Corbs

Well….

Was so lovely to talk to so many fellow rmwebbers and see great models, plus no public, what a luxury! 😄 Thanks so much to @NHY 581 and the team. Here are some choice pics.

That's the same system as on my OKI laser by the sounds of it. The main problems are: -Laser printers use dot dithering to print colour (so no colour is truly solid). -The white toner is last in the printer whereas for decals you actually want it to be first so that it can be the base colour. As it stands, you have to print colour decals upside-down and flip them over, using a ton of setting solution.

Adam and I are planning to come to this :) I seem to remember something about name badges, I was wondering about doing it anyway as sadly I no longer have the cat-eating-pizza-in-space hoodie from my avatar.

Yeah I removed the cab and then cut the back of the footplate off with the razor saw, then glued the Stanier cab and running plate on. I don't remember exactly how I did the previous tender coupling but it involved styrene and I imagine this one will too.

These are left over from a Frankenstein Class 31 conversion, they worked when they were removed from the loco, a bit filthy though. Surplus to requirements so am selling in case they are useful for anyone else. £5 posted in UK.

Sooo Wilbert and his brother George wrote up a big history of the island, notable people, and the railways, as well as drawing up the map. He used to give a lecture on it, the notes for which are held at the NGRM in Tywyn as part of the Awdry study. I've taken the background of the stories and most of the book, then mixed it up with some of my own ideas, changing dates, numbers etc. to suit what I want to model. I think he was partially constrained by framing the stories as if they were happening contemporaneously, so I've just rearranged things to how I want them to be. I enjoy the world-building aspect of it. Any accusations that I do this in order to justify building more locos are well-founded.

New crankpins arrived so No.300 has been wired up today and tested. Shown here with No.300 to show the relative speeds. 301 has slightly more top speed it seems, but a badly quartered wheelset means it's jerking a little. Much happier with the speed and controllability. It's a strange thing that such a cheap and readily available chassis is so well suited to RC. What you see here is top speed! It was about time I used the other two custom nameplates for Nos. 704 and 503. Colonel Henry Regaby features the crossed gauntlets and rose insignia of the Sodor Regiment (hence the commemorative green livery) while Duke of Gordon bears the crest of Clan Gordon (stag over a crown). The metal I've had them etched in is quite thin so I stuck them to styrene to stiffen them. Also, I got bored of looking at the plain white NW on one side of the tender, so I peeled them off with a fingernail, gave it a bit of wet sanding, and then applied some NORTH WESTERN lettering with one of the NWR crests designed by Luke Ryan. Much posher now....

A burst of modelling recently due to the Nailsea Show (weekend just gone). I was helping out with Adam's layout 'Erebus Pit' and got to bring along a few of my RC and DCC locos to include in the mix. It was a lot of fun to operate between 2-3 people at a time. The DCC could be controlled from a Roco handset or from our phones so with someone operating the points, we could keep at least two locos moving most of the time. A few Sudrian interlopers were on the layout and took over duties on Sunday morning. NWR 301 and BHS Co. 16 are seen here. NWR No.106 'Perseus' is pictured alongside Adam's SCOW Bagnall. One loco that didn't make the show was No.300, the E2 with enlarged hopper bunker. I could not get it to run well, it was still much too fast on RC even with diodes to drop the voltage. Low speed operation was impossible. On Saturday evening I tore into it to see what could be done. Originally I thought that it was down to emulsified grease in the drivetrain, but now it seems to be the Bachmann 3F motor. When I try to rotate it by hand, it feels like a cement mixer. Given that the Hornby motor and chassis on No.301 performs excellently on RC, producing a lovely crawl, the obvious solution is to replace the chassis on 300 with a Hornby one. I had this old thing in my stash. Comparing this photo to the one above shows where I have razor sawn out chunks of the chassis block to fit around the body. A nice fluke was that the fore and aft screw holes actually line up with the styrene mounts I had already fitted to the body, so it easily screws in. I managed to find a matching set of wheels in various boxes, the Margate-era ones are far too chunky. Unfortunately I am missing one valve gear screw so am waiting on a new set to arrive - incidentally these things seem to be quite rare as I could only find one person selling them. Posed on the new chassis alongside its classmate. Note that 300 (photon-printed) is bent along its length compared to 301 (shapeways-printed and much older). Might need to try the hot water trick to reduce the warp.

Adam and I will be at the Nailsea MRC exhibition this weekend with his layout 'Erebus Pit', featuring plenty of Railway Mania kits including the two new Avonsides. If you are coming to the show it would be great to see you!

Awesome work on that 13-tonner and fixing up those vans, I need to do something similar to the old junk I have lying around.

Starting to doubt myself now but I think I removed it by putting a screwdriver in the boiler and ramming it on to the desk to pop it off, but the body isn't hard to take off the chassis, just a few screws.

The smokebox door is separate :) one of the things I considered was cutting off the 'dogs' around the door and replacing with a conventional smokebox door dart to change the look of the front end. Hope it goes well!

It’s bending history a bit but I like to think that the LMS standard cab design was adapted from the NWR house style, a nice big cab with double side windows is surely nicer when most of the line is exposed to the Irish Sea…. So this is the same reason that the ex-ROD 2-8-0s are initially rebuilt with NWR cabs years before they gain 3C boilers.

Maybe if you take all the letters in the spelling mistakes and put them together it spells out a secret message…..* *(it doesn’t)

Something fresh, a deal on a second hand Bachmann N Class. The cab was stubborn but eventually came off along with the deflectors. A little chop here… …. a little chop there (Margate-era 8F body from one of the drawers) Some choice cuts mean the cab fits to the N class running plate a lot better than the previous conversion which used the N backhead. It has a solid front unlike the other one. After some Araldite, it starts to take shape! Tender is from one of the ROD conversions, either the Garratt or the 2-8-4T. Need to make a hybrid coupling bar up between them. This one might become Edric, or possibly Sigurd. Maybe another altogether?

It's a snow day here in Bristol so have a retro pic of BHS Co. No.16 during a blizzard.

I actually went there looking to see if they had the ones that come on the Class 20s but alas I think those are moulded into the bodyshell, so hope the 7F one is of use!

Ahhh yes that must be it - the lining.

I could be wrong on this but I seem to remember reading that 1501 never got a crest and stayed in plain black during its entire working life with BR up to the point it was sold to the NCB, the lined black with crest it has now being a purely preservation-era livery.

I think Graeme King made some resin conversion bits for the A1/1, not sure if they are still available but might be worth asking?

Hi mate, would the 7F tablet catcher be able to be adapted? It's here for £1 https://Bachmann-spares.co.uk/product/7f-tender-tablet-catcher-31-010/e3101-mis-012

Hello Mark, I was wondering if you knew the name of the Citadel paint you used for the Crimson? I am looking at doing a Fruit D as well and the look/finish you have is great. Thanks Corbs

... Part 2 bringing us up to now. Me and my sister cabbing a certain blue tank engine at Exeter Rail Fair back in 1994. I think I was too excited to smile! and another pic from a magical Didcot trip back in the day. On the Sodor & Mainland 4-4-0, I couldn't put my finger on what didn't look right about it until someone pointed it out at last. The issue was the amount of footplate behind the cab side, making the loco-to-tender gap very large. It bothered me more and more until I decided to do something about it. Whoops.... SLICE So much better. Obviously there were quite a lot of gaps that opened up so some fillering was in order. One of the other issues with this Oxford Rail chassis was that the motor was absolutely pathetic and even using a 9v upconverter didn't really help. This is a little 3-6v (I think) coreless motor. This should enable me to use a 3.7v setup without an upconverter. The flywheel forms part of the transmission so I prised it off the original motor. The Nigel Lawton shaft adapter isn't quite the right size for the motor output shaft... ... So I hammered it in to the flywheel and secured with loc-tite, then drilled out the inside of the adapter with a pin vice, then loctite-d in the motor. I had recently seen Sam's Trains do a similar motor conversion on two Oxford Radial Tanks, where he just used hot glue to secure it in place. Simple, not pretty, but it works! This probably isn't advisable but I used the soldering iron to melt away excess bits of glue where it would have prevented the body going on. A new loco-to-tender coupling araldited onto the loco with the slow-setting stuff. I used a drop of superglue on one edge to hold it in place while the araldite set. Testing the flexibility on a 1st radius curve, which it just about managed. The white bits of filler were attended to by spraying the green paint into a pot until it pooled, then using a soft brush to apply it. It does dry very quickly so you need to be fast. Fall plate is just an angled piece of styrene cut to width. The crew are whitemetal to add a tiny bit of extra weight over the drivers. The cab steps are the previous ones but the either-side flare didn't really work, being more suited to tank locos. I cut away the lower part of the steps on one side to mimic other tender loco steps. The RC system is a simple installation, with the receiver tucked into the tender side. The battery sits under the removable coal load. Plug it in to turn it on, unplug to turn it off. Adding handrails back on (trimmed to length after this pic, natch) First test run! There is some vibration noise in reverse but having investigated it, there's nothing I can do about it. Note this is cranking the speed up to max with no inertia, the actual response is much better than previously. Battery life should also now be improved. Something else that's in dire need of finishing off is NWR No.102. This has been a long term on/off project. The chassis does technically work but it needs securing to the body, and the RC plumbing in. I've put a lot of weight in the nose and a strong spring on the front bogie, will also be packing the chassis with lead when I have worked out what wiring setup it needs. As a starter though, I have added some Mainly Trains lamp irons.

Goodness me, it's almost a year on since the last update! If I'm honest the almost-total wiping out of the photos on this thread must have demoralised me a little. I've resolved to try and restore as many as I can from my photo archives. Have started working from the beginning and the end to try to make it as unboring a task as possible. Modelling has been somewhat fitful as working 3 jobs wasn't condusive to having much in the way of hobby time, plus there is a broken car to work on, plus every other commitment one signs up to. Not long after my previous post, I had a bit of a crisis at my 'main' job after getting covid. Multiple projects running over time and over budget, remote working (even though I was mostly in an office, my colleagues were elsewhere) taking its toll, never having any spare time, carrying a lot of mental burden for these projects, and then when the deadlines came and went, it turned out they were arbitrary and all the fuss was for nothing. I think something clicked in my mind and I fell into a sadness I couldn't explain, not wanting to do anything. I did see a therapist for a few months but their brand of therapy didn't really work for me. Over a few weeks the gloom subsided and I felt 'normal' again but I had probably stopped caring and my heart wasn't in my job any more. So, some of you may have seen I have left my job of the last 12-14 years and am now working full time for Rapido which is like a dream come true. Leaving the self-employed life has been quite liberating mentally, too, and I really hope I can get my spare time (and maybe some peace of mind) back. Anyway, there have been a few ongoing projects, you may have seen some of the progress on the CLINIC and NORTHBRIDGE threads where I have been building more 'realistic' locos and stock for the big layout at my parents' house. As far as COBBLIN' goes, here are a few thingys. Painting the ironwork of some of these wagons is fiddly but really makes them pop. Hopefully this ^ might become this v Another example is this Harwick Colliery hopper. This Oxford Rail 'Toad' has also been sold into colliery service and is getting the same treatment as the hopper. Handily the ol' decal printer was on hand to make some custom graphics. Bit o'muck Adam brought his model 'Portbury' to meet the real one when I was a crew member back in April. Killian of Small Loco Works printed me some brilliant Padarn Railway transporter wagons. As these have no conventional buffers and drawgear, it made sense for me to modify TK&F No.5 with an extended bufferbeam as this would have operated with the transporter wagons back in S&MR days. The transporter wagons are for these 2ft 3in gauge tipper trucks, carrying copper ore down from the mines in the hills. These are RT models kits which I have glued in place on the wagons. I've got another 5 to build to fill out the rake some more! I've had my J70 in the cabinet for so long and not done anything with it, but I took the plunge and cut out one of the inspection hatches to show a peek of the slidebars, as if the crew had been oiling and not replaced the cover yet. Saw this little guy. I used my new-found love for doing etched bits to do some new, more elaborate name plates for the home fleet. The LRS plates are excellent but I wanted to include a little nod to the origins of some of the names. PPD in Lochgilphead have absolutely superb service. This material is actually a little too thin so when I do it next time I'll thicken them up a bit. No.705 'Westlin' has a Dalahäst for its icon, the fictitious reason for its name being that it was the name of a Sudrian racehorse. This is a Dalahäst, which is the icon of Dalarna which is where Sabina is from (that's me hugging the leg). I've removed the smoke deflectors to represent a different period in the loco's life (also none of the others have deflectors). This necessitated replacing the handrails, there is a bit of blending left to do on the smokebox too. The other thing it needs are some proper outside steam pipes, but I want some Chapelon-style ones and might end up 3D printing them. Proper lamp irons on the front end help, too. Part 2 to follow shortly....