James Makin

There'll be other identities that are candidates for direct renumbering or a little bit of work added (bare in mind the plated side window restricts) - with my cheapy old Bachmann ones I've been rebuilding the roof detail to get certain combinations so it all depends on how much fiddling you want to do! Plus also you never know if there's more general-release 37 'Heavyweights' coming alongside this Ltd Edition too to save you a renumber! Knowing my luck all the rebuild jobs I've done on the Bachmann ones will be coming RTR Cheers, James

Thanks very much Jacob! I'm 50/50 between Merlin and the Fag Packet on my favourite livery, it changes on a daily basis I think the speed of the introduction of the Fag Packet always impressed me the most, from seeing early pics in Model Rail magazine (I still remember the issue, July 1999!) to a Didcot trip a short while later and realising that in the small bit of time that First had stickered up vast amounts of stock, it was everywhere! One of my favourite platform fantasies as a youngster would have been to hook a thumbnail under one edge of the new coach vinyls, stand still and gradually unpeel the whole thing as the train departed the station Cheers, James

We used to regularly walk some of the old route as kids in the 90s with grandparents showing us the way, we got educated to look for the numerous bits of old ‘clinker’ which could still be found by the sides of the pathways, nerdily enough I always used to take a few bits home as souvenirs Cheers, James

Should be interesting, and maybe a backdated Bachmann 56 could be fun too! If I were Hornby's marketing team I'd be trotting out the old Railroad Hornby-Dapol/Mainline Class 56 and painting it up as a GBRf '69' in the various liveries just as they did masquerading the old Lima 66s as low-emission ones - their target audience aren't bothered with the differences and everyone's a winner! Cheers, James

They are indeed, the revised version has less ribs and different profile top capping, and minus steps plus reduced underframe side piping, so noticeably different from the Hornby version. The previous route to a revised MHA was using the S-Kits resin body on Hornby chassis with replacement buffers & Colin Craig brake discs so it looks like the Accurascale one saves a job and gives even more time back to weathering & personalising these fascinating wagons! Cheers, James

Incredible stuff, and personally amazing to see the revised MHA too, a very underappreciated wagon!

I've gone for the cheaper Hornby Mk2F coaches, with the idea I'd rather fix any elements needed to make them as good as they need to be, I think the ventilators are not quite right from what I've read, but not yet spent too much time investigating with other things to look at the F's. The Hornby Mk2Es have the noticeable fictitious solebar moulded that the Hornby MK2F's don't, the F's have a set of fan equipment removed from the underframe but are otherwise the same, and from what I can see with my examples, the body moulding is identical between Hornby Mk2E and Fs. I bought a load of Intercity Swallow Mk2Es for £17.50 at the Ally Pally about three years back, and then with the new MK2Fs coming out last year, I was hoovering up the IC and Virgin ones for approx £27 a coach on the basis that prices only seem to be going one way! The old Mk2Ds appear to me a bit of a con - pumped out in glossy boxes but they're the same as the old 1970s Airfix mouldings so I wouldn't buy those ones new from Hornby these days but instead go routing through the secondhand stalls once shows start again, they used to be awash with them in the various colour schemes, often in great condition. It's worth noting that the Virgin ones are not authentic as they had Mk2Es & Fs in any event if you model that period. After a lot of investing-for-the-future I've now assembled 5 and half rakes of Intercity/Virgin CrossCountry Mk2E/Fs that should keep me going, it's then easy to make adjustments to things that need correcting knowing that they were as cheap as can be and likely to go up in price with future batches. The Mk2F RFBs can either be bought from Bachmann (got a few non-DCC for £44 p/coach) or you can convert your own from Hornby/Airfix donors with window blanks. I'd advise buying the Hornby coaches now if you are tempted, the Standard class sell out the quickest and I know personally I emptied the stock of a couple of retailers doing the c.£27 prices..! Hope this helps, James

I think it's one of those circumstances where if the detail omissions bothered you, is the sum of the leftover parts still useable before making the purchase decision! The lining on the sides appears very intricate, and is likely a higher quality finish than I myself could do with a home repaint (nightmare visions come back of me first tackling lining during a repaint of Lima GWR 60081 back in late year 2000 ) - so I'd think, 'can I install the roof & light mods and do a patch repaint while keeping the good bits intact?', and if it's a yes then that'd influence my decision there! Cheers, James

Looking superb as always Andy! The Colas 37 looks particularly pleasing with the washes highlighting dirt on an otherwise good condition loco, really nice! It’s made a garish toy model into something very real, meaty and substantial looking! My old mind got excited seeing the text about 60054, thinking “ooh a bit of Petroleum livery” before the images eventually loaded up on my phone Cheers, James

I’d love to be unpacking a 5-car WIA ‘Arbel’ articulated car carrier from the glossy black Accurascale boxes... Cheers, James

I think the ideal solution would be to have Merlin decals with white ink on clear backing using the green from the paint job to shine through, the Fox decals are old and date from when the livery was new but the only commercially available option on the market unless someone like Railtec comes up with something! For the paint preparation, I’d remove as much as you can of actual lumps of visible paint but the rooves are far from precise so you can likely get away with the odd tiny bit of paint stuck in a crevice! My process is to dust over with Halfords grey primer to highlight any imperfections before proceeding, rubbing down and reworking until happy, this should also get rid of the colour contamination you mention in the grilles and give an even coating ready for the actual paints over the top! For the paint itself, rather than getting someone to mix spray cans it’s an ideal job for a cheap airbrush (or a pricey one, depending if going two feet in!) and spraying over. In terms of fussiness, it’s down to personal preference but ironically over my years of doing these makeovers I get less and less fussy! I’d say my results get tidier and slicker through tactical cheating, corner-cutting, disguising and bodging when it comes to weathering and finishing! It might sound sacrilege but I handpaint most of my stock roofs, blending shades of dark greys and just using Humbrol enamels, brush marks just disappear and the final layer of matt varnish over the top covers a multitude of sins! Best of luck! Cheers, James

Fran, My morbid curiosity would love to see the wagons inside and potential damage having seen the outer packaging, that would be one unboxing video I’m sure many would be keen to see! Cheers, James

Thanks Jim! I didn’t get around to doing any cheeky plug at the time but it was great fun to put the feature together! Cheers, James

Hi! Just remembered about this thread, I've finished off my GWT power cars the other week, and put some pics in my Workbench thread - They were quite fun to spray but took a lot of care and finishing in getting sharp paint edges to the livery but well worth it, hoping Hornby may do this RTR someday! Great Western HST Power Cars by James Makin by James Makin - Account 2, on Flickr I did also take some snaps before the weathering went on, here's one of the waterslide decal stage in progress, but I wouldn't take note of the actual colours as they are much more yellow in my workbench light than in natural daylight etcs! Great Western HST Power Cars by James Makin by James Makin - Account 2, on Flickr Then once varnished over and weathered, reassembled ready for coming back to when the rest of the Mk3 coaches are finished for this rake for fitting some Kadee couplings and flexible gangway detailing etcs, the underframe weathering will then be looked at as it's just what was on the secondhand base donor models so wheels etc need cleaning up, then finally it'll be released for traffic! Great Western HST Power Cars by James Makin by James Makin - Account 2, on Flickr Great Western HST Power Cars by James Makin by James Makin - Account 2, on Flickr Hope this helps! James

I’ve long thought the late ‘90s-early ‘00s is our equivalent of the past generation’s 1960s BR steam/diesel transition era - that sweet spot when the last great bits of crumbling BR were mingling alongside the first fruits of the exciting and colourful privatised network - a very interesting and diverse few years! I’m also finding it increasingly hard to resist a pair of early DRS 20s, I never saw any, nor found any evidence that they strayed far south to Didcot in the late 90s and am kinda hoping they’ll sell out before temptation gets the better of me Cheers, James

Yeah, around that time there were so many bargains to be had, and you could come home from a show with several new locos in the bag and life was good! There used to be a trader called Martells of Sutton who quickly became our best friends, we'd be out on the exhibition circuit with Worthing MRC's Loftus Road and during the course of an average weekend the Martells guys would be there like market traders trying to get us buying stuff, "ask for best prices" and lots of haggling on new RTR - it was incredible! So many of my current locos being worked on came from this great emporium at silly cheap prices I've seen some of the great shots of the Midland Mainline and GNER sets going over some of the picturesque places like Cockwood Harbour and thinking that'd make for an awesome model! I'd love to do a Cornish exhibition layout one day, I started and stalled on one inspired by Golant, but it's a great part of the country to model for sure. For Didcot, it's going to be a pretty big layout, a touch longer than Loftus Road but a fairly similar footprint. The aim is half a 'cut' triangle, the straight station in the foreground and part of the Oxford curve in the background that heads off behind the backscene to rejoin the fiddle yard, with a teaser of Didcot Yard on the left hand side as you look at it, curving back into the fiddle yard while the Swindon lines head off at the front of the layout and later curve round, it's taken a huge amount of planning to get to that stage! I need to put in my order for the next round of Tim Horn laser cut boards to get that part off the ground. The fiddle yard is designed to have 18 roads in a 3 foot depth so identical to Loftus Road's, but will start on the curves so giving capacity of 2 full HSTs per fiddle yard road on many lanes, the shorter ones will host mixes of the numerous Thames Turbos, light engines and shorter MOD freights etc alongside the longer ones, such as the Freightliners, oil trains, steel and the automotive traffic. Ironically the power station coal traffic was coming from Avonmouth Docks by then so while there'd be opportunities for the arrival onto the scene & loco run round at the Swindon end of the layout, the coal stuff won't be a huge part of the traffic through the layout as it happens! Cheers, James

Thanks for all the nice comments guys! Cheers Rich, I know just what you mean! The price of the power car sets has rocketed, I used to have luck in finding them for £100 a pair in that sweet spot in the early 2010s a couple of years after first release with unwanted stock still floating around before the rises came in. I recently paid silly money for some Virgin power cars, having regretted painting my last ones into the FGW fag packet - never imagined they'd become tricky to get hold of! Ha thanks very much Rhys, I really like your weathered stuff! I was thinking of Virgin HST interlopers specifically but bringing the loco hauled services into the mix too and it does get crazy, the fiddle yard will be bulging! I've got 4 Cross Country Mk2 sets assembled so far, taking advantage of raiding the recent batch of Hornby Virgin & Intercity Mk2Fs at the reasonable price point while they were still in the shops at sub-£30 prices from Collett's Models. I've detailed the first train of Mk2Es already a few pages back and the 47/8 fleet is already done (plus a suitable amount of grotty freight rescue locos done for when the real things failed!) - crazy to think how many loco hauled services you'd see on an average day and that they were taken for granted at the time! I can totally feel your pain Rich! I used to try keeping my models up to date around that time and with so much change it was always a losing battle! It was always a conundrum with Great Western as I loved all the liveries, and no sooner did you start to really enjoy seeing matching sets did they change again! I had one of the original Hornby Merlin HST releases and tried repainting it into the new 'Barbie colours in 2001, but not having any transfers, nor being that competent at airbrushing, it looked a bit of a mess! These power cars here are definitely an exercise in getting back something from the youth! The GNER livery is equally classy to be fair! It took a while to grow on me but it'll definitely always be considered of the most premium-feeling early-privatisation corporate images there! For this first Merlin set, it's going to be mostly the dual-Great Western branded coaches as by 1998/99 it seemed a lot of the sets had that branding almost exclusively, but with the odd coach here and there with the original Intercity Merlin branding showing! The Lima TGS I've got in Merlin has the original Intercity branding so I'll likely keep this, while the rest are the Hornby release with the double Great Western logos. Future sets I might have more of a play around though, I've got plenty of decals ready so it'd just be a case of going through pictures and records to work out which specific coach number held the Intercity Merlin brandings the longest and modelling some of those! Cheers, James

Here's what I've been tinkering with lately! Great Western HST Power Cars by James Makin by James Makin - Account 2, on Flickr With the Didcot layout project slowly rumbling on, and old freight locos popping off the workbench here and there, of course it was only a matter of time before the big meat started to arrive - and the real reason for what captured my imagination as a kid - squadron services of HSTs with Valentas screaming, pounding through at full 125mph line speed! Joining the fleet today are Great Western Trains' 43027 Glorious Devon and 43041 City of Discovery in the short-lived but ultra smart 'Merlin' livery. Great Western HST Power Cars by James Makin by James Makin - Account 2, on Flickr The starting point was the new-gen Hornby model, and really quite a few years back I picked up an HST set from a fellow RMWeb member, it'd been customised to represent the Intercity Executive livery, but for sale on this very forum at a keen price, back in the day. After being pugged away for many years, during the first lockdown last year I plucked it from the collection and set about the long-awaited makeover... Great Western HST Power Cars by James Makin by James Makin - Account 2, on Flickr A lot of caked-on yellow paint was removed and underneath revealing the original Intercity Swallow livery, ready for some customising to represent my chosen power cars. Great Western HST Power Cars by James Makin by James Makin - Account 2, on Flickr The rear Guard's window and obsolete rear driving window were filled in and smoothed on one power car, and fortunately some cunning selection of the power car identities meant no changes were required to the roof grille arrangements this time, unlike the 'Fag Packet' power cars in the last batch which necessitated a time-consuming rebuild. It's interesting how similar the rubbed-down Intercity livery looks compared to the final Great Western Trains livery, there's no dramatic makeover moment unlike with a normal repaint! Great Western HST Power Cars by James Makin by James Makin - Account 2, on Flickr Luscious layers of rich Great Western green and ivory were applied, the masking around the headlights for the green 'bar' proving particularly intricate. Doing this kind of thing always seems to highlight what I've long suspected is some accuracy issues in the size/positioning of the Hornby lightbar but it's tricky to pinpoint the exact issue - had the same when masking up around for the FGW Fag Packet cars in 2015! After some glossing with Railmatch gloss varnish, decals were applied from Fox Transfers... Great Western HST Power Cars by James Makin by James Makin - Account 2, on Flickr Although ordered from Fox last Summer, upon arrival, their stock was clearly aged and had yellowed extremely! The resolution for this was a tip I'd seen online from mates was to simply leave the yellowed decal sheets in direct sunlight, and over a couple of sunrises the UV light removes the yellowing, clever stuff! Nameplates were applied, using those from the Fox range and a layer of varnish applied on top, before being left a while to allow the surface to harden before the weathering stages began. Great Western HST Power Cars by James Makin by James Makin - Account 2, on Flickr Armed with London Grammar's stunning new tracks, weathering commenced, a two stage wash of Humbrol's 251 and 32, basically dark brown and dark grey, just to highlight dirt in the recesses and some of the oily dirt visible. Some of the brown was also let run up the lower sides - with the Great Western ivory being so light in colour, it showed up the dirt easily despite regular trips through the carriage washers. Great Western HST Power Cars by James Makin by James Makin - Account 2, on Flickr To finish the weathering, some highlighting was done around the front ends, on the two prototypes chosen, both exhibited paint chipping and dirt gathering on the noses and lower fairings, so this was recreated exactly to match early-mid 1999 condition for these vehicles. Great Western HST Power Cars by James Makin by James Makin - Account 2, on Flickr 43027 Glorious Devon had long been a favourite due to it's dreamy and quite aspirational name - when you'd be standing on a grey windy platform at Didcot, seeing a power car pull up with that name takes the mind to holidays somewhere much hotter, sunnier with some nice cream teas! Great Western HST Power Cars by James Makin by James Makin - Account 2, on Flickr Great Western HST Power Cars by James Makin by James Makin - Account 2, on Flickr Next up was 43041 City of Discovery. Unlike 43027, this wasn't always a 'local' power car, being recently moved across from Virgin West Coast in early 1999 and a new recipient of the Great Western Trains livery. The City of Discovery name reference is actually related to far away Dundee! Great Western HST Power Cars by James Makin by James Makin - Account 2, on Flickr It's been great fun to model these two power cars, and they've had interesting careers screaming through the countryside. Despite enormous change to the HST fleet in recent times, both power cars are happily survivors as of 2021, seeing out their days as part of the refurbished GWR 'Castle' fleet - back in the day us modellers would've dreamed at the prospect of small modellable 4-coach HST sets instead of 8-coach monsters! Next up, the models will receive some traffic weathering as part of the bigger batch of diesels being weathered later in the year, I'll mainly be adding some roof dirt, chassis dirt and oily exhaust deposits via airbrush in the coming months to finish off. For this next HST I'm going to use Kadee couplings to replace the tension locks and further refine the elastic pipe coupling concept since my last 'Fag Packet' HST too. It's rather fiddly to connect all the pipes together while out 'in the field' exhibiting so I'm looking at something that's super quick to assemble but still looks decent - a tall order! Great Western HST Power Cars by James Makin by James Makin - Account 2, on Flickr Next up in due course is the more fiddly task of getting the matching 8-coach set all finished, detailed internally with a 'rush hour' filling of passengers and all externally branded & weathered up to match. There will be plenty more HSTs in the coming years between the wagon, loco and layout projects as I've estimated I'd be looking for around 7-8 different Great Western HSTs to run a reasonably believable service on the different lines of my Didcot layout, and that's before getting to any Virgin Cross Country interlopers...busy times ahead! Cheers, James

Hi! If it helps, Bachmann still have some of these in stock via their spares department (both 37796 and 37706 in stock) - I recently bought a few for my own projects, £35 a body plus £4 postage direct from the friendly team at Bachmann - contact detail on their website, hope this helps! Cheers, James

I’ve had my bundle of the 6 British Steel Blue wagons through, and they are lovely! All arrived safe and sound, no breakages and are truly superb. They are so gorgeous in the bright blue, normally I love weathering but the prospect of making these look faded and tatty like their true late 90s condition seems a little bit like ruining a work of art! Better get started before I change my mind..! Great work as usual lads! James

Hi, Would anyone have any spare bogie sideframes of the early style for the Heljan / EFE Class 58 please? It’s the type with the early arrangement (without the sandboxes) that I’m after. I have a full loco’s set of the later style (with sandboxes) that I can swap in return or happy to simply make a payment via Paypal, whichever is preferred. The style looks like the below - Many thanks in advance James

Absolutely! I know Steve at Railtec is rushed off his feet working on requests alongside the main range! Great point on the swoosh elements too - the ones I've seen modelled do have variable results as there's a lot of skill in getting the curves just right. Railtec did the Fag Packet transfers because of me! I drew up the designs in CorelDraw back in 2013 and then kept pestering Steve to do them, he then worked his magic on turning my files into something that could be used for gold transfer printing and the rest was history - happy days! Cheers, James

Strangely I’ve always liked the BR Intercity Mainline livery - just the way it made the 90s look more workmanlike compared to the full Swallow which is quite bling bling! Always thought Swallow would’ve looked nicer with full white skirts similar to the 91s though! But my soft spot is for Virgin being the radical new livery taking over when I was just getting into modelling and that’d be my top wishlister! Cheers, James

I’ll be sure to post up some pics of the Merlin power car in unweathered form once I do the project update on the Workbench thread - to be honest the weathering they are getting is just a pin wash over the sides to highlight the grime in the recesses etc, there’ll be no coating of Bachmann style ‘RHTT’ brown spray to hide that gorgeous ivory! I’ve got a few snaps of my first Fag Packet set from a little while back, just a repaint over the new style Hornby power cars - The stainless plates are on there too, those for BBC Wales Today and County of Somerset are from Fox and reasonably decent quality. Shawplan’s ones are a touch finer still but the range of identities is less. The Railtec decals themselves are gold metallic but not overly shiny, and I’ve layered mine over with matt varnish in any event so it’s not bling bling..! The stripes on the power cars are not too far off the Lima FGW coaches but for my next few Fag Packet/Merlin transition sets they’ll be freshly painted throughout (I worked I need at least 7 sets to run a half-convincing Didcot exhibition service, eek!) For the later Barbie livery the First decals are a larger size but I would hope Steve @ Railtec may be up for tinkering with the decals one day! A few others online have already modelled Barbie (all versions), there’s a guy on eBay flogging them occasionally too so someones had a go at the transfers themselves. At the end of the day you could just print the First transfers without the ‘gold’ element and they’d look decent enough in any event! Hope this helps, James

Coming to this thread a few days late, I can confirm that the Phoenix shades are good - I've recently used them on a respray of the new style Hornby power cars into GWT Merlin with Fox Transfers on top. I'm rather happy with the results, the transfers themselves arrived yellowed (old stock it seems) from Fox's but were left to de-yellow in direct sunlight over a couple of days and were perfect. Phoenix's paint shades come out a treat too. Pics will be on my Workbench thread (link in sig) once all weathered! Nameplates are also in the Intercity stainless steel design from Fox's. Shawplan also do a good range too - didn't realise it wasn't more common knowledge but there is an absolute ton of old Intercity stainless steel plates available as per Rich's pic above and all seem pretty good quality. Fox's etched range is great also for filling the gaps between the Shawplan ones too! For best research on the naming history of the power cars - I tend to consult the Platform 5 'Locomotives and Coaching Stock' books for the respective years you're interested in as it lists them in there, failing that Flickr has a pretty good selection if you type the power car number and the year of your choice. Look forward to seeing how your project progresses! If you're on Facebook there's a good group to join "GWR and First Great Western Railway modelling" - resprays like these and the newer liveries are posted on a daily basis by fans of the genre, there's been loads done out there beyond the examples there so well worth having a look when you get a chance! I also did the FGW Fag Packet livery a few years back and asked Steve at Railtec to print us some gold decals - these are on his website if it helps with your Project Rio HST too! Hope this helps and best of luck! James