Jump to content
 

'CHARD

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    10,325

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    5

 Content Type 

Blog Entries posted by 'CHARD

  1. 'CHARD

    Blue Kestrel

    By 'CHARD,

    Well, they're discussing it on another thread, so what better more tongue-in-cheek way to launch my Workbench blog than a look at a W/B job from last season; none other than a Silver Fox KESTREL in BFYE, painted according or at least as close as I believe possible, to the corporate blue livery guidelines, which principally applies to the extent to which the yellow wraps round the radiused cab ends. Visitors to my layout thread on ye olde RMWebbe may have seen her lurking in the background of general shots.
     
    She has survived, like sister Falcon, to 1975, on ECML front-line services, received a domino but kept her 4000 number, as the shunter of the same number is now 08xxx.

  2. 'CHARD
    About time: first half of the Bush Type 4 fleet arrives on workbench (worktop?) - numbers and headcodes have gone, cruel photography highlights the blooming of paintwork where this has received the attentions of a pencil eraser.
     
    Thanks for the kind comments gang. Picking up on one of them on this blog entry, here is the planned locomotive fleet, the vast majority of which is to hand and awaiting workbench. I intend multiple edits on this, particularly with supporting text and background data.
     
    I had intended to summarise Lessismore's fabled Laws by now, but embarrassingly I need the old site to jog my memory. I have since captured an edit and it forms the next blog post on here.
     
     
    So, here goes, the planned fleet with the notable exception of Peaks, which are a work-in-progress.
     
    4MT
    43106 12A Lessismore branch loco pre-December '67 only
     
    0-4-0 DM
    D2413 64H Green Occasional loan loco from Leith for Teviotbank
     
    0-6-0 DE
    D3560 64G Blue Standby Teviotbank shunter
    D3889 64G Blue Rostered Teviotbank shunter reallocated
     
    Type 1
     
    D8164* awaiting allocation of number, may body-swap for disc headcode loco
     
    D8507 awaiting allocation of number, will become a 64B machine
    D8529* awaiting allocation of number, will become a 64B machine
    D8545* awaiting allocation of number, will become a 64B machine
    D8562 64B
    D8591 64B
    D8606 64B
     
    Type 2
     
    D5068 64B Blue full yellow ends (BFYE)
    D5072 64B Two-tone green, small yellow panel (TTGSYP)
    D5116 60A loco will be W/B conversion BFYE
    D5128 60A loco will be W/B conversion, thinking about early collision victim 5122 as alternative i.d GSYP
    D5211 oops - awaiting i.d. couldn't resist at less than ??30 new on eBay
    D5233 LMML branch freight loco, but was used as crew trainer over parts of the route GSYP
    D7603 64B GSYP
    D7606 64B GSYP
     
    D5320 60A BFYE
    D5325 60A BFYE
    D5331 60A BFYE
    D5340 60A BFYE
     
    Type 3 - in abeyance for reasons that will be explored in due course on W/B
     
    D6844 64B BFYE
    D6857 64B GFYE
    D6903 64B GSYP
     
    Type 4 - precise details of class 40 fleet not worked out until they reach the W/B in quantity, probably over the Christmas hols
     
    D2xx since acquired
    D214 "ANDANIA" GSYP
    D260 64B
    D262 64B
    D271
    D285
    D286 BFYE
    D303
    D342 since sold
    D343
    D359 64B BFYE
    D368 64B BFYE
     
    Class 45 and 46: currently looking at Bachmann release schedule alongside period livery details and body differences for the locos known to have worked across the Waverley. Expected final fleet size of between 10 and 12.
     
    D17 55B BFYE
    D60 55B BFYE
    D95 55B GSYP
    D188 GSYP
     
    D1536 55B Early BFYE now on W/B
    D1547 5A Early BFYE TBC
    D1725 D02 Early BFYE
    D1968 64B TTGFYE now on W/B
    D1970 64B TTGFYE now on W/B
    D1971 64B TTGFYE
    D1974 64B TTGFYE now on W/B
    D1976 64B TTGFYE
  3. 'CHARD

    Goings-on at Hawick

    By 'CHARD,

    Don't anyone get too excited, this is 'Chard in web-based research mode (stop sniggering at the back, Viz readers).
     
    Found this, which I've never seen before, quite: http://www.trainnet.org/libraries/Thumbnaills/European/Page12.html
    In the middle, look for a yellow end and the word HAWICK.
     
    Don't ask me why it's there rubbing shoulders with all that German steam and V200s, but it is. And it's real Pennine MC territory too. Not literally of course, because Hull finescale modellers aren't in Roxburghshire. No, I mean in the DMU sense.
     
    Having got over-excited about my pair of Hornby Train-Packs, and bought my copy of DMU Formations & Allocations (Neolithic Era), I was ready to be an apologist for using Met-Cam triples when all the available photographic evidence pointed to Leith's power-trailer twin sets being used. Well the picture at the end of that link looks to me like a triple comprising Blue DMBS and TCL, and a lined Green DMCL. Christmas, Birthday all coming at once. Happy Days!
     
    In other news, I picked up a photo off eBay showing the line in the process of demolition at Hawick. Dated 1975 and taken from a point now in the sky somewhere above Morrisons, but then on the embankment between Lochpark siding and the south end of the Teviot Viaduct, it shows the platforms extant stretching over the viaduct, lamps still in place, but all buildings swept away, ballast excavated presumably for use elsewhere, and a few yellow machines presiding over things in a vulture-like fashion. Spoil is being loaded into a large dump truck, rather than a road-going muckaway wagon, in a hollow that I can only imagine has been created by the deliberate breach of the trackbed and removal of the first underbridge south of the station. Again one assumes the derelict trackbed was in use as a haul road to a bulking site somewhere in the vicinity of the carriage sidings. Bad Times.
  4. 'CHARD
    This blog is to act as a conscience and reminder to crack on with the Sulzers now crowding onto the workbench, a return to working on locos in earnest after a few years' gap, and the first time I've had the nerve to open up new generation diesels.
     
    First up are a quartet of Bachmann Brush Type 4s and a BR/Sulzer Type 2, which despite only coming onto the bench last night progressed rapidly today.
     
    D5233 - D7603 tweak.
     
    The output: 64B non-boilered 25/3 D7603 Waverley machine, from Bachmann D5233 boilered loco. We are eventually aiming to capture something iconic like this: http://www.railbrit.co.uk/imageenlarge/imagecomplete.php?id=17882
     
    Ingredients: 25279 underframe (body sold on eBay) and cheap spare body D5233 (from eBay). Old Revell 47 matt grey (needs replacing with new tin), Howes Railmatch transfers, rub-down for instant result, Fox 3.7mm headcode figures (for the number '8' at No.1 end only), printing label self-adhesive, clear plastic for replacement headcodes.
     
    Key challenges - remove roof detail and make plain at No.2 end, change headcodes (note this is the non-lights model), also darken the cantrail grilles at this stage.
     
    To remove headcodes either prise out with edge of scalpel blade - carefully not damaging beading, or drill through in centre and then lever out. Paint recess matt black.
     

    Hole in roof left by boiler arrangement filled with portion of Thompson buffet roof cut to size, headcodes removed from this, a non-light-fitted example of the breed. This is repainted grey and will need going over again with very fine sandpaper and local repaint prior to weathering.

    Roof comprehensively filed flush after filling, Revell 47 Matt grey is a match for your average Bachmann Sulzer Type 2 roof.

    Headcode swap effected. This is a typical 64B Waverley headcode configuration. The other is even better, dare I say, need a decent photo. Old headcode insert used as template for cutting clear plastic roughly to shape, then filed for an interference fit. The non-standard headcode 'characters' are reversed out of tiny strips of plain white printer label with the aid of a 0.1 fine line permanent black marker.

    Here's No.1 End, cruelly over-exposed by the flash, but you get the idea. The slight bleed of black around the headcode will be swept up during weathering, but change of and correct i.d application across the fleet is number one priority this Christmas. To which end D5211 has taken the place of D7603, ready for removal of its last two digits, fourfold, and headcode work.
     
    Next up: Bachmann 47148 gets the retro treatment as we tackle 'Early Blue' on D1536.
  5. 'CHARD
    In the end the headcodes were the easy bit. Give them a good clearout from inside the bodyshell, stanley blade and pencil rubber method worked a treat, taking care to square the edges. I recommend an episode of Midsomer Murders for this (subject to regional variations), serves two locos.
     
    I used cut & paste - literally - headcodes from Heljan Claytons, reversed onto clear sellotape, and mounted straight back onto the inside of the cab front, adjust by eye, dilute to taste. The hardest bit was getting the body lined up and clipped back on, especially at number 2 end cab doors, the screws in the noses unleashed more Anglo Saxon than my New Year's resolution really allowed.
     
    1S64 at No.1 end is the down Waverley (winter portion), 2S52 at No.2 is the Carlisle - Edinburgh local, for want of a better alternative, as she's destined for passenger diagrams in the main. The latitude of two northbound workings is permissable by the slack discipline of the Edinburgh division cranking-up correct headcodes, as has entered folklore.
     
    This loco requires tweaks to the roof, and possibly underframe before I gently weather her, awaiting sisters 1547 and 1969 to reach the same stage before I tackle the weathering.
     
    Now for some repetitive pics:

  6. 'CHARD
    Drafted-in to replace yet more steam on local colliery and branch trips, Haymarket got its first real taste of the Class 24's younger, bigger sisters in December '66 with the arrival of D7602-7608 from Barrow Hill.
     
    These displacements followed their Clayton shedmates' transfer (effectively to the Millerhill subshed) by a couple of months, giving an instant north Derbyshire feel to Lothian freight. I can't even imagine what that might have been like.
     
    D7602
    D7603
    D7604
    D7605
    D7606
    D7607
    D7608
     
    The entire batch seems to have predominated on branch workings. I have footage of one at Auchendinny with a paper mill trip. On Waverley images there are positioning moves featuring these locos - famously the SO light engine working Hawick - Millerhill taking the Hawick pilot back home, and a beautiful study of another L/E at Stow - quite possibly the outward working of the same Saturday 'as-required' move. Pictures of them in the freight-only period are, thanks to Bruce McCartney, well represented. It is my contention that several of these locos worked as far as Hawick in normal service, and in 1967 I'm not ruling out their use, paired with other Baby Sulzers or piloting inter-regional freights, particularly the car trains, along the whole length of the route. Anyone wishing to model this niche genre of Waverley trip loco would be advised that the septet kept their smutty TTGSYP as-built livery throughout their ScR tenure.
     
    As with Class 20s, there are several recorded incidents of Kingmoor poking 52xx Class 25s up the Langholm branch, and Derby Sulzers site records many whole-line episodes, principally with Glaswegian or Crewe rats.
     
    A month or so after the last freight ran on the freight-only Waverley to Galashiels, St Boswells and Hawick, the same group were loaned to D16 (Toton) and formally reallocated there in July 1969. 7605 became an early accident victim, withdrawn in March '72.
  7. 'CHARD
    Some observers have pointed to the dying years of the route, when its life was literally ebbing away, as painfully exciting times, when nearly new Brush Type 4 locos (less than two years old when the writing was on the wall in February '67) and fellow Co-Co, EE Type 3s, made an impact. BR's 'Standard Type 4' certainly proved itself more than capable on the line's legendary climbs, perhaps even more so than the Peaks with which the line is inseparably associated in folklore. The locos concerned were D1968-1976.
     
    Yorkshire locos began to appear on 1S64 and its sibling diagrams in the last couple of years too, but Haymarket had received some 9 of the class ex-works from late October '65 onwards. For those of us who mourn the decimation of main lines and the post-Forth crossing network, the sight of these locos on principal car sleepers and expresses between Edinburgh and Perth via the direct route through the beautiful Glenfarg, and taming the Waverley on freight and passenger, is poignant to say the least.
     
    Behind the scenes, sharpened pencils were conspiring to seal the fate of much of the network, and by June 1968 60A Type 2s rendered idle by the closure of the Moray Coast lines were working to Edinburgh in pairs on ScR internal Class 1s, this and the demise of the Waverley spelled change for the 64B 'Nine,' D1968-76.
     
    D1968 - D1976 new to Haymarket between 23 October and 24th November 1965 - showing how quickly deliveries were of the Standard mixed traffic large diesel by this time.
    Only three: D1968/74/6, remained Haymarket-based throughout.
    D1975 spent two months at Polmadie from August '67, but D1969-73 were loaned to Gateshead in October '68 and moved there permanently a month later. As is well documented 1970 worked one of the last weekend specials, whether this was under the auspices of Newcastle or Edinburgh management is not known. Therefore the Waverley heyday of this batch of TTGSYP locos should really be considered as drawing to a close with 1968's summer T/T, and the inevitable moving away of assets to lines and diagrams with a viable future.
     
    The class has received its fair share of attention from photographers whilst on the Waverley, on a variety of services, predominantly freight, although the aforementioned last day special is recorded (on video too), as are several foreigners working 1S64 et al, along with a couple of diversions (BFYE locos feature on the W/B blog).
     
    Some very obscure modelling potential exists in the shape of the out and back freight turn which included a 57' non gangwayed brake to convey children to school in Hawick. This fully-fitted inter-yard Class 4 with Brush haulage would make a very unusual but plausible prototype.
     
    The dates when the majority of the batch received full yellow ends on their two-tone green livery are not known, although a picture of one such on 2M52 at Stobs features in one of Rowbotham's pictorials. Locos concerned are 1968-70/72/73. Of these, 1973 gained later style sans serif numbers. Good weathering pictures can be found on the Class 47 website.
  8. 'CHARD
    Here's the premise: take a rake of four freelance Mainline 5-plank wagons and strip their makeweight bodies off. Acquire via eBay some Parkside-Dundas PC45 Medfits (bowler-tip to Max Stafford for their i.d. on the legendary Shankend Clayton photo), and measure-up. Ascertain that the missing link is an LMS 20T Goods Brake (PC58) and add this to the pile. Start the task.
     
    That little lot coincided with starting the new job about eight weeks ago, and while I've been markedly less rowdy on the good ship RMWeb of late, I've not been entirely idle in my spare time. So, when I've dusted off the camera, I'll relate the saga of how this rake is coming together for Teviotbank's DCE. Gleeful amateur that I am in such matters, I've nonetheless had lots of fun and I've got a few questions to ask along the way.
     
    Teribus ye teri odin!
×
×
  • Create New...