Samedan

It warms my heart that people are prepared to go to these lengths to achieve accuracy, when models of Swiss trains out of the box are generally such a high standard. I’ve got enough on my plate assembling and painting 16mm/ft models, so I’ll continue to run pretty much out of the box in HO. But I might pluck up the courage and find the time to weather a few older models perhaps. Thanks for providing a clear explanation of how you went about this and I look forward to the finished set.

I’ve always thought Interlaken OST would be a good subject for a standard/metre gauge layout, albeit a bit large to model faithfully. I’m building a HO/HOm layout but my main station will be completely imaginary, with a lakeside location. I’ll be interested to follow your progress with the canopies. I’ve looked at kits but I’m not sure which to go for. I’m thinking scratchbuilt “modern” for the standard gauge and a more vintage style for the metre gauge, which will be outside the front of the station, similar to Brig and the Arosa line at Chur.

Try telling that to Messrs Faller, Kibri, Noch etc! Your reply amused me. I googled a few articles, forum threads etc on building “curved” viaducts. It’s amazing the lengths people go to to get the underside of curved, tapering arches to fit. Of course, real viaducts on a curve are very gentle curves and so the straight arched are not as obvious.

Well, on balance I’d say that constructing straight arches, even with a 20% gradient, plus wedge-shaped piers, would be more straightforward than scratchbuilding curved arches with rectangular piers. Modelling in HOm, I won’t be building a scale replica of Landwasser, but I will need to build a smaller curved viaduct. It’s a pity that all the kits I’ve seen (which are quite good in themselves) are on pretty tight radii. Just toying with ideas at this stage. Has anyone tried carving a curved viaduct out of dense foam or balsa wood?

I’m in a similar boat.....but I’m not even supposed to be modelling pre-grouping anymore! But I used to many years ago (LNWR with a smattering of Midland and L&Y) and have retained a soft spot for anything Edwardian and in attractive livery. I’ve waited half my life for RTR LNWR stuff and then the Coal Tank came along. Fair enough, it want too expensive to sit in the display cabinet. Then the Precedent was announced (!), jeepers, that was the very definition of a must-have. Then I started to notice all the other attractive recent models I’d either missed, passed-over or had been announced. The risk with these relatively short-run but seductive niche models is that if you don’t pre-order, or at least jump in quickly, they’re sold out and you live to regret it. Take, for example, the Bachmann Midland Johnson 1P 0-4-4T. I put in a serious bid for one recently but it went for over £100 more than the price I could have bought it from Rails just a few months ago. I’ll just have to start selling off some less precious items to make room for all these lovely things coming out.

Ah, thanks for that info. So that’s another tricky little bit of plastic to fix.

Going back to my original concern about accessories. It seems the only ones that are essential to 737 in original condition are front guard irons and cab side doors. l’ve fitted the cab side doors without problem and located the tiny slots for the guard irons, but they won’t stay in place without glue. Before I get the glue out, has anybody found that they foul the pony truck on tight curves? Not that mine will be doing a lot of running but it would be nice to be able to give it an outing now and then. (BTW I’ve completely removed the front NEM coupling housing and replaced it with the little replacement piece provided.)

I only found my way to this topic because I wanted to know what others had done with the various accessories, having recently taken delivery of a 737 directly from Locomotion. I’ve now spent what seems like several hours trailing through all the massively enlarged photos discussing the finer points of SECR lining, running plate alignment and VFM etc. My word, what a learned, but hard to please, lot you are! I’m not a SECR fan or collector, as such, but I’ve always had a thing about Edwardian pre-grouping railways (LNWR in particular ) and the D class stuck in my imagination from the first time I saw photos of it as a teenager in railway history books. So I decided that I would always regret it if I didn’t have one of these to sit in my display cabinet if nothing else. I have to say, it’s a lovely-looking model of a supremely elegant loco. As a collector primarily nowadays of Swiss HO, £200 doesn’t immediately seem excessive for a high quality model. I reckon that if I hadn’t read all the niggles on here, I’d have been 99% satisfied but now there are several issues that I can’t unsee. Thanks guys! Nevertheless, on reflection, I’m not disappointed. I won’t be staring at photos with 100x magnification and the overall impression at even close human viewing distance created by this model is very positive indeed. To a large extent, I’m just grateful that there are sponsors and manufacturers out there prepared to put their resources into very niche pre-grouping models (yes, I appreciate that they generally only cover locos that survived into BR/preservation, I am a LNWR fan after all). So I’m looking forward to the forthcoming LNWR Precedent and the Caley 812 0-6-0 and hoping they are absolutely perfect down to the last mm and shade of lining!