The Fatadder

Does anyone have some good photos of the bullets from arount 1998? everything I've found so far is dated post 2006. Just trying to work out when the European style triangular OHLE flashes were fitted, along with a bunch of other modern H&S signs. Also, has anyone managed to find photos of either of the wagons Dapol/Kernow modelled? Again the best I've found so far is a shot showing the next one up in the number series.

Mine arrived today, Gwiwer, looks like the pipes are weathered to some extent, though a bit cleaner than the rest of the wagon. Weathering really is fantastic, as are the hand rails. but that ladder and roof walkway are truely awful, and looks like its come off something from the 60s. I've just ran a micrometer over the mesh, which is 1.3mm gaps (i.e. a scale mesh with 4 inch gaps) This is even more a shame considering the standard of the very fine handrails which will no doubt be lost when you replace the naff mesh with something scale. Still, that aside, I am very happy. going to add a few more white streaks to further personalise it (it needs some smaller white streaks elsewhere on the side) Need to change the OHLE flashes (and add a bit of brown over the top to blend them in) Finally, does anyone know if there is silver under the brown? I have found a photo showing the 4 hatches along the lower side of the tank in clean silver while the rest is filthy. looks an interesting variation to model...

Got the phone call today saying checking the address and saying mine were going in the post. Planning on having a go and further improving the weathering at the weekend

I like the sound of that, plenty of time between now and the 2nd run to pay for their other ltd clay wagons, and let the credit card recover before the next ones!

Coupling to Heljan 33s has always been something of a pain, and yea, this will be even worse! will see how bad it is, and if its too much of a pain remove the buckeye from one end of 33116 to make coupling easier. Must admit that I hadnt thought about the marker lights, had completely forgot they arnt there on the 33/1. Going to draw up an etch and use that for them! Will have to see if I can tell! though part of the reason for choosing to do it this way is that its just a case of repainting the yellow ends rather than trying to match up the roof colour. while I want to weather it up to a suitable condition for 98 running at some point, I suspect it will be quite some time before I get round to it.

think you're right there on 030, and it has a full set of ploughs as well which is even better!

A good case of seeing what you expect to see rather than whats there I think, was expecting a blue 33 to be 116, hadnt realised that 051 had a name at that time (As the photos I was looking at before showing the blue pair of 051 and 116 only 116 was named. Looking again its very clear that it is in fact 051 as it has cast BR arrows while 116 had painted....

Not really managed to get as much modelling done this weekend as I had originally planned, went down with flu last week which really knocked me out so theres a lot of unfinished work on my workbench at the moment. That said I am hoping to get on and finish the window frames on my 150 this evening. The etches were painted (blue for the outer frame and black for the rubber surround) then are sanded back to clean any paint off the silver parts. This is taking a lot longer than I would like as i keep sanding off part of the blue paint by mistake.... Should hopefully get some photos of the completed unit this evening as well... I have also have brought a dutch Heljan 33/1 from the classifieds, this should be the last loco which is needed for the layout (unless someone brings out a new 73 next year!) My plan is to use it as a basis for a 33/0 (so remove the pipe work & buckeye and replace the cutaway above the coupling. The latter will be modelled with the large dent which is typical for the class. I am trying to decide between either 33030 and 33025. 33030 is rather tempting given the photos of it on a 1997 working of 4 silver bullets, also have found a photo of it working on a railtour with 33116 in early 98. The livery is a lot more tidy than that of 025, so less work is required in the paint shop. The biggest problem I can see with this choice was that it got repainted into EWS in August 98. Finally I came across this photo of it doubled with 116 on a rake of Sea Urchins. 33025 was chosen because of photos of it working on a freight doubled up with 116, it also has an interesting look to it with the faded paint and the scars from the nameplates etc, Looks like doing 33030 will be the one..... Along with the conversion work on the ends, I will be doing the same paint work as on 116, painting the roof grill & other unpainted parts on the model along with correcting the underframe. While researching 33030 I came across this photo of 56047working on clay, while its dated much too early for the layout it is rather tempting to either model this (or search further and see if I can find any other similar Class 56 workings). Must admit a transrail dutch liveried loco would be rather tempting! Still, no rush there to get on and buy one... Finally, the weekend has been spent shopping for a new car (the Bora having got too old and knackered and left me worrying what the next big bill will be.) So I will be taking delivery of a 2006 Alfa Romeo 147 2lt TS Lusso on Thursday or Friday which I am rather looking forward to. God knows if the layout will fit in there though!

Ah good, Kernow wagons due for delivery on Monday! For once I actually hope that I dont get mine too rapidly, at least not until after payday on Friday. Buying the new car yesterday has made a slight dip in modelling funds!

A little more work on 45072. Having looked at some more prototype photos it looks like 45072 had a black headstock (whereas the base model I am working on was red). So today it was out with the black paint to correct this. Once that was dry the next job was to make a start on the bufferbeam detailing. Again working from photos the 5 pipes were added, air and vac pipes were from Heljan (Class 47 parts) and the air control pipes were Vi Trains. This gives the prototypical look with different thickness pipes. (shown off rather nicely on this prototype photo http://jaspersrailphotographs.fotopic.net/p52978325.html Finally the Shawplan lifting brackets were modified slightly to give a little more clearance on the inner brackets (To clear the extra bogie swing from Bachmann's dodgy bogie pivot design), finally this was given a coat of black paint. Still going to be a lot more work on this required before I'm happy with it (for a start the grill on the left hand side of the photo next to the number needs to be plated over.) But on this I am waiting to see what Shawplan follow up their current peak components with. I have made a start on the cab fronts, removing the moulded on handrails in preparation for replacement with wire ones. Once all the body modifications are complete, I plan on a full respray (hence why I havent bothered correcting the over large BR logo) and using it to experiment with some weathering on it to get it looking something like this: http://carls1980s.fotopic.net/p17722111.html

Finally got decent paint coverage on the roof grills panel on 47768. Unfortunately it looks like the paint I have used (Phoenix RES grey) is a completely different shade to that used on the model, so its now going to need painting again once I know the right colour for a match... _____________________________ RKB The other side is now complete, will be giving it a coat of primer this afternoon to see how well the joint has come out. If I have the right paint, the plan is to get it sprayed next weekend (though I think thats a bit of a long shot as I doubt I have any in BR(S) coach green.) Next job is going to be scratch building a new interior for it, the plan is to chop all the seats off the existing interior and then build up the new kitchen compartments from plasticard (whist retaining the strength and fixings of the original...)

small numbers for 33116 will be from a set intended for coaches I think, found some in the transfer box which look pretty much the right size (all be it a slightly incorrect font.) I did have a quick look on the net and couldnt find anyone doing anything specifically for this loco. One other thing I forgot to add in my first post, found a trick to help improve the ghosting of the old number on 33116, by gently sanding down the area where the number was removed with ultra fine wet & dry before varnishing. net result, no marks from the old number!

An afternoon spent watching my Horse in the office sweepstake fall at the National has given plenty of modelling time... I've started off with more work on Class 47s. 47817 has had its buffer beams fitted (having found a set of screw links and glued them into position, the buffers were glued to the headstock which in turn was glued to the model.) I also set about attacking the roof which needs to be converted from the rectangular boiler port panel to the round Spanner type. Again I am using the Shawplan etch for the conversion. A little more difficult will be the perpendicular rectangular panel to the left of the boiler port which is only found on the spanner fitted locos, really it could do with an etch.... Moving on, a little bit of painting on the roof grills of 47768 and what will be 47813, with a bit of luck with the weather I will get the sides of the latter sprayed green next weekend... The Res loco still needs another coat of grey (having made the mistake of priming the grills and panel around them before painting) whereas 813 was painted directly onto the metal, not only resulting in the paint going on better, but also leaving the grill mesh a lot crisper. So thats the 47 fleet for now (I still think that I will end up adding the Royal pair if Vi Trains release them and would end up replacing my Heljan model of 47853 in XP64 again if the livery becomes available, but for now thats enough 47s! Next attention turned to 33116, detail painting is nearing completion, the buffer beam units are now fully painted and ready to fit to the chassis (this cant be done until the bogie towers are swaped with 207 so that the latter gets bits with NEMS fitted ( the coupling pockets foul the snowploughs when fitted.) I have been thinking again about the ploughs as currently I have the full 3 piece fitted, whereas the prototype only has the side ones. That said the centre plough does help hide the dodgy bogie ends..... Along with painting the buffer beam bits, I have also painted the cab mounted air pipes, handrails, lamp irons, roof fan and bogie frames (the latter have now had the centre springs relocating to the correct position.) The unpainted solebars and roof grill have all been removed, primed, and now await a coat of BR blue (although this does have to wait until I next see shawplan to get said paint.) Still need to add the new numbers (and sort out getting transfers for them) and varnish the side.... Finally, a chance find of the etched steps/lamp irons for it in a bits box while looking for a spare air pipe for 33116 has resulted in a little bit of work on my Heljan Western D1015. This was intended to be modelled in 2002 condition as it was when working on the clay trains, with the wrap around V warning panel at one end. However I never did quite get round to doing the respray... My thinking now as we get to the stage with so few new prototypes remaining for D&E rtr models is that a new (Accurate) western in the next couple of years really wouldnt be a surprise, so I dont really want to put the effort in on such an inaccurate model. After coming across a photo of the loco in 2005 without the wrap around panel has made me decide to just finish it off in that condition and be done with it! Will do the job properly once I have a base model which is up to scratch. That said, should someone end up bringing out some high quality detailing bits for it, I may reconsider... Not a lot of work to do on this, other than drilling and fitting lamp irons (which still need some paint), folding up and gluing the steps in position and finally removing the etched plates (which had started to peal off) and reattaching them with superglue. Finally, more VSOE work: The comet conversion for the RKB is coming along nicely. The aforementioned problem with the lenght has been solved in 2 ways, one side it was fine to just remove the excess from one end. The other was a lot more tricky, the gap between the end and nearest detail was too small to take the excess off an end, so I made a cut on the back wall of the kitchen and removed the required length. Now waiting for the first half to dry before working on shortening the last bit. One final bit which needs work is adding a window into the end door on one side, however I really need to find a photo of that side of 1566 in green to see if the window is a later modification...

Further to my earlier research on Virgin Class 47s I have come to a decision. Having researched photos of the first five locos to gain Virgin livery, I have eliminated any possibility of 4 of the 5 locos retaining Virgin XC logos into 1998 (further discussions with friends who were paying attention to the prototype at the time backs this up). I did debate just going ahead and doing it anyway, but that would be a dangerous precedent and would no doubt open the floodgates.... As such, I think for my XC branded stock fix I will stick with the HST powercars and mk3s carrying the livery that I have already confirmed (and modelled) in 98 condition will have to do. This in turn has left me needing to make a decision as to which loco to model with the currently de-numbered shell that I have on my workbench. Given the size of the nameplate scar, a loco with a big name is an advantage, which brings me back to 47817 'IMechE'. Details all match up (a good start), however it is a bit problematic in that it didnt get named until late 1999 (one account says October, another August), so it either just fits in or just misses my upper limit. In my later operating period it also just fits in at the tail end of Virgin Cross Country's loco hualed operations. What finally convinced me to go with this loco is that if running pure 1998 I do have the fraggonset 47/7 which can be used as a stand in..... So having made the call, the next job is to get the paint touched up and ready for the new name plates & numbers. Given that I have a Heljan shell currently with IMechE plates on it, I figured cheaper to strip it down and sell as a chassis and a scrap body and keep the plates than pay for new plates and sell as is (given the amount of work needed on the rest of the Heljan shell...) The plates were carefully removed (thankfully my original 817 was modelled back when I still used double sided tape to attach nameplates!) The new plates were then fitted up to the Vi model, unfortunatly the small round crest from the original name proved quite tricky to shift and has some areas next to it where the wet & dry has thinned the paint too much. My plan here is to brush paint Virgin red over the area, then sand back to remove any brush marks before giving the whole side a coat of varnish to hide the matt areas that were sanded. (of course this does actually require me getting on and buying said varnish...) Another area which needed removal was the 2nd OHLE flash on the centre of the sides, (the base model having one either side of the door, while 817 only has a single flash.) the same approach was used here sanding off with the wet and dry, a little more tricky here given the proximity of the door (and again a little touch up will be needed, really hate having to use this method for renumbering!) The other work so far has been the removal of the roof grill detail in preparation for some of Shawplan's etches, unfortunately this cracked a window when trying to remove the fan insert (seems Vi Trains are as bad as Bachmann and Hornby with the variable amounts of glue as this one was very firmly glued!) Next job: Will be getting on with the bufferbeams tonight, then its a wait until I get hold of some Virgin paint to do the touch ups. Once thats done the last job will be the fitting of the new roof grills. Just need to try and find a decent roof shot of 47817 to see which design of mesh it carried along with which boiler port type(and typically Fotopic is broken...) With the boiler, I think it needs the round type (while the model is fitted with the square), fortunatly I still have a set of etches for that type from when I did 47709

Taking advantage of yesterday's bank holiday I have got on and finished the main work on the bridge. The rear face has had the main brickwork added forming the outer face, wing walls and side wall. I have decided to leave off the fine detailing making up the arch and some of the other fancy brickwork, simply because I am running out of plastic and it will be easy enough to add later should the layout get extended. The final area which will need work in the near future is adding the top capping stones onto the brick walls. Not quite worked out how I am going to add this yet, I did try making my own from plasticard filed to shape which looked good for the 4 wide parts, but would take forever if I did that on the walls as well. Planning on a weekend in Devon soon, so hopefully will find something in the scrapbox down there.... Paint wise I am planning on following Jim SW's approach on both the brickwork and the roads and seems to result in a very good colour. Once the roads are painted I have a bunch of ironwork from S Kits for the drains, manholes etc on the road. The signal box has shown a little more progress with more roof tiles stuck into position, but the roof is a long way off completion, getting tempted to have a go at making some padlocks for the 2 doors........

Before I went off on to Tignes on my holls, A package from Hattons arrived containing another cheap Vi Trains 47, this time in Virgin. Given that the Seven Valley Railway name was applied well after the period in which I want to run the loco, I am going to renumber/rename to something which received its name a bit earlier. Most annoyingly my preferred choice (47817) also received its name too late (1999) which as discussed elsewhere on the forum has resulted in a need to find another loco to model. At the moment the lead choice will be a loco which was long lasted carrying the original Virgin XC logos Along with the usual modifications (Shawplan grills, modifying the underframe, pipework etc) this is the first time I have had to renumber a Vi Trains loco (a process that is a complete pain). I tried to follow the approach listed by Jon, using fine wet and dry. However I dont think the grade I used was quite fine enough as it started to go through the paint (that said it should be hidden by the new plates, if not another loco with bigger names may be in order....) The cab numbers were more of a pain to remove (it seemed the grey paint was thinner than the red) so a bit of touching up is needed here, however the new numbers will hide the paint repairs very nicely.

Final progress before I head off to Tignes & Val D'isere for a week. The bridge is coming along very nicely. Starting of with the deck, this is 80thou plasticard glued into position with Evostick. It was glued roughly into the centre of the bridge structure with a 10mm gap either side (simply because it wasnt wide enough!) pavements were added from more 80thou (giving a 6inch curb) this had curb stones carved into the edge before gluing into place. Once that was dry the next step was to add the core for the wing wall and the pillar where the brick sticks out further, both were added from 40thou plasticard. Next was a start on the cladding, as previously mentioned its a combination of English and Flemmish bond brickwork. I started off with the lower 4ft, gluing a strip onto the bottom edge. This was followed by adding the arch, formed by gluing the brick sheet onto the formers and then once dry cutting back to get a flush joint. The frontage section of brickwork was then added, this was a bit tricky to get the curve exactly right as it has had to cope with the variance between the drawing and the radius of the arch cut. At the moment it does look like it may be skewed to one side, but if that does cause a problem with the next step I have a cunning plan to hide it..... The next step on the front is going to be finishing off adding hte brick that forms the arch, this was added by cutting individual lines of bricks and gluing into place. Another 5 or 6 rows are still required.... If an extra row is needed on the right hand side (as I suspect it might) it will be hidden by one of the large metal plates present on the prototype. Other work planned when I get back is a repeat of the wing wall construction for the left hand side, and then repeating it all again for the back. I have decided that since a possible extension for the layout will be another board modelling the other half of the station through to the next bridge (ala Botley) I may as well model the whole thing correctly now rather than my usual only model the secinic side.

When were the last units on the SW division withdrawn? I get the feeling that they probably went a bit too early for me but would be interested to find out for certain. Certainly bodes well Bachmann taking this on, while Kernow get their exclusive 205 its not stretching it too much to see Bachmann taking it further and releasing some of the other DEMUs in the standard range....

I mentioned last week the intention to start building up a small 1998 Class 33 fleet for the new layout (along with the rationalisation of my existing post 2000 33 fleet.) The first of the new locos is 33116Hertfordshire Rail Tours in BR Blue The planned work: - Correcting livery errors - Painting unpainted parts - New fuel tanks - Bogie spring modifications - P4 & DCC The livery errors are concentrated on one side, (with the bodyside grill on the left hand side.) Heljan have completely messed this up, with the BR logo/works plate at the wrong end, the small 33116 on the wrong door and the large D number in the wrong place. All of the rtr printing was removed carefully with microsol and a wooden scraper, with Shawplan etched depot plaques, nameplates and a fox double arrow. Was rather lucky with the plaques as I had purchased the wrong depot back at Nottingham, but luckly had a set of the right ones in my too sell pile (rather glad I have been taking so long to process it!) The new numbers are a bit more tricky, as I dont have any D numbers (will stick a post in the classifieds and try and sort out a swap for one as buying a whole pack for a single number seems a bit ott.) I guess some coach numbers will have to do for the small number. Unfortunately the D number has ghosted pretty badly, so thats going to require a coat of varnish to blend the area back into the rest of the loco, think a can of Satin varnish will also be on my tobuy list when I next see Brian..... Paint wise the roof grill and solebar both need to be sprayed BR Blue (it ridiculous that Heljan dont paint these!) further to that the lamp irons, hand rails, and bogie /fuel tank detail need to be picked out in the appropriate colours. The Blue painting will have to wait until I next see Brian and get a can of blue paint! Thankfully I still had a spare set of the correct fuel tanks (again ridiculous that Heljan never corrected this error themselves or at least included the correct parts in the box) so these were fitted, unfortunately one of the clips broke so it needs gluing into place (but this will have to wait until the solebar is painted.) Buffer beam pipework and snowploughs will also wait until the painting is finished to protect from damage. The radio roof pods were modified filing an angle onto the fronts, this makes the part look a lot thinner and closer to scale thickness. They were then glued into position with mek. Bogies were modified following the instructions that are in a couple of places on the forum, not going to bother fitting a cross piece to the fronts as I normally would on a Heljan loco because this will be snowplough fitted. Finally rewheeling, slightly more complicated than usual because I need the coupling mount from the gear towers for another 33 that I want to sell, so I will have to remove geartowers and swap them with the ones under the other loco. That however can wait until after Easter.

A little more progress before work this morning, A quick test showed that it dosnt appear to need a central arch to support the brick work, the two arches along with the vertical at the bottom are enough to do the job on their own. As a result I took a simpler option for adding the deck support, with a length of 80thou across the centre above the hight of the arch, and a triangular cross brace between the corner and the central spacer. I am now debating whether or not I will use the same approach for the box either side of the arch, these have a lot more strength already so I am not sure the central support is required, instead an easier option would just be a singular triangular support between the corners to support the deck. I'm running out of plasticard now so that certainly does appeal. As for the deck itself, I have two options, I can either make the deck out of a single length which is too narrow placed in the centre and then build the pavements up ontop of that filling in the gap either side (gap is about 10mm) or use two sheets which are the full width, but have a joint in the middle of the arch. (I dont really want to wait until I have more 80thou as while at the moment I am coming home from work wanting to do some modelling, I suspect that will change when I get back from Tignes next week

Interesting point Jim, though I dont think it needs anywhere near as much materiel removing as from the modified bracket to cope with anything I will be putting it through. Certainly testing placing it on the rails on the templates for the new layout it appears to be ok on the very gentle curves, so I think removing a small amount from the inside just to be sure should be ok. Jon, yes it is along the lines of the 37 chassis with the inner axles not powered and the pivot in the wrong place. Can be a complete dog of a runner I have heard, though I have found my Ultrascale fitted loco very tolerant of crap trackwork when running it on Blackcombe.

Made a start on the road bridge at the station end of the layout today, with the construction of the core structure. This is built from 80thou plasticard as a pair of boxes with the two arches connecting them. Once this is fully dry a central divider will be fitted to each side (along with a third arch) which will give further support to the 80 thou deck once it is added. This will then be clad in South East Finecast embossed brick plastic (the prototype I have based it on appears to have the lower 4ft or so in Flemish bond with the rest in English bond, so this will be modelled.) The brickwork will be attached to the core using the same method I used on the retail park yesterday, covering the majority of the area with double sided tape, sticking on the bricks and then sealing the edges with plastic weld. This avoids the problem I had on blackcombe of having air bubbles get traped between the core and brick sheet. I have also decided to go with the much thicker deck along with a central support to avoid the sagging issue I had on Blackcombe. Once the core is clad in bricks, the plan is to then add the supporting walls, and the other detail brickwork (and of course to get it mounted onto the platform. Speaking of platforms, Really starting to think I should get on and build them though platforms without track may make laying the latter a bit tricky...

A start on detailing up my model of 45072, Having already done a renumber to 072, and fitted some screw couplings, I've started detailing the rest of the chassis starting with a set of Shawplan's new etched lifting brackets. Having cut all the parts from the fret the first job was to fold the smallest part into a U shape and then glued (they can be glued or soldered) into the main body. Once that was dry the main component was folded up (keeping the folds on the inside) and everything was glued together. Once that was dry, the half etched top part was folded to shape and then glued into position. The etch includes two parts here, one for prototype curves which is to scale and another with a large cutout on the inside to provide clearance for bogie swing on tight curves. Finally they were then glued into position on the chassis using prototype photos as a guide. Just need to paint them black and then get on with the rest of the detailing. It needs a couple more bits adding to the underframe along with the bufferbeam pipes, not to mention the grills. However now it will probably go back on hold while I wait and see what else Brian releases for them.

Now got the new part fitted to 47709, and sorted the photos:

Little bit of work managed on the layout this evening, making a start on the Ratio footbridge, the central span is a little bit longer than it ideally would be (but its near enough that it can be worked round rather than having to start hacking it about even more.) Because I am building the 5 panel version, it left bits for a 6th panel spare, this was used to give the extra span between the steps and the embankment. The plan now is to get this section painted, paint the panels and roof supports and roof before gluing them into position (I dont fancy masking off those panels!) Will also have to make a decision as to what colour scheme to paint in. I had been thinking about the similar prototype shown on old rmweb (cant find the link any more.) which was green with cream panels, though I need to have a think what would be suitable for my location (and I guess that means making a decision as to where I will set the layout then.....)