londonbus

Good on Rails - they have now updated their Ebay listing and made it clear the loco may be suffering from corroded metal. As you’d expect from a quality retailer.

I have recently tried “Experts-Choice” A4 decal paper. Produced in both clear and white / inkjet and laser printers. They are available in single sheets, but i’ve also found them occasionally sold in packs of three sheets. This is my first experiment which highlights some of the limitations (of my modelling and the paper) - however I believe with the following improvements the results will be quite acceptable to the eye (but probably not a HD picture) 1) the white background is a separate decal and applied first, on the Esso logo I printed a very fine line as a guide where to cut it. 2) a clear decal is placed over the white decal with the Esso writing and the thick blue line (this hides the original thin guide line. 3) mistakes I made on this first example i) I should have trimmed the second clear decal more closely ii) I did not leave the decal in the softening solution (decalfix / Microsol) long enough / apply sufficient solution to the decal whilst applying so it didn’t get “sucked” into the rivets iii) I didn’t pre-gloss varnish the area where I intended to apply the decals iv) I printed the ESSO writing on both the white and the clear sheets so aligning them wasn’t perfect. Just printing once gave me the depth of colour so i’ll leave the white decal blank. Despite the above “human” errors, I am very satisfied. Although Satan’s Goldfish’s suggestion of applying a body coloured border to blend the decal to the background is certainly worth a try, there’s always something to learn here, and usually more than one way to get the result you’re after. Thanks for starting this thread.

Thanks for your comments. Restraint & observation keeps coming back as a theme and knowing when to stop is a very difficult lesson to learn! Mick, your Flickr feed is well worth a peruse.

What do you use to weather the front of steam locomotives underneath the firebox door where the ash accumulates? I remember reading somewhere of a MIG weathering powder (Ash) however now I can’t find the article. I also can only find MIG “pigments” - are these one of the same? I’ve also noticed PECO are now producing a range of weathering powders, one is ash. Has anybody used real ash? Finely crushed? I’m away from home for a few weeks, so before I start experimenting myself i’d be interested to know how other modellers create their preferred ash effects and any thoughts.

And Rails of Sheffield are still selling these on EBay without making it clear that it's a corroded chassis. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Hornby-039-OO-039-GAUGE-R2420-BR-GREEN-CLASS-31-039-D5512-039-DIESEL-LOCOMOTIVE-OS-/192430655829?

I haven't posted for most of 2017, not a great year and frequent unplanned trips back for parents, extensive work etc. Although not much more track went down I have made the following progress: Airbrush out and lots of experimenting with weathering. Lots of trial and error, lots of blocked nozzles, but now at least i've got the hang of the right consistencies, my preferred media depending on the job at hand (enamel / acrylic) and have settled on Vallejo & Tamiya (acrylic), Humbrol (enamel). I have had quite a bit of success with blending Tamiya acrylics together with various shades and thinners on my hoppers to create one way of adding rust and general traffic dirt without an airbrush, i'll most likely write an entry with pictures going through how I did this. Also hairspray and various chipping media for exposing the rust underneath. I have rather a lot of the old War Ministry oil tanks and want to rebrand them in Esso for the Abbey Lane sidings which are just to the North of Leicester Central. I had a number of the 3 pack silver "A" tanks but when I started working with them noticed that they are not painted but the plastic is pre-coloured and heavily tinted with blue. Although they were to be weathered anyway I was not happy that the blue came through so had an idea to strip them down, repaint them and then individualise them with home-made decals - results are shown below and I shall be detailing how I did this and what I learnt in a seperate blog entry. Below you can see the pre-coloured blue silver plastic (in front) compared to one which I consider to be the target colour (behind). Even more pronounced below. Original left with factory decals, repainted with home made decals right. This is the final result of with home-made decals - not enough decalfix on the left as the decals haven't moulded over the rivets well enough, however the right is better. To get the white background I have two seperate decals. The weathering was a run with thinned enamels with the airbrush (humbrol matt leather & matt black) with some almost dry-brush thinners manipulation. I learnt that even when enamels are touch dry this was possible for several hours after application (compared to acrylic which is dry very quickly if airbrushed). dribbles of oil care of AK interactives / Vallejo Fuel enamels and also some bright orange humbrol which was then manipulated with some thinners after a while. The orange really added a nice touch, but had to be very small amounts. Manufacturers are bringing out a lot of Private Owner Wagons and I have been looking through quite a few old books and sites for ideas to create a late 1950's train of mixed coal wagons with faded PO liveried wagons and some that are unpainted. I got out the Vallejo paints and doctored up this old Dapol wagon as my first experiment with dirty but not yet decrepit natural wood. It still needs some decals and some weathering, i've also notice a fingerprint on the door. Some of the individually painted plans come out a bit too prominently here but I do like the effect of the dark wash I put on. A bit more practice and i'll be quite pleased. I'm still experimenting with my techniques on the 21T hoppers, but they're getting much better. The hopper below would be virtually impossible to replicate as it was one of the orginal experimental batches that I have tried virtually every technique on. Probably 4-5 different layers just painted over the previous attempt. In the end it was such an awful mess I took some paint remover to the lot and scratched away with an ear bud until I realised the result was actually quite good leaving some elements of every single different technique and also going back to the original plastic in places. Never give up, even when it's a complete mess! Again the decals need to be applied and the hoppers properly attached to the chassis. On the rare occasions when I have the house to myself I can clear off my work and get down to experimenting. This is the setup and on the table are the pipe wagons, some MGRs, various planked wagons and some of the Esso wagons in various stages of chaos. Something else i've been meaning to get around to for several years is resin moulds. Finally I had a stab at replicating a peak nose. This Bachmann nose is quite rare so I thought it would be a good first attempt. firstly I did the mould the wrong way around so the air bubble rose to the top ( as you'd expect) but settled under the nose leaving a heavily pock marked final mould. Hardly noticeable on the silicone mould, but very prominent on the resin cast. The track plan hasn't changed significantly but the engineering sidings and loco facilities / turntable area have been tweaked a bit. The different colours are the BDL168 zones to enable quite acurate stopping at the stations. Train Controller will handle reasonably accurate stopping in the storage sidings. Experiments have trains, even ones that haven't been calibrated, to stop within 1-3 cm of where they are supposed to. I have also wired the detections zone where I don't really need them to run trains automatically with Train Controller (points etc) as I intend to have a reasonably realistic Mimic Board and also for safety should a wagon / coach come off over a set of points. So lots of small projects have been going on but not a great deal of actually building! 2018 now is looking far more predictable. So fingers crossed i'll get double line working and the station finished.

Try Roco 73382 and 73383 Elektrolok El.16 in EBay - just be careful about buying AC instead of DC. NMJ manufacture an El 14 - just noticed your picture is diesel. time for new glasses. Good luck anyway.

Thanks for the reply John, a test batch of the blue / green tint wagons now dismantled and i'll use them to try different approaches, but the easiest will probably be as you suggest, spraying liberal filth.

Another question for the group... I've collected a few Esso tanks over the years and have started to personalise and weather them. Most of the wagons have what I consider to be the correct base silver (left) based on the various online and book sources of colour photographs. The Bachmann triple pack 37-668 is not only very badly factory weathered but also the base silver appears to have a distinct blue / green hue. This can be seen in the photo below (although it doesn't appear quite as pronounced on the images). Is this a Bachmann paint mistake or is this based on a prototype? It's noticeable enough to be annoying (if it's not correct) but the prospect of repainting and replacing the decals is equally annoying! Opinions & Guidance welcome. Thanks.

Thanks... in the end I sprayed a light coating of bauxite (Railmatch acrylic) over the sparkling areas of the wooden sides, and a mixture of Tamiya flat black and a mid dark brown over the chassis. I lost some of the nice tones of the 3 layers of rust i'd built up. But at least it doesn't look as if Tinkerbell has been waving her magic wand any more. Plenty more experimenting , I've started to go through this part of the forum with great interest.

Hmmm... I've nicely weathered 6 wagons over the past few evenings... last fly past with the airbrush used a few spots of a darkish browny Vallejo rust into a mucky mix. After a few subtle layers and with the spotlights on, and having cleaned my glasses and realised it was all sparkling a bit. After some elimination work I noticed I'd accidentally used some Metallic Rust by mistake... I've tried some mattcote and it's a bit less sparkly, but any other tips to reduce the sparkle? apart from turning the lights off that is.

This has been a most useful read, and will require re-reading to fully absorb. I am looking at a way of adding some realism and interest to operations over and above just running a Working Timetable and the idea of cards is one i've seen on McRuss's layout. The laminator will be busy. Any helpful experience / Comments on making the pockets on the Car Cards for the Way Bills to fit in? Best of luck with the new layout. Look forward to seeing progress.

It's a public holiday in Germany today and the wife is away so this afforded me two rare luxuries i) cook bacon ii) spend almost the whole day pottering around with the soldering iron and drill. This electronics saga has been going on for quite a while (months) but apart from wiring up a few network cables (run out of RJ12 connectors) the job's finished and although not perfect by any means, it's a big improvement on the boards I had before. So here are all five of the BDL168 occupancy detectors, giving me 80 detection zones and also 6 of the 8 DAC20 point decoders. Although these have 24v going in, they only have 7v coming out, which as long as my old Cobalt stall point motors are recently regreased and newly oiled up (they are about 8 years old) work just about fine. Were I doing this again i'd use the new general of digital Cobalts which would save a lot of time. So now I just have to fix the boards underneath the layout, reattach the wires and power and it all should work. The difference being now that it will be so much quicker to complete track laying and get the points and occupancy detectors working, just plug (or solder) and play. The wall display cabinets are still up.

Hi Markus, seems far away from your Scottish layout! Nice pictures.

!!! No earthquakes yet, although 3 inch screws now secure everything well into the concrete, supported below as well. Could've been a really expensive and frustrating error. Markus, thanks for the comment, making some progress, APT-E is still boxed up though, work, family and usual stuff all still keeps getting in the way as ever. But once the electronics boards are up I hope to complete the track laying by the end of Summer. You must let me know if you're ever near Frankfurt.

Lots been happening here, but not a lot of visible progress. Nearly 200 locos have been "audited" and put into an excel inventory with information on which which DCC decoder socket, or decoder chip and all tested. A few issues after up to 12 years in boxes but mostly running smoothly after a little run round. I travel a fair bit and have built up quite a few ESU Loksound decoders which i've bought out and about. So i've been busy uploading Legomanbiffo sounds (diesels) and Howes (steam). Also have a weird and wonderful selection of 4 and 8 ohm speakers of different sizes and quality which i'm slowly fitting. It's a very slow job, particularly as i'm still trying to make progress on the layout itself. The small stickers on the cabinet doors have a significance, but I can no longer remember what each colour means. To be chipped, already chipped, Loksound 3.5 to be replaced, and sell. Something like that. Observant readers will notice that many of these locos will never have run on the Great Central. But many did. And in my world it never closed. Before new year I drove down to a small German joinery company that produces nice display cabinets for model railways which I varnished and put up. After one disaster when I hadn't drilled deep enough into the concrete wall and all my class 20's came tumbling down (few buffers broken, but easily mended). Now they're all soundly drilled in and I have again made peace with my neighbors. However when I get my two new EM2 "earthmover" speakers (£25 each - price hiked) then I fear I may need to bring more hobnobs over from the UK to keep the neighbors on side. I have also been spending some time sorting out my old wiring. It works but it doesn't look very nice. So after my first (second actually) attempt at wiring up the BDL168, PM42, PR3 and DAC20s I decided to redo them again now that I have a better understanding of what wire goes where. BEFORE AFTER - well it's not finished, but i've tidied up for the day as i'm off to the UK tomorrow to get ready for a trip over the Settle & Carlisle on Tornado. Hopefully more successful than the last two trips which were cancelled and then derailed (Andover Fist). Still looks much better, even the wife says so. Last thing i've done is finish planning the BDL168 sections and power zones (4). I thought I had 5 BDL168s but one turned out to be a second PM42 which I don't need (hence my excited note on the plan). So a quick call to Kevin at Coastal DCC and he's already put one in the post to my UK address (basically a store for stuff i've bought and never have space in carry on luggage to bring back). So all good so far. The plan has now basically been finalised. The sections are for two purposes, i) traincontroller ii) a mimic signal box display. I already know that for Train Controller doesn't need occupancy detectors on points, but I want the display to show the section occupied. I have no practical experience of all this, however it all seems to mirror the many signal box diagrams online. With the extra BDL168 I thought i'd found I added stop sections to the station area. I had previously planned to speed profile all locos and then get them to stop exactly where I wanted. This proved to be above my experience and pay grade right at the moment, so I decided that on the stops I want to be quite accurate I would have a final stop section (or indicator in Train Controller). Although I shall have to speed profile everything anyway. The stops in the storage yards will be based on measurement past the entry indicator (of the block in Train Controller). No more track has gone down since the past update, but it's getting wired up. Every time I had to wire up point decoders or occupancy detectors I lost my mojo to continue, so I guess by doing all the electronics boards all in one go will enable me to progress more quickly. Let's see. Anyway, thanks for reading.

Hi Iain, In the end I went with cork. I did find the Depron quite soft and actually the different in noise was not noticeable. I also found a very cheap bulk source and have a very long roll which has covered the entire baseboard. I was at a large layout recently with cork as the base and it was tacked down, not glued and the noise was noticably lower. I think the key is the noise being transferred through the ballast and glue so i'm using Copydex. It stinks, but is more rubbery so doesn't conduct noise quite as much.

Just as a footnote - I sent two locos back to Hornby and they confirmed the problem as the corrosion and gave me 2 x £100 credits for use on the Hornby website. But the following extract from their email to me suggests they may now not be offering the credit any more. Although I guess always worth a try. From Hornby... "In 2013, a concern relating to spares resulted in Hornby being unable to repair the Class 31 Locomotives, therefore we moved to offering £100 voucher to anyone still effected. Hornby offers a 1 year guarantee on all its products. Depending on the sales channel, we understand and appreciate customers can buy these items up to 3years+ of the original launch date. In the case of the Class 31 it’s now been 8 years since the original concern arose. Following a review of sell through data and the log of customers that have reported this as an issue, it is our belief that affected units have lessened year on year, and as a result Hornby has taken the decision to withdraw any further voucher offers as of the 31 July 2016."

It's been ages since my last update, there has been some work but nothing much that looks like it's moved forward so I haven't posted. First loop (up lines) finished and today I added all the up loops, (Fast, Slow, Goods and Siding) through the station and a few lines in the storage / marshalling area. Cobalts all wired up and so are the PM42 Power Districts and 2 x BDL168 occupancy detectors. It all works with Train Controller but I haven't yet wired up the point motors to the DAC20. The track on the right (Storage Sidings) will take a 10 coach train with loco as will the main platforms of the station. There'll be 12 or so storage sidings when it's done. This is the current trackplan showing the occupancy sections. When locos are profiled I can get them to stop automatically within 1cm of where I want them to stop (using Traincontroller) so I only need one section (occupancy sensor) per block. Also something else i've been trying out is weathering. Still a long way to go, but these seem to have come out OK. I hadn't weathered the chassis on this 21T hopper. With some down time from work over Christmas i'm looking forward to getting a lot more done. Better go and find the missus.

This probably shows what I mean better than words....

Good rainy afternoon collective knowledge of RMWeb. I've recently taken delivery of Hugh Longworth's excellent Reference on all BR Steam Loco allocations from 1948 to 1968. Highly recommended, if quite an investment. Under the locomotive class are the following columns from left to right. Date of allocation / Notes (if a shed was recoded / loco withdrawn) / Shed Code / Shed Name. Qu: In the second column many of the locomotives have the notation "I" in many cases multiples i.e. "IIIIIIIII" in red. I cannot see anywhere in this book what this refers to - I'm sure it's not referred to as it's obvious. To all that is except me. Any help appreciated. Thanks

One year ago, just as I was getting myself organised to make progress on the layout I was given a big work project. So work on Leicester has been intermittent to say the least. Travelling a lot is always good for scouring the online shops, Youtube, (Fle)Ebay. But i'm a little ashamed as I look back over the year on actual physical progress! A few weeks ago I decided that if I don't have the big blocks of time I need to get up in the railway room and actually start soldering, re-reading Digitrax instructions etc then I should get off my hind quarters at least do something on the miriad of little mini-projects i've bought the book, read the book etc. I got the airbrush out and used it for the first time (on my wife's silver coloured scuffed shoes - but a start, I didn't want to ruin anything railway related). I got out the paints, decalfix, thinners, mattcote, weathering powders and started to experiment (pictures below) I finally made a start on installing 20 V4 Loksound chips all reblown by Bryan (@Howes). Some video's of that will be posted on youtube when the Round Tuit is delivered. Also this blog was unburied from underneath the far more diligent and worthy contributors to this forum and dusted off. Here are some pictures at least. And I have August off, so looking forward to continuing my mantra of "Just do it". This was the result of the Humbrol channel research on Youtube - it's the first attempt, In Summary: 50/50 mattcote / enamel thinners brushed onto the wagon dark earth, rust and iron oxide weathering powders randomly applied into the above mix while wet left to dry (mistake one) 50/50 acrylic paint (mistake two - 1st time round I used enamel) and decalfix. Paint over the whole wagon roughly (leaving the running number clear) wait to dry (mistake 3) wet and wait a few minutes scratch and score with something that has a not too sharp point to break the surface of the paint with some thinners break the surface more (this comes off easily as the decalfix in the acrylic paint has made it very easy to distress). The weathering powders should at this stage bleed out more and very fine, light, downward brush strokes should represent rust running down. (mistake 4 as i'd originally sealed the weathering poweders with enamel / decalfix - however using more thinners / scratching I was able to get down to the original weathering poweders, but in several places also the original plastic!) Also the running numbers on the Dapol model also disappeared with thinners. However I detail all four mistakes above to demonstrate that I am but a humble beginner, however I have at least overcome my fear of having a go. I have at least another 20+ (and the rest) of these Dapol wagons, so should have honed my weathering skills a bit more by the time i'm half way through. I also will practice with the Maskol technique for larger areas of rust and dropping small amounts of weathering powders onto the finished wagons into mattcote. I now need to get the track grime out to weather the running gear etc and match it in. I was a little heavy handed at the end with adding some "smoke" weathering poweder, I think as the paint hadn't dried hard I was less able to tone it down. But i'm quite pleased for a first attempt. Tremayne

I have a number of Hornby Class 31 and have been testing all my locos after storage. I noticed one loco had a cracked body which I took off, started to file down the metal without realising there was a serious problem. The whole thin part of the solid metal chassis under the cab just crumbled. That's when I searched here and found this thread! Good job too, I have another one. However a quick phone call to Hornby this morning resulted in some superb customer service and the two locos will be sent back. From the full Hornby production the product codes it affects are: R2413 R2420 R2421 Hornby mentioned that it has not affected later batches with the A, B etc suffix.

Looks like a good trip despite the weather. I went up to the HSB in Feb I think, lots of snow and spent 2 days travelling about two thirds of the HSB route but not Nordhausen. So need to organise another trip! Nice video. Thanks for posting. T

HI Markus, this is really coming on since I last saw it. The buildings are looking excellent.