D869

Having looked at some more photos, it seems that it's quite easy to find Colletts that lack filler pipes. Some have plain handrails and others have filler pipes. You can find examples of both in Russell part 2. I haven't seen enough photos to show any particular pattern and I guess that individual vehicles may have had them added or removed during their lifetime, so it'll be a 'check photos' job. Regards, Andy

Thanks Mark. Not sure about speed - this one took 3 months start to finish and it's not painted yet, so it'll take a long time to turn out a train at that rate. Still, the next one now exists as a rolling chassis, so there's always hope. I agree that the Hawksworths are some of the most attractive coaches of their era... I reckon it's the domed ends to the roofs that do it. The Gresleys aren't bad either, but I can't justify too many of those. Regards, Andy

The scanning and printing operative was away on a business trip. He's back soon, so perhaps there will be some overlays made by reducing photos of the real thing.

Thanks David. I'm not sure about the early Colletts, but I do have a photo (added to the post) that I took of a later Collett at Buckfastleigh. This shows that the tank is very much off centre, similar to the Hawksworths. I suspect they are slightly different though - the photos of Hawksworths show both filler pipes bent at 45 degrees to join the filler whereas one of the Collett ones is straight. So... either the filler is slightly off centre or else one of the pipes is almost exactly on the centre line. I think that this vehicle has probably had some mods post-preservation though, but I doubt that the position of the tank and filler have changed. I also saw some 1960s photos of Colletts with roof tanks but no filler pipes, so may be a good choice for modelling. I'm contemplating a Masterclass Collett or two to form a mixed Collett/Hawksworth set - these should look much more in keeping with the Ultima Hawksworths than is the case with the Dapol Colletts. Regards, Andy

After being on the back burner for a while to make way for the completion of D604 and work on the next signal for St Ruth, I finally got round to doing some more on the Ultima Hawksworth BCK that I started in October. The coach is now ready for the paint shop (I just corrected a typo there - 'pain shop' - quite appropriate really). Although the coach is ready, I don't think it will be going near any paint for a little while - it's too flippin' cold and dark out there. For the most part, the coach went together in much the same way as the BG did last year. The main differences arise from the fact that this coach is passenger carrying, which means bigger windows to expose the presence or absence of an interior, seats and loos. As with the BG, I've made the roof removeable and added some nickel silver strips as strengtheners towards the top of the sides. Predictably, this complicates the interior a little but I did at least think ahead and located the centre strip in the area of the division between first and third class. The interiors are built up on a false floor of 30 thou black plastikard. I used the printed partitions from the kit pretty much as intended (barring some alterations to fit around the strengtheners), stuck together with canopy glue. I added some seats by stealing DavidK71's idea of using coloured paper. Naturally, I had to agonise over the colour for a long time before actually starting though. As far as I can tell the Hawksworth seats had a woven pattern - fawn on a red background for non smoking and on a dark blue background for smoking. The pattern for first class was much larger than the third class one. Having said that, other photos show Hawksworth coaches with a completely different material so it seems that there were at least two types, possibly related to the use of either wood or formica for the internal panelling. The third class seats are a dark brown card (from a cheese biscuits box). These are coloured by lightly going over them with felt tips. The pattern is too small to be visible, so I didn't bother. The first class seats use a lighter coloured paper from a buff envelope. These are coloured with felt tips with some attempt to suggest a visible pattern. I think the blue works OK but the red is a bit too light and bright for my liking. The good thing about having a removeable roof is that I can change things if I don't like how they look once the windows and curtains are fitted. The loo tanks have been discussed on DavidK71's thread. Checking photos supports the view that the fillers are very much off centre with respect to the tanks. Actually the fillers seem to be on the roof centre line (presumably because that's the highest point otherwise the water would fall out) so perhaps it's more accurate to say that the tanks are very much off centre. The etches in the kit don't have the filler sufficiently off centre, so I made the tanks from 10 thou plastikard… stuck them on… realised the next day that they were on the wrong side… sliced them off, sanded everything down and did it right the second time. The filler is 1.5mm round section fitted into a hole drilled through the tank and roof. My original plan was to do the loo filler pipes using wire which would be held in holes drilled into the plastic rod used for the filler. I made a start like this but found it was very tricky to get the pipe runs to stay parallel and generally not look messy. I was contemplating how to secure them to the roof ends (as per the prototype) - ideally I wanted to fix them using a sort of mini handrail knob in a drilled hole but I realised that it was going to be tricky to fit these given that there was no room to do any gluing on the underside of the roof because the coach ends were in the way. In the end I went for DavidK71's dodge and used 10 thou styrene rod. This gave a much neater result and I was so impressed that I extended the same approach onto the coach ends. The result looks a little more two dimensional than wire would but it's a darned sight easier to do a neat job and it also means that the two filler pipes can indeed be separate instead of being one continuous semicircle. I dropped the idea of sprung gangways but after agonising again over the Ultima castings I decided to stick with making my own from black plastikard. Once again these fit into holes cut in the end. Since the BCK can run on its own, at the end of or in the middle of a rake, I wanted to have some options regarding gangway position so at the back of the gangway is a brass wire retaining pin that locates into one of two holes drilled in the floor to allow the gangways to be sloped in the clipped back position or held vertical if being coupled in a rake. At the moment my plan is to put together another Ultima Hawksworth so that the two can be painted at the same time. As a first step, the Siphon G has now given up its (incorrect) long spring bogies and has been fitted with a pair of the NPCS variety built from my etches. Here's a photo of it next to the Siphon that I built many years ago with scratchbuilt sideframe overlays onto a 2mm Association bogie frame. Finally a view of my entire Hawksworth fleet... excepting the stuff in the gloat box of course. EDIT: A photo of a Collett roof at Buckfastleigh related to my answer to DavidK71's comment

I saw that announcement too. I'm very tempted. The trouble is that I probably want most of the things he's planning to offer... and then the gloat box is already well stocked with Ultima Hawksworths and a couple of Chris's Maunsells for good measure... but Chris's kits are a one time run... some tricky decisions to make.

Thanks Jez. It would be right for Par too - they were used from St Blazey on the clay trains in the 60s as well as their Plymouth-Penzance work. You just need to backdate a little.

Nice photos Jez. I particularly like the 50. I reckon that your passengers (or was it 'customers' by your period?) might be in for a shock when reaching the other end of your footbridge though. Regards, Andy

Thanks Mark. On the workbench I have the Hawksworth BCK which is gradually progressing alongside the next signal for St Ruth. As usual, there is no shortage of items waiting to get out of the gloat box but which one makes it out next is still up for grabs. I might put another Hawksworth together so that I can paint two at the same time, then there's the Masterclass 'P' Set, the Stephen Harris tanks and plenty of other choices. Loco-wise there are a couple of projects for which I have already shelled out some hard-earned. I'll say no more now other than that they will be quite a lot different from D604 and D6309 ;-) Regards, Andy

Thanks Pete. Actually this one took me about 4 months to finish, which is about half the time that the class 22 took, so I'm getting quicker and taxing my endurance less. It always surprises me how long it takes to get a model from 'almost finished' to 'finished' and I though it would be good to write about this one before I forget because it's a good example of the sort of nonsense that slows things down. I guess though that if we knew all of the little annoyances that were in store then we'd probably never start anything and that would be bad. Hope the travelling is going well. Regards, Andy

Thanks David. I think that anybody that says that has probably never really taken enough time to look at them. I certainly find the sheer variety of the early BR diesel (and electric) period fascinating. It was no way to run an industry but as a modelling period it's fantastic. Now if I could just squeeze in some of my other favourites from outside the south west... class 15s, class 76s, the Bulleid electric locos, early 25kV locos in electric blue... no... that's probably four different layouts. Regards, Andy

D604 is now ready for traffic. I'd like to say 'finished' but I suspect that some further attention to the chassis paintwork may still be needed. There was one body detail issue that needed to be sorted - I was not too happy with the empty rectangular vent openings in the roof. After trying to find prototype photos to figure out how to make them more realistic I noticed that they were only visible as openings in early photos of D600 and D601. Later roof photos of these and roof photos of D602 onwards are quite hard to find and not totally clear, but it was clear that these holes had been plated over on the whole fleet. This would have been easy to fix before painting but not now. Correcting it involved cutting some 5 thou nickel silver to fit snugly inside the holes and then a second slightly larger piece to overlap. Both were then curved to the roof profile and soldered together. Cleaning and painting such tiny bits of metal was a challenge, but after doing this the completed blanking pieces were glued in place. I'm a lot happier with these than I was with the empty rectangular holes. The main items missing at the AGM were the completed bogies. These are now done and painted and on the loco. Painting was done (after degreasing) using Halfords grey primer and Humbrol enamels. Putting the bogies back onto the loco proved to be enough to dislodge some of the paint from the raised ribs on the bogie sideframes, so I suspect that the future may hold a strip-down and repaint starting with the Precision 2 pack etch primer that I've been too scared to use until now for fear that it will etch the inside of my airbrush. Fitting the proper bogies also provided some extra clearance below the body so that the ride height could be lowered. This apparently simple task proved to be a long and difficult process… The body to chassis fixing is probably the part of this build that I am least happy with. I tried to figure out a way to arrange a robust screw fixing but in the end it defeated me and I resorted to making some wedge shaped clips from plastikard to replicate the ones inside Farish bodies. Some large plastikard strips were glued inside the body and the clips attached to these with solvent. The body height is governed by some spacers attached to a plastikard tray that sits on top of the chassis. For the most part the body stays put when I want it to and can be removed when needed, but it is far from perfect. In my previous post I mentioned that one end of the loco appeared to be sitting slightly higher than the other. I first noticed this problem late on the day of the AGM and it had not gone away. My first step was to carefully measure the roof supports and then file them down by 0.5mm to achieve the lowering that I had intended. The result was that one end got lower but the other end didn't budge. After a lot of peering inside the body under bright lights, assembly and disassembly I finally tried putting just the plastikard tray from the chassis inside the upturned body and noticed that it was slightly too wide and jamming between the plastikard inserts behind the cooler intakes. A bit of filing solved this. I reassembled the loco… problem solved? No. More peering through the windows revealed that the parts of the chassis cover that were intended to hide the worm gear were fouling the cab detail insert at one end, so I disassembled, cut this back to provide some clearance and reassembled. Problem solved? No. Next I noticed that the high end still had a block of plastikard underneath the cab detail insert. I needed this to provide something to grip with pliers while positioning the cab inserts for gluing. Some tricky work with a sharpened screwdriver removed this. Problem solved? No. Finally I noticed that the bogie at the high end was not free to tilt in the same way as the other end. Forcing it to tilt caused the end of the body to rise even further. More peering into the cab under bright lights revealed that the cab detail insert was sitting on top of the plastic housing for the front worm bearing. Solving this involved removing the cab insert to allow it to be filed down so that it fitted up against the windscreen more snugly and also trimming a little off the rear. Problem finally solved! Once the painted bogies were refitted to the loco I added the couplings. Then I noticed that they were not sticking out far enough at one end. Close inspection showed that the body was not quite central in the fore and aft direction so the cab footsteps didn't line up in the same way at both ends either. Fixing this entailed slicing off the body fixing wedges and re-attaching them after moving them along by 0.5mm. After setting overnight I reassembled the loco… and the body was then sitting too high at the other end :angry: . I figured this problem out in one attempt - the ends of the chassis block were now fouling the cab inserts. I tried shaving the back edges of the cab insert, but it seemed unlikely to get me enough clearance so the fix was… disassemble the whole chassis and cut some more metal off the block, clean everything up again and reassemble. It took rather longer to actually do it. Since I haven't said much about the chassis and I had it in pieces to fix the ride height, I thought I'd take the opportunity to grab a couple of photos. It started as a Bachfar 47 chassis bought secondhand. Unfortunately it proved to be a less than perfect runner and the previous owner had tried to 'repair' it by filling every available crevice with oil. It had to be completely stripped down to remove the resulting gunge after which it ran rather better but was still not satisfactory. Swapping in a motor borrowed from the Bachfar Western transformed the running, so a new motor was ordered for D604 and things got better. One bogie pivot has been moved inwards by 3mm using the notches provided on the bachfar chassis block. This needed a new driveshaft to be made from brass. Some metal has been removed at both ends to allow the body to fit and daylight to shine through from one cab door window to the other. The battery box detail has been fabricated from plastikard and attaches to the chassis in a similar way to the original Farish class 47 fuel tank moulding. The bogies have been hard-wired using the 2mm Association flexible wire to a couple of tags that are held by the main chassis block screws. I think that this is a much more reliable pickup solution than a bit of phosphor bronze rubbing against the bottom of the chassis casting and have used it on several of my locos. A plastic tray has been made to sit on top of the chassis. This holds the body at the correct height, carries the cooling fans and provides a guide to keep the pickup wires in place. It also has extensions at the ends to prevent the shiny brass worms from being visible through the cab windows. Another photo of the finished article on its own and one with its partner in crime. Now D6309 is modelled in a condition that's about 4 or 5 years later than D604's presumed date, but I can't really resist running them together ... especially now that D604 sits a bit lower so their heights are a reasonable match.

This prompted me to go take a look in my books. Russell part 2 fig 106 is undated but shows a toplight FK that appears to be blood and custard. It still has its panelling and it seems that the top crimson band is confined to the raised panelling with the lining in the recessed part. I think this means that the crimson doesn't overlap the toplights at all but it's hard to be sure from this photo. 'GW Coaches in Colour' (Robertson) has a 1955 picture on page 26 which shows part of W3955W that has no panelling. On this one the crimson slightly overlaps the toplights and the top edge of the door. The 1955 photo would suggest a nice weathering project too. I think it's safe to say that this is not the livery that the GWR had in mind when they designed these coaches. As an aside... Robertson's book also has a pic on page 32 showing a toplight panelled (possibly ex-camping) coach in BR chocolate and cream - this has the top brown band and lining in much the same manner as the panelled blood and custard coach in Russell. Glad I'm not building any toplights in blood and custard Regards, Andy

A nice pair of locos Mark. You certainly seem to get your skates on with turning locos out, so I guess we can expect the class 14 by lunch time? Regards, Andy

A neat job as usual David. Painting and lining the top of the sides looks like a (ahem) fun job. Regards, Andy

Coming along nicely Jez Regards, Andy

Good luck with the move Pete, and with the modelling while doing the long distance commute. When I was commuting to the Netherlands each week I had available time in the evenings but the challenge was that I was travelling with hand luggage only and couldn't figure out much useful modelling work that could be done without cutting tools or solvents. I reckon that could have been solved if I'd found a place to stash a few locally bought essentials but never actually did it (although I did finally track down a local model shop). A decent light would probably also have been a challenge... hotels tend to go for 'subtle' (or rather... dim). I did get a few things drawn up on CAD though. If your new job brings you to the Midlands you could always look us up one evening. Regards, Andy

Nice photos Jerry. Look forward to seeing Tucking Mill at Warley. I'm quite tempted by the Renwick Wilton wagons because my Dad's family is from Dartmouth... even though these wagons are totally outside my period and would have nothing sensible to run with.

Thanks Pete. 'Heated' might be the wrong word, but certainly a few disgruntled folks... http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/62989-n-gauge-society-goes-west-with-its-5th-ready-to-run-model/

You could always whip them out and flog them to some poor soul waiting to convert a bunch of Farish Mark 1s. The 7mm wheels on 15.2mm axles are out of stock but the 6mm ones are still showing as in stock on the shop 2 list.

Umm... maybe 18 months ago but not now - don't think I can justify more than two Hawksworth BGs I just dug mine out and had another look. You're probably right. I probably checked them last time with 7mm wheels fitted - this definitely leaves them sitting too high. With 6mm wheels in the Dapol bogies they match up pretty well to Farish Mark 1s. The wheels are too small but given a choice between small wheels and a coach that looks too high, I'll go for the height. The Dapol wheels are about 6.3mm, so 6mm is a closer match for what the manufacturer fitted. ...then there is the question of the flush (ahem) glazing. Overall, I still like them as a model though so they will continue to get a run.

Yes I can, but that's the start of a slippery slope if they go on to ask about locos, Farish Mark 1s, Dapol Colletts (which seem rather big even for 'N')... the list goes on.

Yes - definitely tongue firmly embedded in cheek on that one. The method I've seen involves using flat strip on edge for the middle part of the bridge rail and then building up on either side of this, starting with the bridge rail flanges and then the visible parts of the baulks. Presumably you then get to add transoms, complete with suitable woodworking style joints. A simple piece of BG rolling stock might make a nice project, so I might take you up on that one... although strangely all of my rolling stock drawings and photo books seem to begin post 1892. Anything more than that is likely to be a long time in the future.. if at all.

I really admire photos of broad gauge stuff and I have a great deal of respect for the few people who actually build models of it. On the plus side, BG locos do seem to have a commendable absence of nasty things like outside valve gear and tapered boilers, plus probably having a good deal of space for hiding motors. On the downside, research is difficult and building baulk road track seems rather too much like hard work. Maybe I'll await the arrival of baulk road Easitrac... soon to be followed by dual gauge Easitrac no doubt.

A few words on recent progress hereabouts... The second bogie for D604 is now complete and looks much like the first one, so no need for any photos there. There are a couple of small jobs remaining before the new underframe bits get painted and then it should be 'job done'. We've been away in Wales for the past week sampling the Garretts on the Welsh Highland. Definitely a good way to see Snowdonia but take a coat because this narrow gauge stuff has no heating... especially if you want to ride in the open air coach. As usual I took along a few bits and bobs to work on. I assembled a couple of my own GW NPCS bogie etches which went together reasonably smoothly barring a couple of minor mistakes in the drawing. When painted these will be going under the blue Siphon and the displaced long spring bogies will take up residence under an Ultima Hawksworth. ... which leads neatly on to... The kit selected to leave the gloat box on this occasion was an Ultima Hawksworth BCK. I have several different Hawksworths in the gloat box but selected the BCK because it can on occasions be used to make up an entire passenger train on its own, which might be handy for South Yard. It might also appear in the St Ruth sleeper formation because I have a photo of a 1960s sleeper at Penzance with just such a vehicle providing the seating accommodation. I got as far as assembing the basic bodyshell and attaching the bogies while I was away, but there is plenty more work to do. Coincidentally while visiting Llangollen on a rather rainy day we happened across a Hawksworth brake vehicle (BTK I think) apparently in use as sleeping accommodation. So I now have my own photo of a pressed steel bogie... long spring variant though... South Yard didn't go on holiday with me on this occasion. Instead it was loaned to John to take to the Peterborough show where he was helping on the 2mm Association stand. Hopefully that went OK, but I haven't had any reports back as yet. Of course on returning from Wales I found some heated discussion on RMWeb around the announcement of the Hawksworth BG by the N Gauge Society. I have rather mixed feelings about this. On the one hand the availability of another a decent RTR coach model must be a good thing. On the other hand my kit built BG will now be compared to (or mistaken for) an RTR model. Anyway, I'm getting fairly used to building things now and then seeing them announced as RTR models. Maybe I should take up broad gauge modelling. I must admit that I find it rather disturbing that an announcement of a single type of coach available at some future date in limited numbers and to a restricted community can prompt the discontinuation of an entire range of kits. I understand the reasons and I think that the motivations of all concerned are fair enough but the end result does seem rather a backwards step for the whole community, at least until a wider range of RTR models does become available (if that ever happens). It also saddens me to see the supplier of a range that has been supporting 'N' gauge modelling for many years apparently feeling aggrieved by the actions of the society.