second photo. Looking at the first photo, I'm wondering if I should apply some sort of weathering to the buffer heads? I've no idea what colour they would have been on the prototype. Painted black and then worn by impact in the centre? Plain steel? Rusty, greasy?

I'm about as far from an expert on railways as it's possible to be, but to my eye the Rapido bauxite looks more like SR brown (dons flak jacket and helmet, exit stage left).

It's the same with the 4F of course, although the brakes are more visibile from behind the loco. I considered trying to cut away the NEM socket, but that fell into the "too difficult" category and so, in the finest traditions of Chuffnell Regis, I bodged it instead. I threaded brass wire through the lower end of the brake hangers this time, and then tried fitting this to the bottom of the NEM pocket. A bit of plasticard packing was needed to get the hangers at the right level vertically. I'm hoping that this bodge won't be quite so obvious once it's had some black paint ladled on! I then added brass rod along the length of the tender on each side to represent the pull rods (I think that's what they are anyway...) So, I know it's all there, but you can't see much of it once the loco is back on the rails 😀

The package from Alan Gibson that I recently mentioned included the LMS tender brakes, so I made a start on fitting some of those today, beginning with the Hornby 4F. (Thanks to @Rowsley17D for tips on how to fit them). Here's the tender before butchery commenced... Work was complicated a tad by the keeper plate for the tender pick-ups being hard-wired, so access was a bit tricky. I cut some of the supplied brass rod to length, attached the brake hangers with CA gel, and then used the same gel to fix the brass rods to the underside of the tender. One or two withdrawals may have been made from the profanity bank while I was trying to keep the assemblies in the correct alignment until the glue went off! With the keeper plate back in place I can now fix some more brass rod between the lower ends of the hangers. I'm still scratching my head a bit about how to fit the rearmost pair, as there is a blooming great chunk of plastic in the way (the NEM pocket moulding). So here's how the tender looks with two-thirds of its brakes fitted.

Thanks John. I do like the ID backscenes (shame about the glaring join that I left between two panels!) The plan for CR Mk II is to have something similar, but painted by yours truly. What could possibly go wrong!

She's also had a little run. Ignore the fact that (a) she has no crew, and (b) she has no coal! Found an old photo of her as well...

The dead decoder is now in the post on its way to (hopefully) the UK, and so I've finished adding the detail parts to Cookham Manor. Of course, as soon as I reassembled the tender I remembered that I might have a spare non-sound decoder that would fit. Turns out that I did, so the loco can at least run now, albeit in stealth mode... Full size cylinder fronts and cylinder guards fitted (thanks @Harlequin) Tender coal load removed. I've since fixed that stray cab handrail... And etched plates fitted.

Thanks very much Colin.

That all makes complete sense Rob, and as you say, should be straightforward. However, Austrian bureaucracy seems very partial to dipping its fingers into Auslander's wallets...

As I say I've pretty much given up on it I'm afraid Nick. I've also lost track on how UK companies are supposed to apply VAT (or not). Some seem to send here without VAT, others charge UK VAT. I did have one UK company who wanted a £10 fee to take the VAT off an order...