43179

Rotating axleboxes....

Good afternoon - a long overdue update - I've been here there and everywhere recently - Sorry I missed you at Scaleforum Jon - however your handywork in the display cabinet was much easier to spot! Some very nice small layouts this year- Nice to see Fryers lane in real life after following it on here. Mrs 43179 enjoyed Scaleforum too - I think Clecklewyke was her fave though with the nice old canal /lock something that's very close to our hearts. We also went to Bruntingthorpe for the Cold war Jets day - brilliant day if you like big boys toys - after seeing and hearing and feeling these things in action , seeing them sitting quietly in a museum just isn't the same. Mrs434179 likes the VC10 - shes got good taste Some Trains - at the moment I'm putting transfers on the silver 67 - here a quick shot of on side done, with the accompanying DVT - the latter has just had its buffers sprayed silver and the light clusters painted black , otherwise its perfect - Hornby did a great job of it. Also building a 7mm class 122 - this is an Easybuild kit and I've really enjoyed it - the instructions are particularly good , with a CD full of reference photos included Finally an RJH class 59 kit - and old kit , but not bad - it pays to research these a little online before building , as following the order of the instructions can cause problems , particularly with fitting the bulkheads into the bodyshell. Build the chassis first is rule no1 with this kit! More on this later tfn Jon

Livery errors - well I have an airbrush (that doesnt owe me anything) and plenty of cotton buds , so they are the least of my worries - if a roof panel is the wrong color for example - I can respray it in the time it would take to go online and write about it. Of greater concern would be if it runs properly, is well made , i,e doesn't fall apart and is well designed inside. That stuff is much harder to judge from livery samples, and much harder to fix. Jon

Hornby Collectors club members and fans of the royal family look away now this is - or was , 67026 Diamond Jubilee - the collectors club LTD edition - that I'm now ruining to turn into something else. If you know your 'skips' then the black cabside window panels should make it obvious which loco its going to be. Lots of careful masking and paint feathering for this one . Hopefully I wont mess it up, as a replacement will cost rather a lot on ebay tfn Jon

Hi Mark , sorry its been a while since I've updated on here - the 08 is 08648 - I think there was more than one grey shunter at Laira at the time (maybe wrong) but 648 was an easy spot as it had high level pipes and an odd colored panel on top of the bonnet, oh and different buffers at each end too. I love all the little differences you find on 08s. The 150/2 were around , and I remember brand new class 153s arriving, looking very smart in new Regional Railways livery - while most of the 150/2s were still in the older 'Sprinter' Livery , and they looked a bit grotty by comparison. tfn Jon

The more I look at those livery samples, The more i think theyre all photoshopped , particularly looking at the numbers and logos etc, anyone else agree? Jon

Great taste in 47s - nice to see '004 modelled modelled in green. Love it. Jon

Proper Locos

a bit more on the 59 today- while painting a few other things I've given the silencer a quick shot of red oxide and some rust to get the weathering on that started - i also gave thew bodyside grilles a light coat of grime, assembled the bogies onto the chassis - both bogies needed spacers , as a both ends the pivoting points on the chassis were too high up , so the solebar hit the bogies . I found some little round plastic spacers on a southern pride sprue - and seen to be the right thickness for the job. Now, I think it 'sits' just about right: and there's 'daylight' around the bogies/underframe equipment in all the right places A quick look at the body - the glazing in the windscreens is very prismatic and doesn't help the face of the loco - making the windows sort of appear undersize. Ive cut some new stuff from slide glass - very carefully!! and made some new windscreen wipers , modified from some lima class 101 parts. Just need to cleam my fingerprints off the glass which kind of spoils the effect at the moment. The new glazing does show up the thick bodyshell so ill need to paint the inside edges of the window openings - probably in light green to match the rest of he cab interior color. That's all for now , though I couldn't resist balancing it (it's oo gauge, wheras Laira is P4) on Laira tfn Jon

Thanks for that link mark - I'd forgotten about cannon; just had a nice time on their website In the whole scheme of things it would just be far more sensible to model north american and make the best of all those lovely aftermarket parts. Norfolk and Southern of course! tfn Jon

I spy a 59 jo

Good evening , years ago when I was small and had a paper round I remember spending some of my hard earned £12 that week on the Lima Catalog - I cant remember the year but the cover had a Yeoman class 59 on it , and I've always wanted one as a result. My local modelshop had a nice cheap one that was as new , and a silly price so I snapped it up, the idea is to make it run nicely and make the chassis a little more 3D - I'm not going for a full rebuild or repaint , just a quick job to make best use of what Lima has done, and use up some of the spares in my bits box along the way. Whats most important is this thing runs smoothly and can pull a train, so the Italian pancake has to go! sorry if this post goes on a bit - i often do stuff and don't document it, so trying to make up for it with a proper 'how to' Very Silver! , I'm thinking keeping it ex works - its 59001 so I also get to fit the little bell on the cabfront. I've chopped out the plastic infill around the fuel tanks , battery boxes and cylinders -the detail on the ends of the cylinders isn't bad , so I've left it all there and just carefully pierced out the plastic infill around them I've cut away the extra box section on the chassis that formed part of the motor bogie pivot - so now the solebar is the correct shape - this extra box section present on the chassis means the bogie sideframes have sections missing at the ends for clearance - with the chassis hacked , I can add those missing bits to the bogies. The sideframes have been chopped of the bogies and on the top two, you can see grey plastic where I've started filled in the missing sections of the sideframes, other than that. They'll probably need a little bit of filler later . Now to find a replacement drive system The class 59s have a very distinctive unequal axle spacing , along with a few other locos - including 56s. The axle spacing is different between the two locos but not by a huge amount , so in model form I think I can get away with it. A quick offer up , and it looks promising: A quick visit to ebay and i got a 56 chassis cheap , that will donate lots of parts. The 56 side frames simply pull off , now to figure out how to attach the Lima sideframes and get them all aligned correctly , and securely. First off though, the chunky Hornby wheels have to go , they are nearly as coarse as the old Lima wheels from 20 years ago - luckily the 56 wheels are too big for a 59 anyway so they have to be changed anyway to keep the ride height correct. Transferring the Hornby gear to the new wheels - my little back to back gauge, by pure luck, also lets you set the gear at the correct offset on the axle. I prefer to remove the non insulated wheel from the axle as I find it easier to replace accurately. I refit the wheel to the axle with a tiny spot of Loctite 603 I've used nice 14mm black beetle wheels which are the perfect as a 59 has 3'6" wheels Rather than try and glue mountings pegs/pins directly into the Lima sideframes ( to replicate the way the 56 sideframes attach) I decided to make a set of removable mounting pads separately, so the Lima sideframes can be attached to those and adjusted later. The pads are just some rectangles of 1.5mm plasticard with two holes drilled , and some plastic rod stuck in with MEK - I used an old back to back gauge to make sure the rods were stuck in square . I also reamed out the tubes on the bogie gear casing so my new pads plug in smoothly but aren't a tight fit like the original sideframes were. I expect ill want to take them on and off a few times to get everything right so a loose fit is better. Bogie sideframes fitted to the mounting pads - I used slo-zap so i had time to adjust them - but I did make a little jig to glue the sideframes on level and at the correct height. In this piccy you can see now I've filed away the excess mounting pad to the shape of the 'frames. The sideframes need a little bit of filling where i added the missing bits earlier - while the filler goes off I turned to the chassis. On the left ive cut a slot in the chassis floor for the gear tower to clear and pass through. the original trailing bogie pivot hole is reused , just enlarged so the Hornby bogie pivot fits. On the right there's already a nice big hole where the pancake motor was - I've just added a block of plasticard and drilled for the bogie pivot. I've taken the Hornby 56 motor and its mounts and bolted it to the clip that used to retain the old Lima ballast weight - On the motor I've replaced the telescopic drive shafts with those from a Hornby 50 (has some in my spares luckily , as the shafts on the 56 wont be long enough. The shafts simply-un clip at the universal joints . ...and this is it so far - clipped in place the motor is suspended from the old ballast weight clip - this keeps the motor nice and low and the drive shafts run horizontally to the bogies - something I always aim for if i'm building a chassis. Nothing to do with performance, it just looks nice part 2 , tomorrow , hopefully i'll get the bogies on and see how it all 'sits' - I want the model to have the correct stance of a 59 - on the real loco there is virtually no gap between the solebar and the tops of the bogies so that's what i'm aiming for, I'm not expecting it to be right first time but hopefully I've made things so its easy to adjust Thanks for reading! tfn Jon

last one tonight , to make it a trio 56037 in Construction Livery - This started life as , well , 56037 in construction livery , but unfortunately Hornbys rendition of the triple grey livery was terrible - The lower rail grey being more like green than grey - and the upper flint grey far too dark. you can see how it originally looked here; http://www.ehattons.com/35875/Hornby_R3052_Class_56_Co_Co_Diesel_56037_Richard_Trevithick_in_Railfreight_Construction_Liver/StockDetail.aspx To fix it I carefully masked off the sector logos and the roof and ends then resprayed the sides . Fox plates and Plaques and some light weathering and now it looks a bit more presentable. Well , nearly. I really need to tone down the orange jumper fittings on the cabs. Overall I think its turned out a pretty good 'rescue' of a bad Hornby paint job. tfn Jon

Hi Jo - Thanks - it was a nice loco to do - I didn't replace the mesh on the 47s roof grilles- but to make up for it i found some etched fans in my bits box and painted them different colors and popped them in. The yellow one has red tips on the blades which I saw on a 47 somewhere , so nicked the idea! tfn Jon

And 33207 tfn Jon

Hi , well its about time I showed something actually finished - first up 47328 jon

I wish for class 442 please Jon

a quick post tonight - transfers applied to the crane , plus wasp stripes painted and some other bits added on. Etched handrails are supplied with the kit but are very fine so will go on at the very end. TFN jon

Nearly but not quite - my grass needs a trim! Jon

Thank you so much for posting that photo , its exactly what im trying to recreate - ill have to dig out my Bachmann 158. I stood by that fence looking at 50s many times when I was little. Do you have any photos of the pair of snowploughs by chance Regards Jon

Hi Jo , Nice you spotted the cabin its one of my favourite little details - at some point it ended up sitting on a well wagon in one of the sidings - visible here; http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/uploads/monthly_08_2011/post-1161-0-32485600-1312497047_thumb.jpg If i can get a positive ID on the actual wagon , then ill model it - i *think* its a weltrol of some kind. jon

Back in 2012 I took my layout to Scaleforum - since I arrived home from the show it hasn't seen the light of day until now. I couldn't resist a little play , but now its back to work tfn Jon

A couple of quick snaps this evening. I've glazed the 33 this evening - the glazing is the original stuff but with marker pen run around the edges. I also slightly reduced the side of the glazing for the headcode panel so it fits more snugly , as this often shows up on Heljan 33s. Done some painting on the crane too - tomorrow i have to tackle lots of wasp stripes on the ends. tfn Jon