Corbs

More on the Castle, after the improvement to the front end that the lamp irons gave on the County, I've fitted some here. After a couple of experiments, the firebox was repainted using a brush in Railmatch 601 GWR green, which is a close enough match for me and obscures the lining on the firebox (GWR had lining, BR did not). After a coat of matt lacquer it's blended a lot better - in this case I think the fact that the boiler, cab, firebox and tender are all slightly different shades actually helps. In the background of the previous pics is a ringfield drive (and a very dark BR green) 'Cadbury Castle' which a previous owner had dropped and smashed the running board and steps on. It is becoming a handy parts donor for a few projects, including the reach rod and nameplate backing (hopefully my etched plates will just glue over the top of this). I've also used the Railmatch paint and a small brush to paint the running board valance green.

Excellent! I would love to see more pics, especially the little colliery loco.

A few pics from the Hornby Website

Had an absolutely gorgeous day yesterday thanks to a birthday treat from my sister, off to the WSR for the fish and chip (veggie burger in my case) special with cream tea on the return journey. Hymek power on the way to Minehead, but the fantastic Foxcote Manor back to Bishops Lydeard! Got some reference pics when I was allowed up on the footplate, I did ask about painted vs. polished regulator handles which was met with an indrawing of breath and a 'don't go there' from the crew 😄 Back on the bench, the County is near completion after the addition of Fox lining transfers and etched name/numberplates, becoming 1005 'County of Devon'. The lamp irons are from Wizard Models, they aren't the exact type but close enough. The replacement tender body has a mounting screw so now it should just be: DCC chip and stay-alive Crew Tender coupling and then it's ready for a new lease of life on the layout! I am very pleased with the Castle cab conversion in getting a better roof profile. The firebox is still a bit weedy but maybe if I end up redoing this or doing another one, I'll do the 8F firebox conversion, just felt like too much work at this point in time.

Whilst on a zoom call today I added some bits of styrene strip and clear plastic cut from a food container to the roof of the Castle cab to create the roof hatches. The County also had far more rivets so some Archers Waterslide Rivets were used. Meanwhile the loco gained a coat of satin black. Note also I cut off the moulded smokebox door dart and replaced with a whitemetal one from the drawer. This dried quickly and I was able to raid the decal drawer to find a set of Fox Transfers for GW mixed traffic locos - a couple of mishaps with the decals sticking to themselves but managed to recover. Once it was dry, I misted over a bit of Tamiya Matt Lacquer (on the tender too). The brass safety valve cover was done with a small brush (as well as some of the backhead detail). 0.45mm handrail wire was bent to have a 90 degree turn at the base and then glued to the cab, using a pin to add a tiny bit of superglue at a time. The wire needs blackening still. The bufferbeam was brush painted with enamel. Adding the handrails, pipes etc back on makes a heck of a difference. Just a few things remaining like the whistles, glazing etc. but I am going to let the lacquer harden a bit more first. Think it needs some lamp irons too. Name and number plates from Fox are currently in the post.

On my paint instructions it is grey so that's good!

Hornby COUNTY Whilst looking through boxes for a 'King' I knew I had, I came across a 'County' I had forgotten I had 😬 Looking back through the purchase history told me it had been bought as spares/repair. It would run but the wheels would stop momentarily once a revolution with a 'thunk'. Dismantling it I was surprised to find a ringfield but turns out these were used in the original County and Castle models. The culprit was a split gear on the rear axle, I could not find a single gear to this spec. for sale anywhere. Gary had a spares/repair County in the shop which also turned out to have the same issue, so that might explain where they all went. The only options were to buy a new wheelset (all 3 axles). The one I got was from the Castle so the wheels were slightly bigger. I ended up pressing the oversize wheels off and swapping the County ones onto the axle. It runs! (apart from a mistake when dismantling where I had to buy new springs for the motor, but we won't talk about that). This one is going into BR black, I already had a tender body from a bargain bucket purchase some time ago. It will require some modification to fit this tender chassis, I assume it's from a different model. A common criticism of these models is the shape of the cab, but it occurred to me I had the cab which came off the 'bitsa' Castle above. This has the more defined 3 faces to the cab roof and may work better (with a little adaptation). The body has been sprayed with primer.

HORGMANN CASTLE Thanks to John A I picked up this Hornby Castle for 10 of the finest. It was sans tender and in GWR livery, I wanted to do it as a fictitious Castle, the next highest numbered one, so that would put it as 1950-built. Thus a Bachmann Hawksworth tender was acquired. The double chimney (to imitate Drysllwyn Castle from the Railway Roundabout 'Bristolian' film) is a cast one, the original single chimney was sawn and filed off. It needed a small amount of filler to bridge the gap. The cab is from the GBL 'Earl Bathurst' static model, which handily had BR lining already. The plan with the firebox is to attempt to touch in the bands with brush painting. Here's how the Bachmann tender is adapted to fit into the plug on the Hornby loco. A piece of brass rod bent 90 degrees, then epoxied to the tender. At the other end, a printed 2A-rail NEM adaptor is used to allow for Kadees etc. I think the loco may acquire some all-over lacquer and weathering to help blend the tones. I have been experimenting with T-cut on the boiler to create a polished but worn look. It runs rather nicely, this is the newer type chassis with the can motor so no complaints from me. Not yet DCC fitted.

Hornby CATHEDRAL The construction of this loco (from a Hornby Princess, King and a Hawksworth Tender) was described in the cobblin' thread many many years ago. It's long been converted to BPRC but was deleted from the Sudrian Histories 'lore' when I had a change of heart. I didn't want to get rid of the actual loco, though. The NWR lettering was gently scraped and rubbed off and some early BR crests put on instead. Handily for me, 24/7 had a set of Bristol Cathedral plates in stock! It's had a trial on the megalayout but the front bogie's single pivot did not allow enough movement for the curves, so it was quite limited. Very useful for testing height clearances with, though. It did clout the chimney on the first go.... I bit the bullet and got a new-new King bogie from Peter's Spares, along with the mounting bracket. So far it looks like it bolts in the same way as the Princess one, but the bracket allows much more side-to-side movement, so awaits further testing.

I believe this is correct. I have only (so far) seen photos of duck-egg blue bogies with the original wrap-around windows (which this tooling does not have). The photos of Class 28s with the modified windows I have seen only have black bogies.

It'll only get made if people who want to buy it put their name down on the expressions of interest form at the bottom of this page: https://rapidotrains.co.uk/highland-railway-jones-goods-4-6-0/

Absolutely superb Jim, fantastic. Very clever use of driveshaft + tender motor too.

I really think we need a model of L&M 0-4-2 'Lion'

From: https://www.brc-stockbook.co.uk/d2298.htm

On the other hand I am sure there will be people who want the loco without the carriages so I reckon it would be easy to flog the loco second hand if you bought the train pack.

The model of coach 7 as preserved will be in crimson and will be very similar to the GER-spec ones. Different bodyshell (later one with bar fitted), black solebars and different roof but same body colour and lettering. Just thinking if you wanted one coach to go with 126 it could be a close match?

The first ones had no external exhaust pipe at all, the simple straight pipe was added, presumably the exhaust had issues with smoke that needed to be lifted.

How have you found the UV printer to be? A mate of mine bought an all-singing all-dancing one and it was a bit of a nightmare to get to grips with. Total loss ink system that bled itself to prevent it jamming, and a lot of sensitivity to temperature. It also had to be dead-level.

Later news was that the factory figured out how to make the roof removable 😎

AFAIK the handbrake wheels were gone by LNER days, the two GER tram packs have handbrake wheels fitted, https://rapidotrains.co.uk/wisbech--upwell-bogie-tramcars/ The circles in the windows of E60461 are 'No Smoking' roundels. E60462 did not appear to have them in any photos I have seen. The roof has been confirmed that it will be removable.

If only someone made waterslide decals to easily rebrand a skirted version....

Excellent, thanks both. Similar white to the coach roofs sounds a good bet. Is the landlord trying to tart it up for new tenants?!

Lovely stuff Simon, it's so great to see one of my favourite layouts continuing to improve.

Ok well it seems the only safe bet so far then is choc/cream/off-white (in ascending order)? Will see if we can swap the pure white for an off/warm white on the roof interior.