In The Paint Shop

After a long pause there's some progress to report on our project to build a modern day James Spooner from a Backwoods kit.

As you can see above, Himself has started the process of painting the superstructure.

It's had a coat of grey primer and the black has started to be applied.

This model has taken many years to build.

In fact it has been test running on the layouts since before we started the Minffordd project, getting a run on Bron Hebog at the final Warley show at the NEC.

It's also seen some use on Dduallt.

Some of the delay on  finishing the loco can be attributed to the long time it took to obtain some custom lining transfers.

We also spent quite a while wondering how to replicate the bells which sit between the chimneys and the domes, before eventually butchering one of the 3D printed static models (in a slightly smaller scale) which were being sold in the FR shop.

When it will actually get used is an open question.

It's the wrong era for Minffordd  (and dc-only) and there isn't any prospect of either Dduallt or Bron Hebog going out again, so it may have to wait for the Dinas project to get off the ground.

Minffordd Update: Grey Scale

I've always thought painting models to get them looking right is a hell of a lot harder then building them in the first place.

Thus, I was impressed on my latest 'inspection' - having been away on holiday - to see Himself put the paint brush between his teeth and had a go at getting some colour on the undoubted centrepiece of the new layout project, the arched stone bridge which carries the FR above the Cambrian at Minffordd.

Things like this are so tricky because a structure made out of natural rock, like this, will always look slightly different depending on the weather conditions on a particular day - how bright the sunlight is or whether it is wet or dry.

It's looking pretty good to me, so far.

I think perhaps it might still require a little more weathering - perhaps some vague hints of brown tones here and there to contrast from all the shades of grey - and even maybe some invasive vegetation creeping in, although structures like this benefitted from a little more 'gardening' care in the 1960s than they get today.

On the other side of the layout he's mostly completed the track laying in the yard - with just the NG spur into the goods shed remaining to be fixed down - and he's been able to conduct some shunting tests with the Kadee couplings and magnets which are a new adventure for us on this project.

Hopefully this means we can have some hands-free fun shunting the daily pick-up goods from Pwllheli.

Venting

As well as the Vale of Ffestiniog II, Himself has been doing some work on replica carriage 21 this week.

Now all the detailing work has been done it has been sprayed with primer ready for the application of its green / ivory livery with red ends.

It's adding the small details which really lift these Worsley Works kits, such as the ornate door grab handles, and the vents at the top of the doors.

These were made from a single strip of styrene which was scored with parallel lines and propped up with a smaller strip behind.

This was shaped subtly and chopped into the small lengths and glued in place.

Multi-Shade Shunter

For a humble yard shunter the Dinas-based Baguley Drewry number 9 carries an exotic mix of colours.

Himself is making solid progress adding the green and orange sections to the yellow base on the body.

The very fine band midway up the cab sheets has been covered with a waterslide transfer and will most likely be picked out in the same darker shade used on the top of the bonnet.

The orange on the rods and fly cranks certainly helps them to stand out and will look great when it's moving.

Brexit Yellow

Himself took the decision on which colour scheme to paint diesel 9 out of my hands by giving the bodyshell a couple of coats of yellow before the pixels had appeared on your screen in the previous post about this model.

As always, our readership was quick to point out the gaps in my knowledge, and it turns out that what I assumed was faded paint on the bonnet at one point was, in fact, just undercoat!

Being more familiar with the stringent paint shop procedures at Boston Lodge it hadn't occurred to me that a half-painted locomotive would be left out in the yard, and used, but I guess that's the difference at Dinas.

I'm rather pleased with how well the resin cast bonnet doors look now they're painted to match the rest of the body. 

We haven't attempted an exactl colour match but have used the closest Hunbrol tin we can find to the pictures of the real locomotive, which I'm told is painted 'JCB yellow'.

Or, as other readers have suggested, that shade should perhaps be called 'Brexit Yellow' on account of the political views of the chairman.

Although given the current state of the economy and society in these islands I'd suggest that prefix might be more appropriate for a particular shade of brown....

Painting The Pickering

With the construction phase done Himself is putting the Pickering brake carriage through the paint shop.

After being sprayed with primer it has now been treated to four coats of gloss green before the tricky task of picking out the window droplights in a woody brown.

I'm still quite satisfied with how the third generation lamp pots look.

Hopefully that won't change when they're painted black against the light grey roof.

Sir Handle

Every so often I am astounded by Himself's ingenuity.

A case in point is when I received an update on progress with painting the boiler unit of 130.

What I noticed first was not the finish but the rather clever - and also wonderfully simple - way he is managing to avoid touching the wet paintwork.

He's using the hole at the back of the footplate where the rear power unit is connected to fix on a makeshift handle.

There's been something extra added in the cab, where he decided to use some styrene rod, and tiny brass wheels, to represent the various gauges and controls.

Red Tanks

An exciting moment in the build of 130 as the first of coat of paint is applied to the bunker and tanks.

Trying to choose a colour for a model is always a tricky business. You have to take into account the effect of scaling, and also that people tend to see the colour as their mind's eye recalls the real one.

Thus we've opted for a BR crimson shade for 130 which by the time it's lined out won't look too far away from the real thing, I hope.

It's terrific to see yet another Garratt for Bron Hebog on the home straight. 

Green Agreement

It's a rare day when Himself and I are as one on the question of colours - especially greens!

But we had a rare outbreak of unity in choosing the paint shade for our Backwoods Lynton and Barnstable Lyn which is now being finished off.

Himself bought a selection of Southern shades from the Railmatch range and what we decided on was a 50/50 mix of Light Olive and Malachite Green which best seemed to marry up with the photos we took at Dinas a couple of years ago.

Himself held off with painting this loco because he was never quite satisfied with how it performed - it always had a very pronounced waddle.

The solution has been to disable the compensation on the front driving axle, locking it in place with a new bearing. 

Years ago we had to do the same on the Backwoods Ladies which we could never get to run right as the designer intended.

Fairlie Colourful

Himself is in the early stages of painting Livingston Thompson

The challenge with this one is to make it look convincingly neglected as if it has spent 15 years in Minffordd Yard.

At the moment it has been given some initial coats of dirty black and green and posed in its train formation with Earl of Merioneth and bogie wagon 63.

This time Himself is using Railmatch standard loco green in place of our usual Humbrol number 3 and it does look a lot duller.

The nameplates are just tacked in place because the finished model won’t have any - just rusty oblong patches where they used to be - so they are just there as a marker for now.

I think it’s going to look very effective and hopefully quite a conversation starter, whenever exhibitions resume.....

The Green Van

A little progress update on Van 51 which Himself has been finishing off.

It looks good with the FR crest applied on the side but until it is sprayed with satin varnish it obviously looks too shiny.

I’m still not convinced by the current infrastructure livery, and although in this livery it apes the plain green which some of the four wheelers spotted in the early years of the revival - including new Van 1 as was - I always thought the red suited it better.

Still, regardless of the colour, another brake van is always a handy thing to have in a fiddle yard, the challenge will be to make sure our 3 different versions of number 1 / 51 don’t appear at the same time....

Fade To Green

Princess is beginning to look suitably distressed.

The choice of which era to depict our new tow-along model was left to me, and I decided to go for the period which fascinated me most, when it was rescued from its plinth in Blaenau and brought into the museum at Porthmadog.

In this state it was so obviously a non-runner,  whereas these days it looks as immaculate as any of the other FR engines, and the urge to shove a motor in it would be overwhelming.

An FR figure recently shared some correspondence from the late Alan Garraway where he recalled his fear that there would be moves to restore it to traffic in the early days of the restoration - the last thing he wanted with traffic booming was another puny small England engine.

Hiding it in plain sight in Blaenau, as a promotional tool and statement of intent, probably served a double purpose for AGWG.

One point of modelling interest in the picture is Himself’s trick for using black lining as a guide for getting your black infill and edging to look flawless.

And don’t you just love those white wheel rims?

It’s like a 1970s Ford Cortina on rails!

Non-Prairie Primed

Himself has begun painting the 3mm 2-8-0 tank, which means stripping the whole chassis down again so it can be sprayed black.

He’s not a fan of the ‘spray it as it runs’ technique because of a fear it might get gummed up!

The body has had a coat of grey primer which really shows off the lovely detail in this kit.

Red And Green

Himself is cracking on with completing the two WHHR Ashbury carriages ahead of the show in Greenock next month.

They’ve both had at least one top coat - the buffet car in green and the original condition replica in red.

There’s a lot left to do but the liveries are so completely simple that you already have a good impression of how they might look when finished.

Pure Brilliant White

Himself isn’t the only one being diverted by non-NG projects this week - although mine is at least still 4mm scale.

I’ve got to the stage of refreshing the paintwork on the cottage model for my friend.

The more I looked at it the more apparent it became that the white was becoming rather dirty, so just like any real building I’m giving it a coat of whitewash.

In this case I’m using thinned Humbrol enamel so it flows better over the harling, which in model form is represented by fine ballast glued onto a styrene base.

I always have been one for doing things the hard way, but it is very effective and has stood the test of time.

It’s Curtains

The Gladstone Carriage is finally, finally, finished.

The last job was to paint the curtains on the posh compartment in the middle which has worked out quite effectively.

You might also notice there’s been another change inside since the last update I posted.

That’s right. I won the argument about the colour of the fabric on the bench seat which has been repainted pink.

To my eyes that’s the dominant colour of the rather exotic moquette.

But for genetic reasons Himself and I don’t see eye to eye on colours always.

Gladstone Gloss

A new item of stock which didn't manage to make it to the show at Perth was the Gladstone carriage which is still in the process of being painted and finished.

Not that it matters anyway, because the real thing would never appear at Dduallt anyway, but as the years go by we've started to bend the rules and run things - like a WHHR set - just for the fun of it.

The carriage has had a couple of coats of Humbrol gloss paint, which is applied - very carefully - by hand. There is no masking tape used to get he join between the red and the ivory, it's just a question of concentration and a steady hand.

The colour of the seats in the centre compartment has been a matter of disagreement. To my mind the fabric on the real carriage has a distinctly pink shade about it, but I was overruled, with the deciding vote coming from someone who's authority is not to be questioned.

So blue it is.

We've also gone through a lengthy process of deciding what to do about the N.W.N.G.R lettering on the side.

On the real carriage these are gold letters with partial red shading, but we've been unable to find anything equivalent to that.

We could, of course, go down the route of commissioning a bespoke set, but we've tried out some plain gold letters as a test and concluded that the red shadows probably wouldn't show up very clearly against the colour on the carriage anyway.

Prime Minister’s Carriage

Himself has begun the process of painting our latest carriage, a reminder of the days when our most senior politician was probably regarded with a great deal more reverence than the men scrapping for the keys to Downing Street this week - although I suspect there was no less intrigue.

There was a request for a blow-by-blow account of how we paint our models so I’ll start with an image of them being primed.

We do this to give the top coat a better surface to key into.

We spray them using bog standard primer aerosols you can buy in a car parts store.

The red is for the brass parts and the grey for the plastic (or in this case, resin) bits.

17 In Service

Our new Garraway-era 17 is finished and has been taken for a test run on Dduallt.

Comparison with the twins 11 and 12, show that the shade of green on this latest carriage is different despite using nominally the same paint.

I can only assume it’s something to do with it being a new tin and there being a discrepancy in the product.

I also wanted to draw your attention to one of the significant little details that Himself adds to these carriages.

He makes up tiny little heritage door handles which look for at the world like minute split pins.

It must be terribly fiddly.

Cocktail Carr

Sometimes modelling is about finding pragmatic solutions to tricky tasks, and so it is with painting a panelled bowsider.

Himself has started adding in the ivory inserts on 18 and tells me that he’s been using a cocktail stick as a more precise way of getting the paint where he wants it rather than a brush.

Who knew?