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D869

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  1. D869

    1907 Hurst Nelson 10T Tank

    By D869,

    Hmm.. July 2015... apparently that's when I started on this particular project
     
    http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/100931-riveted-oil-tanks-in-2mm-scale
     
    I've not said anything more about it on here since then... mainly because until a few days back I had no idea whether or not it was going to succeed or fail.
     
    Rather than theorising further about whether this would or would not work as a 3d print I decided to take a punt and had it printed when Shapeways had a free postage offer in the spring. The result looked OK but I still didn't know whether it would work as a model when painted with metallic siver - a finish notoriously unforgiving of surface defects.
     
    To cut a long story short it took 3 rounds of priming and sanding the tank I decided to go for the top coats. Although I'd given the tank a day in the summer sun to cure any uncured resin, I still chickened out of using Alclad on this one. Instead after perusing the Tamiya stocks at my local Hobbycraft I went for a coat of gloss black (X1) followed by metallic Titanium Aluminium (X32) which seemed to have a nice fine particle size, at least looking at the bottom of the pot. Tests on some scrap plastic tube for comparison with previous Alclad tests looked promising. The end result on the tank looked rather snazzy, although rather too loud to be left like that.
     
    After decals (from my own artwork to make sure they lined up between the riveted seams), varnish, weathering and a lot of 'knitting' to get the whole thing put together, it went on parade at the Association AGM along with the Air Ministry tank and a Stephen Harris 35T tank and won the John Barker trophy.
     
    A few photos from the build below. The last couple show the tank qith primer before any sanding and then with its gloss black coat. I didn't take any when it was in unweathered silver. Pity really.
     







  2. D869

    2mm Expo 2015

    By D869,

    Today was our third Expo in a row. We did actually question whether they really wanted us again but were told that this one was the 55th Anniversary one so we could come and play again.
     
    A good day was had by all. It was great to meet some with all of the folks at the show. Joint honours for going 'above and beyond the call' go to Steve for travelling all the
    way from New Zealand and Chris who was late for the start of the show with some lame excuse about Chelford being at the end of a 36 hour journey from Brisbane.
     
    Some photos from the day.
     
    The view of the 12 inch to the foot scale train set outside the hotel this morning. I couldn't resist trying this shot although it didn't work too well.

     
    I'm titling this one 'St Ruth by Night' because it's what the layout looks like overnight when at a show.

     
    Some shots from around the show. It was pretty busy although I think it had quietened down a bit when I took these.




     
    Finally my one and only proper model photo - Nigel Ashton's GWR mogul based on his Manor chassis with scratchbuilt upperworks and an RTR tender.

     
    Chris also took a few photos while we were entrusted (ahem) with the operation of Ian Smith's 'Modbury' but he said something about needing sleep, so those will have to wait for another day.
     
    Chris' edit after some sleep.. Some inappropriate goings on in South Devon.

    'Now arriving at platform 1, the 21st Century.'
     

    66204 picks up some very overdue freight.
     

    How much has cattle class has changed over 100 years?
  3. D869

    50% More Sleep...

    By D869,

    ...ing cars
     
    The Met Camm SLC is the first of the four coaches built during the cold season to escape from the paint shop and take its place between its two friends.
     
    The build is almost identical to the other two. There are a few minor improvements because I now know more about the real things (and have of course now found mistakes on the other two). I also had a go at doing the roof overhang at the ends which is most definitely absent from the other two. This was done by adding a lip of 10 thou styrene rod (seriously useful stuff) to the end, following the roof profile. Once dry, the top surface was blended in with Milliput and the whole lot sanded smooth. I'm quite pleased with the result because how to do this was something that I've puzzled over for a long time.
     
    The paint job is part of my long term quest to find a mix for BR Maroon that reproduces the look of coaches in sunny photos of trains in Cornwall. This one is mostly Precision maroon mixed with some Humbrol 100 (a sort of reddish brown colour), which is probably a better option than 153 (a plain red) that I used on the Thompson BG. The result is closer to Farish's version of maroon - not that this is necessarily 'right'. It still looks a bit odd in photos so maybe the next attempt will start from somewhere else to avoid the 'purpleness'... like darkening Precision crimson.
     
    The lining was done without the aid of my Bob Moore pen. I got Ian Rathbone's book for Christmas and resolved to have another try with a bow pen (or ruling pen if you prefer). I've now invested in a couple of Haff pens which (if you try hard enough) are available from the factory in Germany. The lining on the SLC however was mostly done before these arrived. All of of the visible lines were done with a Riefler bow compass picked up for just under 7 quid on eBay and used to offset from the top edge of the sides before they were fixed in place.
     
    Rather than try for thinner lines (which the pens can do), I tried to do the lines to match the other two coaches (I know... why didn't I do the same with the maroon?)... except for the wobbles. This idea slightly backfired because I did the yellow waist lines as two separate lines and got them too far apart. Having left it too late to remove them easily the Haff pen did finally come into use to narrow them down by lining over them with maroon... which was a last resort but worked a lot better than I expected.
     
    The good news is that I learned from my mistake lining the compartment sides of the other two sleepers and put the line at the right height on this one so I can have the compartment side on public show without it looking silly... and post photos of both sides on here. Unfortunately the lines still don't align perfectly with the other two coaches. I think that the corridor side waist lining is a bit too low down but drawing the lines higher up doesn't work because the lining pen falls into the windows (guess how I know this?).
     

     

     

     
    In other news...
     
    The other three coaches are also (mostly) painted but the two Hawksworths still lack glazing and lettering and the Mark 2 is in the process of having the body side paint scheme wrapped around the ends slightly.
     
    The Manor has seen very little progress. It's waiting for new name and number plates before making the transition (aka body swap) to green livery and a new identity. Unfortunately the plates I want are out of stock and I don't know when they will be in, so it will probably still be early BR black for the Manor at Railex.
     
    I joined the 'N' Gauge Society after finding that the Modelmaster name plates were now only available that way (but sadly not the one I want). They did, however have plenty of coach transfers in stock... and now have a few less thanks to me.
     
    Grenville is progressing very slowly in between other jobs. There really isn't a lot to do, I'm just not getting on with doing it. I'm still hoping that this will be ready for Railex but time is getting short now.
     
    Another signal for St Ruth is also on the workbench. Some folks following the 3D printing forum may have seen a few words about finials, which it seems will now not be 3D printed, so back to turning them in the mini drill
     
    At some stage I need to give all of my locos a test run to make sure that we have enough serviceable for Railex.
  4. D869
    Some considerable time ago I invested in a couple of Chris Higgs' Maunsell coach kits. It was a bit of an impulse buy - I've always fancied having a north Cornwall 'P' set even though it doesn't fit with my usual core themes. Having languished in the gloat box ever since, I decided that South Yard's appearance at the upcoming (err... tomorrow) Supermeet at Tutbury was a good prompt to actually get them built.
     
    As with all things, time ran short so they are not exactly 'finished'. They still lack set numbers, door handles, loo fillers, weathering and so on and the non-public side has very effective ventilation courtesy of a complete absence of glazing.
     
    A couple of quick photos of the new arrivals.
     

     

     

  5. D869

    A Bonus Show

    By D869,

    For anyone likely to be in the Wolvey (near Coventry) area on Saturday, we will be setting up St Ruth in the parish church as part of the fund raising fete which is open from 2PM to 4:30PM.
     
    I can't offer you any other layouts or any model railway traders but I'd say that there is a good chance of some decent cakes for sale and the other usual summer fete attractions.
     
    There may be some departures from St Ruth's usual sequence of operations, time period and geographic location.
     
    http://www.wolvey.org/SJTBC_Summerfair_2016.htm
  6. D869

    A Grand Two Days Out

    By D869,

    Just back from St Ruth's first 'real' outing at the Nottingham show. I really enjoyed myself and I think the rest of the team did too.
     
    It was really nice to be in a 2mm finescale 'ghetto' surrounded on three sides by Fencehouses, Brafferton and Annedale Town. At times the number of 2mm Association faces in attendance made me wonder if we weren't at a 2mm Expo. The quality of the whole show was well up to its usual standard - this is a show that I attend as a 'punter' pretty much every year but this was my first time on the other side of the barrier.
     
    The layout behaved itself very well, in large part due to the two test days that we spent knocking the rough edges off its reliability. There were some gremlins, however - mainly in the guise of annoying derailments, vertical alignment on the baseboard joint nearest the fiddle yard and the joint onto the fiddle yard traverser being probably the worst offenders. We also had the branch junction point fail on Sunday lunchtime and had to spend the rest of the day with the point fixed in the branch direction. Happily the east crossover allowed us to bypass the problem and carry on as normal.
     
    On the whole I'm just glad that the layout and stock all kept working for two days (not to mention the operators) and slightly relieved that the mad scramble to get everything ready is over. No doubt all of our better halves have a list of household activities saved up for us.
     
    I didn't have time to spend on posed photos, but here are a few pics from the weekend.
     

    I'm sure there's room for a few more things in there.
     

    Serious business, this playing trains.
     

    The goods yard looking less congested than it did at some points of the day.
  7. D869

    A Non-Runner

    By D869,

    Oh dear!
     
    It looks like my Hymek won't be appearing at Warley.
     
    The Hymek developed an issue a few months back with one of its wormwheels skipping on the worm. I think it had been happening for a while before I figured the problem out. The upshot is that the wormwheel teeth have been rounded off making the problem worse. I'd temporarily solved it prior to Kidderminster by swapping the bogies end to end, the intention being to keep it going while I got hold of a spare gear. Unfortunately no such spare gears have been tracked down and while testing the loco today the temporary fix had stopped working too.
     
    I don't think I'm alone in having gear mesh issues with a Hymek - there's a thread on RMWeb about this and other issues but while investigating the bogie mount tolerances and checking for worm bearing play (there is plenty of that because the bearings aren't really bearings) a more serious problem appeared.
     
    It now seems that the loco has broken its back. Here's a photo of the sad remains. It's not supposed to bend in the middle like that.
     

     
    Dapol Hymek spares seem to be like hen's teeth so I don't think this loco will be turning a wheel in the foreseeable. A dummy loco might be an option but I don't know what's in one - if it doesn't have the wormwheel then it's not going to solve the original problem.
  8. D869
    The latest of the coaches that made it to Railex but weren't quite finished is now done… barring the usual few bits waiting for some crud coloured paint.
     
    To recap for those just joining the story, this is a Fleetline kit bought in the 1980s which has languished in my gloat box ever since. The kit has been assembled mostly 'as intended' except for discarding every whitemetal part (including the coach ends) and replacing with Plastikard.
    I suspect that some readers may have been expecting me to finish this in blue/grey but looking critically at the etched sides I decided that they did not look quite right in terms of the window proportions and spacing so I decided to resort to a slightly different vehicle that really has different window proportions, namely the prototype Mark 2 FK W13252. Use of the present tense is deliberate, because happily it has been preserved on the Mid Norfolk Railway. Having gone for the prototype instead of the production model it wasn't much of a further step to paint it maroon. I could have done the same with a production FK, with the exception (I think) of the rather natty grey underframe.
     

     
    EDIT: I just noticed that one of the '1's has come off the door on the compartment side
     
    The kit comes with no interior so I decided to make my own. At the time I started it the moulded seating was unavailable so I got my own seating made using 3d printing. This has the advantage of being made to the correct width so there is no mucking about cutting it to length. The interior itself has a floor of 15 thou black plastikard and partitions cut from 20 thou white plastikard. I considered printing the corridor partition on acetate but I didn't have any of the right stuff for my printer, which in any case is playing up at the moment so I decided it would be just as quick to do it the old fashioned way. I cheated a bit by cutting every opening all of the way to the top and then adding a separate strip across the top, which is where the pelmet for the sliding door would be.
     

     
    The thickness of the clear sides of Fleetline kits makes them less than ideal for interior detail partly because there is less room available than there ought to be and partly because they cause a prismatic effect that distorts the view of the interior. The first problem is solved by making the whole interior narrower than it should be. The second was solved (partly at least) by removing the passengers after I took the photos because they made the distortion really obvious. Still it wouldn't be the first empty first class coach that I've ever seen. The curtains are cigarette paper coloured with watercolour and then stuck inside the glazing.
     
    The paint job was… err… entertaining and having decided on maroon it was a case of 'in for a penny'. I experimented by trying to get thinner lines than on previous coaches and this worked really well. Wrapping the lining around the ends was a bit of a conundrum. In the end I used the bow compass to offset from the buffer cowling underneath each corner. This idea would have worked really well if I'd planned it earlier - then I could have made sure that the cowling was actually properly level so that it would have made a better datum. As it is some of the corner lines are less than 100% level and a bit wobbly in places but I'm quite pleased… at least with the better corners anyway. The transfers are Modelmaster from the NGS, except for the OHLE flashes which are Fox.
     
    The real W13252 started life allocated to the 'Bristolian' with occasional weekend trips to Weston. I was thinking that I needed a hefty dose of modeller's licence to run this at St Ruth but it ran at Railex anyway… and then in answer to a question on the BRCS Yahoo group yesterday I found out otherwise. This turned up a photo on the rail-online web site that shows D1000 in maroon entering Plymouth from the west with W13252 as the second coach in the train. The headcode indicates the Cornish Riviera around 1965 so it seems that I need no modeller's licence whatsoever. As a bonus, the first and fourth vehicles are Hawksworth SKs so we also have a nice contrast between modern styling 1940s style and modern styling 1960s style.
  9. D869

    A Sense of Place

    By D869,

    ... or maybe plaice!
     
    It's been bugging me for a while that South Yard has a rather dull backscene. It's also a bit low now that the new lighting rig is in position so I've been thinking about doing something about it.
     
    Now South Yard is a real place in Plymouth (or rather Devonport, Stoke Damerel or 'Dock' depending on how old fashioned you want to be). The name refers to the southern half of the Royal Naval dockyard and my layout is set just outside the dockyard wall. Having done a spot of research originally using an OS map, I noticed that there are some quite nice views of Plymouth Sound and the Cremyll peninsula to be had not far away from my setting so I thought that something along these lines would make for a nicer backscene.
     
    So in an idle moment a week or two back I started plodding around the area on Google Streetview to see if I could get the right perspective for my backscene. To cut a long story short, I can't. There is a hill in the way with an old garrison built into it - now a housing estate but a road leads down close to the dockyard wall and terminates on a quay. It's possible to drive Streetview down there and look out over the harbour. Cue the first set of screenshots. These also show the very edge of the old roofed slip inside the dockyard. I've been trying to figure out how to get this into the backscene but I don't think it will fit with the yard wall.
     
    In my notional world the station is near to the brow of the hill allowing the viewer to look over the top and see the harbour beyond so the quayside views are too low down. I found some views from a road on Mount Wise which are from a higher elevation - probably too high and not quite in the right place. Cue the second set of screenshots.
     
    Some cropping and stitching together with Gimp followed, then scaling to (roughly) the right width and printing onto two bits of A4 so that the result could be tried out on South Yard. I slightly squished the high angle photos vertically as a quick way to simulate a slightly lower viewpoint. The prints are black and white as recommended by Martin Goodall in his MRJ article on the Burford backscenes... also because the printer is playing up when used in colour mode.
     
    The photos were tried out at various heights to see what looked best. Here are the results...
     
    From the quayside - right location but too low down...
     

    A promising start if you ignore the white van etc!
     

    Lower is perhaps better
     
    From Mount Wise - higher up but not quite the right location. I also seem to have clobbered the coal yard office...
     

    Too high and distracting
     

    I quite like this one
     

    I like this one too - on the plus side it puts the end of the bridge in the sky but it loses some interesting parts of the waterside on the left.
     
    The eventual backscene will be a painted affair based on a combination of the two images - the viewpoint from the quay but with the perspective from the higher angle. One conundrum is how to deal with the edges where the backscene meets the road bridge and yard wall. Keeping the horizon low will solve the road bridge problem but the yard wall is a more tricky proposition.
     
    It remains to be seen how successful I am at turning these ideas into a real painted backscene.
     
    EDIT: I thought it would be good to see what effect the backscene has on South Yard's role as 'photo plank'. Here are the results. Perhaps a little distracting in the straight side-on view but not too bad otherwise... and I can always keep the plain backscene as a standby.
     



  10. D869

    A Tale of Two Westerns

    By D869,

    I noticed during the first of our St Ruth test days before Nottingham that we were having to do rather a lot more loco swapping and sharing between trains than I was comfortable with. This prompted me into a re-evaluation of my gloat box to see if I could scrape together some more motive power... pronto. The first thing to make it out was a Farish warship - Hermes. This was a really minimalist conversion - wheels turned down by the Association's wheel turning service (the warship has a smaller gear than most locos, so there are no drop-in wheels available) plus some DG couplings and away it went in time for our second test session, but that's not what this post is about.
     
    The second 'new' loco involved rather more work - I had been taking a look at a Poole Western (Courier) that had been languishing since new. I had the wheels turned down for this years ago but had done nothing else to it. On putting it on the track I found that it was not running properly at all and the usual remedies weren't working, so my attention moved to another gloat box resident - a China made BachFar Western (Fusilier) that I picked up in a moment of rashness on eBay a couple of years ago. This had had literally nothing done to it but on transplanting Courier's wheels I found that it ran pretty happily so there was my starting point.
     
    I could have just turned out Fusilier as a minimalist conversion, after all the BachFar product is a significant improvement in terms of the paint job over the early Poole offering, but somehow I just couldn't bring myself to accept the moulding lines, the cab windows sticking out past the roof and most of all the split front skirts to accommodate 'N' gauge curves.
     
    Back in the dim and distant past I converted another Farish (Poole) Western to 2mm with some upgrades for the worst aspects of the Poole product. This is D1051 which you can see in the photos, chosen based on the nice double page portrait of 1051 at Laira in the Bradford Barton 'Westerns' book. I decided to upgrade Fusilier along the same lines, but using a second hand (green - yuck!) body as the basis so that I could keep Fusilier's body in reserve just in case I didn't finish in time.
     
    To cut a long story short, the new loco was ready to roll on Thursday evening in time for the setup day at Nottingham. By then it had transfers but no actual identity because I needed to pick up name and number plates from Shawplan when I got to the show. After getting home that evening I still had to fit the engine room glazing and said name and number plates in time for Saturday morning.
     
    The Farish interpretation of the class 52 is noticeably too long, but if that was going to be fixed... well... I wouldn't start from here. The changes involved cleaning up the moulding lines, replacing the glazing (including the engine room glazing that isn't glazing at all), lowering the body, correcting the middle skirts and cutting proper apertures for the various fillers plus handrails, lamp brackets, headcodes etc. Probably the biggest change is to the front skirts - new ones were fabricated from Plastikard with the 'T' shaped recess for the buffer beam and couplings that is such a feature of the front end... and that is the one thing that makes this upgrade a bit tricky...
     
    The problem with fitting new skirts is that the ends of the bogie want to be in the same place. Shortening this end of the bogie is not a good option because the keeper retaining clips are right at the end. For 1051 I solved the problem by turning both bogies around. The other end of the bogie is shorter so this gives enough clearance behind the skirt. The motor magnet was also reversed to make the loco run in the expected direction. This was not an option with the Bachfar mechanism because the gear tower is offset towards the end of the loco. I noticed that the bogie pivot on the Bachfar chassis is moveable - there are several notches in the chassis block that give a choice of positions for the pivot. Turning the pivot around gives more options. The main snag is that if you move the pivot then the plastic driveshaft is too long so I made a new driveshaft from brass tube and brass rod and found to my surprise that the chassis still ran just as well with this installed. My modified chassis has bogie centres 3mm shorter than the original. This is spot on for the Western but there are plenty more dimensional issues, so it's a minor victory. It does mean that the front skirts are correctly proportioned from the side view, which is something that is not quite right on 1051.
     
    The paint job involved spraying the fronts white and then yellow, followed by masking the warning panels and an overall coat of maroon. I used Precision maroon but added some Humbrol 153 red to lighten it a bit because I think that the Precision colour looks a bit too dark when compared with most photos. Transfers are resurrected Woodheads again.
     
    The loco ran well at Nottingham... considering that it consists of bits of 4 different locos bodged together in a hurry. The wheels are a very mixed bunch because I'd already stolen four of Courier's axles for my class 25 and didn't want to take the 25 apart again just before a show. Some of them have also had split gears replaced and are a little bit wonky as a result and only two of them have the faces profiled as they should be. I might treat it to some new drop-in wheels as a reward, but then again I might just get its original wheels turned down and save the extra pennies for Mr Dapol. There are still some jobs left to do - like a cab interior to hide the rather prominent worm gears, the fillers that didn't get done in time and some brake rigging on the bogies, plus some fiddly painting to represent the window pillars. I'll also weather it, but not too much because I intend to represent the loco in a pretty clean condition.
     
    Oh, the identity... I wanted a maroon loco with small warning panels to fit in with the mid 60s nominal date for St Ruth but I also wanted one that stayed in this scheme for a long time. My first choices were Western Lancer or Trooper and I emailed Shawplan to ask them if I could pick these plates up form them on the Friday evening. To their credit, they did indeed sort out the plates that I asked for... and then left them back at their base. We also both managed to leave behind my email with the list of choices but I remembered that third choice was Western Talisman which was still maroon in July 1969 and finally came to a nasty end in the Ealing accident in 1973. Shawplan had the Talisman plates on their stand, so the decision was made. I'm not sure if the maroon Talisman and the blue Ambassador could really have stood next to each other, but there is only a year between two dated photos that I have of them in those liveries, so maybe.
     
    No doubt my efforts will be eclipsed soon my Mr Dapol, but his new release will be too late to have helped our motive power situation at Nottingham. I'm not sure if it's fate but I seem to have developed a nasty habit of building models that are the subject of releases by the main manufacturers - the sleeping cars and the Western were both done knowingly, but I also have an incomplete Mark 2 FK and you can probably just see a maroon CCT in one of the photos - both recently announced by Farish.
     
    Some more pictures of Talisman and Ambassador lined up side by side on South Yard. I must dust that platform though.
     


  11. D869

    A West Country Hero

    By D869,

    I thought it was about time we had another Hydraulic on this blog, so here goes...
     
    St Ruth is set in 1965 so by rights it should be overwhelmingly populated with Warships. No problem there, we have Cockade, Hermes, Druid and Zest of various ages, plus Cossack too of course. The snag is that in 1965 they should really be green. Maroon is a bit of a stretch - the first maroon repaints appearing in September 65 so we really need some green ones.
     
    The first Farish Warship I acquired was a blue D822 'Hercules' shortly after they were originally released. For some reason it has never been favoured with a finescale set of wheels and has languished in its original box apart from the odd bit of test running. Hermes and Druid were both acquired secondhand, rewheeled and set to work with no other changes in very short order to address motive power shortages at our first outing.
     
    Obviously livery is one reason why it has been on the shelf for so long but another is my dissatisfaction with the Farish model. The moulding quality is superb but for me it just doesn't say 'Warship'. I think that the biggest problem is the way that the windscreens have been done - and this is most obvious on locos with full yellow ends but there are other issues too so I've decided to bite the bullet and try to make it better.
     
    At the same time, I will backdate it to green livery and it will get a new name. The name I've chosen is D820 'Grenville' which was named after an Elizabethan captain belonging to a famous Devon and Cornwall family... partly because this seems like a very suitable name and partly because I don't want to sign myself up (yet) for a bunch of other Warship detail changes by stepping outside the range D813-D832. Anyway a nice set of red nameplates was purchased from Mr Shawplan at Nottingham a few weeks ago.
     
    Anyway, enough of all the waffle. Let's talk about progress. So far I've just been working on improving one end so that I can figure out what works and then copy the ideas on the other end.
     
    The offensive glazing unit has been removed and I'm trying out some of the replacement windscreen surrounds that I had etched last year. These were an absolute pig to draw but thankfully they fit very well. In my (subjective) opinion they are a huge improvement on the Farish effort. I've figured out some further improvements to the etch but they will need to wait until a future build.
     
    I've also sliced off the handrails and replaced them with 33SWG nickel silver wire. They aren't brilliant but slightly less bad than the moulded ones. This seems to be the thinnest handrail wire available these days - whatever happened to 36SWG steel? I started by using the 'shadows' of the Farish handrails to position the holes but wasn't very happy with the ones on top of the nose so I've moved the inner holes upwards and inwards which seems to give a nicer curve that follows the shape of the nose better.
     
    The central headboard bracket has been sliced off and replaced by one fabricated from 0.5mm brass wire and 5 thou N/S strip in the same way that I did for D869 several years ago. The trick here is to file away half of the end of the wire to make a 'D' shape. Cut this off and make another piece the same way and then solder the two back together so that they overlap and trap the N/S strip in between. Then just cut off the bits that you don't want and bend to the shape of the bracket. It's a lot easier than it sounds.
     
    There's still more to do. I'm intending to replace the lower lamp brackets with something more three dimensional and also deepen the undercut below the headcode box. The headcode box is not a great representation of the real thing either. Ideally I'd like to attack that too but I really can't see how to do it without throwing the baby out with the bathwater so I think that I'll live with it.
     
    Other plans include smoothing off the rivets at the edges of the roof panels (go and look at some photos - the real thing has countersunk or pop rivets so they are invisible in most photos). I'll probably open out the fuel fillers to make them look less flat. The cab interior needs some work - the top of the control panel should be very obvious through the windcreens but Farish's version is too low.
     
    The final puzzle (for now) is the two access hatches on the cab sides. For some reason these have been moulded by using a really obtrusive groove. The real things were flush fitting panels so Farish's interpretation is as subtle as a brick. I might have a go at filling the grooves and/or representing the panels with some 5 thou plastic but so far I haven't figured out how (or if) the Farish body is painted or whether it will take Mek Pak. Anybody know?
     
    Finally, a note of thanks to Brian Hanson of Shawplan for sending me a CD with more close-up photos of D821 Greyhound than you can shake a stick at.
     
    That's all for now... apart from some photos of progress so far, alongside Druid which is out of the box Farish.
     

    First trial fitting - not too bad
     

    Another one of the test etches - too small
     

    Surgery underway on handrails and headboard bracket
  12. D869
    Not quite 'finished', but at least back in one piece (at the last minute) in a presentable state for Railex.
     
    On the whole it's far from perfect (and very shiny just now) but I am very pleased with the result.
     
    I'll say more later. For now, here are a couple of slightly iffy photos (dull and rainy day light available today)
     

     

     
    Off to load up St Ruth for Railex now.
  13. D869
    With a little less time pressure, I thought I'd take the time to write a catch-up installment of the account of Grenville's build.
     
    We left things with the windscreen frames and most of the front end ironwork fitted but with a remaining question mark over the access panels on the cab sides.
    To finish off the ends, the lower lamp brackets were sliced off and used as a guide to drill 0.5mm holes. Into these holes were pushed some brackets cut from 5 thou N/S strip… these are probably a lot easier to make than they sound. Then a couple of squares of plastikard were added to represent the parts of the brackets that are flat against the nose.
     
    And so to the access panels… after some indecision I decided to bite the bullet and try to improve these. I wasn't too keen on trying Milliput here so instead I filled the Farish grooves with some 10 thou round styrene rod after first scoring the inside of the grooves to expose the plastic. After leaving these for 24 hours to set I scraped and sanded them smooth. New panels were added using 5 thou plastikard sheet using the outline of the original panels as a guide. The result is far less obtrusive than Farish's interpretation but I will probably use 10 thou next time and thin it once dry because there is some bubbling on some of the 5 thou panels.
     
    The cab side window frames fitted quickly with very minor fettling of the plastic. Normally I find cutting the glazing (from 10 thou clear sheet) rather a time consuming job but with the frames separated from the body it's pretty straightforward, although the windscreens still took some time and care due to their almost complete lack of straight lines. I test fitted all of the glazing by using an amazing (and environmentally friendly) temporary glue that I discovered. It's called spit and it does an excellent job of holding things in place for long enough to check the fit.
     

     
    Looking at the Farish skirts, I'd say that one side is better than the other. The asymmetric side looks pretty reasonable but things are a bit more suspect on the other side. On this side I drilled and filed away the opening containing the fillers because these are very two dimensional. I also used the styrene rod trick to fill in the panel grooves on either end of the central skirt but left the battery box covers alone. I also fitted the front ends of the skirts that come in the box with the loco.
     

     
    The cab interiors needed some attention. Farish seem to have got the general shape right but they have made the top edge of the control console about 1mm too low so it is not very visible through the windows in the way that is so characteristic of the real thing. I solved this by adding 40 thou plastikard to the top of the Farish moulding and filing to shape. I also added some plastikard to make the face of the secondman's console vertical (which it certainly is in the photos of Greyhound kindly provided by Brian Hanson). The seats are too high and too far forward so I chopped them off and just added a representation of the top of the seat back which is more or less in line with the back edge of the side windows. Finally the drivers console is a bit undersized but rather than scrap the whole thing I extended the rear edge a little towards the crew using some microstrip. The console and rear bulkhead were painted light grey with black for the false floor. Some of the 'controls' were then picked out using a fine tipped black marker. I thought I'd taken some photos of these before I glued them back in but I was wrong.
     
    And so to the paint shop…
     
    Some will have read most of this sorry tale elsewhere already.
     
    After unsuccessfully trying meths and T-Cut to shift the painted on nameplates I eventually resorted to 1200 grit wet or dry on one side. I left the other side alone after figuring out that the etched plates would cover it anyway.
     
    The whole body was then given a scrub (using gloves) with dilute Flash and an old toothbrush, followed by a further scrub under the hot tap. The body was then mounted using Blu-Tack on a suitably shaped block of wood for painting.
     
    I have rather an aversion to yellow paint due to its poor coverage so I decided to take a short cut with the warning panels. I just masked off the shape using Tamiya tape after checking which shape was correct for Grenville (it had a fairly rounded top with higher corners rather than the variant that rises to a more obvious 'point' under the central headboard bracket).
     
    In spite of not actually needing to, I removed the headcode inserts before painting. This was probably a mistake because it damaged the fine beading around the opening on one end and needed some touching up of the yellow. Some yellow painting was of course needed around the new lamp brackets.
     
    I was also very keen to avoid filling the fine roof detail with paint so I also masked off the roof panel… I probably won't do this again.
     
    The whole lot was then sprayed with Precision BR green (no messing with the colour this time) and I was very pleased with the finish achieved when the tape came off.
    After 48 hours drying I masked around the roof panels and sprayed Humbrol 27. The first two bits of masking tape came away just fine but then disaster struck. On peeling back the tape from the first body side a whole lot of the green paint came away with it. Because the green had a masked edge it also pulled away some of the edge of the grey paint on the roof panels. You can read all about this over on the painting forum.
     
    I decided to try to fix it by some careful sanding to feather the edges of the remaining green paint (which didn't really want to be feathered), brushing in the small damaged areas of grey and then (after drying) masking the roof and ends and respraying the damaged area from directly above. The result was better than I had hoped. You can still see some of the damage if you look hard for it under strong lighting but you would not notice it unless you knew where to look. I think it was a better bet than a full strip down and respray. There was also some matting of the sides from overspray but (after more drying) a rub with a cotton bud improved matters.
     
    The photo below shows the side that was repaired. Most of the upper part of the side at this end was showing rail blue before the repair. I really must brush the dust off things before getting the camera out though.
     

     
    The lining was done with a Haff ruling pen. Dealing with the line ends was a bit of a puzzle. On the class 22 and 41 I just drew the line a bit over length and then chopped off the ends by painting over it in green but I was less keen on that approach with more prominent waist level lining. Instead I tried putting a 2mm vertical strip of masking tape lined up on the handrail recess to define the ends. This worked reasonably well but did disturb the pen a little at the ends of the line so I think I might look for another approach in future.
     
    The numbers were done with CCT transfers (as used on D604). I must admit that I'm not too happy with these. They seem a bit 'fuzzy' compared to other transfers but they are still the least bad green diesel numbers that I have now that the Woodhead ones have pretty much run out (in comparison, some of the numbers on the Fox sheet are barely legible). I might order some Modelmaster ones now that I've joined the N Gauge Society and see if they are better. The BR crests are from a Woodhead sheet and the OHLE flashes are from Fox. After problems with fogging the varnish on previous builds I avoided using Micro Set on the transfers and stuck to plain water… which left the transfer carrier edges looking very obvious, especially on the numbers which also showed some silvering.
     
    Once the transfers were dry the whole thing was sprayed with Tamiya varnish. Given the dodgy appearance of the transfers and the previous problems with paint fragility I opened up on it rather more than usual so the loco is now pretty shiny and will need some careful toning down when it comes to weathering. As expected, avoiding the Micro Set meant that I had no issues with fogging of the varnish.
     
    The windscreen frames were cleaned with a fibreglass brush and then sprayed with Halfords primer followed by Precision BR Green. Once dry the paint was carefully scraped away from the window frames, including the inside edges. The side window frames were left completely unpainted.
     
    Assembly
     
    Most of the reassembly process was (in the immortal words of the Haynes manual) 'the reverse of removal'. The tricky bit was fitting those windscreens. I was in two minds about how best to do this. In the end I tried both ways. Both are pretty darned difficult.
     
    The first way is to glue the glazing to the frame before it goes onto the loco. I did this by fitting the glazing 'dry' and then adding spots of canopy glue to fix it in place. Getting the glazing to stay in place was very fiddly this way and I didn't get it positioned quite accurately enough. The result was that the whole assembly was a slightly less than perfect fit onto the hole on the loco body.
     
    For the other end I tried the other option - fitting the frames to the body first and then fitting the glazing from behind. This was also very tricky and I needed to trim the glazing a bit further to make it fit so clearly either my test fitting before painting was wrong or else there was enough paint and glue to mess up the fit after assembly.
    For both ends the frames were fixed in place by running some super glue along the join on the corner pillars. I am intending to tidy this up with green paint but I haven't got round to doing that yet. I also added some spots of Canopy glue from inside the cab to give some support in the middle of the frames. Adding some plastikard cubes to support the centre pillar before painting might have been a better bet but I forgot to do it (this would probably rule out the 'frames first' assembly option too).
     
    For the side windows I tried a third way - putting tiny spots of Canopy Glue onto the corners of the frames (off the loco) and then carefully dropping the glazing into position. I think this was a better option and the side windows went in very easily indeed.
     
    Handrails were done using Albion Alloys 0.2mm N/S rod as recommended to me in the discussion on part 1 of the build. This looks a lot better than 10 thou N/S wire… although it is surprisingly stiff and a bit tricky to form into a curve.
     
    The cab handrails are factory fitted wire jobs so these were carefully scraped clear of paint.
     
    Couplings were rather a pain. The quick and easy answer (as I've done on my other Warships) is to leave the front skirts off and glue some DGs to the top of the Farish coupling mount. As I've fitted the front skirts to Grenville I decided to do it properly. Unless I've misunderstood something I can't see a way to have the front skirts on without attacking the bogie mouldings with a knife, so that's what I did. The DGs are soldered to some 15 thou brass strip which is bent to pass below the skirts and super glued to the bottom of the bogie keeper (after scoring both surfaces). The hard part is making this strip so that the coupling sits in the right place in all three planes. I was a bit worried about the strength of the glued joint but after trying unsuccessfully to shift one that I wasn't completely happy with I decided that they were probably strong enough.
     
    The final job on the night before RailEx was to fit the nameplates… and I managed to mess one of them up when trying to clean up the etch tabs so Grenville appeared at the show with just one nameplate on the public side. I think I was treating them like nickel silver… which they are not. They are stainless steel and a lot harder. I picked up another set of plates at RailEx where Brian Hanson recommended sharp scissors as the best way to separate the nameplates from the etch.
     
    Still to do
     
    There are a few jobs left. I still have the red route availability dots to add. The main job is weathering. I intend to keep this fairly light - some crud on the skirts and sooty deposits on the upper surfaces. I found a photo of Grenville in November 65 which shows the paintwork in pretty good nick but with a fair bit of road spray on the lower parts of the bodywork. It's always summer on my railways, so I will skip the road spray.
     
    I'm pondering the ride height. It does look a bit tall so I don't think that a little bit of lowering would go amiss. I haven't looked to see how feasible it is yet though.
    Apart from that the only other things missing are some fillers to go in that hole in the skirt - another job that didn't quite get done before Railex.
     
    So What?
     
    This has been a very experimental build and one which I fully intend to do again because there is plenty of scope for more D800s in my fleet. I am very pleased with the appearance of the new window frames but the fit of the windscreen frames has room for improvement - partly this needs some small adjustments to the curve of the bottom of the etch and partly I think it's a matter of being a bit more bold in filing back the front edges of the corner pillars to allow the frames to fit a little further back into the recess.
     
    I'm also intending to try out a 'minimalist' upgrade on Hermes to see what can be achieved in a shorter space of time and without resorting to major paintwork (or put it another way… I don't have any way to replace those ship's crests on the cab sides).
     
    As evidence of my lack of forward thinking, the next 'full' upgrade is planned to be on another maroon 'Druid' (picked up brand new for a very reasonable price) which I intend to respray into… blue.
  14. D869

    About St Ruth

    By D869,

    This layout is the current offering from the Midland Area group of the 2mm Scale Association. It draws heavily from Penzance station and is very much 'work in progress'.
     
    The scenic area is 12 feet long and up to 3 feet wide, with a further 4 feet of length of a traversing fiddleyard. It is set in the 1960's, but the trackwork is based on what was there in the 1930's.
     
    Currently, the track is operational and work has started on the scenery, buildings etc.
     
    The layout had its first outing at the 2mm Scale Association's Golden Jubilee Expo in Oxford on July 3rd and 4th 2010.
     
    The group meets about once a fortnight in Wolvey near Coventry.
     
    Photos can be found at http://www.rmweb.co....m/1060-st-ruth/
  15. D869

    AbRail 2015

    By D869,

    A few photos from the Abingdon show today. An enjoyable time was had and it was good to catch up with friends again.
     
    A shot against the lighting. I quite like the way the light reflects from the surfaces but it's not easy to photograph with the lights shining straight into the camera.

     
    And we were awarded a nice trophy too. Ian seems pretty happy about it.

     
    The Hall isn't finished yet but it managed to do some useful work.

  16. D869

    Aldershot 2013

    By D869,

    Just back from an enjoyable weekend with St Ruth at the Aldershot show organised by the Farnham and District MRC.
     
    Getting the new sea siding crossover finished in time for the show was a bit of a struggle. We could certainly have used some more time to deal with the stickiness that always seems to happen as soon as new track is painted... and then again when it is ballasted. It managed to (mostly) make it through the weekend though.
     
    The other new items were a new goods yard shunting scheme to cope with the loss of the loop, Ian's new trees, Steve's mess hut and a revised backscene with a semi-3d effect.
     
    I think that John must have really burned the midnight oil on the backscene. It has been underway for most of the summer but last Tuesday it was completely white so it was a huge surprise to see it in glorious technicolour when the layout was put together on Friday night. It makes a vast difference to the visual impact of the layout. Here's John filling in one last bit of missing colour before the lighting pelmets went on. Is that a cup of coffee that I see on the beach?
     

     
    Chris also produced a special train to take full advantage of the new operational possibilities of the sea siding to show how the railway used the laws of physics to move empty coaches into the platform without the need for one of those costly loco things. It also produces some interesting effects if it isn't perfectly coupled to the loco when it departs for London.
     

     
    Thanks to Ian Morgan and David Stratton for stepping in to help out with operating the layout at short notice. Both of them got the hang of our schedule and St Ruth's controls very quickly and did a sterling job for the whole weekend. Thanks too to Mr Brummitt for delivering a certain trophy to us from far off Bolton and to the judges who awarded it to us. And finally of course thanks to Noel and the team for organising a great show.
     
    Next up... Burton on Trent in 3 weeks time. I think that the main work before then will be some more debugging of the new bits.
     
    A few photos of some other layouts that caught my eye. As usual my photos don't do them justice...
     
    Loch Tat - lovely colouring
     

     
    Brixcombe
     

     
    Westcliff
     

  17. D869

    Back to the Drawing Board

    By D869,

    Regular readers may have observed a certain 'theme' to some of my wagon building over the past few years and perhaps even wondered about the reason behind my seemingly incessant fixation with tank wagons.
     
    It's not a huge secret that I've been intending to do something based on what most people in our community will know as 'Hayle Wharf', so here, finally is the start of it.
     
    There are actually several wharves at Hayle, so I've decided to use the more specific name 'Hayle North Quay' as the title for the layout - basically this is the part that is of most interest to the likes of us, being home to a number of rail connected industries including the power station, bromine works, an oil terminal and a domestic coal depot.
     
    For those unfamiliar with the place, there are several nice Aerofilms photos online. The one that best sums up the bit I'm intending to model is...
     
    http://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/image/eaw033731
     
    My plan is to use the old hotel and the limekiln as 'book ends' for the layout because they are (or rather, were) both interesting old buildings. The power station and the main (and very big) process buildings of the bromine works will be off stage to the left.
     
    To do this to scale would need about 6 feet but I'm squashing it down to 4'6. Actually that turns out to be surprisingly hard to do because it's a pretty busy place with lots of trackwork so when you chop some length out of one section it usually messes something else up.
     
    After winding up with some unexpectedly vicious radii in places on South Yard I was determined not to make the same mistake again so I opted for the pain of trying to learn Templot. It's a pretty strange beast but I think I have finally coaxed something out of it that I'm starting to be happy with.
     
    Step 1 was to load up some OS maps and an Aerofilms vertical photo as background images and use these to try to trace out the real track layout.
    Step 2 was to do some selective compression. I didn't find Templot was a particularly good fit for this job so instead I went low tech by printing the plan out and then taking a pair of scissors to it.
    Step 3 was to stick the plan back together and bung it on the scanner, import it back into Templot and then try to produce a track alignment that actually works in the reduced space.
     
    The third step has taken quite some time - a lot of nudging bits of track around a little, fiddling with crossing angles and curve radii but I think I'm finally getting there.
     
    The key bit seems to be the central 'loop' including the two turnouts and the diamond crossing that provide the connections to the bromine works and the oil depot. The word 'loop' suggests a run-round but in reality it was not used like that - all trains were propelled onto the quay. I might occasionally break that rule though.
     
    The latest step has been to print the loop section out at full size, stick the bits together and have a long hard look at them on the table. I'm now on the third version.
     
    There is still plenty more to do before the plan is finished - I haven't yet decided on the front to back dimension - I'm aiming for 22 inches but that might be too tight a squeeze. There is also the vertical dimension to take care of - in spite of appearances, the trackwork was not on a level playing field - it was definitely uphill to the bromine works.
     
    Some photos...
     
    Some tank wagons on the first version of the loop alignment. The bromine tank is on the connection to the Octel bromine works.

     
    Versions 2 (right) and 3 (left) from the 'rest of the world' end. The loop curve on V2 was 3 feet radius but it wasn't happy with the way it looked. Version 3 has a slightly bigger radius. The way that the left hand line rejoins the 'main' line at the far end looked pretty odd in version 1. Version 2 was an attempt to fix that but it still looked odd.

     
    Versions 2 (left) and 3 (right) from the 'power station' end. The loop has more 'breathing space' on V3 although the real thing had more room still. The odd track alignment on the loop end isn't too obvious in this photo but it was really bugging me.

  18. D869

    Branch Home

    By D869,

    Those of you who frequent the workbench thread in the 2mm forum may have seen some work in progress shots of this signal. It's now been planted on the layout and is ready for service at the Swindon show this weekend.
     

    Planted using finest grade scenic putty

     

    Connected up and ballasted

     
    Edit: Wigan
     
    We had been planning to be at Wigan next month but it seems that something went awry with the emails to or from the organisers. By the time we got through by phone it was too late so we won't be there this year. Sorry if anyone is disappointed.
  19. D869

    Bubble Car

    By D869,

    By popular request (well, one person anyway), I will occasionally post an article describing one of my earlier projects. This one is about my bubble car and its trailer.
     
    If you think that this is to fill in when I don't have much to say about active projects, then I couldn't possibly comment…
     
    The bubble car is the mainstay of the passenger service to South Yard (there isn't room on the layout for anything more). The model is 'based on' a BH Enterprises kit and a Kato chassis that I picked up from MG Sharp at the Warley show a few years ago.
     
    I picked the Gloucester class 122 variant (without headcode boxes) for my model. There are some photos by John Vaughan of 55016 on the Looe branch on railcar.co.uk, so it's a reasonable match for my chosen period. This was a fortunate choice because Dapol have gone for the class 121, so at least my bubble car doesn't look the same as the off-the-shelf model. As far as I can tell, the trailer cars were nowhere near Devon or Cornwall by 1970, but the trailer was part of the kit so I modelled a Pressed Steel one that would have frequented the branches West of London.
     

     
    BHE have continued the range of kits previously produced by Fleetline and MTK before them. At the time I bought it, I didn't know of any other DMU kits and the Dapol bubble car was probably not even a gleam in anybody's eye. I'd built several of these kits in the past, so I knew their strengths and weaknesses. The kits provide an opaque plastic floor, roof and clear plastic sides. There are etched overlays for the sides, moulded plastic bogies and whitemetal ends and underframe details. The kit provides no real help with fitting any kind of drive unit.
     
    The whitemetal castings were hopeless in MTK days and they were still hopeless when I bought my kit, so they went in the bin without further ado. Most of the rest of the kit is quite reasonable, although the accuracy of the BHE floor mouldings was pretty poor on my example and needed remedial work by shaving with a chisel (the old MTK/Fleetline ones were better).
     
    Having binned the end castings, I had given myself quite a lot of work to create some new cabs. These were made up from a solid multi-layer sandwich of 40 thou plasticard which was then drilled, filed and carved until the right shape was achieved. Quite a lot of work, but I was pretty happy with the end result. I also tried fabricating an end using some thinner plasticard and a sort of composite plasticard structure behind it to create the right shape. This turned out OK as well, so I used it on the trailer car. Since then I've discovered that Worsley Works sell etched DMU ends that would have saved me a bunch of effort. Such is life.
     
    The Kato chassis was intended for some sort of Japanese railcar, so it had a nice low profile and partial mouldings of seats on top too, which was useful. I had to chop a few mill from each end to make it fit lengthways. Widthways I think I needed to shave some thickness from the back of the sides and I probably also cheated a little by setting the bottoms a little further apart than they should really be. The chassis uses a split axle design with pinpoint bearings. If memory serves, it also had traction tyres which meant that it wasn't a good candidate for the 2mm Association wheel turning service, so I had to improvise.
     
    My re-wheeling solution involved the use of some very old 2mm Association coach wheels on 1mm axles. These have brass backs for most of their diameter with an insulating boss around the axle. I hammered some 5 amp fuse wire flat (and very thin) and soldered this to the back of the wheel. I then poked the end of it into the axle hole, pushed the axle in and then assembled these onto the Kato gear muffs. The result is not perfectly true, but it does the job.
     
    The detail on the Kato chassis was filed away and representations of class 122 underframe equipment from plasticard were added instead. Likewise, the Japanese bogie detail was filed off and plasticard overlays added to produce something resembling a British DMU bogie.
     
    Test running showed that the chassis was a little 'skittish' but could be calmed down nicely by adding some weight. The snag was that there wasn't anywhere to hide the weight so I wound up having to put a piece of lead sheet it in the roof space. This means that the centre of gravity is rather higher than I would like so the ride is probably a bit rock and roll.
     
    One final bit of pain was attaching the etched sides. This is done after everything is painted, but from past experience I've struggled to find an adhesive that will fix brass to MTK or BHE clear plastic and is both neat and permanent. For the bubble car I used 24 hour epoxy. This has held so far, but judging the right amount proved very difficult. On one side of the trailer car I used too much and it oozed out onto the paintwork before setting. I have no idea how to rectify this so the trailer car now always presents the same side to the audience to hide my mistake.
     
    The cab windows were flush glazed by cutting clear plastic sheet and gradually filing it to fit. This takes a lot of time but I don't know of any way to get better results. The trailer cab is still awaiting glazing and grab rails. I'll get around to it one day.
     
    I couldn't find anything suitable for the 2 digit headcodes - these use a different (taller, thinner) font from the 4 character ones so I got hold of a free font editing tool on the Internet and created my own font by tracing around some scanned photos. This was then printed to the right size, sprayed with clear lacquer and stuck to the DMU with a frame made from 5 thou plasticard stuck on top.
     
    So now I have a bubble car to run the passenger services to South Yard as well as occasional trips to the seaside on the branch service at St Ruth. It's quite easy to pick faults with it (there are plenty), but I'll gloss over that. It will probably be mistaken for an RTR model by some observers, but at least I know that it took a lot more time and care than that.
  20. D869

    Building Buildings

    By D869,

    There is a bit of a theme to our lives at the moment... getting the buildings built.
     
    We have accepted an invite to the Nottingham show in March next year so it's now all hands to the pumps to get a reasonable set of buildings into place on the layout. Most of us have little or no prior experience of doing this, but I think that everyone has produced good results.
     
    The photos below were taken at our most recent meeting where we had most of the current crop of buildings in place on the layout... although unfortunately the backscenes were not fitted and I'm not such a dab hand with Photoshop as Mr Nevard of this parish... still, best to save some things for the show maybe.
     
    There are still some unfinished buildings and several that have not yet been started but I think that (as a project manager I once worked with would always say) 'progress is good'.
     

    The low relief warehouses are coming along behind Dick's station but the goods shed is conspicuous by its absence.
     

    Glyn's signal box, Chris's terrace and John's shops. Chris has now accepted the commission for the Cliff Hotel which will fill in the big gap in this photo.
     

    The Royale Hotel (mine) and its neighbours (John and Chris's). They will hopefully be at rather less jaunty angles before show time. Work on the houses to the east of the hotel is underway.
     

    I think that Chris is winning the stakes for the most buildings made. This is his latest residence.
  21. D869

    Burton 2013

    By D869,

    First of all an apology - no pictures this time!
     
    Yesterday we took St Ruth to the Burton show held in the brewery museum. I spent most of the day on the fiddle yard where it is at least possible to make eye contact with the audience so was able to talk to a few people. We had some favourable comments from the audience although behind the scenes things were not entirely going according to plan.
     
    Burton is a one day show so it was an early start, setup, do the show and pack up all in the same day. This meant we hadn't had time to check things over before the show opened and on starting to run the schedule we immediately found that four electrical sections in the station had decided to go completely AWOL for some unknown reason.
     
    The first half hour or so of the show was done with the lid off the control panel so that John could replace one of the PCBs. This meant that the operators were crouching on the floor whenever they needed to press a button on the panel. Even after that was dealt with there were other problems - the yard headshunt section remained AWOL for the whole show which made shunting the yard even more difficult than normal and the fiddle yard electrics were not their normal selves either.
     
    I'm still puzzled about how we can put the layout away in a working state after a 2 day show and then just 3 weeks later it has developed multiple electrical gremlins on boards that are separated by at least 8 feet.
     
    Anyway, I think we still enjoyed ourselves even though the day was a bit hectic. The bacon butties were very welcome in the morning but for some reason we didn't get any free beer vouchers, so maybe a point of improvement for the organisers there.
  22. D869

    Chelford 2018

    By D869,

    Yesterday I took all of my various Hayle related bits and pieces to the Supermeet/Skills day at Chelford. It was a great day but it's fair to say that I was ready for some sleep by the time I got home again.
     

     
    I got a bunch of my research photos printed by one of the online companies. I hadn't actually realised just how many I'd managed to hoover up while researching Hayle. The ones that fitted into the display hangers were probably less than half of the ones printed... and there were still a good few that I did not print.
     
    Apart from being an opportunity to have an enjoyable day rabbiting on about my own interests to anyone willing to listen it was also a good chance to see how the shunting tractor performed over the course of a full day's operation. It was still working at packing up time so there were no major breakages although it did exhibit some rather odd behaviour late in the afternoon that will probably be tricky to pin down because I predict that it will perform perfectly when I try to make it do the same thing back at base. I wired up the 'main line' for locomotive operation on the day before the show but lots of people were asking questions about how it works so the lid was being lifted frequently and the loco didn't spend much time actually being used.
     
    Laurie Adams spent a good while chatting about shunting tractors so it was great to compare notes. Laurie and a few other people had a go at driving and quite a few people declined to have a go when offered.
     
    I also picked up another Worsley Works class 22 kit from Mr Doherty... and found a third for a very reasonable sum on the bring and buy stand.
  23. D869

    Class 22 - Part 1

    By D869,

    Look at a few photos of trains in Devon and Cornwall in the 1960s and the chances are that you will see class 22s cropping up quite often. Although they were regarded as probably the least successful of the WR diesel hydraulics, they were a key part of the scene in the South West and I needed at least one of them if my stock was going to be representative of my chosen location and period.
     
    That’s easy to say but the problem was how to create a model of a class 22 – the number of louvres on their sides made them a pretty unappealing prospect for a scratchbuild. Fortunately I found out about the Worsley Works kit a few years ago and bought an ‘N’ Gauge example at the 2mm Expo in Oxford in 2008. There matters rested while the kit sat in my gloat box.
     
    One of the other challenges with modelling the Class 22 is getting decent prototype info. The published drawings are pretty vague, particularly regarding what was on the roof. For such a short-lived and relatively small class, the detail variations are an absolute minefield so we really need lots of photos. Richard Lake and I pooled our resources and collected all of the photos we could find in published sources or on the Internet. Richard has since abandoned his plan to build one and passed a big box of photos on to me.
     
    After the 2010 Expo I decided that it was about time to make a start. Before doing so, I decided to ‘get my hand in’ by tackling a couple of etched wagon kits that were in the gloat box and then made a start on the class 22.
     
    As far as I can see, Allen Doherty (Mr Worsley Works) has hit the same difficulties with the lack of decent prototype info that I’ve hit. Dapol have also made similar remarks regarding the development of their 00 gauge model. In fact I suspect that creating a convincing reproduction of a class 22 is rather more art than science. In several places I have decided to depart from the kit as provided. I’m happy with my results (so far), but I seriously doubt whether anybody can say who has really got it right.
     
    Given the (deliberate) lack of instructions with the kit, I thought it worth recording what I did in this blog. Others might find it useful and one day I might even build another one myself. I’ll talk in more detail about some of the features and variations of the prototype as construction progresses.
     
    I’m probably going to pick one of the locos that stayed green until withdrawal in 1971. This should give me more possibilities for using it for different duties on St Ruth while also staying true to my 1968-72 period. Hopefully when it’s finished it might look something like this photo by Max Batten…
     

     
    In my next posting I will hopefully start talking about how I am actually building the thing.
  24. D869

    Class 22 - Part 10

    By D869,

    A quick update photo from the paint shop of the body with all of its main paint colours applied residing in its custom Ferrero Rocher anti-dust cabinet.
     

     
    There is still a lot to do - the lower bodyside stripes are next followed by tidying up of all of the messy and oversprayed areas (especially where it is yellow and shouldn't be), transfers, varnish and weathering to a very work-worn 1969 condition.
     
    Not everything has gone completely to plan - the worst problem being that the green finish has tiny white flecks in it. This was caused by mixing some Humbrol white with the Precision green to 'pre-fade' it. It should have worked OK but it didn't. I later found out why...
     
    I started the yellow panels by masking with Tamiya tape (I lost count of how many pieces) and then loaded the airbrush up with thinned Humbrol white and found that it would not spray at all. It seems that my tin of white had degraded to the point where no amount of stirring would stop it congealing. It congealed in the airbrush cup and the lumps got picked straight up by the brush and blocked it. That tin has now been consigned to the bin. After over 1 hour of cleaning the airbrush and a brand new tin of white things were back on track.
     
    I'm still hopeful of finishing this before we reach 'Class 22 - Part 22'.
  25. D869

    Class 22 - Part 11 (The End)

    By D869,

    D6309 is pretty much finished now and is ready to earn its keep on South Yard and St Ruth. It even went on holiday (with South Yard) to its native Cornwall a couple of weeks ago.
     

     
    The trip through the paint shop was fairly long and painful, the lowest point being when I sprayed it with Humbrol matt varnish to protect the transfers only to find that this left a horrid translucent effect over the whole loco. I rescued this with an wash of thinned Precison green applied by brush. Thankfully this worked, otherwise it would have been time for the paint stripper.
     
    The lining was done with the Bob Moore pen. This went very smoothly and only needed a bit of tidying up to make the ends nice and crisp.
     
    The transfers are old Woodhead ones that I have had for many years. These were resurrected using Microscale liquid decal film thanks to a tip on RMWeb.
     
    Weathering was all done by brush - I am not yet confident enough to do this with the airbrush (certainly not on something that has taken so long to reach this stage). The effect I was looking for was to reproduce the very run down condition of these locos (especially the remaining green ones) circa 1969. I think I achieved what I wanted to do (they were really grotty), but after doing it I wasn't quite so sure that I wanted it any more.
     
    The glazing is 10 thou clear sheet glued behind the body sides using Formula 560 Canopy glue. I would have liked to do true flush glazing for the windscreens. I tried to do it but found that I couldn't persuade 10 thou glazing to stay put in a hole in a 10 thou metal loco body.
     
    The headcodes are done using some letters that I had specially produced for me by a local printing company a long time ago. They were photographed from my hand drawn artwork onto some sort of special printing film (not normal photographic film - I tried that unsuccessfully) so that when fixed into place the headcodes appear to be behind glass. I suspect that this way of doing things has probably been superseded by computerised printing so it may not be possible to do this again.
     
    There are still a few bits and bobs remaining - the cab door handrails are the main exterior items. I'm also going to try to fit a bit of cab detail if this can be done without it looking silly. There are still a few places on where too much daylight is visible through the side windows and louvres so I need to add a few more bits of black plastikard to block this.
     
    I'd also like to make the wheel flanges less shiny if this can be done without compromising the running, but I'm not sure how to do this.
     
    One day I might reinstate the lights to illuminate the headcodes from behind. I'd also really like to get a sound system working but I think that this would need to be under the baseboard both in terms of practicality and sound quality. So far I haven't found a good under baseboard system that can be set up with sounds to represent different loco types. I think it's quite a small niche market, so maybe it's too big an ask.
     
    Overall I am very happy with the end result. The loco (to me anyway) looks the part and moves very well indeed thanks to its Atlas running gear. I might even build another one... but not just yet.
     
    Here are a couple more photos...
     

     

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