57xx

Thanks Rob. I'll take a few more pics showing some other "fudges" that were required and not mentioned so far if it will help in your building of your one.

Thanks Rob, it's nice to actually finish construction on a kit for a change (bar the paint). I really need to go through the half finished pile and get over the mental blocks that stopped work on them.

if it's solid black, it's paint/coloured. Bare carbon fibre looks like a very dark grey due to the weave, which will also be visible, like the top two elements of the front Mercedes wing.

Construction of the Fruit D is all done, it's now ready for the paint shop. I still need to figure out why the coupling hooks are pointing skywards. The wheels that came with the kit had to be replaced, both sets were out of true and made the wagon wobble down the track like a clown car. No idea what brand were supplied with Parkside kits (the axles are polished steel, not blackened like AG ones)

I do wonder if people get confused when I say I put LMS buffers on my GWR wagon kits...

Same here, no point joining the initial froth and fawning when they can be had at a much more reasonable prices later on. I'm not desperate for any of them, but when they appear in the inevitable sales, I may pick up any that take my fancy at the time. e.g. I was never interested in the AA20 until I got one for £20. I've even cancelled a coach pre-order now based on pre-prod pics, I'm not convinced the models will be up to scratch for the very steep asking price, especially given errors on other models have gone unfixed. I'll be waiting until release for all future models whether wagons, coaches or locos, if I miss out, I miss out, the world will keep turning and I'll keep kit building.

Mmmm tasty. I've had a recent hankering for a straight frame Bulldog after re-reading my Barnstaple branch books looking at the Moguls. The Bulldogs were also were also a mainstay of that line. I look forward to seeing that completed.

I foiled their plan by already doing (a limited amount of) military modelling. Their ROD loco is way too light for dunkelgelb. 😉 Khaki is a quite a light colour (especially if the uniform has been washed a lot) so it may be "correct" in that respect, what I don't know is what the actual colour the ROD locos should be. Were they actually khaki drab, a quite different colour than khaki and probably more in keeping with the European theatre? It doesn't really bother me too much as it's not a livery I'm interested in. Found a discussion by military types here: https://landships.activeboard.com/t51746194/railway-operating-division-rod-colours/

I saw this technique described somewhere else many years back and when I built the boards for my defunct N gauge layout, I did some tests with it. In the end I decided to just use a single skin of 6mm ply. These proved to be plenty strong enough and light (25% less ply and much smaller blocks for the corners).

I never realised Cambrian had introduced transfers for their kits. I gave up trying to find ones for the Quint so they'll come in handy. I need to check through my stash to see what's left to build, I might even splash out on some for the NE 6plank and LMS D1666, much as i like the HMRS pressfix transfers, I find doing the numbers extremely tedious and it means many wagons are still in the unfinished pile.

The sooner you finish this, the sooner Oxford will release theirs and we can get our pre-orders. 😂

I had mine out on the test track at the weekend. It didn't really require running in at all, a quiet and very slow smooth starter right out of the box. I gave it an hour or so in each direction just in case there were any faults lurking but it remained impeccable.

I've had a load of @Quarryscapes before, nicely etched. Not sure if he still does them though.

Daniella Westbrook would beg to differ, she was particularly fond of it, didn't do her much good though. As for Q1s, I've always thought they were great looking engines, quirky but great. When I was little and playing with my Dad's TT set, one of my favourite locos was the Merchant Navy, so the Q1 naturally fell in to the "like" pile.

As already mentioned, prototypical. It looks like they have two boiler mouldings, one for the fat parallel chimney and one for the tapered chimney. The latter has the rivets. The Mogul book shows 4388 with the parallel copper top chimney and flush rivets in 1919. On the next page is 5350 with the first all cast iron parallel chimney but with visible rivets on the smokebox in 1925. It could have had a boiler swap since it was built in 1918, but appears to incorrect for Dapol's version. The flush smokebox looks to be correct for their 4321 in garter crest livery. It appears to be a production compromise to get the chimney varations.

Great news, Simon, I'm very much looking forward to getting this.

They are indeed, discussed on another thread with a short wheelbase wagon with restricted space for the coupling mount. https://www.morop.org/images/NEM_register/NEM_E/nem363_en_2018.pdf A perfectly valid NEM solution, seems it's a gap in Kadee's range more than anything else.

You. 😀

I agree it would have been better as black (unless there is evidence it wasn't black). A/C got applauded for the weathered smokebox on the Manor though, if this was an attempt to follow that, the execution failed. Would a lick of black paint be the simple solution? The black bits are usually the easiest to paint.

The hypocrisy is hilarious and a perfect example of what I was saying.

Exactly, the whole range of wagons is wrong and the error was pointed out for the first set. To me, visually they are wrong and jar. I don't mind spending extra on changing the kit wagons I build (I'm a huge fan of Mr Franks's products) but doing so when paying a premium for a state of the art RTR product? No ta.

I did have a 2nd sentence involving going on a bender but ran out of rhyming words early on a Sunday morning. 😀

There's lining on the tender, but not the tender fender.

i have a large bottle of the black primer and a smaller "German Dark Yellow" primer. That was bought a for a kit of a German Panther tank that I have yet to build. Until you posted about the various primer colours, I had thought that the Panther was all the Dunkelgelb would get used on. Looking at the bottle now, it might make a good undercoat for wagons, scrub down the top coat a bit with a fibreglass pen and hey presto, exposed wood underneath. I now need to decide which kit will be the victim test subject.

I think so, mine is from 1985.