More Painting Progress

Also going through the paint shop at the moment is the last of the 3 13m WHR saloons I batch built a number of years ago.

This is number 2045.

Yes, we are a little behind the times. This carriage entered service on the real railway when it was still terminating at Rhyd Ddu!

Himself is also cracking on with our replacement carriage 10 (Van 2 in more ways that one for us!) which is being finished in the Col. Stephens livery it runs in currently.

Again this has prompted some colour debate about the shade that should go on the ends and along the frame.

Do you go with something at the redder end of the colour chart or more orange?

After much discussion and comparison with photographs we have of the carriage we've gone for the more orange option - in fact it is called Lining Orange on the Humbrol colour chart.

It's a very tricky business.

Primed For Action

Having chided Himself on the pages of this blog last week for going on strike and not venturing into the workshop when the cold weather hit he's been working hard this week.

Our 2nd model of carriage/van 10 has been treated to a coat of primer now along with another duplicate, a model of carriage 116 in its current condition.

This one has been sitting in the drawer of doom for a few years now.

116 has spend a lot of the last couple of years strengthening the rakes on the WHR trains, if memory serves, so it'll be a very useful addition to the Bron Hebog fleet.

In fact it's the 3rd model we have of this mid-1970's prototype, the other two showing it in its original configuration as a composite with the 1st class compartment at the Porthmadog end, marked by a wider window.

The carriage was rebuilt as a 3rd class saloon a few years ago with the window spaces equalised which is the way its been captured here.

10 Plus 10

Over the years we've acquired a number of duplicates in our carriage fleet.

Mostly it's on account of the FR rebuilding the original or changing it in some significant way or my scratch building techniques improving to such a degree that it was vaguely embarrassing to have carriages I built over 20 years ago running around on the layout.

In the case of Number 10 - no, never Van 2 around here! - it's a combination of both of the above plus a third factor: the failure of the original.

In this case it's just one of the plastic bogies from the Parkside Dundas kit which has given up the ghost, and they're easily replaceable, but it provided a very good excuse to do something I've been meaning to do for a number of years now which is built a second kit and finish it in the livery the vehicle is currently running around in, with the red stripe along the bottom of the bodysides and on the ends.

So to this end Himself has been making up another Dundas kit and adding extra details such as the gutter downpipes and the truss rods beneath the frame as well as the vac pipes.

I hope this might spur us on to creating a fuller Col Stephens set to run on Bron Hebog where we're rather short of Heritage train formations - I'm already thinking about new models of carriage 16 and 20 in the green and red livery, making use of the Worsley Works scratch-aid kits.