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Ravenser

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  1. Ravenser
    I know I promised a report on the final stages of the reworked NBL Type 2 , but a start has been made on the long- stalled Class 128 parcels unit , and it's getting a little frustrating...
     
    This posting has been sitting in draft for four years with the optimistic stub "Progress on the 128 has been slow, but like BR we're getting there" Very slow indeed... . However on closer inspection I find I am in no sense entering into the home straight with this one
     
    The project ground to a halt when I found that part of the bogie support at one end of the Replica chassis had sheered, and could not be stuck back together. This left one end of the chassis sitting lop-sided. I eventually found out that Replica could supply a replacement, I took it to Peterborough show the following year and they fitted the part .. and other things were higher priority and got in the way.
     
    Having finally got round to the 128  as a result of lockdown I started by trying to fix the mistakes that had begun to nag at me while the bodyshell sat gathering dust on the bookshelf. The lights didn't look right. I removed the whitemetal castings and found they'd been glued the wrong side round. They now look a good deal better, though not perfect. At the left hand end the cab handrail should be inboard of the door. With some trepidation I clipped out my first attempt at a handrail here and put in a new one in the correct place.
     
    There is a problem with door furniture. Two styles were fitted, one to the WR vehicles (of which my model will be one, as inherited by the LMR and modified without gangways) and one to the vehicles originally built for the LMR
     
    A good shot of the WR vehicles is here - M55993 - ex WR and an official photo of one of the LMR units adorns the relevant Railcar.co.uk page Railcar.co.uk - Class 128 page
     
    M55993 is going to be my "target unit" for this model:- the door furniture is visible if you blow up the photo - and I have absolutely no idea how to do the two small handrails either side of the handle , bearing in mind there would be 6 per side and they need to be exactly the same and in exactly the same places . The DC Kits instructions seem to indicate that there are two etched door handles to be applied , one on each door, and no handrails. That is definitely wrong for all units..
     
    After several attempts I eventually got suitable door handles for the three parcels in place, using bits off an NNK/Phoenix etch for Bulleid coaches. As a fudge I've done a rendering of the LMR style handrail , using an etched grab rail from the fret. It is at least regular and neat and more or less the right side, though I had to clip out the first attempts and reposition when I found a good photo.
     
    I also added the vertical handrails beside the windows on the cab front.
     
    This brings me neatly to my big grumble and issue. What I bought from DC Kits was a package deal of 128 body and Replica chassis. The kit instructions are a little sparse and broad-brush. There were a couple of etches of detailing parts. Since what I'm trying to do deviates significantly from the original kit with floorpan and underframe the instructions are not always relevant anyway. There are some sketches but they are not always relevant either. And I'm finding that in a number of areas the parts needed are not included and there are parts included that may not be relevant.
     
    To be more specific - there are no bogie parts included . Since the Replica chassis requires bogie sideframes, I'm on my own. I've managed to find an unbuilt Kitmaster Mk1 coach kit in the cupboard with plastic sideframes that can be adapted to give a decent representation (I would use MJT bogies if actually building the coach , so the mouldings are spare)
     
    There were two fold up etched strips for the underframe equipment, but these were designed for the DC Kits floorpan moulding and the folds weren't in the right place to suit the Replica chassis. And after looking at it for several months I was certain that a fold up etched box with no detail on the face simply wouldn't convince . There are two plastic mouldings representing battery boxes in the bag of bits , so I've hacked away the etched box on each side and made good before fixing the plastic mouldings in place with superglue. But they are hollow, so I'll need to make a back from plasticard… The instructions refer to castings for engines, and two types of airtanks . No such castings are in the box. What lumps I have on the underframe look uncomfortably sparse (and thin) - certainly compared with photos. Golding's book of DMU drawings only shows one side of a 128 , so I'm left to guess if the other is the same , mirrored , or significantly different. The sketch in the kit instructions , and the two identical etched strips imply the two sides are the same but I'm not sure I trust that.
     
    Plastic buffer beams are provided as are etched brass detailing overlays. As I can't see anything on the etched brass overlays that isn't on the mouldings , I've just used the plastic moulded buffer beams. Plastic buffers are supplied but they are round , and by the 1980s M55993 had oval buffers . I found some MJT 1'8" Oleo buffers in the bits box and have substituted those. I butchered the etched brass coupling hooks to get them in, and left off the etched shackles as they would foul the Kadees (There's no diagram to show what the components on the etch actually are)
     
    And I'd already replaced the roof vents with MJT cast torpedo vents
     
    In short this is looking less and less like a 128 kit, and more and more like a scratch-aid for a 128 requiring the builder to conjour up much of the build from his own resources
     
    Progress to date is shown here. I can get a long way towards finishing this, but there are some parts of the underframe equipment where I am afraid I may find myself stumped.

     
     
    And I'm starting to wonder if I was a mug trying to build my own and I should just have paid £50 for a Heljan model out of the Bargains page of a boxshifter… Because I cannot finish this to the accuracy of the Heljan model.
     
     
  2. Ravenser
    After a brisk start , this project seems to have gone to sleep again. 
     
    Not quite true - in the last 10 days I've actually managed to paint the bodyshell, and matters now stand thus:
     
     
     

     
    I see I have managed to capture the corner where one of the window pillars became damaged and had to be repaired. It looks much worse blown up to around 7mm scale. I also haven't removed the Maskol from the handrails
     
    Transfers are Modelmaster (someone said he's dropping transfers?) and the etched NBL diamonds are 247
     
    All it now needs is a coat of matt varnish - and a working chassis to put it on
     
    (As an aside I now have a further excuse to own one of these locos. There's a group talking about building a replica Class 21 Class 21 replica project  - and from them I learn:
     
     
    The possibility of running one in Lincolnshire - maybe even at a pinch on the E Lincs line - hadn't occurred to me)
     
    I've also added a little representational buffer beam detail. When I were a little lad (ok, armed with an ABC..) buffer beam detail seemed to be the core of diesel modelling. It was almost the whole of "detailing a diesel" - and as I used tension-locks in those days it was out of the question for me. These days I use Kadees, which though neater still swing, and I've still pretty restricted in what I can do below the buffer beam. I do try to do something but it veers from the representational to the frankly vestigial.
     
    However all Hornby attempted in the 1980s was a vague blob where the coupling hook should be, and so something had to be done to fill up a notably "busy" area. I've now replaced the blob with a proper whitemetal coupling hook, and fashioned a very rough representation of the two large jumper sockets on the buffer beam out of the ends of two Langley cast speedo cables, with a bit of cable - probably overscale - looped up to one side. It's not much, but it's something , and should be a significant improvement on the starting point. I'm not 100% sure about the shade of red on the buffer beam , but looking at the photo above I think it might be ok
  3. Ravenser

    Loco Hauled Substitute - 1 : Overview

    By Ravenser,


    Constructional
    In the latter years of BR a little bit of interest was added to the DMU deserts of secondary lines by emergency loco-hauled workings. By the 1980s the Modernisation Plan DMU fleet was dwindling and ageing, while both passenger traffic and passenger services had begun to increase again. Any depot that didn't keep on top of maintenance or saw its DMU fleet racked by some infirmity of old age could easily find itself short of sufficient serviceable DMUs to cover all diagrams . This was particularly the case in areas with Pacer fleets when they suffered their gearbox problems but it wasn't necessarily confined to them. By this stage nearly all first generation DMUs were hitting 30 years old, and being worked more intensively than ever before
     
    The alternative to simply cancelling random chunks of the service due to "shortage of serviceable rolling stock" was the "loco hauled substitute". Provided you had some means to run round or change engines at destination, the hapless depot scraped together some elderly loco-hauled coaches generally surplus to requirements, found a spare Type 2 or Type 3 , and sent them out on a suitable DMU diagram as a "loco-hauled substitute".  ("Top and tail" was not a recognised practice at this time. If it was ever done, it would have been seen by contemporaries as a very desperate lash-up)
     
    For additional operational interest Blacklade has one "loco-hauled substitute" running:  two blue/grey coaches and a pair of 31s which change over Minories fashion. One of the 31s is used to haul any other loco-hauled going - the morning and evening parcels , and the engineers' train
     
    For about the last 7 or 8 years the Loco Hauled Substitute set has consisted of a Bachmann Mk1 BCK acquired cheap as a return off the Bachmann stand, and a Mk2Z TSO bought discounted along with a few other Bachmann coaches when my local model shop closed down. (They can be seen lurking in the back platform in the heading photograph to this blog). They were weathered and given Kadees and they've given sterling service over the years; but it's about time I rang the changes , or at least gave myself another option for this slot.  After all I have a modest sized pile of RTR coaches  and donor vehicles for coach projects, not to mention a stock of bits to rework them. It's just that only two of my diesel era coaches have been breathed on and released to traffic.
     
    So - what's in the pile?
     
    Well :
    - a Bachmann Mk2Z BSO, Mk1 BSK , and SK. All blue/grey , only needing commissioning - Kadees and weathering. 
    - The remnants of my teenage layout Flaxborough, to whit , a Lima Mk1 SK, a Hornby Mk2 brake (presented as a BSK, actually a BFK) , an Airfix Mk2D TSO, a Triang Hornby  RMB roughly repainted into blue/grey and two Lima Mk1 BGs 
    - A vintage but essentially unbuilt Kitmaster kit for a Mk1 SK.
    - Comet sides for a Mk1 CK and BSO, acquired second-hand
    - A Mainline Mk1 BSK acquired cheap secondhand at DEMU Showcase 
    - An InterCity liveried Hornby RMB , representing the last Mk1 in regular traffic (a regular on the 18:00 Liverpool St- Norwich)
    - A Comet Mk1 underframe kit
     
    There's also a Mk3 DVT in ONE blue with neon bars, and a spare Midland Mainline Mk3 TSO, but we can ignore them in this context
    The stock off my teenage layout can be seen here. (For the record one of the two CCTs has been rebuilt and detailed for Blacklade, the other still awaits)
     

     
    Certain reservations must be noted.
     
    - The Lima BGs are 64' instead of the correct 57' - they are therefore only of use as donor carcases to take etched brass sides. The presence of two sets of etched sides in the list isn't an accident
     
    - The Mainline Mk1s have windows that are far too shallow. I was thinking about converting this coach into a bullion van , but that has an extra end window and it all looked a bit difficult. As did justifying the presence of a bullion van on the layout, and doing the blue/grey paint job. An NNX courier van would be easier to justify, but the cut and shut work would be much easier on the old Triang -Hornby Mk1s . This develops into a separate story....
     
    - Some years ago in an expansive mood I decided I would flush-glaze one of the Mk2 brakes. I rapidly came to the conclusion that a lot needed doing to it, this wasn't going to be a quick job and it went back in the pile. I subsequently disposed of the other Mark 2 brake at the club show. One Hornby Mk2 rework was going to be quite enough
     
    Since we have been in lockdown, and since my attention has been wandering from the straight and narrow path of only finishing what's been started, I thought I would do some coach modelling. I've produced enough sets of steam-era coaches for the "Kettle period" in the last few years, so it's time to give the Blue period an alternative to the long-standing loco-hauled substitute set
     
    Where do we begin? A 2 car set is all Blacklade can handle. Ideally I need a brake and a little first class accommodation too. It is winter. I started this lark in early December, at a time when spray painting is going to be questionable for a few months. Especially in a shared landing in a high infection area during a lockdown. I am more than a little nervous about attempting to spray a two-tone livery anyway.
     
    We can agree that an airconditioned FO has no obvious place in a 1980s loco-hauled substitute set. Nor do buffet cars. 
     
    The two Lima BGs are likely to be donor carcases for the Comet BSO and CK sides. They could make a well matched pair. But those will be the two most demanding projects on the list - metal parts, comprehensive underframe replacement, respray in blue /gray, make up interiors. Not perhaps the best place to start...
     
    Simply commissioning a couple more Bachmann RTR coaches is something of a cop-out. This is the time to do some modelling. And I have a pile of MJT coach bogie etches and cast bogie sides in stock. I've had them for years, since I discovered the Engine Shed at Leytonstone and went a little bit mad on the coach bits on offer. That must have been over 15 years ago.
     
    Let's start with the brake coach . There are three options : the Bachmann Mk1 BSK and Mk 2Z BSO, and the Hornby Mk2a brake , which should actually be a BFK and on which I had already made a tentative start.
     
     
     
    (Bachmann BSK - I admit it's had the interior painted, Kadees fitted, and end steps removed. More of that in the next post..)
     
    For the second coach , the options are : Bachmann SK, Kitmaster SK/TSO (interior wasn't supplied and the bodyshells are identical) and the Lima SK
     
     

     
    Now the SK was the most numerous type of Mk1 built . But by 1992 they had all gone from revenue service, while there were still modest numbers of Mk1 TSOs and small numbers of CKs, FOs, and brakes in service. (BSKs, BFKs, and BCKs survived in penny numbers. The BSOs had all gone) . 1992 is my earliest convenient reference point, in the form of a Platform 5 volume.
     
    There is a reason for this . TSOs have 2 + 2 seating  across the centre aisle, for a total of 64 seats. The ER, LMR and ScR specified their SKs for 3 a side seating, with armrests. That gives just 48 seats per coach - a relic of a more spacious age when express trains did not expect to fill all their seats. The WR and SR, whose main lines carried heavy holiday traffic on summer Saturdays, specified Mk1 SKs with plain bench seats and no arm rests, officially rated for four a side seating
     
    In my coach modelling box were two Replica Mk1 TSO interior mouldings. I really shouldn't be running 3 x SK and no TSO in the late 1980s... I already have a  maroon Hachette SK running in Set 4 for the kettles.
     
     

     
    The options now resolve themselves. The Lima SK is nominally an upgrade project to a RTR coach with a ready-painted body. The Kitmaster kit is well, a kit, and it would need painting. Swap the Lima interior for a Replica moulding and flushglaze , and we have a result - a straightforward Mk1 TSO (There's rather more to it, as we shall see, but still at first glance this is the quickest, easiest project...)
     
    We need a brake vehicle and some first class accommodation. Only one project gives me that - the Hornby Mk2a BFK. These two projects are also relatively well matched in terms of the standard of the base model. If the flushglazing turns out so-so then at least you aren't faced with direct comparison against one of Bachmann's better efforts. Unfortunately this project does mean some repainting, as we shall see. And that in turn means it's not going to be finished and ready to enter traffic before at least Easter.
     
    The simplest stop-gap until then is to commission the Bachmann Mk1 BSK. If I can't bring the Lima TSO up to an adequate standard to run alongside (which means acceptable flushglaze)  , then  I simply push ahead with the Hornby Mk2 BFK. If the two end up well matched - it doesn't matter if the BFK hangs fire.
     
    That opens a further can of worms - finding a suitable long term partner for the Bachmann BSK . The Kitmaster SK/TSO, which does have flushglaze and is at least a plastic kit, would probably be the easiest answer
     
    Oh, and along the way I sourced a replacement Triang-Hornby BSK for the NNX courier van - so that got added to the projects, too
     
    (The heading photo is not a loco-hauled substitute or even on BR . It was in fact taken on the GCR at Rothley in 1977, but it does show what blue/grey Mk1 BSK + CK would look like, even if there are other coaches behind the photographer. And at least there are definitely no copyright issues with it)
     
     

  4. Ravenser

    Letter from Lockdown

    By Ravenser,


    Constructional
    My annual review and New Year's resolutions are a month late this year - which is rather better than I've managed in the last couple of years. Not only that, I can report that that the delay is due to Making Stuff, rather than as in previous years meaning to , but not actually doing it.
     
    I'm not saying I'm completely cured of that. Despite my best resolutions, the amount of modelling I've actually done during various lockdowns , furlough and the like has been much  less than I intended , and less than I ought to have managed. I'm probably not the only one in that situation.
     
    Early in the pandemic I made what amounts to a Statement of Good Intentions here.   Some things in it have since clarified themselves.
     
    I was made redundant at the end of July, and although there has been a resurgence of activity in the jobs market in the last few weeks and a couple of interviews, at this point I'm still looking for work. The legacy will be significant , as the value of things has not collapsed. While I need an income, I'm certainly not broke either in the short or medium term - but it also isn't sensible to spend money without a good reason. Lockdown and furlough have enforced an economical lifestyle on me - and probably on other people. Vaccines are being rolled out, I'm hopeful that I'll find work in the next couple of months; but at present the shops are shut, I'm going nowhere except for my daily walk and it's become blatantly apparent that I have enough projects already in the cupboard to keep me going for a long time - years even - without me spending money to buy any new ones. 
     
    Quite a few of my Good Intentions were carried out last year. I tidied up the 009 stuff on hand, and I did a little weathering of it. I ran the 009 stock a few times. The NBL Type 2 was finished and released to traffic: I've even finally written it up. After years of procrastination an article on the Boxfile for the DOGA Journal was finally written and published . The ex LNER Toad B was finished off. I made progress with the 128.
     
    It was at this point that I strayed from the straight and narrow....
     
    My plan was to work steadily through all my unfinished projects before I started anything new. Unfortunately, once I'd finished off the Toad B I started to reflect on the fact that I hadn't built any wagon kits  for several years. While I was on a roll, perhaps I could build some more, and finish off my purge of the non-runners in the Boxfile fleet, which was discussed here.  That reflection produced a burst of activity, and I replaced a detailed-up Hornby Dublo OHV with a much better Parkside kit that actually stayed on the track, and resurrected and rebuilt  a Slater's rectangular tank wagon from my teens , described here.   
     
    And whilst I was hunting through the relevant boxes in the cupboard all sorts of things turned up, which prompted me to see what else could be done in this direction. (As you do..)
     
    Discovery of the mortal remains of an Airfix cattle wagon kit from my early teens spurred wild schemes of rebuilding it as a tunnel inspection vehicle, based on a conversion photographed at Rotherham in 1984 I spotted in a Cheona wagon book . The battered bits were treated to some Modelstrip and bagged up for safe-keeping, but it's not actually a priority. An Airfix brake van from the same period, nicely painted but which dropped to bits in short order, was also bagged up for future use. But at present I have no need of another brake van. So that's not being built. (I've got a perfectly decent Airfix brake finished as a piped CAR in a storage box)
     
    More constructively , I sorted out the discarded ex Hornby Dublo OHV as an engineers wagon for Blacklade. The chassis was tight, so I loosened it by melting in one bearing a little with the soldering iron to give a spot of rock and slop : "bastard  compensation". It acquired new transfers, along with a load comprising a builders' compressor unit (from a Mendip Models pack that I found in the cupboard) and a spare whitemetal signal cupboard . I should have cleaned up the castings slightly better before I painted them, as rubbing down the paintwork took forever and yellow has rotten covering power to start with.
     
    The elderly Hornby refrigerated van has not only been cleaned up, it has also acquired a scratchbuilt wooden underframe , been painted, and been given transfers. Much of the weathering has been done - I simply need to finish the weathering off, and fit couplings. 
     
    It was at this point that I wandered off into containers. Vintage 1950s railway containers.
     
    Some years ago I bought a Bachmann Conflat A with a rather attractive Speedlink container. Further research discovered that the Conflat A wasn't right for Speedlink operations, and I concocted a more appropriate Conflat V  from a Red Panda clasp braked underframe kit, a spare Parkside wagon floor and a few scraps of plasticard. (It's stretching a point to call this scratchbuilding.)The Bachmann Conflat A then acquired a suitable Parkside BD container.
     
    Unfortunately both wagons proved to derail on the Boxfile. Since Conflats count  as vans , and since I'm underweight in vans anyway, Something Had To Be Done. Especially when I found a Parkside kit for an ex LNER Conflat S in the box of wagon kits.
     
    So I built the kit, meaning to reuse the Parkside BD container off the Conflat A , which it was to replace. But for various reasons the BD container wouldn't quite fit on the Conflat S. So I ended up buying a new Parkside Conflat A kit, and building the FM meat container out of that, which is slightly smaller and which will fit the Conflat S. In due course the Parkside Conflat A will be built and given a Bachmann AF insulated container froma pack of 4 I found while rummaging in the cupboard. (The AF wouldn't quite fit the Conflat S either. Before you ask.)
     
    The unloved BD was eventually found a home in a Dapol ex LMS 5 plank open , which had also shown a strong propensity to derail. I had to file away at the projecting bumpers on the bottom edge to get it in, but after a little work in it went... The container has lead inside it so what was a lightweight open now weighs 50g. And suddenly the LMS open is running reliably, without any need for me to rebuild the chassis . Result!
     
    One more wagon credited to the "vans" , a segment where the Boxfile fleet is light on numbers, and off the total of opens (where I was overweight).
    Here we have the OHV - showing that Hornby Dublo made the sides too tall - and the BD container jammed in the LMS 5-plank open. High security shipment...
     
     
     
    As result of this I now have a spare Bachmann Conflat A knocking around , which I'm thinking of repainting blue  and transferring to Blacklade with a DMU bogie sat on top of it.
     
    And while I was sorting these vehicles out  I fitted coupling wires to the little Ruston 48DS I bought at the last Warley show , and finally got it into service. A further product of this burst of enthusiams was the addition of a few scraps of detailing to the Boxfile, which was looking a little sparse, (Better sparse than too busy). The British Railways delivery van (someone's resin kit) that I built some years ago and never glazed has now received side windows courtesy of Glue and Glaze, and I need to cut windscreen glazing out of clear plasticard to finish the job (It's not the Morris Minor van visible in the photo, by the way. That was a more diminutive replacement, in better keeping with the Boxfile . I gave that a coat of matt varnish to dull it down while I was about it)
     
    The Ruston needs weathering. Another little job for 2021. It does run very nicely - slowly and controllably , thanks to the low gearing - and it's ideal for the Boxfile.
     
     

    After all this progress I succumbed to the urge to buy more wagon kits. The fact that I didn't have any Southern wagons at all in the fleet was starting to nag, and given that the Boxfile is heavily skewed towards vans and the fleet is short of them, there was no doubt that the Southern wagon needed to be one of their distinctive vans.
     
    Given the fact that most of the wagons that fall off the Boxfile seem to have RTR chassis, and nearly all the RTR wagons fall off , not to mention the sordid question of money - the Southern van had to be a kit. A Ratio kit for the wartime plywood type was therefore acquired from Dutfields between the second and third lockdowns, and I've actually built it. (I'm at least trying to ensure that any new project I buy is built and doesn't add to the stock in the cupboard) . That too awaits final weathering and couplings. I will paint those buffer heads.... That reminds me that I modified the kit slightly to represent those fitted by BR in the 1950s, some of which received Oleo buffers
     
     

     
    Then I got distracted by coaches . BR blue and grey ones. A Lima Mk1 from my teenage layout has been extensively upgraded as a TSO and needs finishing off. I have started work on upgrading a Hornby Mk2 a to a BFK. In a moment of weakness I bought a Triang-Hornby Mk1 BSK as "feedstock" for a NNX courier van conversion, and I've made a reasonable start on the job. To add to the list, a Bachmann Mk1 BSK I bought years ago and have got into traffic is being commissioned and weathered as a short term partner for the TSO. More of all this in a separate posting...
     
     
     
    But this does mean that all the three new project purchases (Ratio SR van , Parkside Conflat A, Triang-Hornby BSK) have actually been started and reasonable progress has made on them. My cupboard is at least emptying, and not being refilled....
     
    Also in the coach department there's the two Fisons weedkilling coaches I bought from Invicta . These were ordered in 2019 but I let the order stand when Invicta contacted me duringb the year to say they had come in. The coaches need couplings and weathering , and I have to sort out two suitable TTA tankers for use with them. The lack of an actual spray coach is nagging at me slightly, but I can't see an easy solution. No-one bit when I asked on the relevant Invicta thread about a colour match for the Fisons green.
     

     
    So that's what I actually built in 2020, despite all the expansive plans and good intensions. As far as running the layouts is concerned, the year was equally mixed.  The Boxfile came out and was used a few times: it's a convenient way to test things do in fact run properly. Blacklade has been up three or four times, but it should have been much more...
     
    Now for 2021 - and resolutions aspirations:
     
    - First priority is to finish off  the TSO and the Bachmann BSK and get them into traffic. Followed by the Hornby BFK and the NNX courier van when it's warm enough to spray paint with confidence (i e about Easter)
    - The various wagons need finishing off and releasing to traffic in the next month or so.
    -  The 128 needs to be finished to the point where it too can be painted and released to traffic. Otherwise I have nothing to pull the NNX and my NRX van. Since those vehicles will be/are in Royal Mail / RES red, I'm now leaning to finishing the 128 in Mail red , not BR Blue - this would arguably be slightly more in period for 1985-90. That would mean the 128 would be sprayed at the same time as the NNX van.
     
    This then leaves outstanding on my bookcase and elsewhere:
     
    - The Airfix Trevithick 1/32 loco kit , which I haven't touched in 2020
    - The West Yorks PTE 155 , whose motor bogie seized when it was almost finished - I have a Hornby Javelin motor bogie ready to install
    - The Class 29 , which needs rewiring, a decoder installing , and the cab front windows reworking.
    - The Pacer , which was started a frightening 11 years ago,  and has been largely stalled for at least 8 years... Finishing that may be the biggest project for 2021, especially as I should try to fit Ultrascale wheels into its chocolate and cream  twin, and fit decoders and Kadees.
     
    Not to mention the long-term lurkers:
     
    - The etched brass LNER van, which will require some reshuffling of the stockboxes for the Boxfile fleet in order to find a slot for it.
    - The somewhat battered ex WD road van resin kit (see "brake vans, no real need of more.." above)
    - The  long-stalled Drewry 04 etched chassis, which is a bit daunting
    - The long-term stalled Bratchill 150
    - DCC conversion of the very troublesome 4MT 2-6-0
     
    Beyond the coach projects I'm already committed to, the one that I might well attempt if I get that far is to build up two Kirk kits I have to make a Gresley 2-car push-pull set. Since these are plastic kits they shouldn't be impossibly demanding, I should have everything necessary to upgrade them already in stock, and this would give me an extra two car set for the kettles. The MTK LMS Porthole brake 3rd seems likely to slip into 2022
     
    I've got 3 DMU projects that need finishing. I don't think thoughts of building a DC Kits kit are realistic this year.
     
    If I got far enough down the list to contemplate a new loco project, then a high-standard Class 25 using the Hornby body on a Bachmann chassis would seem the logical candidate. Doing anything with my stockpile of 31 bodies means sorting out a reasonable mechanism to go into them - which isn't so straightforward.. GBL Jinty body on Hornby 0-6-0T chassis is not urgent either
     
    But when it comes to new purchases, I might be a bit more extravagant this year. 
     
    The fact is, I've always half-promised myself that if they ever did Hardwicke, that would be the special limited edition I might go for. Seen on the mainline in 1975-80, usually ran with 3 blue/grey Mk1s: that would be a steam special that might look half-way credible on Blacklade. It would certainly be more plausible than an appearance by the Stirling Single.
     
    I have also been mildly tempted by both the Bachmann MR 0-4-4T and the Oxford N7. Both are moderate-sized passenger tanks, and would not be out of place in Nottinghamshire /Derbyshire in the 1950s: more so, arguably, than 4MT 2-6-4Ts on 2 coach trains . Colwick not only had N7s, some of them were push-pull fitted. However at present a suitable BR black version of either isn't available. I'm not paying for DCC sound, and the round-top N7 hasn't yet been released.
     
    More urgently, I'm half-promising myself the Hattons Genesis 6 wheel full brake in crimson - very close to a GSWR vehicle, and short parcels coaches are always useful. I'm even toying with the idea of a totally unnecessary LNER branch set : Hornby all 3rd 6 wheel, Hattons Brake 3rd + composite. No lights.
     
    And I'm very seriously toying with the idea of a Hattons Barclay for the Boxfile. Something I've considered in the past , but given that it wasn't urgent, it had to be a 14" loco, and on discount. The planets are now aligning...
     
    And someone does a Gloucester DMU trailer body as a 3D print. Not cheap, but it could be an option for the missing weed-killer train spray coach. If I can match that green.
     
     
     


  5. Ravenser
    Some years ago I was in a toyshop buying Christmas presents for young relations. While I was scanning the shelves I noticed an Airfix Gift Set in a large box marked down to the absurdly low price of 10 quid. (I think it had started off at around £30 and even that may have been somewhat below the list price.) For a tenner you were getting FOUR plastic aircraft kits in 1/72 scale. most of them interesting and unusual subjects, with acrylic paints, glue and brushes thrown in . That's an absurd £2.50 per kit, or - if you attribute value to the paints and brushes - about £2 a kit. This was value too good to pass by. So I bought the set, even though I had no obvious use for any of the kits, and hadn't touched an aircraft kit since I was a boy.
     
    And there it sat, as a box under other boxes, in the study....
     
    The Gift Set in question, produced in collaboration with the Imperial War Museum, is titled VC Icons and features aircraft flown by 5 RAF VC winners in 1940-1. The four kits are for a Hawker Hurricane Mk1, a Fairey Battle Mk1 (was there ever a Mk2 ?? ), a Handley Page Hampden, and a Bristol Blenheim Mk IV.  When I came up with the scheme for an inter-war military narrow gauge railway on some islands in the North Sea (see here )  it seemed a nice idea to have an aircraft on final descent hanging over the layout: there is deemed to be an RAF station just behind the backscene , and aviation fuel and armaments will be brought up from the port by train.
     
    In the context of a boxed diorama OO9 layout 4'3" long any 1/72 aircraft suspended from the lid had better be as small as possible, and the smallest aircraft for which I have a kit is the Hurricane Mk1. (I also have a Revell Mk1 Spitfire kit , which the Daily Telegraph were offering as a promotion a few years back, claimable free from ModelZone on presentation of a voucher. But a Spitfire is bigger than a Hurricane, and Spitfires did not become operational till 1939)
     
    However this is not an account of a Hurricane build....
     
    I hadn't built an aircraft kit since I was about 11, and I don't think those I stuck together as a young lad ever achieved the dignity of paint. I'm not an aviation enthusiast: I've visited Duxford twice in the last 5 years, and flown as an airline passenger a few times over the years, and that's it; although coming from Lincolnshire I'm well aware of the RAF's presence.  It seems only sensible to build something else as a learning exercise to get my head around 1/72 aircraft kits properly, before I venture on building the Hurricane kit.
     
    I want to make a decent job of that one, and some preliminary online explorations have already revealed that RAF markings and colour schemes changed several times between the summer of 1938 and the Battle of Britain. I will certainly need a replacement decal sheet for the Hurricane, and the aircraft as finished will almost certainly pin the layout to the period between the start of the Munich Crisis and the outbreak of war. Whether any other modifications or upgrade parts would be required I don't currently know.
     
    Arthur Ward's "Boys Book of Airfix" (a serious company history, despite the title) has a listing of Airfix kit introductions in the back. From this it appears that the Hurricane kit dates from 1979; the other three kits in my set date from 1968.
     
    Having cleared the old broken computer desk from the study and installed three bookshelves I have a little room to breath. The OO9 layout moves from theoretical concept to possibility; although in practice it would foul and force out the new minimal computer trolley  back into what is a narrow room. Not sure if I want to do that... . The right hand bookshelf in the living room could do with a middle ornament with more presence on its top. Though I think a two-engine aircraft may be too much.
     
    So the test-build kit will be the Fairey Battle. As a single engine aircraft it should be a simpler kit, but it's a bit big for the prospective layout and an aircraft with a very long canopy really isn't suitable for suspending from a length of fishing line: there's no convenient fuselage to act as an anchor point. If it lacks sufficient presence as a  bookshelf ornament, I could attempt a  very simple diorama to be stored in one of two hatboxes I seem to be hoarding - it should be small enough
     
    This is apparently a notoriously inaccurate old kit . It's faults are outlined here: Airfix Fairey Battle rework  That documents a pretty heavy rework. As a learning exercise I intend building it as supplied, according to the instructions and see how neat a job I can do. Any aspirations to upgrade kits are best kept for better basic raw material where a decent result is in fact possible, once I have some idea what I am doing. Using the worst kit in the box as sacrificial training material makes sense
     
    As noted I've no background in aviation modelling. My sole practical reference is a section in Christopher Payne's Encyclopedia of Modelling Techniques, which is veering towards a coffee-table book. This is something but still... Deep breath
     
    I claim no real knowledge of the prototype, but rapid internet checking reveals that the Fairey Battle was designed in response to a 1933 Air Ministry specification for a monoplane to replace the RAF's existing biplane light bombers. A prototype flew in March 1936. It was the first RAF aircraft to be powered by the Rolls-Royce Merlin. It was certainly a lot better than the biplanes it was to replace but even this early there were concerns that it's range and bomb load were inadequete for it to be effective in a war with Germany. However the RAF needed to expand, the Battle was a monoplane and could be put into mass production immediately, and so it became a priority. 2,201 production aircraft were built between June 1937 and September 1940
     
    The Battle was effectively obsolete within a year of entering service. It was slow (240 mph maximum speed - the Spitfire could manage 370 mph), and it's defensive armameny consisted of one machine gun in the wing and a gunner with a machine gun poking out of the back canopy. They were sitting ducks for fighters. 160 Battles were sent to France in 1939 to support the BEF. When the Battle of France began there was carnage: in six weeks the RAF lost almost 200 Battles in France. For want of anything better the Fairey Battle remained in service on anti-shipping raids until mid October 1940, and that basically was the end. The RAF operated no more single engine "light bombers" in World War 2: tactical support  /ground attack was left to fighter-bombers - varients of fighter aircraft compromised to take bombs and rockets. Wikipedia  here
     
    I had hoped for a nice simple start to construction. But the first thing  to be done is to assemble the cockpit: and that means figure-painting the pilot and gunner. Ouch. Since some sources recommend painting smaller parts on the sprue I went beyond the crew figures. For model railway work I would use enamels, but this set comes with a bag containing a large number of small pots of acrylic and two brushes , so I used them. The point carry the colour number on the lid - there is no list and the painting scheme diagrams omit detail, but I have a Humbrol colour card booklet which allows  identification
     
     
     
    And here we are so far. Undersurfaces painted in Revell matt black (as I had a pot on the bench) , Humbrol cockpit green for the cockpit, figures in a mix of Games Workshop Macragge blue, Vallejo tierra oscua (flying coats) Tamiya red brown, Humbrol Flesh, and Railmatch warning panel yellow....

  6. Ravenser
    We left the 1:72 Airfix Fairey Battle here . Actually that's a slightly generous interpretation because all I had managed to do was to assemble the two cockpit units  and fix them into one side of the fusilage. Several issues had already come to light, though.
     
    Since then very substantial progress has been made: in fact the kit is now assembled and part painted.
     
    By the standards of plastic kits in railway modelling, the assembly and fit of parts in Airfix kits is extremely good. However as I flagged in the pervious posting, there are some problems with the fit of parts in this kit, and they are mainly found underneath the model. The fit of the two halves of the fusilage is fine on the top surfaces , but underneath there is significant misalignment of the parts . There is also the unfortunate "bubble" in the lower surface between the wings. the wings fit fine, but there is slight misalignment of wings and wing roots on the undcerside
     
    Remedial action to such things is fairly familiar to any experienced railway modeller, and suitable bodging was duly undertaken with files, filler and emery boards.
     
    The scene of battle is displayed here:

     
     
    Filler has been added to one side of the join and the whole thing filed down to even it out . A length of microstrip has been added alongside the wing joint on one side and filed down and the wing root on the other side filed and smoothed to fit.The bubble has been filed down as far as I dared without risking breaking through the plastic, and the hole for the clear plastic stand opened out , possibly a fraction too much. I ended up using a medium size Airfix stand, but the model won't quite sit level. Long-term I intend to construct an experimental basic airfield diorama and the Battle will probably end up adorning this.
     
    A representational air intake has been fabricated to replace the missing part. I have filed it back a little but I suspect it is still oversize. 
     
    There are some optional parts in the kit and choices have to be made about how the model will be presented. The gunner's rear cockpit can be modelled closed, or open with  machine gun poking out; the bomb bays can be modelled open with bombs mounted , or closed; and the undercarriage can be modelled either down or retracted. I decided to keep things relatively simple, and opted for a closed rear cockpit, closed bomb bay doors, and lowered undercarriage. The latter is essential if the model is to be dispalyed on a diorama at any time; open bomb bays restrict you to an aircraft on the ground; and the rear cockpit would be closed both on the ground and most of the time whilst flying. The combination I chose allows the finished model to be displayed on a stand  as if in flight (either in take off or landing) or posed on a diorama.
     
    Here is a rather prettier view of the model right way up:

     
    I had something of a fight trying to get the rear sections of the canopy to seat themselves and I had to resort to filing down the rear gunner's head. (I suspect I may have transposed the figures for the pilot and gunner when building the cockpit sections). I have managed to get a reasonable result with applications of Humbrol Clearfix but it isn't a perfect fit I'm afraid.
     
    I have pre-painted parts of the kit where there should be a sharp line between colours prior to assembly using the acrylic paints supplied, although the underside has been painted in Revell matt black, as I have a pot of that and I'm not sure the small pot of black supplied in the boxed set will be sufficient for all four aircraft .
     
    Otherwise this kit has been built strictly as supplied, without upgrades apart from fabricating a missing part. There seems no point trying to run before I can walk , especially when the kit has some fundamental inaccuracies which cannot be removed without very major work which is well above my level. Once I've built this one I'm sure that more advanced techniques and methods of refining and upgrading kits will make a lot more sense to me.
     
    At this point there are still a few small parts to add before final painting and application of transfers. And painting the canopy is starting to present itself as an awkward task
     
  7. Ravenser
    We left this saga a couple of months back with me finding that the NEM pockets on the Hachette Mk1 were way too high, and that I therefore couldn't couple it to anything. Pro tem the Coopercraft Tourist Brake 3rd was coupled to the Dapol LMS Stanier  Composite from Set 5 and pressed into service as an improvised set:
     
    https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blogs/entry/21622-baby-deltic-released-to-traffic/
     
    I don't seem to have written up the final rounds of my bitter fight with the Tourist BTO. The Wizard aluminium roof was cut to length, filed back on each side at the ends, and stuck on with Evostick. The roof detail is plasticard strip, stuck on with superglue, and with a distinct tendency to break off. It may be a little heavy, but it was the best that could be done under the circumstances. The whole lot was sprayed with Halfords Grey Primer which proved to be too light, then weathered, patch-painted , re-weathered.. The body was patch-painted again, transfers and Modelmasters post 1956 lining were applied, and the whole thing was brush-painted with gloss varnish. Then the underframe was weathered.  A working gangway was added to one end , and we were done.
     
    It's not wonderful but it will pass as a layout  coach and to be honest, given the "quality" of the kit and the number of coats of paint that have to be applied by brush to get sufficient opacity, not much more could be hoped for from it. Very much better modellers than me have struggled to get good results with this kit. There is a metal kit available from Wizard Models , and if the Coopercraft kit is never seen again I doubt we've lost very much.
     
    So to the present...
     
    I went to Ally Pally last weekend , and by chance I came across a Hornby Gresley BCK in blood and custard at a silly price. After a moment's reflection it was too good a bargain to miss , so I bought it. (The awkward lack of first class accommodation in Set 4 and the fact these BCKs were intended as through coaches was also in the back of my mind when I bought it)
     
    I also managed to source a solution for the coupling height problem on the Hachette Mk1. After a lengthy conversation on the Keen Systems stand (during which I was repeatedly told that Kadee couplings don't work) I acquired a converter pack for a Bachmann Mk1, which is intended - amongst other things - to put the NEM pocket at the correct height. 
     
    I've never before dabbled with Keen Systems products. This is mainly because they are based on rigid fixed links between the vehicles, and that is not much interest to me when I run 2-car sets on a portable layout and want some flexibility in how I can deploy my stock. And the quoted ability to get a rake of coaches round first- and second-radius curves close-coupled is of limited relevance  when my tightest curve is 2'6" and the general radius on Blacklade is 3' or greater. In any case I fit working gangways to the inner ends of my coaches and my DMUs - and there's only one set of gangways in a 2 car set.
     
    Sadly the replacement resin close-coupler cams are nowhere near a drop-in fit for the Hachette, despite the latter's origin as a back-engineered "Bachmann knock-off".
     
    I had to file out the cam to get it to fit in place on the coach,  and of course the profile of the resulting hole isn't a great match for the taper of the Hachette original. Then I found the Keen Systems cam wouldn't seat correctly . This was because the head of the screw holding the coach together was fouling on it. Cue more filing to create a suitable recess to clear the screw head... Because you really don't want to breath in the dust created as the screwhead grinds away at the soft coupler arm....
     
    I thoroughly dislike anything that involves working with resin castings because of the health risks from the dust - and the huge awkwardness imposed by the  precautions you have to take as a result. All working of resin has to be done outside in the open, wearing a mask - with (of course) no modelling bench - meaning that every check or new round of fettling means running up and down two flights of stairs to the flat and though one or two doors with Yale locks. And the need to wash down and decontaminate the tools means carrying water jars and kitchen roll up and down as well. Not to mention the fact that washing your files thoroughly in water isn't exactly very good for them. Oh, and under normal circumstances it also means that resin items can only be worked on during British Summer Time or at weekends , otherwise it's dark outside.....
     
    Fortunately on this occasion I'd taken the day off, and the job was done reasonably quickly, without it (so far) killing me. I suppose white lead from dust-shot and PVA or working depleted uranium are much greater health risks. But this was one occasion where a drop-in fit would really have been appreciated.
     
    You will not be surprised to hear that I decided that sorting out one end for a Kadee was quite enough. This will be the end where the loco couples on, and the intention is to use one of the NEM plastic steam-pipes Bachmann supply with their Mk1s as the coupling within the set. This can adjust for the mismatch in NEM pocket heights between the vehicles.
     
    However this does mean that the Hachette Mk1 can't run with the Coopercraft BTO, which has fixed Kadees. It will have to be paired with the newly acquired Gresley BCK.
     
    So Set 4 as it was originally conceived is no more... Long live Set 6!
     
     
     
    (This isn't the end of the matter - I still need to resolve the mismatched scratch-set of Tourist BTO+ Stanier CK. And there is the question of blue/grey sets as well
     
    Here we take a detour through ancient history, set out in an earlier posting on my layout blog:   Flaxborough Almost all of that layout's coaching stock is visible in the photo , and it has all been in stock, pending reworking...
     
    One Lima CCT has been thoroughly reworked and written up. https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blogs/entry/9843-a-small-parcel-arrives/
    I decided that all the lettering was really too much of a bind to do a second time, so I salvaged the Hornby-release body, swapped it onto an old Lima underframe as the next "donor vehicle" and disposed of the hybrid Lima body/Hornby underframe CCT on the club stall this weekend.
     
    I started trying to upgrade one of the vintage Hornby Mk 2 brakes (really a BFK) a few years ago but it rapidly became clear this is not a quick or easy exercise. Partial repainting will be required, the window openings need filing back....It went back in its box, and I decided I didn't have the moral fibre to do it twice. So the second Mk2 brake , still in its box, was also disposed of on the club stand. Thus the BCK is nil cost in terms of both space and money...
     
    In the course of time I have also acquired two sets of Comet sides (Mk1 BSO and CK), sundry Comet castings, a large pile of MJT and Bachmann bogies, assorted SE Finecast flushglaze and an unbuilt Kitmaster Mk1 SK kit. Not to mention a Tony Wright DVD showing carriage conversions and quite a few vague aspirations.
     
    When Blacklade runs as BR Blue , I use a 2-car loco-hauled set  composed of a BCK off the Bachmann stand and a Mk2Z TSO acquired when my local model shop closed down almost a decade ago. In the same closing sale I bought a Mk2a BSO, and a Mk1 BSK and SK. I have had various aspirations to sort out some more blue/grey coaching stock, but it has never seemed urgent - DMUs are a higher priority. 
     
    In steam mode Blacklade requires at least three 2-car sets plus a parcels train to operate - which explains why most of the carriage-building activity has gone into the steam-era stock. The dates on my blog reveal it has taken just over 6 years to reach the dizzy heights of five serviceable steam-age sets plus a parcels train.
     
    Building the MTK LMS Porthole Brake 3rd as a proper partner for the Dapol Stanier CK is still firmly on the agenda. But that means I need a new partner for the Tourist Brake 3rd to form Set 4. The best option, given what I have available, is to build a Mk1 CK using the Comet sides on one of the old Lima BG bodyshells, but to put it into maroon livery, not blue/grey. I'm fairly comfortable with the idea of spraying a single-colour livery like maroon, whereas the challenge of doing blue/grey properly , with its rounded corners and white lining, is a major obstacle to tackling several modelling projects. Most if not all of the Lima underframe will have to be removed, but I have all the necessary replacement bits in stock. It would be a chance to do a first "proper" coach conversion project, though obviously I'm not in the same league as Larry Goddard.
     
    And as a medium term project I could strip down the Triang-Hornby RMB, upgrade it as far as it can be reasonably taken, and put it back into maroon. Sandwiched between a pair of my 2-car corridor sets, it would  provide an instant 1960 5 car train...)
     
     
     
     
     
     

  8. Ravenser

    Contain Yourself - Assorted Conflats

    By Ravenser,


    Constructional
    I suppose it is inevitable that I would want railway containers to feature on the Boxfile. I've spent nearly all my working life involved with containerised seafreight, in one capacity or another, and in the 1950s railway containers were a significant part of British Railways freight traffic. Since it represents an urban goods depot, the Boxfile is heavily skewed towards van traffic and as I've said a couple of times recently my wagon fleet for the Boxfile is light in vans. So the remedy is obvious.
     
    This all started with my efforts to sort out the unreliable running on the Boxfile, and the unhappy discovery that  much of the wagon fleet wasn't really  serviceable. Along the way I found out that both my Bachmann Conflat A and the homebrew Conflat V  were dodgy, and weight and wheel changes weren't  enough to cure them.
     
    When I went rummaging in the modelling cupboard, one of the things I found in the box of wagon kits was a Parkside kit for an ex LNER Conflat S.
     
    So I bit the bullet and decided that the Bachmann Conflat A would have to go -  meaning to reuse the Parkside BD container from the Conflat A on the Conflat S which was to replace it. The kit comes with an ex LNER DX open top container - these were pretty rare beasts and in BR days were only to be carried in Lowfits, since they were thought not to stand up to the stresses of chain restraints. (I do in fact have a Bachmann Lowfit body in stock and will ultimately build it as an ex LNER wooden underframe vehicle , as in Iain Rice's book, to carry the DX . That can be traffic to a London building site. I have a second DX kit in stock now, to provide an empty sat in the yard as an extra scenic detail . But this has been on hold till I found the brass strip, as the plastic lifting basrs are terribly fragile)
     
     But for various reasons the BD container wouldn't quite fit on the Conflat S. So I ended up buying a new Parkside Conflat A kit, and building the FM meat container out of that, which is slightly smaller and which will fit the Conflat S. In due course the Parkside Conflat A will be built and given a Bachmann AF insulated container froma pack of 4 I found while rummaging in the cupboard. See below... (The AF wouldn't quite fit the Conflat S either. Before you ask.)
     
    The unloved BD was eventually found a home in a Dapol ex LMS 5 plank open , which had also shown a strong propensity to derail.  Tight, but after a little work, in it went... TI put lead inside the container when I originally built  so what was a lightweight open now weighs 50g. And suddenly the LMS open is running reliably . Result!
     
     

     
    Here we see the Conflat S , awaiting couplings, final weathering and chains. Behind is the ex Hornby ex NER refridgerated van.
     
    The Conflat A was a bit of a performance. In fact I ended up with a vehicle in which Messrs Parkside played only a limited role. I built the wagon - and then found that for reasons I can't quite understand the chassis was significantly and irredemably crooked. I can't remember when I last had a chassis so far out of true. Attempts to break out one solebar and adjust failed miserably , so the only way to sort the mess out was to cut away the plastic W-rons, fit etched compensated ones, and find a suitable spare solebar in the scrapboxes to replace the damaged one. Axleboxes and springs are ABS castings, as are the brake gear. Not that there is anything much wrong with the Parkside versions, but every scrap of weight is needed wherever you can with a Conflat.
     
    here we have the result , unpainted , without couplings and no securing chains. The various whitemetal bits are obvious. Tierod is 0.045" wire
     

     
    The container is one of the aforementioned pack of four AF insulated containers from Bachmann, finally finding a use. It's been stuffed with a decent amount of lead sheet. Another one these containers has become a sacrificial weathering test piece after a heavily diluted weathering wash removed much of the lettering on one side. White is a nasty weathering job without an airbrush.
     
    The surplus Bachmann Conflat A  was then reworked as a service vehicle carrying wagon bogies, in line with some photos on Paul Bartlett's site. These carrier TOPS codes FAV ior ZVV and were also used by Derby Works for carrying DMU bogies. I contemplated some ex Triang Metro-Cammell DMU bogies in the box and thought "perhaps not". So my wagon carries a GW-type plate bogie - one of the wretched original bogies off the Cambrian Walrus I built some years ago, which are almost impossible to build square. Wheels are the Gibsons out of the Parkside Conflat A kit, which I replaced with Hornby wheels. Baulks are bits of balsa, securing chains are spare bits of the Ambis etches left after I had fitted securing chains to my replacement Conflat A / AF container (seen finished, behind) . The wagon is now fitted with Kadees , but requires new TOPS codes applying. It can now be used as a Loco Dept / engineers wagon on Blacklade, at least occasionally.
     

     
    All of which means I now have a reasonable fleet of Conflat wagons, which can do a job or work, instead of falling off.
     
    I have only one problem still remaining- this:
     

     
    Or at least the semi-scratchbuilt Conflat V on the right . Bachmann container - the original load of their Conflat A - Red Panda chassis, spare Parkside floor and the edging/chain pockets scratchbuilt Despite an attempt to improve matters by melting in one of the bearings to give a little rock ("bastard compensation") it still falls off. It's currently sat on the bookcase , pending further thought. I'm not even sure if there's still a slot to squeeze it into in the stock boxes
     
    The old Ratio MOGO on the left is fine. That one's never given any trouble in its years of use.
  9. Ravenser

    At the Dawn of Time - Chapter the First

    By Ravenser,


    Constructional
    In which the Author discovereth a Cardboard Box in the Study which recalleth his Childhood; and subsequently journeys into the Western-most Parts of Great-Britain.....
     
    A few years ago I saw a reissue of the Airfix kit for Trevithick's locomotive in a shop. I had one of these as a child, when I was too young to have any real understanding of how to build it: I recall some attempt was made at it, though it certainly never got as far as any paint, and one or two cogs and bits survive somewhere in the depths of a scrapbox.
     
    It has always lingered in my memory as one of the most interesting Airfix kits, both for the subject and for the fact that this one was supposed to work. In the 1970s there was supposed to be a motorising kit available, though I never had it, or knew of anywhere you could get it. Occasional sightings of a residual part would prompt the rueful reflection that it would be interesting to attempt the kit now - when I actually know what I'm doing and might make something of it.
     
    So when I saw one I bought it, and brought the thing home - and it's been sitting in a pile of magazines on top of Tramlink
    ever since. I seem to have bought it from Modelzone in High Holborn, it's that long ago.
     
    The kit seems still to be available in places https://www.steamreplicas.co.uk/Airfix-1804-Steam-Loco.asp - I know nothing of these people except that they come up on a Google search and seem to specialise in Mamod live steam.
     
    I was meaning to dig out the Judith Edge Vanguard Steelman kit this weekend . But there was the Airfix kit, and it doesn't need a soldering iron, and I don't have to worry about whether it will run... Also Ally Pally is coming up and there's usually someone there who sells display cases, into which I can put the finished model.
     
    Here's the kit , with the basic boiler assembled:

     
    Essentially the kit is built round the boiler
     
    It's a very long time since I built an Airfix kit , other than a wagon kit, and impressions are pretty favourable.
     
    It takes a little getting used to the idea that every part is numbered on the sprue and you assemble by part order. This isn't what you expect in a model railway kit. The pictorial instructions are clear, and once you recognise the code, quite detailed. I've only found one place where the instructions weren't clear exactly where a piece went in, and one place where it isn't entirely clear exactly how it will all fit together.
     
    The fit of the parts is excellent - quite a bit better than I'm used to. In two places - the boiler and the chimney - two halves leave a seam through slight misalignment, and I've had to use filler and file/emery board to get a totally smooth finish. The seam at the top of the boiler is visible in the photo. Otherwise it's all startlingly good - and this is a forty year old kit. There's minimal flash on the parts. As a result of all this, I'm finding I true up and finish pieces to a fairly high standard
     
    There are prototype issues.
     
    Wikipedia is not a reliable source, but it is a convenient one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Trevithick
     
    In summary, accepted wisdom is that Trevithick's 1802 engine for the Coalbrookdale plateway was 3' gauge, and the furnace door and chimney were at the same end as the cylinder and the reciprocating machinery. It is generally assumed there would have been a small wooden tender pushed in front of the loco.
     
    Firing under the piston, slide bar and connecting rod would seem fairly hazardous, and there seems general agreement -I'm not familiar enough with the scholarship to say upon what basis - that Trevithick reversed the arrangement for the 1804 engine, with the furnace door and chimney at the opposite end from the reciprocating machinery.
     
    What Airfix have modelled is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Coalbrookdale_loco.jpg , but to 5' gauge. As a modern image modeller I'm unfamiliar with the detailed provenance and exact sources of this drawing
     
    https://www.locos-in-profile.co.uk/Early_Locomotives/Early_1.html
     
    A further point is the boiler cladding - or lack thereof. Airfix - and modern drawings - assume an unclad iron boiler , probably painted black.
     
    However the only contemporary colour image of a Trevithick loco seems to be Thomas Rowlandson's watercolour of Catch Me Who Can at Euston in 1808. The best version I can find is here:
     
    http://collection.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects/co66226/richard-trevithicks-railroad-euston-square-1809-drawing
     
    And to my eye that clearly depicts a brown /teak boiler , with horizontal lines and boiler bands . In fact it is plainly varnished wooden boiler cladding, as seen on the restored Locomotion No1 and Wylam Dilly, and on pictures of Planet, Murray's Middleton locos , and other early engines.
     
    But Trevithick's tickets for the show just show a plain black boiler : https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Richard_Trevithick:_Catch_Me_Who_Can
     
    That , I suspect is the engineer's view - the boiler cladding is a detail to him.
     
    I can't see why boiler cladding would have been newly invented in 1808 - surely the purpose was to lag the boiler and improve thermal efficiency?
     
    So my money is on both the 1802 and 1804 locos having had varnished wooden boiler cladding as well
  10. Ravenser

    Gremlinology

    By Ravenser,


    Electrical
    In February I had the layout up after a couple of months and all was not well. Things stuck and stalled because they needed a thorough cleaning, the 128's body sat visibly too high, the NBL 21 needed a wheel adjustment, I was reminded that the NRX van needs one Kadee re-setting...
     
    And most importantly, the point that leads into the fuelling point (and which forms part of one end of the run-round loop) stopped throwing . I tried adjusting the motor to release it with my fingers, tried adjusting the throw wire. And all I achieved was a motor that ground and whined without moving anything. 
     
    There had already been a problem here - about 18 months ago locos with limited pickup started stalling on the frog when the road was set for the fuelling point. Checking wires, remaking screw connections didn't fix it.
     
    In short - a new point motor required.  Because of the very constricted space under the boards in the throat area I had used a Hoffmann motor  on this point . And on searching the forum I found an old post from Dagworth reporting that he'd had problems with Hoffman /Conrad motors when the switch failed. Clearly that had also happened to me.
     
    The Hoffmann motor was originally sourced from Finney & Smith, who have been gone for years. A cheap grey clone was available from Conrad, and one or two people swore by them; but on checking the Conrad website these motors are no lonnger available. A like-for-like replacement was therefore not possible.
     
    The original installation is described in an old post here but here is an old photo of the relevant area:
     

     
    It is the upper board that concerns us,  and the Hoffmann motor is the little black and red thing in the bottom left corner of the board.
     
    Here we are again - and the tightness of the location is obvious . You can also see in this shot that the point itself is located to one side , under the board framing , a piece of which has been chiselled away to allow the throw arm to operate. Dear reader - do not create this kind of situation, except from dire and compelling need. 
     

     
     

     
    Clearly a Tortoise was never going in here, and the best and smallest thing I could find was a Cobalt Blue . One has already been used satisfactorily for a good few years - the blue motor just below the Hoffmann.  So a Cobalt Classic Omega motor was ordered from DCC Concepts as the cheapest option. This now comes with 3 switches: one low-powered LED connection and two high power switches. The Hoffmann motor had only one switch, which is why the Erkon ground signal controlling movement off the fuelling point was never installed. Now, potentially, it can finally go in.  (I should say here that the colour-light signals on the main board have been a minor disappointment. Because the platform roads are not in line  with the board edge, the signals are slightly turned - so it's difficult for an operator to see the aspects without deliberately moving to look. As a result they don't really serve as an indication to the operator of what route is set)
     
    There  is, of course, a catch. Cobalts and Tortoises are designed to work a point immediately above them. The throw wire is driven from a mounting in the centre of the casing, through a fulcrum hole positioned on the side of the casing. Making them work a point which is off-set to one side of the motor is  not exactly obvious. And quite clearly there is no way a Cobalt (or for that matter a Tortoise) can be positioned directly above that hole right up against the baseboard frame. Which is the whole reason [sorry, pun not intended] why I orginially used a Hoffmann motor in this location.
     
    Fortunately there is a commercial solution, at least for the Tortoise. Exactoscale have for many years sold a moulded plastic mounting plate to which a Tortoise can be screwed, and which is then fixed to the baseboard by further screws. The throw arm then moves a thick plastic bar which slides from side to side beneath the mounting plate - and a secondary pin projecting up from this then throws the point. The arrangement should be pretty clear from the photos below.
     
    I bouight a number of these adaptor plates when Blacklade was originally built, but only used one of them. Now a Tortoise won't go in this location - but the adaptors aren't designed for Cobalt motors. 
     
    But they can be adapted to take a Cobalt motor - so this posting may be of wider interest to anyone who needs to use Cobalt motors in an awkward location. Details should be fairly obvious from the two photos below.
     
    The recess in the Exactoscale mouldings is just too small to receive the lower flanged base of the Cobalt. But it will take the sticky pad supplied with the Cobalt. All that then needs to be done is to mark locations for new holes for the fixing screws inside the recess. Using the Cobalt as a template to mark the locations I drilled a pilot hole with a pin vice then opened it out with something much larger.
     
    Several of the fixing projections have been removed from the Exactoscale moulding to get it to fit, and I also had to saw a sliver off the back of the moulding. The loss of these fixing points doesn't matter, as the fixing screws supplied with the Cobalt are long enough to go through into the baseboard , so the original fixing points are a little bit of a belt-and-braces exercise.
     
    The sticky pad is then inserted in the recess in the Exactoscale moulding, and the Cobalt added on top - this holds it well enough for setting up. The throw wire needs shortening and fits into a hole drilled in the Exactoscale bar (I left the wire too long, drilled too deep and found I'd effectively pegged the bar to the underside of the baseboard when I tried operating the motor. Once the wire had been shortened a little more all was well)  
     
    The photos were taken before the  main fixing screws had been inserted into the new holes, and before the wires had been connected up, but the details of  installation should be pretty clear.
     
    The current design of Cobalt has 3 switches , compared with 2 on the original design (see the other blue lump in the picture). One of the high-current switches is used to switch the live frog. That leaves at least one switch available to control the Erkon ground signal that was originally going to be installed to control egress from the fuelling point. As there wasn't a contact available on the Hoffmann this never happened, but now it might. However now I am back at work time is limited and the list of  outstanding modelling jobs is long so don't hold your breath... (I am not quite clear how the low current LED switch works. Does it switch either DC feed to a wire , meaning that an LED will light up /not light depending on which way it is connected to the wire??)
     
    The replacement point motor has been thoroughly tested through a full running session - it works reliably, and the frog is live and properly switched. Since it is part of a crossover it is connected to the same output terminals on the accessory decoder as the other point motor with which it works in conjuction. This ensures the crossover always throws together , and saves the cost of an extra decoder output. Since stall motors are low current devices the total current drawn from the output is perfectly acceptable

     
     

  11. Ravenser

    Butchering a Meat Van

    By Ravenser,


    Constructional
    I've been fairly quiet for a few months, partly because of work getting on top of me . But after finally managing 2 weeks holiday , having previously not managed more than an odd day off since I started the new job just over a year ago , I'm feeling human again , and I'm trying to resolve some of the various unfinished projects .
     
    One small project is nearly there - an ex GW MICA meat van.
     
    At present the main vehicle available for the cold store on the box file is a Blue Spot fish van from a Parkside kit. Nice kit - but it's really a bit big for the box file. The thought occurred to me that I should repaint the Blue Spot van as a BR Blue example in parcels service , for use as tail traffic on Blacklade - and replace it with a reworked RTR body from the junk box - either the Hornby ex NER refrigerated van, or an elderly Hornby Dublo GW MICA. As I didn't fancy scratchbuilding a 9'6" wooden underframe using castings, I went for the MICA.
     
    There is nothing original about the conversion - it's based on one of the first "proper" wagon-building articles I ever read as a boy - "Taking the MICA" by Grp Capt Brian Huxley , in the Railway Modeller for July 1977. It was the first of a whole series of articles covering different headings in the GW wagon diagram list - he was trying to build a "representative collection" of GW wagons, meaning a model of pretty well every wagon diagram
     
    However as most people won't have access to 40 year old Railway Modellers, the details of this exercise are worth summarising here.
     
    The old Hornby Dublo MICA is a hybrid. Most MICAs were 16' long and had full width bonnet vents on the ends. The last diagram, X9, was on a 17'6" RCH underframe with bonnetless ends . Hornby Dublo, Wrenn and Dapol sold you a 17'6" van with bonnet ends.
     
    There were therefore two approaches in the article.
     
    Firstly you could cut out the van sides neatly, reduce them by 3mm each end, chop 6mm out of the rest of the body moulding , stick the whole lot back together , add a suitable underframe (Dean-Churchward brake gear, anyone?) and get any type of 16' MICA.
     
    Or secondly, you could cut out the ends, replace with plain planking . add a standard RCH 10' wheelbase fitted underframe and get X9 of 1929.
     
    The world has moved on since 1977 - there is now a recent Parkside kit for the 16' X7 MICA , and that is probably the easiest route to the 16' vans. And these days most folk model post war, not - as was the norm in 1977 - the interwar GWR. The earlier vans are probably much less relevant now.
     
    So finally, after 40 years, I've done the deed. (Since the wagon had a cast Hornby Dublo chassis it must be nearly 60 years!)
     

     
    The ends are Slaters planked plasticard , as recommended by Brian Huxley. However the planks don't line up exactly these days, despite my efforts - mind you some of the preserved examples have the same issue.. The steps were removed from the original ends with a chisel blade in the craft knife . I seem to have found this rather easier than it was in 1977 , though there are plenty of spares.
     
    A Parkside 10' wheelbase underframe has been fitted from the spares box, built onto a 40 thou plasticard floor. Unfortunately, at that point I realised the kit was clasp-braked, and the prototype had 4 shoe Morton brakes. A rummage in the cupboard produced a packet of ABS Morton brake gear, and this was added with cyanoacrylate. I couldn't find the buffer beams so used some which I think came from a Cambrian PO wagon. They were rather too deep so had to be filed down top and bottom, and cut to an angle at both ends. The buffers had to be replaced with more ABS whitemetal castings for RCH fitted buffers. I had glued a couple of strips of lead flashing inside and with the whitemetal parts the total weight was up to the desired 50g (25g per axle)
     
    These later vans used dry ice, and had a single hatch at each end, not two - so the roof hatches had to filed off the model and replaced with new ones (7mm square in 20 thou plasticard). Brake pipes are DMR brass from the bits box, and spoked wheels are Bachmann
     
    It now needs only the end handrails and axlebox tiebars adding, priming (I'm not taking a chance with different coloured ends and white paint) and painting into BR (grubby) white
  12. Ravenser
    Longer-standing members will remember the 2006/7 Layout Challenge which started on RMWeb2 before we broke it. This produced a number of rather fine layouts including Keyhaven. It also - mostly - produced Blacklade.
     
    The basic remit of the Challenge was to produce a small layout providing a showcase for some of the high standard RTR we have enjoyed in recent years . LisaP4 defined the rules to require layout to have a maximum footprint of 6 square feet . That killed off an idea of mine to base a small layout on a version of the Timesaver shunting puzzle and mocked up to represent a version of Tyne Commission Quay transplanted to the foreshore of the Thames in the 1950s and electrified at 1500V dc. It would have required 8 square feet . In retrospect Tynesaver Wharf ("For Your Economical Fuel!") was a merciful escape - the work involved would have been far too much and I'd have been stuck with a half built layout stalled and abandoned. As opposed to a 4/5th built layout stalled, like wot I 'ave..... The scheme would have required amongst other things a DC Kits EM1 and a Judith Edge EB1 (and possibly an EF1 to boot) and a heck of a lot of inlaid track - always bad news on the work front . The EM1 kit I acquired cheap when the local model shop closed down is still sat behind me with no obvious prospect of being built. It's not merely well down the list - it's not on the list at all.
     
    As well as this still born scheme , the Challenge produced a large range of schemes which never quite made it - I think at one point there were just under 80 layout proposal threads in the subforum on RMWeb 2 and to my mind the unbuilt proposals were the saddest loss when that version of RMWeb congealed and froze. I recall Buckjumper had a proposal for a gaslit subterranean S7 affair in 1890s E.London ("Always carry a revolver east of Aldgate, Watson") illustrated by some atmospheric sketches (Sepulchre St wasn't it?). A particular mention is due to two very innovative and radical schemes to use the footprint - Kenton's "Long Thinney" and a bold circular doughnut multilevel scheme in N , whose name and builder I have forgotten (Sorry!) . Both proceeded a long way into construction before abandonment for differing reasons and both used the idea of a very narrow board to maximise length .
     
    But to return to what actually got built on my part
     
    I attach the link to the thread on RMWeb3 (itself starting as a repost of the RMWeb 2 thread - I'm sure some of this material must have been through either the Library of Alexandria or the Saxon monastery of Jarrow at some point):
     
    Blacklade - RMWeb 3 Challenge thread
     
    It is perhaps reposting the initial ideas:
     
    Quote
     
    Plan B revolves around on of the plans from Carl Arendt's micro site , which has attracted me for a while:
     
    http://www.carendt.c...lans/index.html
     
    The plan in question is under Shelf Switchers / Passenger Lines , and is called "Amalgamated Terminal 2" . It's a slight tweak of "Amalgamated Terminal"
     
    Carl has designed this around shunting passenger coaches, thinking in US terms of loco hauled passenger trains being shunted and reformed.
    I looked at it and thought "small terminus for DMUs"
     
    Some people may remember the long threads on RMWeb 1.5 about modern small termini and MUs:
     
    [Links deleted because dead]
     
     
    and there was a discussion on RMWeb 1.0 sparked by some photos of Manchester Mayfield. Cloggydog [Alan Monk] declared an unfulfilled urge to build a small Manchester terminus in the late 60s.
     
    Anyway, my concept here is to take Amalgamated Terminus 2 and lengthen it to 8' 4" : ie 2 boards each 4'2" long, 5" wide at the board joint , and 12" wide at the end.
     
    Someone who can remember things like triganometry may be able to confirm, but according to my maths (done using strips, trriangles , and fractions on the back of an envelope)that's just under 6 square feet.
     
    There are a few tweaks to the trackplan. There'll be an extra crossover between the centre platform and the front platform, giving access to what Carl Arendt marks as "Engine Ready road" and for me will be a small fueling point. And there'll be an extra fiddle yard road at the back
     
    What's marked as "Covered Concourse" becomes the back platform. The middle platform moves to between the front and middle roads
     
    We are in a largish Midlands county town , somewhere between 1989/90 and 2000/1. [in the event, I've slipped into an "early" period 1985-90 and a "late" period 2000-6: The end of the Central Trains franchise closes the latter] It isn't Derby, or Nottingham, or Leicester or Lincoln. Maybe it replaces one of them, and it resembles bits from all. It had an ex GC through station and an ex MR terminus, and now the rather battered MR station remains, served by DMUs
     
    In the early period we get 114s, 105s, 150/2 , 153, 155 and Pacers. (In other words I build the kits in the cupboard and finish the conversions) Maybe a 108 and 101 in blue/grey (I grab some new RTR). Parcels are possible (CCTs + 31). A 20 brings the fuel tank for the fueling point. Maybe a 31 and 2 coaches subs for a DMU [i bought the RTR; Hornby forstalled the 153 conversion , and I bought 2; the other conversions still await - a tentative start has been made on one Pacer: see my blog]
    In the later period the Modernisation Plan units disappear , and I get to run my Central Trains Turbostar and the 156 I'm promising myself. [and got] Maybe a 158 (See Steve Jones picture) [W Yorks 158 in service, and I'm finally going to order a CT 2 car set from Hattons. The photo in question was of a classic CT pairing on the Joint line - 153+158] Maybe I'll sort out the 37 conversion and use it for the fuel [ Maybe by the end of the next decade. A cheap 57 off the Bachmann stand and a discount 66 will serve in the meantime]
    It will be DCC ; some of the interest will be joining and splitting trains. I can just manage 150/2 + 153, and 142 + 142, or 142 + 153 , or 153 + 153 are possible
     
    It will be OO. I want to have pukka OO track, and as beginners don't start with double slips, I'm thinking of investigating Marcway. This may affect the geometry slightly: as drawn it seems to use Peco medium radius. [ I went Marcway]
    It will use stock I'm going to build for the club project , which will be DCC anyway, plus units intended for the home layout I haven't built. The only things I would need to buy is two Pacers. Virtually all the structures /bits can be sourced out of my cupboard.
     
    In any case there's only a few low relief flats involved. I don't need to build stock specially. So it should be a relatively quick project.
     
    8'4" comfortably fits in the "study" where the home layout was going to go [ Ended up as 8'6" long]
    I've roughed it out with stock and Peco templates on some lining paper full size. I've never tried XtraCAD, and this seemed quicker. Also I'd endorse Neil and Shortliner's comments about needing to check every quarter inch
     
    And it fits. I need to get a friend to turn it out in Templot to check the geometry 100% for handbuilt, but it drops in place and all the stock fits...
     
    The "bow-tie" shape has caused a few interesting issues with the pointwork and motorisation of same in the throat area, but works, more or less, scenically
     
    After October 2007, construction gradually slowed down, and by the beginning of 2009 it more or less ground to a halt as I became occupied on other fronts. I repeat the last posting in the old thread , dated Sat Aug 29th 2009:
     
    Quote
     
    Its been a long while since anything was posted - most of my efforts in the last few months have gone into stock.However this does mean that there are a few new items to play with and the other evening I had a running session.
     
    I went for an early period session and managed to get 8 trains on the layout, being W Yorks 158, 2 x 153s, W Yorks 155, 108 , 3 car 101, parcels (31 + 2 bogievans) , 20 + TTA .Operation was on the same principle as those puzzles they used to sell , where there were 9 positions and 8 tiles, so you had to shuffle things round using the one available space. I managed to run trains for over an hour and a quarter before getting myself boxed in to the point where I needed to take something off in the fiddle yard to make another move possible . Given the small size of the layout and the lack of frieght , the operational potential is good, even if permissive working was stretched a bit now and again.
     
    The 3 car 101 is probably a bit much. The original idea was to make up a 2 car set , but as Hornby's unit was actually allocated to TS at the right period, it seems a pity to rework it as power car+ trailer and dump the centre car. Whether such a 3 car unit would ever have run as a temporary power twin at this period is unclear, but there seems to be some evidence formations were starting to get a bit improvised and mix'n match by the mid to late 80s. It would certainly make operations simpler if I just removed the centre car on an ad hoc basis. Both of the DC Kits in the cupboard are for 2 car units (105 and 114) so once one of those is built there is an alternative anyway
     
    The running session has clarified things in terms of fleet strategy and what projects I start next. I was a little surprised to find that I already have almost everything for the early period (1985-90) and potentially plenty to spare, whereas I'm short of stock for the "late" period 2000-7. I'd assumed it was the other way round. To get a complete blue period fleet, I need to swap over the W Yorks 158 and the Central 153 (which was pressed into service to test consisting - dead easy with the PowerCab). I've already got a Provincial 150/1 on order from Trains4U - far from being an unnecessary indulgence, it can replace the 158 with something appropriate in short order. Longer term , I'm intending to buy a second RR 153 to go with my existing one, once Hornby release a RR livery in late condition with ploughs. In the medium term , however, it looks like I need to get on with reworking one of my Pacers with the Branchlines chassis pack. Neither Pacer is operable at present (no decoders/coarse wheels jam in the points) so this would get some "dead" stock into traffic.
     
    I was considering one of 3 possiblities as "next cab off the rank" - the Pacer project, detailing up a body for the Airfix 31 and building the Ratio Southern bogie brake van . However it looks like the choice is made - I already have a perfectly serviceable Hornby 31 and 2 parcels vans...
     
    Another way of freeing up space in the fiddle yard would be to fit a decoder to the old Bachmann 03 lurking in a cupboard , and sort out the pickups, couplings and a few other bits of upgrading . Again it was on the list as a "quick win" project to get some stored stock back into use and may well be prioritised
     
    Looking at the fleet list from the other evening, if I was running late period, i'd need to swap out 2 Modernisation Plan DMUs, the parcels trains, and the 20+TTA. I've a couple of Type 5s and a late green TTA recently finished,so the fuel oil is covered, but the only other DMUs currently available are a Turbostar and a 156. I had been hesitating whether to get a Central 158 from Hattons, on the grounds I didn't really need it - perhaps I do. And it does suggest I should get my finger out and finish the Bratchill 150/2 which has been stalled for an indecent length of time. Even with both I'll only have one DMU spare for the later period. If I just build everything I've already got for the earlier period, I could have 4 spare units, 5 spare locos and at least 3 spare parcels vans....
     
    It's one thing trying to calculate what stock you can and can't run and do and don't need, but once you actually try a session everything becomes a lot easier to see
     
    Nothing has been done on the layout since. However it has seen occasional use as a programming track . You'll have spotted that a couple more items of stock have been finished (PMV , TTA) or begun (Pacer)
     
    Having recently managed to shed a couple of commitments within the club I should now have more time to sort out the long list of jobs to be done in other areas - finishing Blacklade being one. The items still outstanding are the old ones - the remaining point motors and the station walling. But with luck we may see some progress in the coming months
     
    As I've now found the Create Blogs page again, and managed to transfer this to a blog, I can update this entry to say I've given the thing another running session, and what sticks out like a sore thumb is that the points do not throw completely . If you don't check each one is fully over and snug , and push it into place where necessary derailments result . The problem is clearly the one discussed here:
    Strengthening Wire on Tortoises
     
    I can watch the wire bending instead of the point moving if I view it from below. So this will need sorting out when I find out where I can source piano wire - and what I use to cut it with . I'm not going to wreck the edge on Xurons- they're expensive tools.
     
    This time round the 101 was reduced to 2 car, we acquired a "swinger" in the form of the newly built PMV and I found I didn't need the second diesel loco , as the 31 could be used for the TTA and minor pilot duties . That's 7 and a half trains, but proves comfortable to operate: I managed over an hour and a half of train shuffling without getting boxed in. Part of the concept is that each unit needs to go onto the fuelling point as some stage - this gives some point or or purpose to the train shuffling moves
     
    On account as it were are two quick snaps:
     

     

     
    And yes I really do need to add the station buildings, or at least the surrounding walls which would once have supported the overall roof
  13. Ravenser
    In a previous posting , I mentioned trams . I am trying quite hard to be a good boy and finish things off ,not take on new projects and commitments; but despite my best intentions there have been stirrings on the tramway front.
     
    It started when something caused me to look at the Street Level Models website. I spotted a card kit for Manor House tram station (LT), and that started something stirring. Wasn't Manor House the northern terminus of one of the Kingsway Subway routes ? It was - route 33 to be precise, which lasted until close to the end of London's trams. Could this make a modest diorama to display a tram or two? A quick check of the track map in the back of LCC Tramways Handbook ( no doubt long out of print) showed the track layout at Manor House as a crossroads of two double track routes, with a connection between two of the legs. But on which leg was the tram station? Did Subway cars terminate there?
     
    I mentioned in an earlier post about layout projects and commitments (here) that I had vague inchoate aspirations towards a tramway layout, potentially a London tram layout and that the Highgate Archway area seemed to have potential. The trouble with this was that it would also require a lot of space, or at least length, and if I threw in Holloway depot for good measure , probably with as well
     
    Manor House and the kit promised something smaller , but the crossing is a bit of a problem . Still the operating potential should be high . Initial thoughts crystalised into a figure of 8 , with the 4 arms of the double track crossing linked behind the scenes. At the northern end , this would just be a double track loop providing off stage storage, but at the other end, there would be a single track loop past a depot, , and two double track routes going off stage (using a cassette):
     
    A very crude sketch will show what I mean: - top is north(ish)
     

     
    Nearly all of this is prototypical , the liberties being the depot and connecting loop at the bottom , and joining the two arms of the crossing behind the scenes at the top . In reality, the right hand leg of the X continued via Stamford Hill, Hackney and Bethnal Green to Aldgate , while the top leg headed for Alexandra Palace, Enfield and Barnet
     
    Obviously this is all very loose and undimensioned, but then this is only a very general conceptual sketch of a might-be (one day)
     
    In the cupboard I had a Tower Feltham kit, and a Tower E1 kit , not to mention a KeilKraft West Ham car. Of course you can't credibly model London with a single E/1. I made the fatal mistake of looking at ebay for the first time in years , and within 10 days I had won two more Tower E/1 kits, a Tower kit for the centre entrance Feltham prototype "Cissie" and a nice diecast Corgi Feltham in LT livery. I think the whole lot came to about £30
     
    Then there's the ABS LCC storesvan kit in the cupboard, not to mention the LCC B class kit, the etched LCC F class single decker Subway car, and the card M class from StreetLevel
     
    Of course I'm not committed to building anything
     
    Shenfield added the StreetLevel Manor House tram station and a changepit. The north leg of the X was MET , not LCC and therefore overhead - the wires continued to the layby loop at Finsbury Park (represented at the bottom left of the sketch) which was for MET services to terminate. Whether any did , is a moot point, but you could imagine Route 34, which ran from Ally Pally using the single decker cars modelled by Ks, being extended. Failing a Ks kit a plausible representation could be bashed out of a Mehano tram....The LT Feltham displays Route 21, which was a joint LCC/MET service from Holborn taking the left to top connection at the Manor House crossing and continuing to North Finchley. Kingsway Subway Route 33 terminated just south of the crossing
     
    This is all strictly hypothetical, you understand....
     
    A trip to Kew Bridge last weekend was meant to supply some mechanisms for bogie trams. Unfortunately both the trader who supplies tram mechanisms and ABS were absent, and although there was a German trader who had a Halling mechanism on his stand he was only taking cash and I didn't have £47 in cash left ...
     
    Which is a great pity , because what I did buy was this:
     

     
    and about the only thing that would fit to mechanise it is a Halling mechanism. HO is really rather small, and this kit brings it home. Not quite the Holy Grail in whitemetal but not far off - the only Sydney tram kit of which I'm aware
     
    What on earth would I do with this kit ? Well, that's only too easy . A small layout based on the Wynyard terminus of the N Sydney tramways would make a good boxed diorama and could plausibly be done in something like 6 ' x 9"..... The awkward fact is that this is one idea which I might actually have space for , but Wynyard in the rush hour needs more than one trams , and the question arises what else I could come up with
     
    Of couse I'm not committed to building this, or anything else, you understand....
  14. Ravenser

    Retail Therapy

    By Ravenser,


    Reflections
    Last weekend but several was , of course, Warley. Feeling a little buoyant after completing the Baby Deltic I went with a list...
     
    It was one of those occasions when you end up buying all sorts of things you didn't know you needed until you got to the show. And I didn't get some of the things I did know I needed.
     
    But the result of all this is a number of new projects opening up so -
     
    - The first cab off the rank is an attempt to follow the Baby Deltic by assembling a home-brew NBL Type 2 diesel-electric from bits. (That's a Class 21 in decimal money, but in 1958 TOPS was a long way away). I have long had a second-hand Hornby 29 body , bought for a couple of quid. The Baby Deltic used up the chassis and bogie frames I had bought for it - so I sourced some more from Peter's Spares
     
    But they didn't have a power bogie.
     
    So I went to Warley on the scrounge for a cheap second-hand loco to cannibalise for one. With the further thought that if I managed to get a Hornby 25 then the body is reckoned to be better than the Bachmann one, so putting it on Bachmann chassis is a known route to a 25....
     
    And I found a Chinese-production Hornby 25 in BR Blue with 5 pole motor and all-wheel pickup for £39.50 . Thank you!
     
    A tip-off from the Chairman on the stand sent me scurrying across the gangway to Shawplan for their etched NBL cab window surrounds - which radically improves the cab end of the Hornby 29. I also bought a suitable etched fan and a set of laserglaze windows for the Hornby 25. 247 Developments supplied NBL worksplates
     
    Dart Castings visited us to advise of a new etch allowing the fitting of couplings to bogies. I went round to their stand and bought a couple.
     
    And then there is the GBL Jinty which I've recently disassembled. I think the wheels on the Hornby 0-6-0 chassis - or at least their flanges -may prove a bit big for the moulded chassis. But an etch on Brassmasters' stand for a fiver, intended for the Bachmann Deeley 3F , offers replacement splashers for a larger wheel.
     
    I sourced a Zen Nano Direct for a Bachmann BR Standard 4MT 2-6-0, and a couple of other decoders from Digitrains , including a big stay-alive to help the 29
     
    Two weekends later was Peterborough. The list was shorter, but I still needed sheet lead. I took my part built 128 - or at least it's Replica chassis with a damaged supporting yoke at one end - and Replica fitted a replacement part for me for a modest sum - I bought a few small bits from them as well. That unblocks the 128 project , which I hope to finish in the New Year
     
    And I also managed to find a second-hand Bachmann class 25 , at a very reasonable £49.50 - probably because all the cab handrails were broken. But I don't care about the cab handrails because I have a Hornby 25 body....
     
    Also part of the Peter's Spares order was a Hornby Javelin motor bogie to repower the recalcitrant 155 with its seized motor bogie, and a Hornby Railroad 31 chassis frame . All I need is some suitable bogies so I have a mechanism for another of the stored Airfix bodies.
     
    I hope to make some inroads into the list of outstanding projects in 2019
     
    Meanwhile I think I have found a solution for the Baby Deltic's annoying tendency to stall. The culprit is almost certainly the deep flanges on the old-style Hornby wheels combined with code 70 bullhead track - removing prominent bits of ballast has eased but not quite cured the problem. After various wild ideas about somehow turning down wheels in a lathe I don't possess , I realised there was a simpler solution . A quick rummage in a box produced the remains of a packet of Bachmann coach wheels. Pinpoints were quickly sawn off and the wheels replaced on a trial Hornby trailing bogie .
     
    But I could have sworn there were 4 axles in that packet when I found it, and when I went back to do the next pair - there was only one axle left. I've had to buy another packet from the local model shop...
  15. Ravenser

    New Year's Resolutions, Part Umpteen...

    By Ravenser,


    Reflections
    It's that time of the year when I take stock and make a plan for the year - which then ignominously fails in the next 12 months.
     
    Twelve months ago I decided I really would finish the Tourist Brake Third. And after a lot of struggle I actually managed it - though it still needs writing up here.
     
    The Baby Deltic was another "promise to finish" - and lo and behold it's done. And written up.
     
    There the good news stopped.
     
    However I have recently managed to clear away a lot of obstacles to various projects, http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/296/entry-21655-retail-therapy/ so I hope there will be more progress in the year to come.
     
    Work has actually started on the original condition NBL Type 2 diesel electric, and this is looking promising. I think I have all the bits now
     
    (After that I can contemplate the task of putting a detailed Hornby 25/1 body onto a Bachmann Rat chassis, for a good mid 80s Class 25, but this isn't urgent)
     
    The Ratio GW 4 wheel coach rebuild (to an engineer's tool/riding van) still needs to be finished, but should be a relatively quick project.
     
    Now I have a replacement power bogie I hope I can finally get the detailed 155 up and running and (finally!) into traffic.
     
    And with the damaged bogie of the Replica chassis repaired I can finish the 128 and get it into traffic as well. This (I hope) will give
    me some better options for consisting Modernisation Plan DMUs - 2 x 2 car DMU is awkwardly long but 1 x 128 + 2 car DMU should be much more manageable. It will also bring the NRV and the GUV into play for operating sessions
     

    There are still a number of long-standing projects which need finishing.
     
    The Airfix Trevithick kit proceeded a lot further before hitting a problem with a seized and sheered bit of motion. I have an idea about how to fix this , but I need to find the courage and the focus to do it.
     
    Once other projects finished and the decks have been cleared I can restart the upgraded 142 which has been lying stalled in bits for a long time. This too would improve my options for consisting - and therefore the operating interest of the layout - if I can get it finished.
     
    The two brake vans , long stalled, are somewhere down my list of priorities
     
    But there is a lot to be done on the locomotive front in the next couple of years, turning projects, aspirations and materials already in hand into actual working locomotives.
     
    Type 2s are likely to be the major focus . The Hornby NBL body is well under way, and all parts to finish this should be in hand. It might turn into a quick win I now have the second-hand locos to do a "high spec" 25/1 with a Hornby body on Bachmann chassis. The combined cost of these two should be around £125.- a new Bachmann 25 would cost around £145 at a box-shifter
     
    Then there are the 31s. I have a roughly -detailed Airfix 31, with filed-off body bands bought for £15 second hand as a mechanism donor. Not that the Airfix mechanism is a wonderful thing. But the body is in fact salvageable - at least to my eyes - and I think I could strip , clean up and redetail it as a refurb 31/4 (Transpennine South, for the use of) with decent result. The target loco would be 31 462 in plain departmental grey, and I've ordered the PH Designs etch - which at least takes care of the biggest issue, the roof fan grill cowling
     
    I then have the 1978 body I removed from 31 415; a secondhand body with body bands on but buffers cut off; and the wreckage of Hornby's 31 270, with Mazak failure and a blown circuit board. I got to it before the body split - but there's an issue. In my experience, the Hornby locos are track-sensitive, and my other Hornby 31 (31 174) does not like the crossover outside Platform 2 which forms part of the run-round loop. This means it is relegated to Loco Hauled Substitute duties , and is in fact my back-up 31 , whereas the detailed Airfix 31 415 is front line and handles engineers and parcels trains as well. I like good quality mechanisms with smooth low-speed running , but I also like locos that stay on the track. This means that the obvious approach to providing a decent mechanism - ie stripping out the Hornby mechanism from the unhappy 31 270 and installing it under something else - is problematic.
     
    No matter how you slice it, I have 4 x Class 31 bodies and 2 mechanisms both with question marks against them. I managed to get hold of a Railroad 31 chassis frame - but missed out on unpowered bogies and couldn't find a Railroad motor bogie. I also missed out on Hattons cheap Railroad 31, though that would not have improved the chassis/body ratio. I do have a spare (second) Athearn PA1 chassis, but that doesn't have quite the right wheelbase /wheel size, and would mean cutting and shutting a Mazak chassis frame and a drive shaft, and converting to DCC.
     
    And there is no obvious route to the missing bodyshell variants - a "skinhead" at any date, or of any sub-class; or the Golden Ochre Brush 2 (successively Stratford, Tinsley and Immingham in the 60s , and therefore suitable for Blacklade, an E.Lincs before closure project, or any transitional GE layout)
     
    I shall be on the scrounge for cheap serviceable mechanisms at Stevenage . A donor loco with a wrecked body going cheap; a Lima motor bogie and bits capable of receiving a remotor ...
     
    I also have a vintage Triang-Hornby 37, bought second-hand from a junk shop in Louth in 1978 for a fiver, and used on my teenage layout, where it ran like a dog - a three-legged dog with emphasyma. Mechanically it was - by a country mile - my worst loco.
     
    It has so far failed to be rebuilt as 37 688 or a Baby Deltic because more promising donors turned up for less than 20 quid each . I have an Athearn PA1 chassis, and Dave Alexander replacement bogie sideframes - this time it's a cut and lengthen job. So the long term plan would be to redo it as 37 172 in plain BR blue, on PA1 chassis (not entirely accurate - but it's only a cheap old 37). This because in 1977 we returned from a scout trip to Guernsey via the 01:05 KX Leeds night train (only Deltic haulage I ever got) , changing into what I now know to have been the Manchester-Cleethorpes newspaper train at Retford Low Level at 4:30 am - hauled by 31 172 in blue.
     
    There are all of the issues of stripping and cutting the Athearn chassis, converting it to DCC and the small inaccuracies in wheel size and wheelbase - but this would give me a decent-running 37 of an earlier vintage than I have and I could manage the bodyshell work.
     
    And wild horses and red-hot pincers would not persuade me to put that wretched Triang motor bogie under a 31
     
    Then there's the stuff I have but need to get working....
     
    The 155 has already been mentioned.
     
    There's a Hornby 29 I detailed up years ago as 6119 in blue. Looking at it with fresh eyes , it's rougher than I expect the new NBL Type 2 to be, and it has a 3 pole motor bogie converted to all-wheel pickup with Ultrascales, which will be an inferior mechanism to the new loco . It also needs conversion to DCC , and with the original Hornby Ringfield this is not a simple task. So I intend to delegate the job to someone else at Stevenage....
     
    I also have a Bachmann 4MT 2-6-0 which is compact , has a tender cab and would be ideal for Blacklade's kettle period if I managed to install a decoder. I now have a suitable decoder.
     
    Then there's the Bachmann 08 and original split-chassis 03 (both BR blue) which have been lying in the storage drawer for years because they need hard-wired DCC conversions. Those, too, need sorting out and getting up and running on Blacklade.
     
    Not to mention a few running repairs to coaches, switches and the like
     
    Another purge of the unreliable wagons in the Boxfile fleet might be in order
     
    Some of the things on the bookcase have been unfinished for an appallingly long time. Pacer anyone....
     
    I really mean to get stuff finished and into action this year 
  16. Ravenser

    "Here's one I made earlier"

    By Ravenser,


    Constructional
    Very many years ago, when James Callaghan was prime minister and I had not yet discovered that it was possible to make model railways without using steam engines, I had a GW/LMS joint branch line. Because those were the popular prototypes. I wasn't very old but I'd discovered the Railway Modeller, and I had a pannier tank and a Hornby GWR brake third. I wanted a longer GW train but not too long, so a plastic kit for a 4 wheel GW coach seemed a good idea.
     
    This relic survived down the decades in a storage box, and in the last decade vague ideas of doing something with it surfaced. Eventually, last year I actually started but didn't get far, and the project is referred to in my annual survey and resolutions posting:  2019 Resolutions
     
    "The Ratio GW 4 wheel coach rebuild (to an engineer's tool/riding van) still needs to be finished, but should be a relatively quick project.". Well...
     
    The prototype inspiration  is two photographs in Cheona's Railways in Profile - 8 : Engineer's Stock 2
     
    These show two ex GW Dean 4 wheel coaches in Engineer's use in 1958 : a neat 4 compartment composite used as the Oswestry Electricians' tool van , taken at Portmadoc , and a rather more battered 5 compartment all third used as a staff and tool van at Plymouth.
     
    Blacklade has an engineer's train in its two "proper" periods - why not for the steam stock too? Since the steam stock is nominally supposed to be 1958 a GW  4 wheeler is at least in period, and one might have been found in the Birmingham area, and come under LMR control after ex GW lines were transferred. 
     
    The whole thing is not completely implausible, and for a convenient scrapbox project for the inauthentic steam era, seemed worth doing. So a total reconstruction of my 4 compartment all first as a staff /tool van was begun last year.
     
    The coach was stripped with Modelstrip and predictably this allowed the brittle polystyrene cement joints to break. Some of the panelling was filled in with Squadron filler, and the whole lot sprayed with the big aerosol can of Games Workshop Chaos Black - because I had it, and it was suitable and convenient. Perhaps I should have over-plated with 10 thou plasticard , since getting a smooth flush finish has proved a little difficult
     
    That was where matters were stalled by pressure of life last year.
     
    On restarting a couple of weeks ago, I quickly cleaned up and assembled the basic bodyshell. A spare compartment partition , built from plasticard sandwiching a piece of lead sheet, was used up - I think this was made for my Ratio MR suburban project ("Set 2"). One plastic buffer was missing so I replaced the lot with some long slender brass buffers I acquired at some point  - I think they may have originated from a Ratio LNWR coach kit.  I have assumed that one central compartment has been retained for staff riding to site, with a long and a short tool compartment on either side
     
    So we get this:

     
    Along the way I picked up one of the Shire Scenes etched brass compensation units for these kits. As originally built (aged about 12) the chassis was not square, and on a long wheelbase 4 wheeler like this it just seemed so much safer to go for a purposely- designed compensating etch. There are separate fold-up cradles for OO and EM/P4 on the etch.  Hornby disc wheels were fitted in brass bearings - as originally built it had no bearings and plastic Ratio wheels - and some whitemetal Mansell inserts from MJT were superglued in place. These too were from stock, left over from the MR suburbans
     
    here we are in the heat of battle, showing how the etched brass cradle works

     
    The pinpoints were duly sawn off the compensated wheelset with my piercing saw
     
    There is one major error in the model. On rechecking the photos it seems the engineers usually cut away a section of the footboards by the axlebox and fitted a hand brake-lever. I haven't attempted it - reinstating the missing sections of footboard lost in 40 years of careless handling was enough hassle, and I'm not sure that cutting out sections in the middle of the footboard here would have been easy or successful here, as I was working with partly-assembled units. 
     
    This is very much a scrapbox project - actual spending has been confined to the compensation unit
     
    I am now deep into the painting - partions and seats in one compartment have been fitted and sheet lead araldited to the floor between the axles to weight it up to 70-75g. Glazing - sheet plastic from the coach scraps bag, I think left over from the LNW coach kits forming Set 1 - has been fitted. The roof now fits - it didn't the first time I built this - and will be glued at the ends and tacked on the sides with a tough of cement, in the faint hope of getting it off without total destruction in an emergency
  17. Ravenser

    "Here's One I Made Earlier" - 2

    By Ravenser,


    Constructional
    The first part of this project was written up here PART 1 but it's now more or less finished.
     
    And there's a picture to prove it. 
     

     
    As it was finished a while ago some of the details are now a bit hazy but here goes... One of the centre (first class!) compartments has been retained for staff riding and this gives a long and a short tool compartment in the rest of the vehicle. Kadees have been fitted (I think they were long) and a lot of time spent touching up, lettering and weathering. 
     
    I can't remember all the details of weathering. The basic black is Citadel Chaos black, from a can, touch up was Chaos black with a brush - the difference between the two is minimal. (I know they should be absolutely the same, but there's a very slight difference) . Weathering on both vehicles involved AK Interactive enamel weathering washes - Light Dust Deposit was just too light and white and I think I used Shaft and Bearing Grease over the top to knock it back to something acceptable. Other ad hoc enamel washes may have been used along the way , and I think I just mixed up a suitable grey for the roof
     
    The Starfish is an old Cambrian kit someone gave me a while back, which seemed suitable for a vintage engineers' train and for which I had no other obvious use. It has been built essentially as it comes , and though I think a little care and possibly the odd scrap of microstrip packing in the joins were needed in assembly, there is nothing much to remark on in its construction. This is a very small wagon (which is ideal in the context of a small layout) and even with lead sheet araldited underneath it was little more than 25 g - about half the target weight. It therefore has a load - ballast glued onto a rectangle of 40'thou  styrene sheet with artist's matt medium (to avoid discolouration). There is lead sheet under the styrene , to give the additional weight.
     
    Lettering both was a pig. I didn't have suitable Departmental transfer sheets , and couldn't find anything obviously suitable and modestly priced. A large sheet that only does part of the job at £10 was not a sensible approach. So transfers are made up of bits and pieces found on various transfer sheets I have , words had to be made out of several donor bits, and the whole thing took about 4 evenings , with lots of care , and application of microsol in stages to bond the bits in place. They were then given weathering washes to tone them down . I hoped to suggest patch repair of panels . There is at least one lettering element missing on the Starfish, but I'm prepared to live with it for the moment. These wagons survived in this condition into the 1980s so I have a bit of flexibility of use on this. The wagon number is correct - the coach number is a wild guess conditioned by transfer bits as I have no relevant GW reference and online reference here was limited. I have a nasty suspicion I've numbered it as a diesel railcar or an autotrailer.
     
    The intention is to "borrow" the black Grampus and the olive Shark to make up an engineer's train (politely ignoring the TOPS boxes on the borrowed vehicles) . This leaves me one wagon short - the half-built ex LNER Toad B from an old Parkside kit has been mentally allocated as the second brake van . That finds a sensible use for another model, so I have an incentive to finish it. The stumbling block on that project has been the need to contrive wire handrails on the sides
     
    And now  for a 21st century variation on the same theme......
     

     
    I don't know the provenance of this kit. It is a resin-cast body with integral solebars, which was on the second-hand stall at the Stevenage exhibition this January for £4. Included in the polybag were some Cambrian pedestal suspension units. I assume it was being disposed of because there were some small air bubbles in a couple of places and because the solebars were so thin they'd broken away in one place along the edge. That was repaired with a little superglue - I'm not convinced the solebar is 100% parallel on close inspection but it's not noticeable. Wheels are Hornby discs , fitted with disc-brake inserts. These seem to catch slightly underneath  - they are slightly bigger than the 12mm Romfords that may have been intended. I've gouged away at the underside of the mounting (remove the pedestal unit then work on the fixing) and they are a lot freer-running than at first but may still need a little more work
     
    The Bachmann PNA is 5 rib , this is the 7 rib version. Base coat is BR loco green, weathered with various rust potions /browns, and a wash of green let down with off-white. Transfers were again "interesting" and had to be made up with bits and pieces from various sheets - the green and blue patches were done by brush-painting onto some Fox blank transfer paper, then applying transfer lettering from other sheets (sometimes in bits) on top . The patches were then cut out and applied as transfers to the wagon. This has all been another slow lettering job, and I still have to source the Caib transfers and apply a sealing coat of matt varnish. There may be some more weathering too - the originals were pretty beat up vehicles (see below)
     
    The resin used is a soft white substance, not the hard resin more commonly seen in kits.  This vehicle may actually be a purely amateur exercise - I think Jon Hall may have done a few wagons a bit like this as resin casting demos over the years. It has been weighted with lead sheet underneath, but Kadees are still to add. I bought two commercial resin wagon loads at Shenfield , intended for the Bachmann PNA : unfortunately they are fractionally too wide, and more seriously about 3mm too short for this wagon, so a suitable load will have to be made up. . (I have a Bachmann PNA that can use one of the commercial loads and at £2.65 primed it's hardly a great expenditure)
     


  18. Ravenser
    The last few months have been somewhat difficult. At about the time of my last posting, my elderly mother had a fall , and I went up to Lincolnshire on quite a few weekends after she was discharged. Then there was a second fall at the start of December, and then we discovered that her cancer was terminal. I spent a fortnight over Christmas / New Year up in Lincolnshire driving back and forth across the Wolds each afternoon to Lincoln hospital to see her: we finally managed to get her discharged into a care home near my brother, and she died peacefully in mid January. After that came the funeral in Lincolnshire and what was to be done about the house; and then coronavirus descended on us. After initially working from home I was furloughed after Easter - when a majority of your shipments are airfreight and high-end goods, things were always likely to go quiet. (I remarked to several people during March that September 1939 must have felt much like this...)
     
    Naturally, very little modelling activity took place during all of this - I've effectively had a 6 month layoff. I managed to get to "Lincoln" show at Newark showground on my way back from one of the early trips, and some things for the prospective OO9 layout were bought - though not the Bofors gun Clive recommended for airfield defence. Thoughts of visits to Spalding and Peterborough shows proved impractical, I managed a day at Warley, and snatched a couple of hours at Stevenage, and that in practice was it until April. Not surprisingly my normal New Year's Resolutions survey on here didn't happen.
     
    I now find everything very much up in the air. With some kind of inheritance to come, there was the possibility of moving from my flat (which is rather full) to a modest-sized house. That rather called into question the OO9 scheme I was drawing up here, since that was predicated on decommissioning of the old desktop PC and using the space for shelves and a boxed diorama layout. If I were to move, there might be a different, larger site. But with the ongoing pandemic , and the resulting economic mayhem I cannot be certain whether I will have a job in the medium term, or what the chaos might do to my savings, (or for that matter the value of my late mother's house.) So that project is very much in limbo. I have stock, a few kits, a little track, and some buildings in store for it - but whether I go ahead with the current plans is now a moot point, and under present conditions there's no question of commissioning a baseboard unit from Tim Horn or buying other items. So starting work on it is for the moment out of the question.
     
    I have been slowly digging my way out of the piles of admin that built up during the autumn and winter. But the model shops are shut (like nearly all the other shops), there are no exhibitions (and probably won't be until late this year or even 2021), and mail-order now involves decontamination and quarantine. My club is closed for the duration, the Area Group can't meet, it's not exactly safe to go anywhere or to see anyone. While I have an adequate income at present courtesy of the Government, that may only be the case for a few more months so it doesn't seem a good idea to spend any money unnecessarily. 
     
    Added to which I have a cupboard full to overflowing with unbuilt stuff, various projects left where they fell last September - and if I'm honest, piles of unread books and various other stuff I really meant to do, watch or sort out . I'm starting to realise that the accumulated backlog - and it's not just railway modelling - is very large indeed. I've tried to be good in the last decade and restrict myself to "one in, one out" but all I seem to have done is slow the progressive accumulation of stuff to a crawl. The size of the modelling pile - and even more, the amount of work it represents - is very sobering. The BBC series on Hornby introduced me to a new acronym from the world of plastic kit modelling: STABLE - Stash Beyond Life Expectancy . I think I know what they mean...
     
    So - the only sensible approach seems to be to work steadily through the various unfinished projects currently littering my bookshelves, and finish them. That would be good for my mental health - not an irrelevant consideration when you haven't actually seen anyone except once or twice in the street for 2 months - since it would clear up a series of nagging dangling loose ends, resolve various outstanding problems, and tidy the flat up a bit. It should also not cost me any money - and if I do need to buy anything it will be strictly necessary and not destined further to clog up the modelling cupboard. Furthermore this approach should provide the biggest return in term of modelling results for the least investment of effort by me.
     
    And once the decks are clear, I can launch into some new projects from the cupboard. There really isn't any need to go purchasing extra projects. 
     
    Added to which, I really ought to run the layouts more often. I don't think anything had been run for at least 6 months.
     
    So what do I have lying around outstanding?
     
    1. OO9 
    I bought - and painted the body parts for - a Parkside brake van kit at Newark. The bits were lying on my table for months , along with a WD open kit. That has been built, with Bemo couplings, and painted, lettered and weathered. Along the way a Bachmann and a Peco open, and two Peco flats were weathered, too, and the WD open kit started. Couplings are an issue with that one so it's not finished... At some point I'll do a posting on OO9, and I still have to finish the larger scale drawing of the intended plan, but this side is more or less tidied up for the moment.
     
    2. OO wagons
     
    There's rather more outstanding here. I managed to finish weathering the resin PNA kit I bought second-hand at Stevenage last year, and while I was about it, I weathered my Bachmann PNA - and I'm pleased with the results. One of the resin loads I bought at Shenfield last September was eased to fit and painted: unfortunately these don't really fit the resin kit. Flushed with success, I moved onto this , which had been sitting unfinished on the bookcase for a couple of years:

     
    Handrails were the issue , and how to do them - this is an elderly Parkside kit bought second-hand. I fitted the vertical handrails, slightly simplified, decided to use handrail knobs either side of the ducket to hold the horizontal handrails - and could I find the packet of handrail knobs?? I think I may have put them in with a loco kit - but I haven't found which one. The idea is to use it as a second brake van for the engineers train now I have some 1950s engineering  vehicles to go with my kettles 1950s engineering stock - but the project has stalled again and it's back gathering dust. Mail order for a single packet of handrail knobs it a bit extravagant.
     
    The poor resin WD road van has taken a tumble or two from the bookshelves, resulting in serious damage to the upper part of the veranda ends. I'm frightened enough of resin dust at the best of times, so any shaping has to take place outsider. And going outside now means hospital-level sterilisation procedures for me, the kit, and the tools. Added to which I don't actually have a use for the thing at present - so the WD road van is near the bottom of the action list.

     
    Then there's this - a 5522 Models kit sold by DOGA a good few years ago, and as it would be quite useful on the Boxfile I ought to finish it, once I am confident enough to fire up the soldering iron. I've managed to trap the supports for the brake gear, so the solebar will have to come off...

     
    And if I'm feeling inspired, while I've got the soldering iron out, I could actually start on the Judith Edge Vanguard Steelman kit I have in the cupboard - which is body-only and would suit the Boxfile...
     
    Finally, rooting around in the drying box (which has sadly degenerated into a debris box) I find the bits of an incomplete Connaisseur Models LNER single bolster. It's twin was finished and sits in a storage box along with the rest of the Boxfile fleet, even though it has no actual use on the 'file. As the whitemetal axleguards failed, it needs etched W-irons fitting, couplings, painting, etc. 
     
    3. Locos
     
    First cab off the rank in this section is the NBL Type 2 diesel-electric I was working on last year: Class 21 . This one needs a full posting to itself, but here it is sufficient to say that although it's been fighting me mechanically all the way (entirely prototypically!) I think we're finally there....
     
    This then brings another loco into view. Twenty years ago (gosh!) my first diesel detailing project was a Hornby 29 I can bought cheap, second-hand, for Ravenser mk 1. Early last year I attempted to convert it to DCC. This was part of a whole block of DCC work, most of which failed for mysterious reasons, blowing decoders in the process.  It was a very frustrating episode - all I got out of it was a resurrected Bachmann 08. I came to the conclusion that the whole of the DC wiring for 8 wheel pickup on the 29 had better be ripped out and redone. The loco also needs a damaged grill replacing, and the cab front windows reworking. This - like the Baby Deltic - can be excused as an RTC loco.
     
    (And if I get very ambitious I have a blue Hornby 25 sans power bogie and a green Bachmann Rat with slight body damage and a good blue 25 could be produced by combining the two with some Shawplan etches and glazing , which I have in stock)
     
    There is also the Airfix Trevithick loco kit in 1/32,  see here At the Dawn of Time 2 which became stuck (literally!) when solvent got in where it shouldn't and a component of the drive train sheered. I really quite want the drive train to work and the wheels to revolve - motorising it , as originally intended for this kit would be excellent. So I need to work out how to pin the relevant components back together.
     
    Then there's this: 
     
    This, too, has been gathering dust for at least a decade - a Branchlines chassis for the old Airfix plastic kit for the Drewry 04 shunter. Someone persuaded me it should be made compensated - and I didn't quite understand what I needed to do with beams and pivots. This has always been intended for the Boxfile. I've never actually built a chassis - perhaps when the decks are getting a bit clearer I should try to finish this. 
     
    Buried deep in the pile of stock for Blacklade is a Hornby 60 which suffered a little bodyshell damage at one end . I really ought to patch it up and get it back into traffic...
     
    And finally there's the problematic 76xxx Standard 4 Mogul with its mysterious short that fried two decoders. I will have to be very confident before I have another go sorting out that one.
     
    4. DMUs
     
    The first priority here is to finish the DC Kits 128 . I am not happy with the headlights, or the underframe equipment, as I originally did them, so these will need sorting out. As will the remaining handrails and the doorhandles. This will at least give me convenient options for consisting Modernisation Plan DMUs (as opposed to inconvenient ones involving 2 x 2 car short frame units ) . And it will allow me to use the 57' Mk1 parcels vehicles (BG , GUV, and NRX) which have been sitting idle for ages, since the centre platform on Blacklade - the only one which has access to the run-round loop - will only just take a Brush 2 and two 50' vans. It will however take a 128 + 57' vehicle.

    (gratuitous picture of weathered GUV)
     
    Spray-painting the body will be "interesting" during lockdown , as the landing outside my flat where it would need to be done isn't exactly a safe sterile area during the epidemic.
     
    Then we get to some very long-standing projects, which bristle with problems.
     
    There is the Pacer:
     
    This is supposed to be getting a Branchlines replacement etched chassis. However I decided I really couldn't tolerate the large black underframe box that replaces the engine block. These have been cut off, replacement weight installed and engines fettled out of plasticard. This lengthy process essentially killed the impetus needed to sort out the new chassis itself. There is also the question of whether it's possible to improve the body - I'd love to flushglaze it but I'm not sure that's practical - and upgrade the interior. Lights are supposed to be fitted, and Kadees, and gangways and DCC...
     
    The first push on this one is recorded here - Pacer - and I'm horrified to see the project has been stalled for exactly a decade....
     
    This too would be give me more options for multiple unit working on Blacklade and it really needs to be finished off.
     
    While I'm about it , I have a second Pacer - actually a Skipper in chocolate and cream - and an Ultrascale rewheeling pack in my DMU box. This would be a less drastic upgrade since the second model is in somewhat better condition, and it would "simply" be a matter of fitting replacement wheels, decoders, lights Kadees and a little detailing. However I am also now committed to doing something about the underframe to match the first Pacer....
     
    The West Yorkshire 155 is a case of "so near and yet so far" . At the last stage of the project, the motor bogie failed. Someone diagnosed a seized central motor bearing , oil seemed to fix it - and then the motor bogie failed finally and irretrievably. There are really only two approaches to sorting this out - rob the motor bogie from a second 155 , in Provincial livery, which has been sitting unused in its box for two decades , or else use a Black Beetle. The latter option would remove the large black motor unit visible inside and would involve me putting  more of the interior into the unit.
     
    This should provide the best result - but the only way to get a suitable Black Beetle is now to rob one out of the Bratchill 150:
     

     
     
    A project which has been stalled a very long time....
     
    The killer issue is that I fitted some etched window frames from Jim Smith-Wright . The model took a tumble at Ally Pally one year during breakdown, several came off, I picked them up - and when I got home I was one short. Since Jim no longer does the etches - I'm stymied.
     
    I really can't see this making any progress in the foreseeable future - hence the decision to take the its motor bogie for the 155.
     
    Getting the second 155 up and running is a possibility, but I'm not sure I can face a second full-dress rework on one of these.....
     
    5. Coaches 
     
    Nothing to declare, officer... 
     
    But if I clear up all the above, starting the MTK Porthole Brake third kit is an obvious option. I could also use the Comet etched Mk1 CK sides and a Lima donor to build a second coach , and break up the scratch set with its mismatched gangways. 
     
    (Though on reflection I started upgrading a Hornby Mk2 BFK and gave up because it was looking a lot like hard work. I suppose that could be finished as well...)
     
    6. Layouts:
     
    Nothing I can see to be done on Blacklade or the Boxfile as layouts, other than to run them more often.
     
    But Tramlink (Kent) needs sorting out, and nothing has been done in over a year. It would make a decent DC test track, and there are buildings to be finished. Not to mention light rail units.
     
    I really don't need to buy any more models given all this...….
     
  19. Ravenser

    2018 - Deja Vu ?

    By Ravenser,


    Reflections
    It's that time of the year when I survey the state of the bookcase and the cupboard and post over-optimistic ambitions for the year's modelling....
     
    At least this year I'm sitting down to contemplate at the start of January, rather than the middle of February, which I suppose is progress. There's also the fact that I need to write up some of 2017's output for the blog.
     
    After a pretty patchy year things took a sudden leap forward when I realised I didn't have to wait for a suitable IKEA product in order to mount the Boxfile on a solid base (a chassis??) . That project is written up here, http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/343-blacklade-artamon-square/ but as noted towards the end, it spread into quite a bit of work on the stock. I don't think I'd done any significant wagon modelling for five or six years.
     
    This gave me a real incentive to finish off the MICA and get couplings fitted. It also spurred me to take action to deal with the Blue Spot fish. Rail Blue looked just too dark compared to some of the photos on Paul Barlett's site - some look almost as if Parcels transfers have been applied straight onto Ice Blue - and I was lucky enough to find a jar or Railmatch faded Rail Blue in the paint box. Much better. With HMRS transfers (and a bit of cobbling from other sources) and Kadees the van is now ready for use as an NRV on DMU tail traffic, though perhaps the weathering wasn't really heavy enough, and I suppose the real things disappeared a couple of years before Blacklade's "mid-late 80s" period (As far as I can gauge from Paul Bartlett's photos they went in 1981-2 ).
     

     
    For the MICA I improvised with the only black transfers I could find in my collection - a Fox sheet for the BR Insulated van in 2mm/4mm/7mm which was a give-away with MORILL.... Ah. That must have been over 20 years ago. It's not surprising the transfers had yellowed, though I managed to touch round with white and after weathering and varnish it's not really visible. The number's not quite right either, although I used a 7mm letter for a W-prefix , and the capacity should be 8T not 10T - but you can't read the capacity from a distance of more than 6 inches.
     
    Another two wagons for the Boxfile were sorted out over the weekend, which takes me to 24 serviceable wagons. The "extra weight plus Hornby wheels" formula is working well. Two wagons more will receive Sprat and Winkle couplings this week. Another wagon should respond to the standard treatment - and then I'm down to a hard core of 3-4 wagons where further thought will be required.
     
    And one Saturday before Christmas I bought another boxfile from WH Smiths and converted most of a corregated cardboard box into dividers... This one takes various bits - the LMS interdistrict Brake 3rd (which had its underframe weathered while I was doing the CK), the Tourist Brake 3rd, a Lima LMS 42' GUV I bought for reworking, the NRV van, a stray Grampus...
     
    I don't think I ever wrote up the Lima 37 upgrade which I was threatening in last year's "2017 programme" posting. I think that one was done in time for Blacklade's appearance at Ally Pally: certainly it was available well before the layout's outing at Shenfield in September. There was nothing ground-breaking about it, I'm afraid, and as Tim Shackleton wrote up a more comprehensive rework of exactly the same loco in his diesels book I shall be modest and brief. A new etched roof fan from Shawplan, Shawplan etched window frames and Lazerglaze windows (fettling them to fit is still laborious - but infinitely better than attempting a home-made job), new and substantial buffers, etched depot symbols and nameplates (more Shawplan) , Kadees and weathering. I'm not terribly proud of the Kadees - there's not enough room for the draft box on the bogies so the box and coupling protrudes and there's an uncomfortable resemblance to a Eurostar 37. It's a lot better than the tensionlock , but that's not saying much. Only touch-up repainting was needed as the target loco (37 688 in two-tone Sector grey) was what Lima had produced in the first place.
     
    And an old Express Models DC directional headlight kit went in. I had it kicking around with no other sensible use , and working headlight when you ease open the controller is better than nothing. Lights are an operator's convenience, basically
     

     
    An interesting minor point concerns the nose grills. Some photos show these in black on 37 688, other shots of 37 688 show them in grey as represented by Lima. So somewhere between 1985 and 1990 this loco got a repaint. I left the grills in grey, with weathering - I didn't think there was any real gain in fitting etches, even though I have two packets of the things from the time when I thought this loco would be done using a Triang-Hornby body (recycled from Flaxborough in my teens - and even then second hand from the Aswell St junk shop) on an Athearn PA1 chassis. (Those bits will now become a plain blue 37 172 sometime in the distant future). the biggest gain on the grills is removing the body grey Lima left showing in the recessed bits. It was an IM loco in 1990, but still carrying BX depot symbols
     
    The roof "shoulder" grills are incorrect for this loco - Tim Shackleton corrected them, I didn't dare to. He also lowered the loco on its bogies - I thought about hand-filing bearing surfaces flat, and chickened out.
     

    This loco was a bargain find at DEMU Showcase - right number, right livery - for £18, it runs well and with all the bits the whole project cost no more than about £35 (plus decoder). I can justify that for a space/backup loco that only needs to shift two coaches- whereas a three-figure sum for a new Bachmann one would be an extravagance
     
    Now to plans for the coming year.
     
    First of all the outstanding projects, and here a little clarity is dawning.
     
    - Finishing the wretched Coopercraft Tourist brake third has to be a high priority, so that I can commission Set 4, and have some proper "modern" mainline corridor stock and some coaches in post 1956 maroon for the steam period on Blacklade
     
    - A relatively quick win would be finishing the complete rebuilding of an elderly Ratio GWR 4 wheeler. This survived intact from my early teenage steam layout, was stripped down with Modelstrip, and duly broke down into its component pieces as its vintage polystyrene cement failed. The sides have been filled and sanded to represent an elderly departmental vehicle with a few plated-over panels, and sprayed with Games Workshop Chaos Black. I have a Shirescenes compensation unit in stock for this for this ( last time the chassis wasn't square). This would go towards a steam-age engineers' train. Again this is a 2017 project I never got round to writing up..
     

     
    - There's a Cambrian Starfish kit sitting in the cupboard that might go nicely with this.
     
    - And if I finished off the stalled vintage Parkside Toad B sitting on the bookshelf , that could be paired with the olive green Shark to make up an Engineer's train for the steam period (It doesn't have hand-rails - and I've been chickening out of doing my own...)
     
    - The 128 made some progress this year , until I realised it was sitting askew on one bogie. The plastic mounting had fractured, and after several briefly-successful homemade repairs with superglue, I discovered at Peterborough that I could get a replacement part from Replica. I now have to do that, and get this one finished. I can then run an alternative parcels train featuring the 128 and NRX or my blue GUV (which has been sitting in its box for a long time). Or a BG. And the 128 can be consisted with my 101 or 108 without forming an awkwardly long train
     
    - I have a more or less finished Silver Fox Baby Deltic body and all the components of the chassis : finishing this should be another relatively quick win. It's been on the list to finish since 2016....
     
    The revival of the Boxfile has sparked renewed enthusiasm over some very long stalled projects.
     
    The correct intergroup ratio for wagons , I read somewhere long ago , is LMS 8, LNER 7 , GWR 3, SR 1. I'm one over the top on GW, have no SR, am on par for the LMS, and two light on the LNER (And one of those I've got is a Single Bolster - useless on the 'file). The ratio adopted between types is 4 vans: 2 minerals: 1 open (the Boxfile takes 7 wagons). I have four rounds or tranches of stock plus 4 locos - and I'm one open over the top and two vans light.
     
    There are 3 vacant slots in the two stock boxes.
     
    So obviously I need 2 x LNER vans... And an etched kit for an LNER van has been sitting on my bookcase part built for an inordinate length of time. I think it was started before the Boxfile. Provenance is 5522 Models, offered as a complete package deal by DOGA long ago. This is an obvious candidate to finish off.
     
    And for the second one, I have a Hornby LNER van sitting somewhere in the cupboard. They've done it in white as N E in the past - I am pretty confident it's an NER prototype but can't confirm (I wasn't prepared to pay £35 for the NE volume of the new Tatlow for 1 wagon - but I do have the old 1 volume Tatlow, which shows some very similar NE goods vans). Whitemetal NE axleboxes and buffers from ABS are in stock..
     
    I have several first loco kits in the cupboard. One is a Judith Edge Thomas Hill Vanguard - slightly late for the Boxfile, but of particular interest as it is designed to fit a Black Beetle . So no chassis building needed... I was getting quite enthusiastic about building this - then I checked and found a) it needs a 36mm x 14mm wheels Beetle , not the usual DMU types and b ) Beetles have almost disappeared. A hasty check round various suppliers ended with me buying one of Branchlines' last two of these units. (I also got a Mashima motor for the Craftsman 02 kit lurking in the cupboard)
     
    So it looks like I will be building show etched kits in the near future.
     
    - Another, much larger, stalled project is the heavy rebuild of a Hornby Pacer using a Branchlines chassis . This would be a very useful model if I can get it into traffic, so I really ought to have a serious go at it once I've cleared the other unfinished items out of the way.
     
    - I have a Lima 42' LMS CCT which can be cleaned up and upgraded: I have Comet LMS bogies in stock. This will presumably be in Crimson - I can't quite make out when they disappeared but I presume they had gone by the mid 80s ? (If not it would be a useful vehicle , as this plus a Mk1 BG would fit into the platform...)
     
    This accounts for all the occupants of the bookcase bar the WD brake and the Bratchill 150
     
    If I get beyond that , there are some DC Kits DMUs I could build, or some blue/grey coach projects. Maybe fix the N5? Or perhaps I could try to sort out Tramlink, still buried under it's pile of magazines. There's an elderly Bachmann 03 and a not so elderly Bachmann 08 - neither DCC Ready - which could live useful lives if given a decoder, not to mention the "stuff a Hornby 0-6-0 chassis under a GBL Jinty" project
     
    I really don't need to buy any RTR this year (though a Stirling Single hauling a couple of blue/grey mark 1s could be justified in the E Midlands in the mid 1980s....)
  20. Ravenser
    Over the last few years I've been very consciously trying to rein in my spending on the hobby, and reduce the pile of stuff in my cupboard. Money has been tight at times, and a couple of short periods of unemployment have brought home to me that I have accumulated an awful lot of unbuilt kits and bits over the years, and that I have made very limited progress with building them.
     
    "Don't buy - build!" has been the watchword.
     
    I'm afraid that my good intentions have not been fully realised.
     
    To be honest Moral Restraint has turned me into a bit of a sucker for the cheap, elderly, and questionable.
     
    Yes, I bought a Hachette Mk1
     
    (And a Great British Locos Jinty and D11/2, and a Hornby 0-6-0T with a dubious shunter body in dayglo livery in order to motorise the former)
     
    The thinking was that this coach might become part of a "modern" mainline set for the steam period on Blacklade. Since the steam period is a not terribly authentic spin-off anyway I wasn't prepared to pay for a Hornby Railroad Mk1 , let alone a pukka Bachmann one. But a Hachette second with flush-glazing for a fiver wasn't bad - especially as I already had a NNK plastic Mk1 underframe truss in stock anyway.
     
    I fitted Hornby wheels and Kadees - and there the matter rested , with the underframe untouched and the coach in a box in the study
     
    The Hachette Mk1 was supposed to be paired with a Mailcoach LNER Tourist Brake 3rd kit which I picked up at Ally Pally for a very reasonable price from a trader a couple of years ago. Fancied the stock, plenty of seats, compatible gangways - seemed like a plan
     
    But then I learnt that those kits are not highly regarded, getting a decent result is thought difficult - and I had plenty of other, more urgent jobs to do involving things in Rail Blue. So there the matter rested....
     
    Until recently , when I thought I'd got a great bargain: an LMS Porthole Brake 3rd kit in the form of a
    punched aluminium bodyshell with bits - almost all complete said the trader, and just a fiver.
     
    BSL kits had a good reputation, and I used to gaze enviously at the Hobbytime adverts in the Modeller when I was very young, listing all sorts of wonderful pre-nationalisation coaches, all quite out of my reach.
     
    I was rather deflated when someone pointed out the MTK sticker on the header card. Aaarghh - garlic and silver crucifix, quick! But he assured me these particular were thought to be quite buildable.
     
    So I got it home, opened the packet , and took a look. You can see the contents here:
     
    First assessment: all the bits that should be in the kit are there except one of the guard's duckets. The coach requires an interior and wheels. I've a packet of Hornby wheels and a rummage in the boxes in the cupboard revealed I'd enough spare bits in the various Comet interior packs I have to cover a 4 compartment brake
     
    Second assessment: the quality of the castings is quite reasonable, given MTK's very dubious reputation. The buffers are a bit basic, but I have plenty of Comet LMS buffers left over from the Dapol Brake 3rd. The gangways are rubber and passable but I found a Roxey pack for two pairs of working LMS/GW gangways . Only one end needs to work, anyway. The vac cylinders aren't great but I found a generic ABS pack in stock which will be an improvement. I have Comet etched crossframes left over from the Dapol Brake 3rd
     
    So far so good. None of these upgrade bits will cost me anything extra
     
    The bodyshell seems to be 2mm overlength, but I'll live with that . A scale drawing is included with the kit, which might even be accurate.
     
    I've bought a Comet detailing etch which will give me hinges, a gangway plate and one or two other bits and pieces, plus a pack of 10 Comet guards duckets , said to be LMS/LNER. Total cost , just under eleven quid
     
    In the meantime, whilst I'm awaiting a pack of transfers from Modelmaster, attention has turned to the Hachette Mk1.
     

     
    As can be seen, I've dismantled it - unscrewing the 3 screws below (two of which are hidden under the bogies) proved an easier route than trying to lever off the roof. The solid trussing has been cut away piece by piece with Xurons - on my model the battery boxes and brake cylinders are very firmly glued in
     
    I sharpened up a fairly blunt chisel blade on a small oilstone to clean up the remains, and duly got Blood On My Hands when the blade slipped and my finger demonstrated that the sharpening had indeed worked. I do have a tin of Birds Custard Powder in the cupboard, but this one's staying in maroon
     
    I then glued in place the replacement underframe truss from Precision/NNK (4PM/022, and still available on their website), trimming around the battery boxes and with some fettling to get the brake cylinder shafts in place, and we get this:
     

     
    I really will get around to writing up the current state of the 155 at some point...
     
    I've also removed the end handrails and water-fillers prior to replacement in wire. The interior will be painted and populated
  21. Ravenser
    Just to round off a couple of projects - and prove that I do occasionally finish things as well as starting them, here are some hasty shots of the Met Bo-Bo and the Set 1 coaches at the DOGA AGT . Two coaches proved a little too much for the card loco , though one was easy enough - at 100g+ each this is not too surprising
     

     
     

     

     

     
    This one was taken in it's working environment before weathering and lettering - also before I fitted gangways to the inner ends :
     

     
    Somewhere along the line I managed to lose the moulding for one pair of gangway ends . The work around for this was to fit the Ratio mouldings at the outer ends - representing retracted gangways - and working gangways to the the inner ends . I had a packet of MJT "British Standard" gangways in the bits box, possibly bought for use on a Mainline LMS BG which didn't need them in the end, so I found a use for them here. Despite fitting the shortest possible Kadees, there is still about 3-4mm gap between buffers and the final result is a little more reminiscent of Hornby tinplate than I'd like, but at least there is no tell-tale gap between corridor connectors
     
    Numbering and lettering is from some Modelmaster WR and LMR sheets cut up to get the required numbers. I have heard that HMRS have problems obtaining transfer paper for their Pressfix range - certainly their stand at Ally Pally did not have any BR 1948-65 coach lettering sheets so I was driven to improvise from what I could find in the Modelmaster range.
     
    I'm indebted to Bill Bedford for BR (E) numbers for the ex M&GN coaches surviving in 1952 . As none of the brake composites survived that long - presumably because their small guard's compartment wasn't ideal on a line where the main passenger traffic was holiday makers - I've used a number very close to that of the surviving brake thirds.
     
    The roof was originally painted in Railmatch Centro grey (because I have a jar and have no real need for it). This didn't look quite right , so it was overpainted with a 50:50 mix of acrylic Railmatch Roof Dirt and Frame Dirt, with a touch of Tamiya Flat White to lighten it. I brushpainted the sides with satin varnish to even out the fininsh(I couldn't face masking up the windows , and after 3 brushpainted coats on the body there seemed little point spraying the varnish) More or less the same acrylic mix ,very heavily thinned, was applied to the sides , working down, and drawn off where it gathered, and a similar mix, with a bit more brown, to the underframe. I'm satisfied with the result
  22. Ravenser

    News and Parcels

    By Ravenser,


    Constructional
    I've made a very slow start on things, but there is some progress to report with the Ratio Southern parcels van.
     
    I've seen some adverse comment about this kit on here - notable Roger Chivas' remark that having seen somebody build one he went off and designed an etched brass kit because it would be so much easier. Given that most people are frightened by etched brass [I'm not saying they ought to be, just observing factually the way people actually react] this makes it sound like the Ratio kit is unbuildable and may put people off even thinking about trying it.
     
    I'm far enough in now to make some comment on the kit. It is certainly much more intricate and fiddly than the older Ratio MR and LNWR kits. Take the roof - which I'm currently tackling. This is moulded with a slightly textured surface - probably to represent canvas. You have to drill out holes for seperate whitemetal torpedo vents - the instructions say 1/16" drill which equates to 1.6mm in new money. I've still had to ease every hole a fair bit with a broach to take the torpedo vent casting. And at first glance the roof moulding looks a bit long - so I may have to file back at each end. Now compare with the older Ratio kits - a one piece roof with the vents moulded on in the plastic. No doubt not quite as effective but much quicker and simpler.
     
    Take the sides. These require seperate doors to be fitted to the basic side, and etched drop light mouldings to each door window. Not to mention seperate droplight mouldings for the guards' door. The Ratio LNWR coaches have a single injection moulding for the whole side
     

     
    Take the underframe. Each battery box requires the addition of 4 lengths of microrod. The dynamo comes in 4 bits
     


     
     
    There's nothing exactly difficult about each operation, and everything is supplied. It's very far from difficult to build so far - bear in mind that I've not attempted a coach kit since a few teenage attacks on Ratio MR kits, so I must be counted as a novice builder here. But there's no doubt it's a much slower, more laborious and intricate process than the older Ratio kits.
     
    I've added lead flashing along pretty well all the floor to bump the weight up to 130g+ . I know 4 x 25g is the standard formula for a 4 axle vehicle , but that seems a bit light for a 50' coach
     
    Two detailed gripes - not exactly with the kit design. The transfers cover SR and BR pre 1965. Nobody seems to do BR Corporate image post 1965 transfers in white. [The same situation exists with the PMV - the only "4mm" transfers available are actually to 7mm ] This is odd, because these vehicles were well known as the last surviving pre nationalisation coaching stock and ran for over 20 years after the Corporate Blue livery came in. And it's not as if there were only one or two survivors either. There must be plenty of modern image modellers who fancy a bvit of variety in their fleet by adding some Maunsell vans in rail blue
     
    And somehow quite a few of the brake blocks have come out of the sprue, and despite a hasty search on Sunday I'm now two short. I am reasonably certain I had one floating around on the workbench earlier and didn't realise what it was. Somehow I'll have to improvise for the one wheel I can't cover...
     
    I've even made a start on the Dapol open I bought at St Albans , to turn it into a retro-fitted LMS wagon. This is a very simple conversion - a spare Parkside vac cylinder cut down for height, remove the old couplings and securing lugs which hold on the chassis , glue body to chassis , cross shaft from plastic rod, scrap of plastic rod for the crank off the vac cylinder , and there we are, ready to paint. Can't think why it's taken 6 months to do...
  23. Ravenser

    Set Two: Finishing Off

    By Ravenser,


    Constructional
    In the absence of better information, I reworked the underframe as proposed, sawing the Comet LMS battery box castings in half in then X-Acto mitre box, and plating the cut ends with 20 thou plasticard. The Comet vacuum cylinders were also installed , though possibly they could have been filed down to sit a bit lower. The completed bogies were fixed onto the composite and I had two completed coaches. They've come in at 110g all up: slightly more than the intended 100g (25g x 4 axles) , but a satisfactory weight to achieve good running. As the kit comes in the box, it would weigh about 40g and give lots of trouble
     


     
    A first test run on the layout when I was programming the decoder for the Bachmann Ivatt Co-Co revealed an unexpected problem - buffer locking at the brake end. I'd done all I could to close up the gap between the coaches with short Kadees but the intermediate buffers are about 4mm apart. Nothing can be done - and as I'd run out of suitable short heads , the bogie with the medium Kadee went under the brake end where the longer buffers would cover it.
     
    After the fight with the intermediate couplers it never occurred to me that a medium head would be too short. But the long shank buffers at the brake end are much longer and the knuckle on a medium head is a little way inboard of the buffer heads. It would be extremely destructive to attempt to remove the draft boxes and change the head - I'd probably find myself writing to Peco to source a pair of new bogies
     
    My intitial thought was that I'd have to remove the buffer heads with a pair of Xurons, tidy up and shorten the shanks a little with a file and glue the heads back on. A nasty bodge, but less destructive of authenticity than anything else - the buffers would simply look compressed. However the other evening I was combining programming of a decoder in my J11 with a bit of test running. and it became apparent that only the L1 actually had a problem with Set 2 , and then only at one end. (In fact I was able to swap Kadee 19 NEM longs for 18 Mediums on the Bachmann Ivatt diesel and it could still handle Set 2 without trouble).
     
    So I did the sensible ,easy, thing. The NEM Kadee at the bunker end of the L1 seemed to be slightly the shorter of the two , so I replaced it with the next size up. Provided the loco is run so the bunker end couples to the brake end of Set 2 , trhe problem is solved. The coupling at the smokebox end is in fact ok except through the curved front exit from Platform 2 via the crossover - at 2'6" radius the only curve on the layout below 3'
     
    The remainder of finishing off comprised lettering, weathering and vanishing, and here there were setbacks and disappointments . The coaches were numbered using bits taken from a couple of Modelmaster sheets for other things . After much poring over the sheets andHistoric Carriage Drawings 2. I managed to get a suitable number for a Birmingham area D501 6 compartment brake out of what I had, but I couldn't readily make up a suitable number for a Birmingham area D551 composite , and I ended up with a number falling in the block allocated to the slightly different Nottingham area composites. Then I realised I'd put the number on a panel at the brake end on both sides of the Brake - meaning it has left hand numbering on one side (used up to 1952) and a right hand number (1952 onward) on the other....
     
    I gave the sides a brush painted coat of satin varnish, as there are too many small windows to attempt masking , and then decided that perhaps I preferred the sides dead matt. I suspect really old wooden coaches at the end of their lives wouldn't have had any sheen. The one colour shot I have of ungangwayed stock in this livery (from Parkin's Mk1 book , taken at Bradford Forster Square , lurking behind a nice blood and custard SK ) shows them a rather brown and dusty colour , but I don't necessarily trust colour rendition in a photo of that age . However I wasn't really up for a second brushpainted coat , and in any case the matt varnish has had a few "issues" of its own.
     
    Weathering owed a lot to Humbrol's blue/grey wash. This is far too thick for my taste and was thinned with white spirit . I also added a little of the brown wash into the mix to represent traffic muck from below. The blue grey was used almost neat but thinned on the ends with excellent results - it approximates very well to a colour photo in Parkin's Mk1 book of the grubby black ends of a maroon Mk1 (A grubby black end in one red livery is going to be pretty similar to a grubby black end in another) With a bit more brown in the mix a similar wash was very effective in toning down the underframe - the brown in the mix was stepped up a bit more for the top surface of the footboards
     
    At about this point disaster struck.- I dropped the composite on the table. To my horror I found that one of the seats in a third class compartment had come loose - the roof is sealed irremovably in place and you can't get inside . Still worse, it was now the wrong way up and I couldn't seem to get it back the right way by shaking the thing. I seemed to be stuck with a beige blob at the window - admittedly , with a bit of care it didn't look much different from the other coloured blobs at the windows (my carefully painted Slater's figures) from a distance of 2 ' And the Kadee head had taken the force of the impact and the knuckle wasn't springing back properly. Just when I was starting to feel quite pleased with my efforts all the gilt was taken off the gingerbread
     
    Somehow - I don't quite know how - the wandering seat has subsequently managed to right itself and is no longer noticeable ./ And the affected Kadee head will still couple up - and as it's the end inside the set, it won't have to do much coupling and uncoupling anyway.
     
    Set 2 undertook its trials while I was programming and testing the J11 and a couple of photos show it in all its glory . (I know that a modern image layout isn't really the right setting for this kind of stock, but at least it gives me a place to play with it)
     

     

     
    The shiny roof is undesirable - unfortunately the Humbrol washes come up quite glossy. I resorted to a brush coat of Humbrol matt varnish , which swiftly became two coats of matt varnish. Then I had to remove the areas where it was drying white (too thick) with a brush loaded with white spirit, and finally touched up the remaining marks with a grey-brown compound of acrylic dry brushed. I'm now happy with the result.
     
    And just as I was putting the set away, finally complete - disaster struck again . One bogie dropped off the composite. Inspection revealed that the plastic pin through the plate into the bolster had become glued solid both to the mounting plate and the bolster - and had sheered neatly across , probably as a result of being required to flex while trial running
     
    Since I couldn't get at or replace the plastic pin, I resorted to an emergency bodge. A few years ago I saw someone's multiple unit where they had left the bogie loose and it fitted onto brass bolts protruding from the body as pivots. I don't recommend this approach - it seemed to cause a number of problems - but it suggested a desperate remedy. I found some thick brass wire - I think about 0.9mm diameter - and drilled a hole dead centre by eye into the two halves of the pivot pin - the bogie and the bolster - using a 1.0mm drill. A short length of the wire was super-glued into the hole in the centre of the bogie , adjusted by eye as near dead straight in both planes as possible and allowed to set hard. It gives a fairly tight fit into the bolster, so there should be little slop , but the bogie will fall off when I try to manoevere the composite into its slot in the stock box. I'll probably need to wrap this end round with tissue paper to keep everything together when putting it away.
     
    The Ratio bogie is designed to rock relative to the stretcher piece (which you don't glue in - it's just trapped) , thus taking care of any inacuracy in the for and aft plane . I just hope its ok in the lateral plane. I haven't actually re-erected the layout to re-test it
     
    Still , I've come a long way from where it all started , with this gruesome object
     

  24. Ravenser

    NRX Van

    By Ravenser,


    Constructional
    Next cab off the rank is yet another project that was supposed to be a quick win - and hasn't been.
     
    In a moment of weakness at Peterborough show a few years ago I bought a Replica Mk1 BG in Transpennine livery . They were being discounted to a tenner at the show, and it seemed too good a bargain to pass up. After all a Mk1 BG is the archetypal modern image parcels vehicle , and I didn't have one for Blacklade.
     
    After I got home I decided that it was a bargain I might have been better missing. The lack of flush glazed windows grated seriously, and the whole thing was more basic than my Bachmann Mk1s. A Transpennine passenger full brake wasn't really likely to find itself on parcels work in the Midlands, and it probably wouldn't have been cascaded to other things until several years into the 1990s . Since Blacklade's "early period" is supposed to be 1985-90 this wouldn't really do (Actually I suspect I am drifting towards this splitting into Periods 1a c1983-6 and 1b 1987-91. And I have a nasty feeling that the steam period may go the same way in the end)
     
    Therefore the box went into the stock pile and stayed there.
     
    Last autumn, while I was off work, I was rummaging through some of the boxes in the modelling cupboard , and found a Hurst Models etched brass kit to convert the Replica BG to an NRX container van. (One of the few things still available from Hirst,actually - rather like the Cheshire Cat they seem to be fading away until only the website is left). These 2 vehicles were an experiment by the Parcels Sector around 1990, the idea being to create a van capable of loading airline hold containers of the type used for airfreight. This would then allow BR to compete for inter-airport transfer cargo. Nothing seems to have come of it: the two demonstrator vehicles rapidly ended up in general parcels traffic, acquiring RES livery in 1991, and in 2001 they were repainted into EWS livery and sandwiched between two PCVs to provide a 4 van express pallet freight service for Securicor between Walsall and Aberdeen. What happened after that I don't know - I suspect this was another of EWS's entreprenurial ventures that faded away later
     
    But in their original guise they're just in my earlier period, and one might just have turned up in a parcels train at Blacklade.
     
    https://www.flickr.com/photos/50619197@N07/7901510494/in/photostream/
     
    [ Errr.. this shot shows handrails on the ends - something that Hirst don't mention. Looks like remedial work is needed....]
     
    The first problem was that the bogies on the Replica BG were wrong . The NRXs had Commonwealth bogies - the Replica model had B4s . These were hastily removed by pulling out , and a pair of Bachmann Commonwealths substituted from the bits box. Since these plug into a spigot on the chassis, and the Replica bogies have a spigot that plugs into the chassis , I used two suitable brass bolts with the bogies retained by two nuts on each, the bottom being retained in place by a dab of UHU on the nut and thread so it didn't work off (This bodge was pioneered on a pair of spectacles where the screws kept working loose - a replacement glass lens cost £100 and I didn't want it happening again).
     
    The coupling boxes were removed, a plate of plasticard glued across the top, and underset Kadees in draft boxes glued in place with scraps of microstrip wedged down the sides to reinforce the thing. Since the van will not run in any train longer than a couple of coaches, this will do
     
     
    Work then began on the body and results are shown here. The Hirst instructions were followed , not necessarily in strict order , though I picked up from an old Model Rail article (Feb 2002) that the top of the roller shutter doors needs to be turned in . I also used a substantial plate of 20 thou plasticard across the back to support the doors
     
    This shows the body more or less complete. It took some time to pluck up courage to saw into the body , but
     

     
    So far , so good, but...
     
    I used an elderly tube of Molak Stucco filler which I think came from a ModelZone. I'm driven to the conclusion it's not much cop, as it seems to crumble away , lift and not fill properly - something which has also happened on the 31 . I suspect I ought to replace it with something like Squadron
     
    I then made a big mistake. After a light spray of etch primer I set about painting the body Royal Mail/RES red, with Railmatch enamel - brushpainted as it doesn't come as an aerosol. I really should have spayed a second coat of normal primer over it first, as the covering power of red is dire . And I should have made determined efforts to remove all the stripes with a cotton bud dipped in surgical spirit. (It doesn't shift the upper blue though) .
     
    Paint , rubbing down and a couple of traces of thick cyano as a desperate filler have pretty well removed the faint traces of the door lines. But they haven't quite removed the very faint traces of the old livery on certain panels, although some of the detail has unfortunately lost some of its sharpness under the coats.
     
    At the time of writing I'm still painting in red.....
  25. Ravenser

    A Decent 31 - Finishing Off

    By Ravenser,


    Constructional
    31 415 is now finished - I've done rather more modelling than blog-posting in recent months.
     
     
    Much of the finishing seemed to be a question of paint
     
    I made a serious mistake with the noses and used Railmatch pre1984 yellow acrylic for the first coats. Nothing wrong with the shade , but I got a dreadful tar-brush result. Much careful/desperate rubbing down resulted , with fine emery boards and a little nail block someone directed me to , that has 4 different surfaces on a block and retails for about a pound in Superdrug. The file , ridge-remover, and buff surfaces were all used , and a vast improvement has been made . It's still not as good as if I'd used enamels from the start.
     
    After multiple coats of Railmatch yellow enamel well rubbed down between coats, I got a decent result.
     
    There is a very noticeable notch or recess under the nose door area which Airfix did not model - this was carefully chopped out using a narrow chisel blade in the X-Acto between two cut lines. As mentioned in my original posting on the 31 , the locos have a little wing plate on either side of the shoulder of the cab door. They are noticeable but I couldn't think how to represent them neatly and robustly so they've not been added
     
    The Airfix buffer beam is very bare indeed: there isn't even a moulded coupling hook. I use Kadees, and the loco is required to couple at both ends on a terminus to fiddle yard layout, so the scope for buffer beam detailing is limited. But after looking at various photos of 31s in Diesel Retrospective - Class 31, I felt something needed to be done to give the cluttered coloured lumps and pipes effect of the real thing. I made use of some spare whitemetal castings from an old detailing pack for a class 20 , which were not used on that model because they fouled the couplings... The effect is frankly representational but a good deal better than nothing. To avoid them fouling the Kadees, the pipe below buffer beam level was cut off with my Xurons
     
    One detail improvement that has a big effect is to paint the raised rim of the cab front windows black , to represent the rubber seal - this instantly enlarges the window and improves the proportions substantially, though it needs a very careful hand and a 00 or 000 brush (and quite possibly a little "wipe away and try again" in the odd place when you attempt it)
     
    Flush glaze is SE Finecast - Shawplan don't , so far as I'm aware, do Lazerglaze for such an old model
     
    Transfers are a mix of HMRS and Fox (flashes, blue stars etc) . The ETH box came out of the Howes buffer detail pack. Roof weathering is Revell anthracite, because that was a suitable shade I had to hand. Cleaning away any black paint that got where it shouldn't have sufficed as weathering on the nose, main radiator grills got a wash of anthracite, and other grills a mid grey wash. Beyond that I chickened out on bodyside weathering , other than a sealing coat of matt varnish - the reference photo of 31 415 at Skegness shows her quite clean
     
    The whitemetal castings representing internal pipework were fitted with Superglue on one side and UHU on the other (to prevent differential expansion cracking the Superglue) . The bottom parts of several of the castings had to be cut away to avoid fouling the chassis - needless to say I found this on a trial fitting after initially fixing them in place , so off they came. I also found that pure white made the pipe runs all too visible through the side windows, so a weathering wash (Humbrol blue/grey) was applied to those castings not irretrevably fixed . The others got a very dilute weathering wash over the windows themselves
     
    As an interesting contrast , here is the finished body shell next to the unmodified body I removed from the model:
     

     
    And as a final "as released to traffic" view here are some shots on the layout during a trial running session:
     

    and

     
    show 31415 side by side with my Hornby 31 174 (thankfully showing no signs of any mazak problems) - an interesting comparision between two models 20 years apart.
     
    And as I now have 2 x 31, an attempt was made for the first time to operate LHS1 (the loco hauled substituted set) in place of one DMU
     

     
    31 415 ran well and I'm pleased with the results
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