Review Of The Year - Part 2

Picking up on our look back at the year, and a lot of what we were up to in the spring revolved around the carriage fleet.

 

April

A long-term ambition had been to get round to buying and assembling a Chris Veitch brass kit for the FR 'sentry' brake van, which makes a very distinctive model full of Victorian character.

Trying our best to keep up with the carriage works in Wales we also set making a miniature version of the Welsh Highland Heritage Railway's new Pickering brake replica.

This project had a false start because, at first, I purchased the Dundas brass kit.

Once Himself put the body together he found there were a few inaccuracies in the dimensions, but more importantly from our point of view, the design made it difficult to paint and to fit an interior.

So we put that one on ice and got hold of the alternative body kit from Worsley Works.

If you read the first part of the Review you'll have seen a picture of the early stages of my commission to scratch build a model of Carnforth buffet car 114.

This was a snap I took just before it was sent off to its new home.

May

A crucial part of the Pickering project was to find a way to depict the fake lamp pots on the roof.

I had a number of goes at scratch building one which could be copied with resin casting.

Himself got round to finishing off the paint job on the 3mm scale ex-GWR 2-8-0 tank engines he'd been building for the Engineering Consultant.

It was just as well we kept in his good books, unknown to anyone, he was about to become a very important person in the top left hand corner of Wales.

In this month I also resolved that the time had come to make a model of the WHR's diesel shunter at Dinas.

The post about my intentions resulted in an offer to try out one of the prototype body kits from RT Models....

June

The paint job on the Pickering brake was one of the more straightforward ones so we didn't have long to wait for a picture of it posed ready for service on Bron Hebog.

With the Pickering built it left the Hudson toast rack carriage as one of the obvious missing vehicles from our WHHR sets.

We managed to get hold of one of the 009 Society kits before they sold out, but I was also keen to have a second model of the FR replica 39 in its current green livery, so the only option left was to scratch build.

This was a fortunate move because it transpired that Winson Engineering wasn't capable of making an exact copy of the original carriage, and there are some fundamental differences between the 1990s version and the original carriages.

My plan was to make a master for the carriage sides in styrene and cast a copy of it - the one in the picture shows me starting to embellish it with extra details in brass and styrene.

And June was also the month when, after much planning, we began installing the baseboard for a permanent dual gauge test track, my first home layout since I was a teenager.

We came up with an 8ft x 5ft board which can be folded into a frame on the wall when the space in the study is required for something more boring, such as *spoiler alert* self-isolating from Covid-19.....

Review Of The Year - Part 1

And so we come to the end of another year of lockdown and exhibition-less modelling - for us at least.

It's ironic that the reason I began this blog nearly a million page views ago, was to have a way of showing off what we were doing while we were in the long process of building Bron Hebog, and while Dduallt was retired from shows.

Never could I have imagined we'd face such a sustained period where modelling, once again, became an almost exclusively private activity in your home, with no communal outlet.

It's one reason to be thankful for the opportunities the online world gives us.

Now, as I always do at the end of December, I'm going to take a look back - three months at a time - at some of the highlights of our modelling .

January

I'm afraid to say that there's been little progress since the start of the year on my prototype for the FR infrastructure well wagon,

Since this picture was taken I have found a way to cast the deck pieces in styrene, but it still doesn't have any couplings so has yet to be given any sort of test run.

Himself was busy adding the final pipe runs onto to the boiler unit of the Backwoods NG G16 kit for our model of the freshly restored 130.

And he was also well on the way to lining out a set of three 3mm Hawksworth carriage kits he'd been making as a favour to the Engineering Consultant - a man who was destined for higher things before the year was out!

February

This was the year my son reached an age where he was ready for his first OO layout, and I found my moulding and resin casting skills came in handy fixing a second hand Mainline wagon which had lost one of its sliding doors on one side.

Once the pipe runs were finished on the real locomotive, Himself wasted no time in getting our 130 painted, lined, and sent on a test run on Bron Hebog.

It really looked quite the part!

Another locomotive which was finished off - after many years - was our Mercian Welsh Pony, which looks absolutely stunning matched with the Victorian set.

March

Our James Spooner II project was in danger of running perilously far ahead of the real build as Himself had a play around with the etches to see how the half cab arrangement would work,

This is a model I hope we can expect more updates on in 2022.

Many years after our first model was stolen at an exhibition, Himself finished off his long-term project to make a replacement of the works shunter Harold. (aka, Shitty the Shunter)

At this time I was busy working on a commission for a scratch built model of Carnforth buffet car 114 in styrene.

To be continued...

Buffet Service

The model of Carnforth buffet car 114 I've been building for a customer is ready to be sent off to its new home.

The blue panel behind the windows is just a protective film on the glazing sheets to prevent them getting scratched.

The challenge on this carriage was to make it match its brass-built twins as much as possible, which is no easy task working in styrene.

We'll find out for sure once my customer has painted it.

Floor Show

Over the Easter weekend I got a bit more work done on the contract job for a model of FR buffet car 114.

Having shown you the body shell in a previous post, this time I'm concentrating on the floor / chassis unit which will remain removable after the model is finished.

The seats are resin castings, using moulds I developed last year for the same customer.

In this carriage only have half the space is given over to passengers and I've yet to work out what needs to in the buffet area - I don't have any images to work from.

The underframe has a new innovation for me.

These Carnforth carriages have very distinctive truss rods made out of square tube section.

I've got an idea they might double as the vacuum brake pipes, but I could be wrong in that?

On previous models I've made these by fabricating each one out of styrene strip.

This time I hit on the idea of making a master and casting resin copies of it, with the idea they'd have more strength and durability and I think they've turned out very well.

The carriage will run on my own design of modern FR bogies with fold-up brass frames with resin covers.

Buffet Box

I passed that magic moment this week where a carriage stops being four separate pieces and comes together into a body shell.

114 is much more delicate that my average styrene carriage because it has so little beading on the outside, meaning that most of it is just 0.20" thick.

In order to prevent it developing any permanent warp I quickly moved on to cutting the floor / chassis and not only making the roof but gluing it into position at a much earlier stage than I usually would.

This should keep in shape reasonably well, and by the time I have fitted the seats and the glazing it will be really quite solid.

Mental Blank

Why does no one ever tell me?

There I've been, merrily posting pictures of progress on the sides of buffet car 144 and it wasn't until I neared the point when I thought it was done that I noticed it..

There was one window too many!

I suspect I misread my homemade drawing and instead of blanking off the space I unthinkingly rounded it off like the rest of the windows.

Never mind, the beauty of modelling with styrene - and why I get on so much better with it than metal - is it was the work of seconds to rip out the strip forming the window frame, clean out the Milliput in the corners, and insert a snugly-fitting square of styrene in its place.

Thin Strip

The one thing the trio of Carnforth INCA carriages have in their favour, from a scratch builder's point of view, is they have very much less beading than almost any other FR vehicles.

Once the biggest headache of making the rounded window frames is overcome, it doesn't take too long to add the rest of the surface to each of the sides.

On this build I'm using strip which is 50% thinner (0.10") than the stuff I would use on my own models to try and get it to match as close as I can to its etched brass running mates.

The last thing left to do on these is to add horizonal bars on on the windows which opened, which were fewer on the buffet car than the two composites.

Round And Round

There's been some gentle progression on the commission to scratch build a model of FR buffet car 114 in styrene this week.

Before I can start adding a second layer of detail on the sides I needed to fill the gaps at the corners of the window frames.

My favourite material for these jobs is Milliput.

It doesn't dry too quickly and crumble like the sort of model fillers you squeeze out of tubes, and if you wet the surface it will flow into the tiniest gap and leave a brilliantly smooth finish, as well as setting very hard.

I've also made the base pieces for the two ends of the carriage.

For these I've used a different technique to get rounded corners, this time gluing tiny triangles of styrene strip into the corners and using a file to shape them.

Two Sides Of The Story

A little more work has been put in on the contract job for a model of Carnforth buffet car 114.

The window frame detail has been added in using the 10 thou strip technique I described in a previous post.

Once you get your eye in and establish a rhythm it's quite a relaxing and enjoyable job, and also very satisfying when you see the finished effect.

The most important thing is to try to use reasonably 'fresh' strip - if it's too old and brittle there is a risk it will snap at the corners when you apply a drop of solvent along the edges.

I think I might make the carriage ends - and fill the corner gaps on these sides with Milliput - before I go on to add beading detail.

The Sea Side

Although it's been a big week for us taking the metaphorical covers off two new locomotives for the fleet, I haven't managed to get that much modelling done myself.

I'm in the middle of delivering another epic voluntary project, which is eating up most of my free time, so I was pleased to be able to get an hour in the study making a start on the other side of Carnforth buffet car 114 - the side which faces the sea when it is on The Cob, otherwise known as the 'engine side' in Boston Lodge parlance. 

This foundation stage is always the most important bit to get right.

You need to make sure it matches the other side in terms of length and height, that the window pillars are perpendicular and a mirror image of those on the opposing side of the carriage when it is assembled.

My next task will be to tease the thin strip into position around the inside edges to form those distinctive window frames on the Carnforth stock.

No Cutting Corners

 

A start is being made on my mission to scratch build 'Carnforth' buffet car 114 for a customer.

The most difficult part of this trio of FR carriages is representing their big windows which have a very obvious frame with rounded corners.

The solution I hit on when I made my own fleet of these around 20 years ago is to create the window apertures as usual with vertical and horizontal pieces of strip, with the square corners.

Then I take a very thin piece of strip - in this case 0.10" x 0.30" which when fixed on its side stands slightly proud of the 0.20" thick window pillars.

I curl that around the inside edge of the window, glueing it only along the straight edges with the smallest drop of solvent and letting it naturally form an arc in the corners.

With some very careful cutting with the scalpel I can made the two ends meet so precisely that you can't see the join unless you look really closely.

It takes a little while to do each one but I think the effect is worth the effort.

Afterwards I will use Milliput to fill the cap in the corners and once its painted you'll never notice.

Copy Shop

I've been given a new scratch building challenge.

A long-standing customer is looking for a model of the FR's Carnforth-built buffet car 114.

Straightforward enough.

The challenge is that the other two parts of the trio of carriages have been built using the Worsley brass scratch aid kits, but mine will be constructed from styrene.

What I have to do is try to and make mine as good a match as I can, which is tricky given the nature of the materials they're made from.

They've sent one of their existing carriages to use as a guide.

In case you were wondering, the reason I've been asked to scratch build it is because 114 has undergone changes to its design - an extra window on one side - compared to the Worsley version.