chaz

Just found this snap of the two brake vans that were both built from Connoisseur brass kits.... The van on the right was built as per the instructions - the one on the left was modified to portray the earlier LNER van. Both of the prototype vans would have been built at Faverdale (Darlington) so the progression would have been easy. The LNER van may well hold the record for the number of handrails - any advance on 30? Since I built it I have been made aware that I made a couple of errors with the LNER van (some people just have to spoil things!) but you will have to be a real LNER wagon buff to spot 'em. Me, I'm happy with the van as it is - I really don't want to spoil the paint correcting it. Chaz

Yes, but the Furness Valley Railroad is on hold until the new year, when I hope the bulk of the work on Dock Green will be done. WTS Chaz

Difficult to say this without sounding like a teacher (Cos' I am a retired teacher) but the important word in the above is "enthusiastic" - that will carry you a long way. If I am a skilled modeller I have to say that what skills I have are largely self-taught. I started out not being able to do much - I used to invent what I thought of as work-arounds, to make up for my lack of skill. After a while it dawned on me that what I had done was acquire the necessary skills, or at least my version of them. So get soldering, make your mistakes. Read the mags, talk to demonstrators at shows. Find ways to make your soldered joints without singeing too many fingers. Go on, have a go! Chaz

why do you not have a go at building your own (points)? Time, Martyn. And also I don't want to. I am building all the track on my ON30 American NG layout, using timber ties and spikes for the plain track and jig-building turnouts with code 83 soldered to PCB ties. But Dock Green has taken about two years to build - I think building the points as well would have added considerably to that. There are other modelling jobs I would rather do. Chaz

Thought you might like this picture, David.... It's a Connoisseur kit for a BR standard brake van - but modified to make an ex-LNER Green Arrow van. You might be able to spot some of the differences. Most of this was assembled with a 25 watt iron, Carr's green label flux and 145 degree solder. The white metal duckets were soldered with a temperature controlled iron set to 165 degrees and some 70 degree solder. I did straighten that wonky lamp iron before I painted the van! For me there's no contest - a good etched brass kit is much nicer to work with than a plastic one.... Chaz

I'm thinking on similar lines Martyn, except that I would hope to leave the tie-bar intact and just infill plastic to repair whatever is left of the sleepers. I'm tempted to have a go - one of the points on Dock Green is a bit "iffy" - if I attack that one first then if I wreck it I will be replacing a dodgy one anyway. Chaz

Thanks for the comments David. I have built the Slater's plastic kit for the BR standard brake van as well as Jim McGowan's etched brass one. If I needed another van there would be no contest - the brass kit wins hands down - much easier to assemble and more robust when finished. Soldering is easy once you have "the knack" and I would certainly advise anyone who thinks they can't to have a go. Probably the best way to start is to sit down with someone who has the skills and build something like a simple wagon kit with their help. Etched brass is much more forgiving than plastic - If you go wrong you just unsolder, clean up and try again. Everytime I see the Peco points in a photograph I wince (looking at the actual layout I find the boxes less obvious). I wonder if anything can be done with them in situ. With the points glued down and ballasted it might be possible to cut the box away and make good the remains of the sleepers. Anyone tried this?

Well, the setts are not finished yet but I thought I would post some more technique pics. When adding DAS in thumb-friendly dollops you may see this effect.... A stubborn gap shows between two adjacent dollops. It doesn't seem to matter how much you smooth the top surface the gap may well keep showing as a thin line. If you leave it untreated when the DAS dries you are likely to see a crack develop. The clay contains fibres which do stop cracks forming but they don't cross this gap. So to lock the two sides together take your wooden modelling tool and criss-cross the line. Now when you smooth the top surface the line will have gone and when the DAS dries it will not crack. Last photo of my DAS application techniques shows how I get the top surface reasonably level. A steel rule is pressed into the DAS until it rests on the top of the rails on either side. High points will be obvious as grooves in the surface. Low points can be seen by sliding the rule sideways and watching for gaps. If I were not working between two lines of metals I would pin down two lengths of wood battens to get the same facility. You are probably not that excited by snaps of DAS (unless you are in the throes of a DAS job yourself!) so here's a more exciting picture.... The BR standard brake van was built from the excellent Connoisseur etched brass kit. It includes a fair amount of white-metal (the duckets, "concrete" platform weights, axleguards etc) so doesn't need any additional weighting. I soldered the kit together, the only glue being used to attach the glazing for the windows. The only deviation from the kit I made was to discard the white-metal label clips (which I thought oversize) and cut some little brass rectangles. This picture shows how discrete the Dingham auto-couplers are. What a pity Peco redesigned their 7mm points with that huge plastic box over the tie-bar! I wish I had cut this away before the the track was laid. And the red-brick section of the retaining wall? It's waiting for the last bridge which one of the Dock Green team is making (he has already made a similar bridge in 4mm). Now I really must get back to scribing up setts (yawn).... Chaz

No amazing progress this week I'm afraid. Nothing new either. Just acres and acres of stone setts (a load of old cobbles!). Wish I could say that the work was inspiring, but it's turned into one of those long, plod through it, jobs. Next post will probably be when the setts are finished and painted. I just hope it looks good enough to justify the time I'm spending on it....

No might be about it SS! And yes I am drinking a lot of tea whilst doing this work. I also have music playing more or less constantly - yesterday it was Mahler's symphonies. #3, #4, & #5 were a welcome distraction - today I have enjoyed the last six Mozart symphonies - magic stuff. I did find a better and faster method of cutting the sett pattern - I still mark out with a scriber but then switch to a needle file to make the cuts. I use the type of needle file that has a curved face on both sides, making sure that the one chosen still has a pointed end. Because this has cutting teeth right down the taper, unlike the scriber (which is smooth sided and only cuts at the point) it makes the work go much faster. It also seems less likely to cause a sett to break out, as less pressure is needed. This second photo shows progress made today. Sorry that it's quite hard to see what I've done, it's tricky to photograph the white DAS surface. The paint will reveal the pattern nicely. One of tomorrow's tasks must be to add the next few areas of DAS, including the the one between the rails (in the four-foot!). Chaz

Thought I would just post a few photos showing my method of scratching in the setts.... (sorry about the strange variations in colour balance - my camera doesn't cope very well with the energy-saving bulb in the spotlight I've been using) First picture shows the repair over that brass screw.... I found that you can add more DAS directly to some that has already dried completely and it sticks very well with no tendency to come away. This patch is quite thin in places but I was able to cut the setts into it without any problems. The next picture shows an area marked out with a scriber. I am finding it best to tackle smallish areas at a time (how would you eat an elephant?). The last picture of this posting shows the same area worked on and largely finished and the next small area partly marked out. I found that if I wanted to avoid it looking like I had scratched a grid into the surface (which, of course, I have) I had to "draw" around each individual sett a couple of times with the scriber. This knocks off some of the corners making the effect look more convincing. Occasionally (especially if I press too hard with the scriber) the sett will come away, snapping off and leaving a gap. This has happened in the row next to the rail. I will pop a little extra DAS into the hole and scribe it up again. Tedious doesn't begin to describe this job...... Chaz

Ballasting, pah! Just doesn't compare. But thanks for the appreciative comment Pete.

Thanks to you both, Tim and John. I will try to finish the setts this coming week. This is certainly possible - if only I can keep at it. WTS. Chaz PS I have discovered that DAS has a tendency to crack upon drying - BUT only if it is not sufficiently compressed when applied. My usual technique of thumbing it down firmly on top of a patch of wet PVA seems to prevent any cracking but cracks have appeared at the edge of an applied section where I have stopped for the day. Presumably this is because I have not compressed the very edge sufficiently. Not a big problem - I remove any loose bits and fill the remaining cracks with the next lot to be applied.

A whole day's work and I have ended up with quite a few setts scribed up and a numb thumb..... ....although the area pictured is less than a tenth of the area to be dealt with. I could cut down the amount to be done by putting in another building....tempting. The brass screw is pulling down a warped corner where the underlying foam board has pulled away from the baseboard. It will be covered with a little more DAS. Chaz

Thanks Peter, I need all the encouragement I can get for this most tedious of jobs....

This job is going to take a while... I have started scribing up the DAS to produce the stone setts around the inset siding. I found a photo in an album of a goods yard with setts which showed shallow drain gutters set into the surface. Casting around for a tool that would allow me to scrape the gulleys I eventually opted to use a scalpel blade. Snapping off the end of an old blade with a pair of pliers produced a square ended scraper, with the taper of the blade allowing the width to be set. I chose not to try and form the gutter in one, it seems more controllable to opt for a narrower blade to work from both sides. In this picture you can see from the right... an area of setts scribed up with a drain gutter crossing it an area scribed up ready for the next batch of setts a gutter being finished off by scraping the bottom with the snapped-off scalpel blade the next section marked up with a pair of dividers, ready to have the courses scribed in I should say that I use a straight edge, sliding the back of the blade along it, when starting the cuts, otherwise fibres in the DAS can cause the blade to deviate from the line. If you decide to try this, snapping off a scalpel blade - DO PROTECT YOUR EYES. I found the very end of the blade snapped easily and cleanly BUT the steel is very hard and if the blade breaks up at the handle end bits could fly off in any direction. Doing the large area of setts I want is definitely one of those "do a bit now and then" jobs. Chaz

Steady on, Pete! Thanks for the comment, but I think I have a lot to do and much to improve to get it to the standard I hope for. Christmas is my self imposed deadline to finish Dock Green and I think it's possible (just). It would seem quite appropriate for me to take the layout to North London, after all that's where I set it. But it depends on us getting an invite.......Ally Pally would be nice. Chaz

Thanks for the comments Don. "just look at the quality of Norris's layout." or Martin Welch's Hursley! I am sure you are right about the focus on locomotives. Nothing wrong with that approach at all - whatever floats your boat - but the standard of my locos don't compare with the ones that Norris ran on his layout. I'm very much in tune with Jim McGowan's approach - good, basic layout locos. In my view it's more important to make steam locos look like what they were - dirty, than to worry too much about every last minute detail. Some of the locos I have seen in magazines and at shows just look too good. I know that cleaning standards used to be very high, with crews taking much time and trouble to keep their loco spotless, but even those machines would accumulate the effects of hard-work and weather. As for publishing pictures of Dock Green - I would not be averse to putting some in the Gazette in due course but... not yet - I would want to finish more of the layout before that happens... And I would prefer to use my own photographs. No disrespect to Stephen (Warspite), who took some fine photographs at the Wimborne show. I readily agreed to him posting them on this forum, indeed I encouraged him to post more. However I would hope that anybody who photographs (or videos) a layout at a show would seek the owner's consent before submitting them for publication (as he did). Chaz

Thank you David. I really enjoyed Wimborne - the first time that I had been able to see Dock Green fully assembled (albeit unfinished) - as I have said before it's just too big to assemble in the house. I am allowing myself a week off to do other stuff, but next week I will be getting on. I think the setts will be next - I want to deal with that big white blank in front of the goods canopy. I hope to quash the belief that you can't do as convincing layouts in 7mm as you can in 4mm... Chaz

I can take a hint Stephen! More good photographs of my models, so here are some notes to go with them.... photo 1 - 68824 (nice B & W, but too sharp for a train-spotter's box brownie!) - that ballast edge is much too neat! The brass chimney in this Walsworth Models kit was really obese! Everything about it looked oversize except, fortunately, the curve in the base that sits on the smokebox. Checking it against an accurate drawing of the prototype showed that an accurate GNR chimney was possible from what was there. Fortunately it had been drilled right through so I could solder it to a brass pin to chuck it up in a lathe. I then turned it down until it matched, as closely as I could judge, the prototype. I waved a gas torch over it to unsolder the pin (soldering irons are just not man enough for that job). photo 2 - the trio of wagons The ex-GWR 3 plank on the left was made from a Coopercraft kit. I can't remember whose wheels it runs on but I do remember using Peco buffers, with turned brass housings and steel rams, to replace the poor plastic ones provided in the kit. I put the axles in WEP compensators. The pig-iron wagon in the middle (what was that doing in this yard?) is from a Peco kit so naturally has their wheels and buffers. The kit uses nylon to get the axlebox springs to work as the real things do. The right hand wagon is a Parkside LMS 5 plank open. This has Parkside's floating axleboxes - a method that seems a bit crude but no matter, it works well. photo 3 - the wagons with timber load The centre wagon is a GWR 4 plank, from another Coopercraft kit. It also has Peco buffers. The LNER 6 planker on the right is from a Parkside kit. it was against the rules to rope up a load around the wagon buffers or to parts of the underframe and wagons were provided rope hooks to make this unnecessary - but it was done, and I have seen photos that prove it (lucky that, because my wagons don't have rope hooks) . When I prepared the wood for this load I used a red felt-tip to stain the ends. The wagon glimpsed on the left is a Coopercraft GWR match truck. These wagons had no means of securing a load and were intended for this type of role, protecting an overhanging load. photo 4 The white Insul-Meat van is one of Jim McGowan's Connoisseur range. It is an ex-NER vehicle and has a 9 foot wheelbase - so is not XP rated. It shouldn't really have the ladder and ice hatches as these would have been removed before the war but I liked these details - so Rule One again! The centre wagon is a Coopercraft 5 planker with a paper tarpaulin. I turned up a steel punch to make those rope grommets on the tarpaulin, although they were a real pain to glue in place! The other wagon is that GCR van again. I am pleased at how well the planking on the platform looks. photo 5 That crimson van (yes - it is BR crimson under the filth) is a WEP etched brass model, with door frames in white metal. It's one of my favourites as it has lots of nice, fine detail, although I'm not sure how late these Fruit C's lasted. The open wagon next to it has been fitted with Peco GWR self-contained buffers. photo 6 "Susan" is, as you say, a Peckett which I built it from an Agenoria brass kit. This went together very well. I compensated it by making one axle rock against a fixed rod and gave it an ABC gear-box and a small Mashima motor in it's firebox. That front coupling has a wire lifter raised by a memory wire mechanism. This lifts the loop on the wagon to uncouple when function button #7 on the DCC handset is pressed. The action is synchronised with a coupling-chain sound effect. photo 7 68891 - Ah, yes, I must have another go at fixing in the crew. More than a little tricky getting them in through the opening in the Doncaster cab - even worse trying to get the 10BA bolt sticking out of one of their feet through the hole in the floor so that the nut can be added! You can just about see the two vacuum brake cylinders behind the rear buffer beam which I turned up from aluminium rod - there being nothing provided in the kit. A real nightmare to build this loco but consequently one I am really proud of.

Stephen, Thanks for posting your excellent close up photographs, I love the loco portraits. If you have any more close ups like these please post them. Just in case anyone is interested here are some details of the models you captured... 68824 - as you rightly state was a J52. The prototype was not built at Doncaster but by Robert Stephenson, in 1899. It was shedded at Hornsey from autumn 1953 until spring 1959 so I'm stretching a point to run it with some of my diesels - but I invoke rule 1! The model was built from a Walsworth Models etched brass kit - the less said about the accuracy or ease of build of this the better. It has a compensated chassis, with axles 1 and 2 supported in rocking beams, an ABC gearbox with a Canon motor, and an ESU Loksound chip, with a sound project from South West Digital. When I compensated the chassis (it was originally built rigid, before I knew better) I bought a set of very nice machined, jointed coupling rods from Keykits. They look really nice, don't they? 68891 was a J50/1 - one of the original GNR engines with the small coal bunker and a coal cage. Like the saddle tank this loco' had vacuum brakes. The J50s replaced the J52s in the London area and were, in their turn, replaced by the standard BR 350HP 0-6-0 diesel shunters that later became class 08. These weren't replaced, their jobs just disappeared! This model was built from some (!) of an ACE kit. I certainly would not recommend this to someone who had never built an etched brass loco', suffice it to say I replaced a substantial part of the kit with parts cut from sheet brass - this being easier than trying to use the supplied bits. It also has a compensated chassis, with axles 1 and 2 supported in hornblocks controlled by a single, central rocking beam. It too has an ESU Loksound chip, but with a sound project downloaded from the ESU website to make it sound different to the saddle tank. The van you photographed is a model of a GCR 10 tonner. It is from Jim McGowan's excellent Connoisseur range. I have built several of his kits, locos and wagons, and have found them to be well thought-out and accurate. I must say your photograph has really shown off the grimy finish on this wagon. Chaz

Sue, my wife took a number of pictures at the Wimborne show. I rather liked this one, very atmospheric. The sun had come out and was streaming in through the windows behind the layout giving rise to this dramatic effect. You can almost smell the soot and hot oil drifting from that tired old J50/1. Of course that platform needs some sack trucks, barrows or trolleys, and piles of crates etc, not to mention a recumbent porter grabbing a quick gasper.....and whoever cleaned the windows of the foreman's office last did a really good job! Chaz

Three photos, taken at Wimborne yesterday, by my wife. In the picture above the operator in the middle distance is Peter. He has spent a lot of time on various bits of the layout and is also my logistics coordinator (Oh alright - van driver!). Dock Green was the only layout at the show with sound, and this proved to be a very effective magnet. Somebody, who looked like they might walk passed, suddenly gave his full attention when my Sulzer type 2 caught his ear. "Ah, that's my kind of loco" I heard him say. It was nice to see the younger generation taking such an interest. Staring at the camera is my other "team member" Dave. He also models in 7mm (pre-group SDJR). That's me further back. At this point direct sunlight was making a bit of a nonsense of the layout lighting.

Thank you Stephen. "even better 'in the flesh' than in the photos" - Maybe that's because you can take in the whole thing whereas the photos are always selective - "if I crop it there you won't see the baseboard edge/unfinished bit". "everything run so smoothly" - I am pleased that that is how it looked. From behind the scenes I was conscious of a few stalls and derailments. Also the couplings on some of the stock were misbehaving. But I am a perfectionist - I'm not happy with any glitches - still, I did think that it performed well enough for a first outing. I have a list for attention...

Thank you Simon. I look forward to that day myself!