Hollar

Earlier this year I finally gave up on my old 40w temperature controlled iron and replaced it with a 70w Weller unit - and wish I had done it much earlier. I've not found a job it didn't breeze through, and changing bits is really quick and burn-free. The one disappointment is that it doesn't have a pilot light and I have more than once left it on overnight, which is just annoying. Tone

My wife and I travelled on something similar to the doodlebugs, up the Douro valley in Portugal a few years ago. Fantastically noisy, but cool enough with all the windows open and a lovely line to spend the day on. Tone

I took Tony's warning to heart, and when I needed to drill the ventilator holes on my pigeon van roof I started pin chucking very slowly and very small, working up to the right size in small increments. Which worked ok. I experimented by using my Proxxon drill at the lowest speed for safety loop locations under the floor, and that was ok too. I came a cropper, though when drilling handrail holes next to the window and losing a flake from the door pillar while inserting the wire. It really is fracture-friendly, though easy enough to make an invisible mend. Tone

Good luck with the chassis. I did exactly the same thing a few years ago and for the same reason. After a couple of depressing evenings and significant finger-scarring I couldn't mate the hopper square with with the chassis, and the whole lot ended in the bin. Which isn't something I do lightly. Lesson learned - if you follow Dave Bradwell's instructions everything goes together perfectly and you finish with a lovely model and a real sense of satisfaction. Otherwise . . . you're out there in the waste land - or at least I was. Tone

I've found the Masokits screw couplings to be a very good compromise between robustness and appearance. You have to older them up, of course, but it's quite an enjoyable little job for those says when I'm feeling too ham-fisted to go nar anything delicate. You get a choice of bottom link - near-scale or usable. Tone

A short train of my coal wagons trundling round Millhouses. Tone

Thanks for this, Tony, very useful. Funnily enough our resin flakes are pretty well identical. I've not fitted it yet because I'm thinking of putting in a rudimentary interior, but the roof looks as though it will need some work to make it fit perfectly. Tone

Earlier in the week I had my first go at a printed kit - an Isinglass pigeon van made on my portable modelling tray out in the garden. It went together perfectly, but my level of carefulness increased substantially when I realised that the resin body was as brittle a sliver of ice. However, because they snap immediately there is no deformation and they can be glued back together invisibly. Now for some decisions about how much of the underframe to use. Tone

I've been thinking of trying out some bristle discs. I'm not much troubled by stray flicks of glass fibre but if there's a less problematic alternative . . . I find I can keep the work surface fairly clear with a trusty old stiff bristle flattie brush which serves as a 1:5 scale broom. My question is, are the branded 3M discs worth the extra money over the unbranded alternatives available on Alibaba and eBay. My other question is do you have any advice on which combination would be a worthwhile starter kit. On the shelf next to my not-quite-finished kits I have a gadets-I-bought-but-never-warmed-to collection I don't wish to add to. Tone

Like most men in their 70s, I can get irritated by some aspects of our more formalised society. But safeguarding definitely isn't one of them, and when I was a cricket coach and umpire I was always perfectly happy with the bureaucracy surrounding children in clubs and with my responsibilities in law. And I've seen too many predators coming through court to think that the current situation is foolproof. Tone

A lovely representation of an elegant loco, but that must be the ugliest chimney ever to deface a British engine. Tone

Another E4 in OO - a John Brighton build of a Gibson kit. A bit clean, perhaps. Tone

Quite a lot of my modelling predates acrylics, but I've been enjoying working out how to get the best of them, as demonstrated in this thread. One thing I would like to add is the usefulness of roughing up the surface before getting out the paint. These wagons had a hard life - polluted rain, men in hobnail boots, heavy and often sharp-edged steel loads, caustic and forcefully loaded coal loads. I prefer to break up the regularity and smoothness of the pristine plastic or white metal planking. Since 1970 you haven't been able to pop down to the station to check what the real thing looks like, and the colour film of that time aren't terribly accurate in the red/brown it of the spectrum - and that's without any fading of prints. However, I have found the scruffier sort of builders and scaffolders lorries can give a good general idea of what you should be aiming at. As David BCP says further up this thread, the real thing is less brown and more silver and grey than you think The wagon in the photo has had this done: T. he gaps between the planks has been varied by a gentle use of a Tamiya skrawker. Important not to overdo this, except maybe on the sides of wooden coal wagons towards the end of their lives when sometimes the wear and tear progressed to actual holes. Also important - make sure you score right to the ends, otherwise it looks odd. 2. Using the skrawker even more lightly, score cracks into a few of the planks. 3. If it's to be an old wagon do a couple of bits of more serious damage by using the skrawker more vigorously and at a bit of an angle. 4. Make a rake by fixing a short length of junior hacksaw blade into a small Exacto knife handle or, a tubby 4-jaw pin vice. Scrape it with the grain of the "wood", again taking good care to go right into the side. 5. Give the floor (or sides) a good, random rub over with coarse glasspaper to simulate scuffing. 6. Give it a good scrub with an old toothbrush and make sure you are happy with what you see. Painting First, remember that because of the way we process images, models should generally be a bit paler than the reaal thing. Think Father Ted trying to teach Dougal This is small, that is far away. Like anything else to do with weathering, you can't do better than go to Martin Welch's Art of weathering and his more recent articles in MRJ. Over the years I 've used all sorts of grey, brown, gunmetal paints, enamel and acryllic, and you can get to the right final colour blend with all sorts of combinations, so long as they are all matte. Especially with enamels, which give you time before they gel, I have found that the easy way to get natural variation is to use a ceramic artists palette with three or four shades, and mix them on your brush. Put down the main coat very thinly, so as not to clog up all your preparation and then drybrush a darker shade (gunmetal and/or metalcote gunmetal) across the grain; this will highlight the damage done by the sanding, raking and glasspapering. Be sure follow the lucid drybrushing advice by Zero Gravitas at the top of this thread, though none of this stuff is non-reversible. Weathering is truly a cousin to the architectural concept that Less is more. The wood used in wagons was not of brilliant quality, and you can use tiny amounts of dark brown paint to simulate knots. These seemed to be more common on the side planks of unpainted or repaired wagons than on decks. New repair planks tend to be a greyish-yellow, but this can still be After Painting Small amounts of weathering powder can give additional variations. Again, be sparing and have some wet cotton buds to hand. Tony McSean

I think the picture is deceptive and that the wagon is loaded with pit props or something similar - resting on the floor and leaning on the end. I've recently loaded some bolsters with pipe loads (having stumbled on some comparatively cheap brass tube at a builder's merchants. An enjoyable little job, including thinning the ends down to the absolute minimum, and a Marabu Anthracite aerosol gives a very convincing finish. My problem is that you can't really scale down the chain if you want to model the shackle / hook tensioning arrangement. I chose to settle for a too-heavy chain but it rankles a bit. I liked the overall effect of the goods trains,. Although Bachmann cattle wagons are lovely mouldings, but they are much too long. (I realised this after working up three of them, of course.) The faithful old Airfix kit needs some work (beautifully set out by Geoff Kent in The 4mm Wagon) but is still the BR cattle wagon of choice. There is something about a cattle wagon, though, that entices even the most austere modellers to extend their time envelope. I had great fun with the Shire Scenes conversion for the GWR iron cattle wagon - arguably the most bizarre goods wagon ever to run in the UK. It used up a lot of talcum powder but really should just be as entirely orange as Tango Man. Tone PS: The pipe wagons were modelled from photos, showing the method of securing, and the rather ad hoc stacking of the pipes. The DO NOT LOAD WITH CONTAINERS rubric on lowfits was only put there because people were always doing it.

My 1958 Observers is also a treasured possession for much the same reason. It fell to bits about 20 years ago when I happened to be dealing with an antiquarian bookbinder - so I splashed out and had it bound in Country House leather. Now it does at lest look like a treasured possession. Tone

I've been spending some house arrest time reworking a couple of insulated vans to look more like my photos. This time, I hope, they look more like the real thing after many, many hours with tiny brushes and the faithful, charima-enhancing optivisor. Luckily for me, CCT are trading again so I was able to letter them up properly. And of course I didn't notice just how much the left-hand tiebar doesn't look like the real thing. Tomorrow's little job. Tone

A few pages back was a brief discussion about cheap versus expensive paint brushes, which I've just read. I best paint brushes I've ever found are the Winsor and Newton Series 7 Finest Sable. They are very expensive. A set of sizes 5, 6 and 7 will cost you over £140. However, there is nothing like them for bodywork jobs that you can't (or in my case choose not to) use an airbrush. They keep their shape and last forever - I still have some over 20 years old and although their point isn't as sharp as it once was they are still fine for a proper, careful job, so all that time cleaning them as soon as they were done wasn't wasted. They are not something to be bought online because not every Series 7 brush has a prefect point and you can sort out good one. However, I would never use a series 7 for weathering, or let one near acrylic paint. There are a lot of decent cheap brushes around, and after a lifetime of brush-cherishing I am getting used to the idea of throwaways. For everyday use I've found the Hornby brushes with the orange orthopedic handles to give good results and last a reasonable. For the more brutal techniques such as drybrushing, stippling, textured paint, and sloshing acrylic washes around I have started using really cheapo brushes from the local craft shop and online. Some have turned into miniature chimney sweep brushes the moment the pain pot was opened, but often they are surprisingly resilient - and if you have to chuck one in the bin and reach for another then they really are very cheap. How have others adapted to the changing times for painting? Tone

Prototype fpr everything: When the new Basildon station was opened, the Opening Party were due to arrive by train. When the train arrived the dignitaries fond themselves trapped in the slam-door train because the platforms were too high. They had to go back to Laindon and travel to the new station by a hurriedly-assembled convoy of taxis. After the opening ceremony, the station closed again for the necessary adjustments. Tone

A terrific piece of work, The texture and colouring of the concrete is as good as anything I've seen- would you be willing to share how it was achieved? Tone

Apologies for the false start. I spent most of this afternoon doing little modelling jobs I have been putting off. Including reattaching some cab doors which I had knocked off my Hornby 8F. Not easy to get it to adhere nicely, so I opened the window and reached for the Butanone. I dipped my last-legs cheapo paintbrush into the bottle, got distracted for a moment and when I picked it up it came out minus bristles, ferrule and a significant part of the handle. A cursory tale. The good news is that the doors seem to have been reattached securely, and my first attempt at programming CV values seems to have gone ok. Obviously, I sorted out the CVs before getting on with the glue sniffing.

Shirescenes cousins, Dart Castings also do some lovely carts. I built this (shown on my diorama in memory of a figure from my childhood holidays in Ireland - a local farmer

Their Dart Castings stable mates do some lovely carts, too. I built this cart (seen on my diorama) in memory of boyhood holidays in Ireland, scattering before local farmer Con Hayes who was never the same after seeing Ben Hur in the Carrigaline cinema. Took much longer to paint than to build. Tone

Continuing the 2-8-0 theme, my newly finished 2-8-0 which is newish Hornby with Brassmasters detailing and some of my own too. To quote a programmer collegue it wasn't hard it just took a long time. 48739 has joined my two commissioned 8Fs in the allegedly dustproof case, and my biggest disappointment is that I just can't top and tail them with my two Hurst etched snowploughs - which were the hardest kits I have ever completed. Three 8Fs and two independent snowploughs, just the job for the 62-63 winter. And no prizes for spotting the one I haven't painted Tone

You're right. 35 years and I still don't know the plumbing. Thing is, our house has a larger two-storey rear extension - the kitchen wing - which has a high. sturdy chimney stack its own. Hence my miscounting. I understand about the lack of space = scarcely room to hang the tin bath on the wall, but I'm confident that the number of homes in our little 1870 estate that had inside toilet would have been tiny - especially with no rear extension in which to tuck the toilet. By 1950 most of them would have had 80 years of sooty neglect and indifference. If they hadn't been so over-engineered they would have fallen to bits. Smashing model though, of a very awkwardly shaped prototype. And I've never before thought of myself living in a prototype. Tone