Chris Chewter

Those photographs are absolutly beautiful and inspirational! Thank you for posting these.

Not owning an airbrush, and not looking forward to painting the rails with a tin of Humbrol, I used the woodland scenics pens. They do allow you to quickly get the side of the rails, and using the weathered tie pen you can turn the sleepers from black to a good shade of dark brown. I then applied diluted black enamel paint over the ballast to tone it down.

Don’t use coir or coco liners. You need the jute or sisal ones. Basically the green hanging basket liners, not the brown ones. This pack I picked up from B&Q (You should have seen the cashiers face when I purchased this in January last year!), but most laid on Tetbury was a big roll purchased from eBay. The coco/coir liners can be used to make bushes by teasing them out, but I found rubberised horsehair better. Likewise, I bought a big A4 sized pack of rubberised horsehair on the world war scenics eBay shop rather than the tiny packs sold by most model stores.

I've gone away and had lunch, a mug of tea, and a bit of a think. One of the problems I had was the loco wasn't secure at the front resulting in some rough running. She'd work acceptably on a rolling road, but would struggle when let loose on the layout. So I took the keeper plate off and refitted the centre screw. This seemed to catch a thread in the base of the chassis pulling the body down towards the chassis and resulting in vastly improved performance! Now the runnings improved, I've fitted a driver. Just need to remove the glue marks from the name plates and I think she's close enough for me!

Trojan Mk1 has been repainted in Alders paper mill green and looks the part, although the multiple repaints has made it a challenge. I’ll try to get a few more photos later. The problem now is that whilst she runs acceptably well on the rolling road, when light engine on the layout, she puts up a fight, so will need taking apart... again!

I’m surprised no one has responded, although the specification for specific responses may have come across as overbearing and put some off from providing an answer. To set up Seeps to operate frog polarity is a pain. If they slip slightly when installing, they can work perfectly to switch a point but travel too far to operate the frog polarity switch. I’ve used Gaugemaster DCC80s on my layout and they work great, although I would recommend testing them first as I received two failed units when fitting my layout. However the tam valley units seemed to work better and have a small led on the board so you have a visual indication of the frog polarity switching rather than hearing the relay clicking on the DCC80s. As for the second question, if it works on my DCC set up which uses a slightly elderly ZTC511, it should work with any DCC setup, however I cannot be specific given I do not own an NCE powercab.

In L&B measured and drawn, the lamps are shown red on all Manning Wardles regardless of era.

The Narrow Planet plates can be found here; https://shop.narrowplanet.co.uk/collections/custom-etched-products/products/npp-116

Although reading the email, why is there a limited delivery of Exe? What also weird is that the website states you can only pre-order Exe.

Just received an email that Taw in stock at Rails.

Poor old Trojan mk1 hasn’t gone to plan. The loco was stripped ready to repaint. In a haste, I read on the can that you can repaint after 15mins. I ignored my screaming better judgement, and of course the paint crazed. So Trojan was given a bath of oven cleaner and currently some imperfections are being filled before I sand and try again.

Whilst waiting for a set of Slaters sprung buffers to turn up to repair Trojan Mk2, I was looking at the pair, and it seemed pointless to keep two matching locomotives, so I think Trojan Mk1 shall receive a new paint job. I found a lovely photo of Trojan at Alders paper mill, and thought a repaint into a light shade of industrial green might be nice. https://www.flickr.com/photos/60790501@N04/5675394617

I am quite tempted to fit sound into it, but it would involve putting a Sugercube speaker on the footplate and hiding it behind some crew. I could fit a speaker in the boiler, but as you can see by the video, she's running nicely and I don't want to remove and refit the motor again! However those buffers need repairing first!

I've been waiting for a 6 pin harness to arrive from Digitrains to allow me to reassemble the loco. Wheels are on and she's running very nicely! A quick video of her running around can be found here: Side by side, you can see how I've got the boiler too short on the Mk1 verson. Front and rear views for comparison Sadly you can see that whilst reassembling trojan mk2, she took a tumble and the carpet monster claimed the rear set of buffers. At the moment, the cab roof is blu-tak'd on. (I need to find a better way of keeping that in place.) Also I may put some lamp irons and crew on in due course. I also need to apply some Johnsons Klear to take away the brush strokes from the gloss coat.

The problem with shop bought trees is they are really too small. If you have deep pockets, you could try 4D model shop. They make architectural models but also do trees. They can be commissioned to make something a bit more to scale. In the end I developed a technique using florists wire to make my own. They take around an hour per tree. Would you be interested in some step by step instructions on this thread to have a go yourself? If so, I’ll post a few instructions on this thread tonight.

I hope you will allow me to indulge in a little bit of rule 1. 4549 never made it to Tetbury as far as I’m aware, however before it was withdrawn, the smokebox numberplate went missing. Instead if chalking it on, someone painted the number on the buffer beam in the old Great Western style. It’s a departure from the models original condition. Believe it or not, it was manufactured by Bachmann in Great Western green with outside steam pipes! It was always photographed in filthy condition under BR ownership, so I felt obliged to give weathering a go.

Well I make that a successful day!

A bit more progress. Whistles and safety valve from an old Hornby "Smokey Joe" body that I purchased to do another cut and shut. Handrails are from the Hornby Pug. Door dart is an Alan Gibson set with 5mm handles cut to suit.

After some spraying and painting and a coat of gloss, she's looking a lot better. Once the gloss coat has dried, I can start looking at adding detail such as handrails door darts and decals. The 3D kit obviously is designed to fit the Hornby/Dapol pug chassis. On trialling the motor, the hole in the cab floor fits perfectly. Given that I have a Hornby Pug available and originally intended for this project, I'll use this to power the kit. The Peckett can live to see another day!

Excited to see this one go ahead of this much lamented branch. If only it was still here today to alleviate some of the traffic congestion going into Oxford, the A40 could be a very different place today! Personally I'd drop the "Little" and just call it "Fairford". Compression is often necessary, and if you don't draw people to the compromises, often they'll never know! There's a nice model of Fairford here you could refer to: http://www.gwr.org.uk/layoutsfairford1.html Also, there's another in New Zealand which shows the oddly shaped signal box: http://www.fairfordbranch.co.uk/Model.htm As for prototype photos, make sure you check out this website as there are some great colour photos on this site that aren't published in the books: http://www.fairfordbranch.co.uk/Fairford.htm

Well upon acquisition of Hornbys R3550 Lilleshall peckett, I can trial some different RTR chassis to see what works. I felt a bit bad taking the peckett out of the box as it’s a lovely little loco. However, you simply remove two screws and you have a chassis ready to go. The next mission is adapting the 3D printed Trojan to go over the top. Lots of cutting and removing the underside of the mounded boiler was necessary, but I got there in the end. Once I slipped the chassis into place, There is clearly a gap between the running plate and the cast chassis. I could pack out the gap but is it worth it? So out came a Hornby LMS pug which was dutifully disassembled and slipped underneath the Trojan body, however the underside of the boiler needs reinstating if I go with the Pug. And a few different views; Peckett chassis Pug chassis Looking at the photos, the peckett chassis works better with a bit of packing, but I dont think the 3D body is good enough to sacrifice a Peckett for. I’ll probably slip a static Dapol kit underneath for the remainder of this build because the lack of rivit detail on the 3D body really lets this option down. So, do I sacrifice the Peckett, the Pug, or go static. What would you do?

I thought I'd take a video to show a bit more of the Hattons/DJ Models 14xx in action on Tetbury. Shes a little tail happy and fitting the DCC chip in the boiler is an absolute nightmare, but she works reasonably well.

Whilst the wife caught up with her X-factor viewing, I decided to have a little bit of fun with Tetbury. After a bit of videoing which I shall edit another evening, I decided to try to recreate DaveF's photo from post 87. I was going to wait until either I finished off my 16xx kit or Rapido released their version as comissioned by Model Rail magazine, however I thought I'd see what happened. First the original And my attempt Unfortunately it does show that the OS plan I used is probably inaccurate, resulting in the turnout being further away, but I'm not planning to rip up the trackwork just yet! Its also very tricky to balance the camera to get the angle just right. i think my coach may have been too far down the platform, but it was fun giving it a go!

I thought I'd record a couple of my DCC locos added to the Tetbury fleet. First up following the historic photo of a 55xx at Tetbury, is my sound fitted example. I've managed to just about fit a SWD group 2 chip into the loco and a sugacube speaker. Next up, is my DJ Models/Hattons 14xx. This has had a Howes 14xx chip hard wired into the boiler, and a sugacube speaker fitted into the bunker. Enjoy!

Well the mimic panel is nearly finished, and its been an absolute mission! Firstly, with the best will in the world and even when using a locator tool for the SEEPs some must have slipped when fitting resulting in the lights not working on over 50% of the points. I could have tried to realigning the SEEP motors, but that feeling of "if it aint broke, dont fix it" came across me, so i decided to leave well alone! An alternative needed to be found, and this came in the form of the Gaugemaster GM500s instead of the Gaugemaster Autofrogs that I had previously fitted. With hindsight, I would use the GM500s throughout, but then I didn't think I would hit such an issue! After nearly a month of crawling back under the baseboard, testing, clipping, using several hundred cable ties and bell wire clips to try to tidy up the cabling, and a complete reel of brown wire to serve the LEDs, things are nearly complete. Currently the GM500s are dangling under the baseboards at the moment, but it works! I love it when people manage to get lovely tidy wiring under their baseboards. I managed to get one board looking lovely-ish. I need to replaced the adhesive copper bus with a wired bus, but that's a job for another day. Look the other way, and things didn't go quite to plan! I now need to wire up the repeater panel above the point switches, but again, a job for another day! If you are interested in the SEEP locator tool, the chap who makes them has put a helpful video up on Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw6iV-UsBJA