SRman

Thanks for the kind comment.

Commenting on my own blog! Guess what ... I just found that missing tin of SECR wagon grey. I have now given the brake van a quick coat of that grey, which is rather darker than I expected. I thought the Humbrol #79 grey was too dark but, in fact, it appears more like a faded version of the correct grey, possibly useful later when/if I do any SECR wagon kits ad want to make them look well used.

Thanks Pete. Yes, they are nice kits and the service from Cambrian has been good too, in my experience. 

The kits were easy to build and inexpensive. They seem to be well thought out and the instructions also include a potted history of the relevant wagons with livery details and diagrams. While not perfect, these still go a long way to making the kits as accurate as possible to build.

I do have one of their large SR ballast hoppers to do and that will be a more complicated kit to build but the four-wheelers should be a doddle for beginners or more experienced modellers alike.

Thanks Adam. I'll try to give you a diagram or annotated photo with my suggestions. All are minor but will improve accuracy. I am aware that simple artwork changes may require a lot more behind-the-scenes work on your part to maintain accurate cutting of the vinyls.

One extra nice touch which can be seen is that your cab destination screens, when in place, are nicely illuminated.

I am very pleased with the result, overall.

Thanks, guys.

I have only seen the real ones in photos and videos but they do look impressive to me. The SWT colour scheme seems to suit them well and Electra have mostly captured that well, with the minor exception of those front stripes.

Thanks for answering that. Roxey have quite a few pre-grouping items available in etched brass, including this brake van.

Cambrian Kits are to produce an LSWR D1543 brake van in the not too distant future too, as well as their existing SECR 'Dance Hall' vans and SR 'Pill Box' types.

I was lucky enough to find two built Roxey LCDR/SECR luggage vans at recent swap meetings here in Melbourne. They were very nicely constructed although the brake gear had suffered minor handling damage before I bought them - price = $20 Australian each (that's approximately 

As Rick (Gwiwer) said, next time let us know you are coming to Melbourne. To get to Puffing Billy by train from Flinders Street you would have passed through my local station at Blackburn.

There are quite a few interesting and worthwhile layouts around here, including Rick's.

As for artizen, yes I have done that trip in the past and reckon on two 12 hour stints with an overnight stop in Dubbo. With three drivers and two kids it wasn't too bad as we rotated at roughly two hour intervals: two hours driving, two hours in the back with the kids and two hours in the front passenger seat.

They are coming on well. I have done the same trick for weight in plastic kits in the past, filling toilet compartments with lead and even plasticene at times!

Just an idea but for those seats that show in the windows, is it possible for you to get a paint brush on to the very edges without touching the glazing itself? If you can, you could paint the visibe edges with black to disguise them somewhat.

p.s. I agree with the comments re the Bogie 'B': i have frequently criticised it for the over-complication, using 100 parts where 30 would have done (so to speak ... don't quote me on those numbers!). And, after all that, they still didn't include the window grilles! It still made into a nice model in the end, though.

Hi Peter.

It is usually advisable to remove the capacitors as they affect the decoder's ability to adjust for BEMF, although some brands/types of decoders are better at coping than others. 

You could also adjust CV2 (the starting voltage) to make it more responsive.

I am usually not impressed with Lima running qualities on DCC but I was so pleased with 31 327's running I decided to do the other one, with the resulting tales of woe above. It ended up being a lot better than the initial problems would suggest but it took some perseverance to get there.

Addendum: after about four hours of running 31 004 is now behaving as expected. I had to change the value in CV2 to compensate for the stiffer mechanism (set to a value of around 50). That's still with the Digitrax DH123 decoder but I may try the Gaugemaster one again after this - it works very well in 31 327.

Ditto all of the above! Very nice, N15.

Hi Colin. The LED pointing through he floor was pretty well what I had in mind. I was thinking of blue but it may actually look better with twin LEDs, one blue, one white. I also had this in mind for some of the class 73s I have (mostly Lima bodies on Hornby chassis).

As for paint quantities, yes, I have enough to sink a battleship ... or at least, to paint one!! I did much the same thing with the London Transport train red.

Hi Colin and thanks for the compliments. Of course, mine is nowhere near as finely detailed and finished as yours but it will do for me.

The paint was actually mixed for me at a local paint shop. I took along a Bachmann 2 EPB as I think that shade of green looks right (without starting debates on SR and BR(S) greens all over again!!). The resulting acrylic semi-gloss paint came out a fraction lighter and bluer, although the shop assistant said if I wasn't happy with it to take it back and he would try a few more tweaks to the colour mix; this was after he had spent a good 40 minutes mixing and testing for me, so I have nothing but praise for him and his employer ... and his patience and persistence!  

Anyway, I now have over a litre of the paint, from which I decant a little into a much smaller jar for use on the workbench. Just my opinion but I think it looks pretty good. I do need to thin it slightly more next time as there are a few brush strokes showing on the HAL (not too obvious in the photos, thankfully).

Thanks for those kind comments. I do intend doing something about the cylinder shape in the near future. First task is to level it and get it to sit over the driving wheels properly - because of the slight tilt, one side 'sits' better than the other!

I should have commented further on the HAL glazing: it really requires curved glazing for the main windows but flat for the droplights. I cheated and used flat glazing throughout, except for the corridor side of the DTC, where I re-used some curved glazing from a dismantled Bachmann Bulleid coach (which means the droplights also have curved glazing!). Eventually I want to individually glaze each window on the corridor side as this will look so much better in the long term.

The dismantled Bachmann coach is another project in the making as I have two such coaches ready to accept some Comet brass sides for the 63' 6" Bulleid multi-door stock. As these sides were intended for conversions using BR mark 1 chassis I have had to shorten them slightly by filing 1mm or so off each end. I converted the first brake coach some years ago using an old Hornby mark 1 chassis - I may have to find another Bulleid coach to redo this one to match the other two.

Why do modellers always create more work for themselves??  

Hi Ivan.

Yes, I had considered that as Peter's Spares do advertise the N15 cylinders periodically. However, I was going to try filing down the sides of the Stanier ones first and use a little Milliput to build up the valve chests a bit to resemble the G16/H16 cylinder style more closely. If that fails then I will invest in the N15 cylinders. Thanks for that suggestion though.  

I like Peter's Spares and have bought stuff off them before but I tend to build up an order for multiple items as the postage to Australia tends to be bit on the dear side for one item only.

Very interesting, Grasslands.

My own Craftsman 07 has been runnable for some years but I never fully completed it because one of the wheels has an annoying wobble and all attempts to fix it have failed, to date. I also want to convert it to DCC. Your idea may provide me with a workable solution to both my problems.

Hi Philip.

I was pleasantly surprised at how easy this has been so far. It does look daunting when you read the instructions but it all makes much better sense if you have the chassis in front of you at the same time.Probably the toughest bit was removing the 6mm from the back of the chassis - I started this off with the Dremel and a slitting disc but finished it off with a razor saw. I could have left the motor in place but preferred to remove it and the wiring to reduce the risk of filings getting int the works.

I haven't done the 'Z' although I know someone with the kit (unbuilt though). I wouldn't mind one but it would be dependent on getting a suitable chassis at a reasonable price, as I managed with the G16.

A interesting project that has come out surprisingly well, considering the unpromising looking body you started with.

That really is crying out for some finer wheels to be fitted.

Could I also suggest (with no criticism intended) that you could improve it further by extending the straight line along the bottoms of the side tanks.

Overall though I admire your skill in getting it to look like the USA tank and your imagination in even seeing it in the initial model in the first place. I'm sure I have one of those sitting in a scrap box somewhere that I haven't known what to do with.  

Hi Peter. Yes, Graham's pages are very useful indeed.

Perth has had a real heatwave. Thankfully, so far, we have been spared the worst over here, although Friday is predicted to reach 39. I hope you survive it ... there must be an end in sight.

Definitely. That sounds like a very smart approach. Don't forget that some units had AEC engines too, mostly replaced by Leylands as parts became scarce. Then there were some later builds that had the more powerful Albion engines (Chiltern lines 115s come to mind). It may not be possible to get all of these sounds as authentic ones simply because some of these units don't exist any more.

Whatever you choose to do, I'm positive the results will be excellent.

Hi Bif. 110s certainly used RR engines but had a 6 cylinder version with mechanical gears (SCG, like most blue square DMUs), whereas the 127s had a hydraulic transmission and 8 cylinders. I'm fairly sure the RR Cravens units had the 8 cyl engines and some (but not all) had hydraulic transmissions but I never ever encountered those in real life so I cannot say what they sounded like.

The 110s and similarly engined 111s seemed to me to have a rather flat and uninteresting engine and exhaust note (I rode them on quite a few occasions between Leeds and York, and sometimes further afield too, to Manchester).

Don't get me wrong: I'm not criticising your choice at at all, I was merely wondering how much demand there will be for the 127 sounds ... and I would still love to hear them in all their glory. Being so far away I cannot just go down the road to even a preserved railway to see and hear these things nowadays. I think my last trip on a traditional DMU would have been in 1986. On subsequent visits to the UK I still rode many trains but the Sprinter families had taken over by then. The sounds provided by you and the likes of Howes do bring back pleasant memories of some of the earlier trips.

As an aside to my SR and LT modelling, I have a varied collection of DMUs, including classes 101, 104 (from Hornby 110), 105, 107 (one DMS only, done as an experiment), 108, 110, 114 (brass kit), 117 (modified Lima), 120 (Craftsman) and 121 (converted from Lima well before they offered one RTR), with unbuilt conversions still to do for 119 and 129 units. I only have sound in the Bachmann 108 at the moment and I wouldn't even consider it for the older Hornby and Lima based units because the running qualities are rather inferior to the more modern models.

I'm not sure how many models of 127s are around, Bif, but I applaud you for doing something different (well, I love hearing all the different sounds of these things, anyway!).

As for the 104s, I remember riding a train of two power-twin 104s from Manchester Victoria to Blackpool in the '80s and the coach I was in definitely had a rasp to it. That was quite an exhilarating ride as the acceleration was electric - we arrived at every stop early and had to await departure time.

Going back to the 127, could those sounds also be used for other RR/hydraulic units such as the Cravens ones, or were they different again (does anyone remember?)?

I'll be looking forward to the class 33 in particular. I have two with Howes sounds and, good as those are (to me), I would like to have one a little different to the other.

I think we have your rain here today in Melbourne. A few rumbles of thunder this morning, then, just as I was ready to leave for work, it poured! Looking out of my office window, it is still squally and miserable. I hope your weather is kinder to you now.

The Ayjay kit is not perfect but it is a very good starting point. Some of the detail is a bit on the heavy side, like the original moulded-on jumper cables, the heavy cab window surrounds and the roof and end conduits but for those prepared to put in a little extra work, the result can be very promising; I am certainly happy with the way it is shaping up.

I do keep looking at the roofs and thinking I might replace the conduits, although the lighting cables are reasonably fine and won't be touched if I do decide to proceed that way.

I am also debating whether to replace the moulded resin buffers with some white metal items I have.

Ideally, I should flush glaze all the side windows and cab windscreens (not the droplights though) but I can't see me putting in that much effort - I will do the windscreens flush and maybe the large corridor side windows, but not all the smaller compartment side windows. I will also curve the side glazing using some hot water to set the clear material.