blueeighties

I have to agree with you chaps, I found blue sides one of the hardest things to get right. Everyone said yellow is, but I always find that easiest! Right, back to the barbecue!

Look forward to seeing that Andy! One of my favourite liveries.

Hi Andy. I matt coated a pile of locos yesterday morning with Railmatch, and they all covered perfectly. Railmatch for me now! I use the same brush as yourself.

Hi Colin. Ask away mate! The joy of the forum. The picture is deceiving, I think you think the complete bottom half is masked off and painted white? What I have actually done is left the original painting reference line on that Hornby provide, as I will be painting along that line anyway. So my new white stripe has just been roughly painted along the middle of this line, white over grey is very difficult to see on a photograph. Sorry if that's a poor explanation. All should become clear as the other colours go on.

How warm has it been today? Absolutely glorious. I'm glad I didn't have a whole lot to do indoors on the old workbench. The power car has been primed, and the 1st white stripe is on. The others have had that good old traditional HST livery element added, the splattered pigeon. I really need to get out more

Evening Colin. I airbrush a light coating of dirt over the whole cab roof area. Most of this is then taken back, using cotton buds soaked with thinner. Another overspray and repeat of the process can be performed as many times as necessary until one is happy with the effect. I then mist a little bit more on with the airbrush along the rear edge of the cab roof to simulate a build up of dirt constantly blown back by wind, rain etc.

Hi mate, thanks. The lighting in the modelling room always seems to soften things a little in the photographs...They are actually a bit darker looking in real life. I didn't want to spoil it and go over the top

Cheers John, they really do look the business weathered. It's just a shame the Hornby blue grey ones are slightly out of my era, no smoke deflectors etc. I keep meaning to try scratchbuilding some for mine.

Cheers boss, thought you would appreciate them :-)

Hi Jon. He did indeed say that, I have tried white spirit with Humbrol, and it seems to work absolutely fine. I'll try it with everything else when I get the chance. Precision is now about 7 quid for a 250ml tin, white spirit is a fraction of that! Well worth trying being the skinflint that I am.....

Good evening all. Weathering, weathering, and more weathering! A number of projects have been finished off today to try and get some workspace on the bench back again! First up, d1005. A littlebit of work on the cab fronts, with rust patches, and the headcode numbers have been added from Precision labels. Just waiting for a bass reflex speaker to arrive now and she's complete. I think I may have got the window masks slightly wrong. Easily corrected. The 85 has had all of the additional details painted, and a light weathering applied. I have to say this thing looks superb illuminated, especially with the engine room lights. She has also been given a new number, and had the metal arrows affixed. These 2 have had buffer beam detailing, and snowploughs added, and a light weathering to the chassis. At long last this beast has been completed, I had to start again with it after the issues with the Precision varnish :-angry And last but not least, 2 of the 3 hst power cars have had a dirtying down. I really enjoy creating the characteristic streaking on the cab roofs. I think the blue grey one looks best. I think that's enough for 1 day!

Hi Colin. I agree with your thoughts entirely. I have always enjoyed using Precision, it is only varnishes I have started having an issue with. I tried Humbrol matt myself last weekend, it does indeed take an absolute age to mix! Ho hum.

Hi Jon. I do remember you saying that you had also had issues with Precision. I can only presume, as others have said, that shelf life is limited on the stuff. I go through tins pretty quickly, but I guess there is no knowing how long it's been previously standing on the shelf prior to purchase. Touch wood, Railmatch is working for me now.

Varnish. The word that puts fear into the heart of grown Men. Well me anyway, as you all know from my previous pulling hair out sessions! everything had been going swimmingly, until a strange problem manifested itself a couple of weeks ago. I thought it was just me, so pressed on, but unfortunately it meant ruining a recently resprayed loco, and having to start it again. The problem was varnish turning almost white. It's called blooming, and is usually caused by spraying in cold conditions. The problem has still been with me this week, and it's much warmer, so I was starting to get concerned, as lots of stuff is piling up on the bench waiting for matt sealing coats. So, last night experimentation time. On the right, you can see the issue. This is Phoenix Precision matt varnish, which has always until recently worked perfectly for me. On the left, sprayed from a new bottle of Railmatch matt. It's gone on perfectly. Now this is the 2nd tin of Precision I have had do this, I have no idea why. I'm sticking with Railmatch for a while! I have also learned the valuable lesson to do a test spray on a piece of something dark first, before spraying the item being worked on. Next up on the bench, HST power cars. We have 2 new spec Hornby ones, and a Lima. Can you tell which is which? The blue grey and old Inter City ones are getting weathering, the Swallow one is getting repainted into old style Inter City. Quite looking forward to dirtying these up!

I thought about doing this, but everything is glued in and very firmly affixed. I have had things go wrong previously when trying to remove similar glued in items, I'm leaving well alone!

Wow! An exceptionally quick and helpful reply. Thank you very much sir I have emailed Precision labels to see if they do produce anything superior to Dapol's supplied headcode labels.

Hi all. I am currently detailing and weathering a blue Western. Not being familiar with the class, I am not sure what to do with the supplied headcode sticky numbers. Are they just stuck directly onto the front of the illuminated headcode boxes? I also cannot see any prototype pictures showing the location of the supplied etched builders plates. Fantastic model though. Many thanks.

Hi JBM. I was happy with the final result.

Today, I have been detailing a class 85. A very good model, but its missing a few bits in the bufferbeam department. First off, I had to make some horn covers from some scrap brass offcuts. You can see the circular horn grilles outlined in silver. Bending the brass around an appropriate diameter drill bit. Trying them for size. Perfect! Next, forming the missing triangular steps that sit under each buffer. I used Shawplan lamp brackets. And then the above buffer lamp brackets from the same material. I also added a missing ETH box, you can just see it in unpainted metal underneath the left hand buffer. The rest of the details have now all been added. After doing that little lot, enjoyable as it was, I thought that was it.But then the Western came out, I fitted the name and numberplates, and decided to attack it with the airbrush. I think it was worth doing. Its not finished yet, but the basics are there and I'm pretty happy with it so far. I think that's enough for today!

Thanks guys!

Hi Jon Really simple mate. A ligt dusting of the chosen colour with the airbrush, and then just remove to taste using cotton buds, streaking in whichever direction you want the dirt to run. In this case, front of cab to back. When finished and dry, I then sprayed a little bit more muck build up along the rear cab bulkheadline.

Good morning Sean. Gloss black, with some weathering powders mixed in does the trick :-)

Funny that, I have never realised it before, but yes, I felt exactly the same way about the 'new fangled' 58's when they arrived. Hmmm......

Hi Guys. I think I'm back Apologies for my 'dummy out of the pram' moment earlier in the month, I have had some personal issues and have not been the happiest person in the World. Hopefully back to normal now, and more importantly, back to updates from the workbench. So here are a couple of updates. Now this is a bit different to my usual flavour of stock. I have to say this particular loco, ugly as it is, has a very strange attraction to it. Or maybe its just me! Not a lot done, front end detailing added, and a general weathering. Another lovely model to reach the workbench...Heljan's 128. It's an absolute pleasure to work on these things. Again this is slightly out of my chosen period of modelling, but on seeing it at my local model shop, I just couldn't resist. Heljan certainly seem to have upped their game of late. Dirty and dusty. A new technique tried here....I have tried to replicate dirt that has been rainwashed along the vehicle, and then dried. It's not that easy to pick out from the picture, but the engine and surrounding area is quite heavily oil stained. Greasy buffers to finish! Another 'different' vehicle to my usual stuff, an Inter-City Swallow dvt. Inspired I think after last months Inter City repainted 86! A particular area I wanted to get right was the cab roof. They have a characteristic streaking, where dirt is forced up and back from the sloped cab front, especially in the wet. I'm happy with the result. I must admit, I found these vehicles completely uninteresting, and totally lacking in character when they arrived in force on the ECML (they are completely silent!), but this Hornby one is a really nice model. Looks the business with lights and a dusting down. And back to my staple diet 37506.Had this sitting on the bench for way to long to do for a mate who I owed a big favour to. This is getting large white numbers, and the name 'British Steel Skinningrove'. I created a glossy patch for the new number, and also removed the plain white Thornaby Kingfisher on the engine room doors, and replaced them with the coloured ones. I ended up having to use Fox gauge 1 running numbers....the 00 large logo ones were too big. These are the same size as the oddly sized ones found on some large logo Scottish 37's and 47's.