relaxinghobby

0-6-2t I got a cheap non-running Hornby L1 2-6-4 tank and thought I could use the chassis to be an old style 0-6-2. It was easy to get running, a wire had come off inside. But the motor was far to high for the job I had in mind and I had to do major hacksaw surgery on the chassis to tuck the motor down low and out of the way in the much smaller body of an 0-6-2t. Now it does not look right under the M7 body the wheel spacing is far too short and towards the front but it does look good under the Wren 0-6-0 body that I have already extended to make an 0-4-4 t. M7 Wren Final picture M7 body on a Jinty chassis with longer wheelbase. So folks which way to go long M7 body or short Wren body and on which wheels ?

Biggest influence ? C J Freezer for his advice on general railway modelling for the averagely skilled. His editorials and realistic approach to what can be achieved on a small budget and table top workbench. Rice was also an inspiration for small industrial and fiddle yard layouts, some achievable in a small space and construction time. Something that could be managed rather than a mega-basement empire. Alan Downs for buildings that could be made from cheap materials like cardboard, sandpaper and PVA glue. I lived miles from any model shop, still do, so had to make do with what was at hand. I had the Iain Rice books on loco construction and kit building, after a while trying to make P4 work I now follow Wright's examples of simpler chassis construction on this forum and his How-To CD's. On file I have kept articles of CJF of his "Confessions of a lapsed scratchbuilder" series which I think ran in both the Railway Modeller and later continued in Model Railways. I built 2 of CJF track plans or at least got past the track laying stage and started the scenery. My version of Minories and before that an end to end branch line on a 6 by 4 plan. In the struggle session between super accurate P4 and achievable 00 CJF's advice helped me through.

Another diversion, I finally found an old Airfix J94 kit I can chop about and convert into the current tender version. I saw it at the Spar Valley Line near Tonbridge Wells in the Autumn. There are quite a lot of photos about on the internet of the J94s as both saddle tanks and the tender version, so working from these I got the razor saw out and set square, marked some lines and cut carefully the footplate and chassis. Fore and aft of the boiler. A new boiler is rolled from 20 thou plastikard wrapped around a metal tube and heat formed with boiling water. I’ve got three layers glued together here. I'm out of liquid solvent so had to use Humbrol Precision Poly which is a bit too thick but can just about be squeezed into the space between the layers. The wheels are metal from a defunct Mainline J72, they can be forced into the axle holes after a slot has been cut out underneath to make a horse shoe shape. The cab had the bottom cut off but did not look right so I stuck some plastic back on. The cab sides have been filled and a new suitably shaped lookout needs to be cut. I’ve used the back spectacle plate as the new front one. Keeping the lower half with the back-head detail on. The tender is a cut down Airfix Schools. the 4 sides back, front and two sides are trimmed back to produce a small tender of some vague pre-grouping style. An internal sub chassis holds the wheels but needs levelling up. Maybe this model will have a motorised tender rather than a motor and gearbox in the loco? Watch this space but don't hold your breath, unless you are Houdini.

Reading 33C's entry on motorising a SECR class C has encouraged me to have a go. After all I have most of the same ingredients to hand. I struggled to get Hornby's Jinty chassis up inside the GBL body and ended up hacksawing of the two top corners off. For the tender I have the inner sub chassis from another one of Hornby's models, a Schools class which also comes with 6 wheel pick up. Handy as squeezing the loco chassis up inside the body can distort it's copper pick-up strips so it does not run so well. Body resting on chassis, it does fit and sit level. The heavy metal tender frames in front are too long, pity their weight would have help pick-up and track holding. The trick is to get the motor at the front, this old chassis is a bitza, yellow coupling rods from a Thomas for example. And a set of middle wheels from else where. Rectangles sawn off front and rear of the outside wheels. Before sawing the wheels and motor have to be taken off, Just a few screws removed takes care of that. Clever on piece casting of the tender chassis, all solid the wheels don’t turn. Sorry fro the bad photo but it just about shows the hole cut into the footplate, also some footplate cut out inside the splashers to allow coupling rod to turn.

Some examples of moulded roof sheets. Good for heavy tiles like pantiles which I assume are pottery or terracotta tiles and much thicker than slates. Two signal boxes, larger one is Airfix moulded roof so represents tiles. The small one is Tri-ang with reverse moulding as if the roof is turned inside out like a washed sock back from the laundry. In real life it is not nearly as noticeable as in the photo. It just registers on the eye as roof texture, as one's main attention is focused on the trains. More moulded rooves from bashed and abused continental kits re-worked into British style buildings, at least I think so. Left to right. Pantiles, slates on half timbered house, bigger pantiles on small white warehouse, tops of Airfix moulded signal box. They could do with a bit more weathering. In an attempt to highlight the tiles edges I rubbed them over with a soft pencil but the graphite has left too much shine on them. Perhaps I should rub them with charcoal to represent industrial grime ?

This chassis is a cut about and abused Hornby L1. I'm trying to squeeze it up into an old M7 body to make a LNER A9 0-6-2t. That is a big old fashioned motor, to big to fit inside the boiler or tanks so it had to be moved back, even so it just fits inside the cab. My junior hacksaw has been hard a work cutting back bits off the chassis lump. This one seems to be a very hard version of Mazdak. It has taken a lot more effort than usual, a lot of metal has been removed and now some sort of drive shaft and gear box must be devised. I have some cheap radio control toys that provide some nice gears and steel shafts. The toy and model industry is all nicely standardised and metricated so every thing seems to be compatible from what ever source model or toy mechanism it comes from. Maybe the same factory in China? The yellow gear is being used as a shaft bearing. The Hornby gears are safely away stored in a plastic bag whilst the hacksaw has been flashing about. As usual these sort of conversions take a lot longer than expect as unforeseen problems always crop up and have to be puzzled out. Any ideas on hold to hold the new drive shaft in position ? I intend to connect it to the motor with a short bit of rubber tube, maybe even fit a flywheel on it too.

Hi Back in the 70's Allan Downs was using sandpaper to make tiles. Cutting the sandpaper into strips with a knife then with scissors cutting the strips half way to show the individual tiles. Then laying the strips half over the one below. This gave a very coarse tiled roof look. He was modelling a sort of Cotswold stone town with heavy and thick stone sets or slabs on the roof. Would also work for representing west Yorkshire Pennine towns such as Todmorden. Else where in the country red clay tiles are common and they are 1/2 inch thick or about 15 mm thick and slate are even thinner at about 1/4 inch, 8 mm. which is almost unnoticeable in 4mm to the foot scale. So I go for the slightly scored tile paper look, because I am lazy I guess. As with my photos above my layout is at about chest level so my eye is nearer the track for a more immersive experience. To support my point of view see the photos over on the Amberdale thread or look at photos of the real thing for your reference materials.

I've used Superquick and Metcalfe slate papers and follow the Peter Denny method. Slates in real life are very thin and if you walk along a street of terrace houses that still have slate roofs like I did this afternoon on the way up to Tesco. They are hardly noticeable other than a grey thing up above the gutters. My point is you will be looking at the trains once you have taken your attention away from the roofs where our attention is focused whilst making them and they are put out on the back of the layout at the edge of our attention. So the method that I read in an article by PD is; glue the paper onto the cardboard with Pritstick or Tesco's own brand dry stick glue, then score the horizontal lines between the tiles with a sharp pencil and to tone it all down rub a bit of pencil lead dust onto the roof with your finger. I think the shape of the roof and chimney pots is more noticeable, just the correct outline. Slightly fuzzy, slightly greying fading into the distance not distracting from the trains. Here's my Metcalfe terrace and the tall warehouse has a Superquick paper roof. Come on fix those railings on the coal drops.

At last I've got a prototype to remake the Lima H0 coal wagon into. It's narrower and shorter than the later 12 ton standard coal and mineral open type. I've found it's nearly a perfect match for an old Caledonian Railway diagramme 22 8 toner. Trim the top off and beef up the chassis. The dividers are used to score a line about 2 mm down from the top, then keep on cutting along the line with a heavy Stanley type knife. Two slabs of 30 thou' or 0.75 mm plasticard are marked out and scored for planking and stuck on. this widens the body just about enough. As the glue sets I've packed out th e insides to give a slight bulge. Cutting the distinctive end framing has not gone well the very thin 20 thou' or 0.5 mm and relatively weak card has broken so I used it as a base to glue on square section plastic strip to build up the framing. The height of the Lima chassis is built up with a layer of 0.75 mm plasticard, the U channel style sole-bars are filed in with scrap bits of card. Buffers used to support the dumb buffers.

Patching up a wonky kit. This is an open wagon based on the same set of parts cut and used from the lime wagon above. In stead of a pent roof I've rounded of the end and for a bit of variety used a spare kit end. The gfrey plastic it may save time on detailing if I can get it to go together straight. Re-joining the side plastic to the end plastic. One corner was off square, so I broke the joint and reglued it around some blocks of wood and card packing until the corner was good. As glue, Humbrol Precision Poly in this case, takes a few days to harden, a check of the model 24 hours later for straightness and squareness may reveal wonkyness, often the case with my models so in a day or two the glued is still soft and weak enough for joints can be pulled apart and re-glued.

Lurking around my hard drive I've found a few pictures of the work needed to adapt the Lima coal wagons into shorty primitive types in the train above. So the green is the original Lima coal wagon. Detail sanded smooth and new planking scratched on. The iron work is mostly brass from a Mainly Trains etch I think. This gives a much neater look that my home made strapping cut from thin plastic, usually take away coffee lids. My straight cuts are never very good straight cuts. The brass detail does not look at all ragged. Chassis is made up of cut and combined ratio kits I think or one of the kits makers perhaps Slater's ? Cast white metal buffers at one end the other was dumb. Brakes from bits and pieces of plasticard and kit sprue following a photo as a guide. Wizard Models are the website to check for all these little details.

Some Blue Peter grade buildings here. Cardboard from finished writing pads, cereal boxes and other cast off packaging. Sheets of cardboard is good for buildings which are a series of boxes and flat slopping roofs. Combined with brick-paper and other building textures, brick paper works well when stuck on with Pritt Stick or some similar dry rub on glue as it does not crinkle the paper. From left to write, two Metcalfe kits from the factory and warehouse set as a comparison. Cut back a bit to about 1 inch thick to act as back scene. Third along is a proper Blue Peter, scratch build with Superquick brick and roof tile paper. The windows are home made, can you tell? Frames painted onto clear plastic packet material, bubble pack or something. The blue bits are from left overs of that Metcalfe kit. Worth a bronze badge? Then along from that, towards the corner, more scrap cardboard covered with brick papers, the retaining wall below has built up blind arches and the terrace house end is a single layer of card with Metcalfe brick paper. A silver badge's worth? The big end retaining wall is some scrounged feather board. This is a 3mm layer of soft polystyrene, like that used for ceiling tiles sandwiched between paper sheets. The model can be marked out and cut then the outer layer peeled off exposing soft poly and then the stone work scribed on with biros or a sharp pencil. A few horizontal lines ruled on with felt tip pens helps keep things horizontal. The larger tunnel entrance is salvaged from an earlier layout, an essential of Blue Peter modelling is to never throw anything out if you can help it. It uses the cheap card from the back of a note pad. The card is so poor that after the stone work is scored on with a knife, for each stone a few layers can easily be scraped away to give a rough stonework look. Some very rough stone work Gold Badge? A whole loco body now, some 0.5 mm card, post card that is flexible enough to go through the roller system inside a computer printer. If you swipe that bar code perhaps you can tell me what was in the packet. The yellow bits are from an old manilla wallet file. The parts are drawn out on a computer drawing app' like Inkscape and then printed and cut out. This gives accurately shaped parts but it's not really strong enough to form the cab. The front is too weak and has been squashed a bit. Could try metal, using the card model as a pattern perhaps? This is a Tri-ang TT tank mounted on a Tri-ang 00 metal chassis frame. All the extra tank holding frame parts are coffee stirrers. Several are glue together and cut down to make realistic scale timbering. Bits of paper-clip wire for details. The white manhole tower on the tank is the end of some lucky pen body.

The Arkwright Mills Ginny seen here approaching the basic wooden halt at the back of Arkwright’s mill. This is a shuttle service between here and the mainline along the old tramway. This was in the period when this backwater of an industrial line had acquired an American style coach. View of rear shows the guard acting as a sort of brakes man standing on the open platform of the coach. A procedure OK for the wild west but it would upset the unions here on safety grounds I guess. I found the little coach 2nd hand. It's a Bachmann shorty clerestory and had already been weathered and populated. I've swapped the couplings for Hornby ones using the original mounting sockets and screws, and a few layers of card packing to set the height. These are attached to the coach body, fixed under the floor prototypically instead of the onto bogies as with most models. Seems to be able to manage the 2 ft radius PECO points OK. This series of photos is a fake set up, I still have not wired up the motor to the pick-ups. So not running. The loco is just posed to make the shot.

Two models based on the same foundation. The old Triang Hornby 3 F, For the 2F just the footplate and filed down chassis on the left. This is a model I take out now and then look at, think about how to finish it and then put it away again. The right-hand is a 3F back dated to a round top and sits on the current Hornby general purpose 0-6-0 chassis. The cab needs cutting down.

The scratch built lime wagon is about finished and here is waiting outside the factory for it's painting crew. It looks a little to big, over scale perhaps ? Was my drawing wrong ? But it does not seem too different from the PECO kit one or the Cambrian Kit 10 ton open.

Electrical contact between wheels and motor is a bit vague, depending on metal strips just touching here and there in the right places and Bachmann have blackened the metal which I think is causing a block to the flow of electricity so I can try and scrape the black to get back to shiny metal. Look there's a hair there just touching the white cog, only noticed that in this enlarged picture. It must be sticking to the grease. Top motor contact barely reaches the motor and on pulling off the wheels I fine the contact metal behind has the chemical blackening so I've polished it up with a find nail file abrasives strip. There was also a small amount of burrs on the back of the spokes which could not have helped and the nail file abrasion also took that away. All fine dust and grease washed away in bottle top filled with WD40 a good general cleaning solvent. The wheels are not original solid disc ones, they are from the Bachmann gandy dancer I think and replace the original disc wheels. They are all a push fit in the internal gears and are readily interchangeable. Pictures of top inside motor bogie. I've polished the topside of the contact strip. Then when the tops on it's the underside of the contact strip that makes contact with the motor contact. I've now only just noticed that, I will have to dismantle it and clean up the under side. Which is what I've done to take these pictures. This work has bought about a big improvement, it now runs but only slowly, there is still a problem somewhere where one of the metal strips is only making partial contact and the only 4 wheel only pickup might be a problem. Homework mark redo and try again

The motor bogie does not run so I've been dismantling it to see how to get it going. Working with tiny parts here, screws are small and dark so if they fall onto the floor and roll somewhere there is a low chance of finding them. A bit negative I know so as a hedge against that I'm working in the bottom of an ice-cream tub. In close up the picture shows one of the motor bogies from the little Bachmann double bogie and double bonnet shunter. As a model it comes with two separate motor bogies. A win-win if you want to motorise two small 4 wheeled shunters, not just a win-win but a bo-bo...bwin-bwin. The motor section is very narrow and can fit up inside the Airfix pug easily. Trouble is this one does not run.

This one has not been shown for a while it is an attempt to motorise a chopped down Airfix pug. I trimmed back the cab length to allow a coal bunker before the spectacle plate. Trying to give it a Beyer Peacock look like the one at the Foxfield Railway.

A stroke of luck, I found this plastic tube just the right diameter to make a round top replacement for the fire box. Lucky twice as I quickly found it and it's not only the right diameter but the right sort of plastic to easily glue in place with normal modelling solvent glues. The plastic tube is the stake from one of those rechargeable LED garden lights you can push into the ground. The sort that provides little low fairy lights amongst the flower beds and cabbages. The rechargeable LED light had long ago corroded and failed, being in use in the weather. That white is masking tape I wrapped around it to give an edge I could saw to. D stands for dome and C for cab, even thought I have been careful to mark out and cut carefully the hole and the curved plastic piece to fit, they are not a perfect fit, the dome end is slightly different to the cab end. To trim down the curved section cut from the tube it was rubbed on my old favorite flattening tool, a piece of sandpaper glued to a flat bit of plywood.

Not an Airfix chop but very similar, work to an ancient Hornby body. Similar to any plastic model. To removed the top of the square firebox on this 3F, because I want to turn it into a round topped earlier version. Drilled horizontally along above the handrail molding, leaving many tiny holes and cut between them with a large Stanley knife. Junior hacked sawed down from the top to remove the square section. Big old flat file good for finishing a rough sawn edge. Drawn across the rough edges while holding the work piece, loco body plastic does not need much force. Nice clean square edge ready to receive a bit of round pipe.

Hi 33C I hope to make it some sort of double bogie contraption, the two front axles on a sub chassis pivoting with the rear bogie. A bit like the way a bogie diesel model works. Both ends will have the ability to swivel slightly inside the body shell. Not prototypical but perhaps it will give model better weight distribution and on train set bends go around a tight bend ability?

There is nothing as embarrassing as a close up photo to show how bad my modelling and painting is. Seems like I can't get the paint into the grooves between the planks. Not just with one colour on the brown van but also on the grey one too. Can I blame the paint? Is modern paint in the little tins as good as it was in the old days? Is my brush too big. Should I have used thinners,? Either way it looks like a third coat is needed for both vans. So here is a line-up of models for inspection, the good and the bad. Amongst others a modified Hornby van to make some sort of refrigerated van and my Lima carve-up with it's new layer of planking and strips glued on to make outside framing that fits in quite well with the others, what was an H0 model is actually taller than the brown LSWR van which is the only proper scale height model here. Also look at that gap under the roof on the brown one. I could not get the roof nestled down onto the top of the sides, it is now glued into position look at that massive gap above the central door. Just there in front is a model of a NBR jubilee mineral wagon. It seems so small yet it conforms to the plans I have, it looks wrong. Too small. How can I check accuracy? The size would make it a 7 ton capacity wagon. I drew it out on in the Ink-scape app and printed it up on 0.6 mm cardboard so the sides seem very thick. But one advantage with cardboard is that you can distress the sides a little, I mean pull them out a bit to give that beaten up old mineral wagon look.

Continued from above post. I could not load any more pictures so carried on in this new entry to the thread. Never happened so here is a scrappy picture with a bicycle torch shinning up the back.

More modified kits, this time Wills. In the May 2020 Railway Modeller there is a story of how a modeller CW, used the Wills Cattle Creep kit as tunnel entrances for an underground ammunition dump. They even had lit-up interior details, I had once hoped to do that too somehow and used one cattle creep entrance to make a calverted drain under a shunting yard. To prove it is a water drain it has a stagnant trickle made from green paint and varnish dribbling down the front. The entrance has about 2 inches to 30mm of plastic tube glued on behind it to form a tunnel. The inside is painted in dark greys and the plan was to hide some sort of dragon or troll or boggit figurine inside that could light up when a little button was pressed ? Never happened so here is a scrappy picture with a bicycle torch shinning up the back. Now I remember the tunnel was have a plastic tube cut length wise for the vaulted roof, plastic sides didn't bother to used stone pattern plastic card just plane and a bit of strip-wood for the floor. Image from Dream Stream Model Railways web shop. I cut up the second entrance kit to get matching stone effect walls to extend the entrance downwards under the opening and the wings.

Problem how to turn an Airfix 0-4-2 into an 0-4-4 ? 58a 72 Attempt number one I've hacksawed away at the chassis to allow room for a bogie to swing. The hole is for the motor fixing screw. A quicky plasticard bodge built bogie has been slung together to test for room to swing and try it for position. I want tall sides so it acts as a bogie and side frames going up under the body sides, so this is a way of trying the idea out. Eventually there will be a metal one. There is also a cunning plan to pivot it from that motor fixing screw and then produce the ultimate 0-4-4 chassis. It will deal with the difficult weight distribution of this type of loco. The body will sit on top and both the front and rear parts of the chassis will have some side to side movement under the body. I hope to control the rear over hang on tight curves and get good weight distribution and haulage ? Watch this space. 67a 65a The body does clear the large Airfix motor. The join between the green inserts cut from one Wren body and glued onto the black body shows my poor measuring out hacksawing skills. The parts are supported at the back by rectangles of plasticard. One piece at a time with 24 hour intervals so the glue had time to set. I have been using Tamiya Cement, it gives a little bit of fiddling around time and it does a bit of gap filling too. The bunker parts where fixed with the help of metal straight edges and squares I can fill the gaps later. 70 a The body needs to ride about 2 mm higher, plenty of room for ballast.