'One Day' Projects.

Browsing my photo reel the other day I was reminded of another one of those project I'd always intended to get around to 'one day'.

Over the years we've built up a collection of rolling stock from the Welsh Highland Heritage Railway which we ran on Bron Hebog.

To start with it was a gentle 'wind up', at a time when relations between the railways were at a bit of a low.

Then it became something aspirational, and more recently, of course, it has become a reality.

To the best of my knowledge - although I'm sure someone will correct me if I am wrong - the four-wheeler number 6 has never ventured as far as Beddgelert.

I find it quite an intriguing design.

It's got the diminutive appeal of the classic narrow gauge four wheel carriage combined with the body style cues and proportions of the 'Eisteddfod coach', which was one of the first 009 kits I bought more than 35 years ago.

I've often thought about scratch building number 6.

Like the real thing I would most probably use a former RNAD wagon chassis, either from the 009 Society kit or one of the Bachmann wagons if I was feeling flush.

Over the years I've take quite a few photos of it, although never any proper measurements, but it would probably be easy enough to guestimate from the things we do know about it, such as the chassis dimensions.

Whether or not I ever will get round to it I'm not so sure.

With Bron Hebog no longer going out to shows there's not really any pressing need for it.

Open For Business

I've got more action to report from the paint shop.

Himself has been busy with the multi-coloured Hudson semi-open carriages - one the replica for the FR and the other for the WHHR fleet, which have different origins.

The red (WHHR) one is from the very neat 009 Society injection moulded kit, and has had a few enhancements such as brake pipes and the safety chains across the passenger access openings.

The green (FR) version is one I cast in resin from a scratch built master I made in styrene, and has a number of differences, including the positions of the right angle uprights and the number of slats on the end panels.

The mesh doors - a mid-life upgrade which offer significantly more protection than the chains on number 42 - are 3D prints which were kindly donated to the project.

For a few minutes Himself thought he had caught me out by noticing that number 39 currently has fewer, and thicker, planks on the ends, but he forgot the golden rule of FR modelling, which is that things change so frequently you have to choose the day you are modelling your locomotive, carriage or waggon and stick to it.

Thus, this 39 shows the carriage before its most recently, and thorough, overhaul.

Painted Pickering Carriage

And just like that, a few days later, a new carriage takes to the rails.

Himself spent the week putting the finishing touches to the Pickering brake replica which looks quite the part posed at the platform at Beddgelert station.

When the body side is brass, as this one is, it makes painting the drop lights neatly especially challenging.

I'm also very pleased with how the resin cast lamp pots on the roof look now they're been picked out in black with the base ring matching the off-white roof.

What really sets it off, of course, is the W H Rly lettering.

This has been done by transfers, rather than the slightly raised metal letters on the real carriage, but at this scale I think it hardly matters.

I look forward to seeing it as part of a WHHR rake running behind Russell, and hopefully it won't be too long before that scene happens in real life.

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.

Non-Identical Twins

I suppose in a way my naivety is quite touching, but I really shouldn't have been surprised when my plan to make one master for the sides of the FR and WHHR Hudson toast rack carriages hit a snag.

A correspondent informed me that there is a clear difference in the pair in the orientation of the upright L girders on the sides.

While the WHHR rebuild has them as per the original carriages the FR replica - built by Winson Engineering in the 1990s - has most of them facing in the opposite direction.

I am also informed that this is not what was designed, however, that is what was delivered!

Armed with this unfortunate information my options were:

a) build separate masters for the two carriages

or

b) try to slice off the uprights to make a generic master to which I could use to cast incomplete sides and add the uprights separately for each carriage.

I've decided to go for the second option.

This now looks a lot more basic, although I have been able to add on the footboard and some resin rivet head transfers along the frame.

Hopefully cutting and sticking on the girders will be much less hassle than having to make a whole second side from scratch.

Hot Toast

It's been an ambition for a while to get a second model of Hudson 'toast rack' carriage 39 in the fleet, wearing its Col. Stephens green to match many of the other vintage carriages.

Our existing model is one I scratch built in styrene probably the best part of 25 years ago in its original red and ivory colour scheme.

As well as the FR one we could do with a third model to represent carriage 42 on the Welsh Highland Heritage Railway.

So when I heard the 009 Society had produced a run of their exclusive, members-only, kits for the first time in many years I thought that would be the ideal opportunity to get these models built.

Alas, it appears they have sold like hot cakes - or more like hot toast? - and by the time Himself obtained a login for the members' section of the shop they'd all gone!

So rather than wait for an announcement about if or when there might be another production run, I've decided the best thing to do is to make a pair myself.

I've done it before so it won't be difficult.

I'm going to make up masters for the sides and ends and cast copies in resin.

A friend, who got in ahead of us and bought a handful of the Society kits, kindly helped me out with a few measurements and after a couple of hours work last night I've got this far.

Just like the Society kit the semi-circle hoops which are such a feature of these carriages will be added on by hand, and I've still got the footboard and the triangular underframe to add - plus bolt heads / rivets - before it is ready to make a mould from.

The ends will be slightly more involved as the FR and WHHR examples are different - or at least they were in the period I'm going to model them - 39 had many more horizontal slats before it was taken in for a heavy overhaul ahead of the 2021 season.

Pot Luck

Or perhaps more a case or persistence pays off.

I think we're both satisfied with the result of version 3 of the lamp pots for the Pickering brake replica.

They are without a doubt the biggest pain in the backside I've had on the modelling bench for quite a while but I think the result of many weeks tinkering will be worth it.

You'll also notice Himself has added the air and vacuum pipes, this being a dual braked carriage, and a very pragmatic decision by the WHHR which is to be applauded. 

The long, sweeping rain strips have also been soldered onto the roof.

It's details like these, and the styrene ventilation hoods above the doors, which really make the difference on these Worsley scratch-aid bodies.

Benches In

Today's update is to show you where I've got to with the interior for the Pickering brake.

As carriages go this is a very simple one with only three compartments and basic bench seats.

The real ones - as you may know - are made up of horizonal slats, but I'm not motivated enough to try to recreate that when you won't have a hope of seeing them inside.

Same goes for the vertical boards on the compartment walls - I'll be quite content with plain panels as long as they're the correct shade.

What I am going to be fussy about is getting the lamp pots to look right, and in the background of the picture you'll see a tiny styrene box filled with RTV rubber.

Under there is my third prototype!

Having seen the pictures of the carriage being delivered to Gelert's Farm it's obvious that I need more of a stacking rings effect, so this latest effort uses a smaller diameter tube for the very top section.

Once the rubber is cured I can cast a few and see whether I've cracked it at last?

Petit Pots

I've had a second go at the lamp pots for the roof of the Pickering brake.

I reckon I've shortened them by around a 1mm and to my eye they look a bit better, although it's very tough to properly recreate the look of the real ones.

Why are carriage lamp pots the hardest thing to get right?

Covid Safe Carriage

Little Welsh railways have had lots of reasons to thank Victorian carriage designers in the last year, as compartment stock has become the solution to running Covid-safe services.

I suspect the walls between the seats was probably more to do with wanting to keep the riff-raff away  than concern for keeping out infectious diseases - although all the No Spitting signs on the old Glasgow trams show us that was also on their minds.

The more we learn about the current pandemic also gives us a greater appreciation of the excellent ventilation afforded by all those droplight windows on the more traditional carriage.

All of which will no doubt make the new replica Pickering brake carriage a very welcome addition to the Welsh Highland Heritage Railway fleet.

As you can see from the image above, I've started work on the interior for our model.

Already I can see that his fancy idea for disguising the vacuum pipe bend, which means the chassis has to be fitted with a twisting motion, is going to have to go.

Get the cutters out....

P - P - Pick Up A Pickering

A Sunday morning off - the first in ages - gave a chance to catch up with Himself for coffee in the garden and get instructions for what I'm to do with the interior of the WHHR Pickering brake replica.

I haven't decided whether to take the easy route and do the inside of the carriage first, or have another crack at the lamp pots.

So long as the Indian variant doesn't begin to run riot across the whole of Scotland we can, from today, socialise in each other's houses again, so we also spent some time working out the basics of a design for a fold-down layout in the spare room in my house to be built over the coming months.

Ostensibly this is so my youngest has somewhere more practicable to run his burgeoning 00 collection than the current layout-on-wheels which lives under his bed, but I've got a secret plan to make sure that it's a mixed gauge layout with some 9mm NG track on there as well.

Purely as a test track, you understand......

Pickering Pots

Apologies for the unusually long gap between posts on the blog, which I can attribute mostly to the inconvenience of the election, and its aftermath, here in Scotland, which has required a lot of overtime in my professional life.

Added to which, Himself has been occupied with projects which I am not going to publicise on this page.

So the upshot of all this is there's not been a lot to tell you about, expect that I managed to get the experimental lamp pots for the Pickering brake carriage passed to Himself, but I fear it's going to be back to the drawing board.

It's always hard to judge when the model is unpainted, but I think it's pretty clear the pieces are too big and I shall have to try and make some smaller ones - which is a real pain because these were very fiddly to make.

In my defence I would say that these items are always one of the hardest items to judge because you rarely see them in real life from the sort of angle that you view a model - from above.

Pots Of Joy?

As I mentioned in my previous blog post I have had a go at replicating the lamp pots from the replica Pickering brake, and with one master made from sections of styrene tube I have cast a set of four.

They look for all the world like very miniature chess pieces - narrow gauge pawns, perhaps?

I know that they don't completely match the real things in every detail, but they are a very complicated design, and there's a limit to what you can achieve with something that's only a few millimetres high - at least that's my excuse.

I'd like to think they're a passable representation, but the test will be when I can take them over to Himself, perch them on the carriage roof and compare to the photographs we have.

Brake Two

I've had an update from Himself on progress with the second of the Pickering brake carriages.

This one is the Worsley Works version.

It is the correct length but has the wrong panelling detail on the doors - you can't win!

Himself has also made a correction to the windows at the van end, which needed a fillet of brass on their outside edges to make them the right width.

Regular readers will also be please to know that I found the motivation to return to the work bench and have a bash at making a master for the rather ornate lamp pots on the roof.

More to follow....

Going Potty

Another challenging part of the Pickering brake project is going to be replicating the lamp pots along the roof of the carriage.

These look much more detailed than the usual plain cylinder shape we see.

My intention is to try to knock up the closest-looking thing I can in styrene and then use it as a master to cast the full set.

While Himself solders together the Worsley etches I've brought back the redundant Dundas body to practice on.

The Missing Foot

The Pickering brake van project has taken an unexpected turn.

Himself turned detective and discovered the Dundas body kit is a foot shorter than it is supposed to be.

On a whim he ordered the etch for the same carriage produced by Worsley Works, and when placed against each other it confirmed the earlier kit is longitudinally challenged.

Usually I expect we would overlook this - after all we model in a scale where the track gauge is 1mm too wide for our prototype - but when you factor in the other difficulties with this kit, such as the challenge of fixing in a floor and inserting an interior, it tips the balance.

Using the Worsley etches also means he can solder the roof in place and the floor can be kept removable.

Because neither 'kit' comes with bogies or an underframe it's not like we're creating any extra work for ourselves.

What we'll do with the redundant Dundas body we'll have to wait and see.

Sliding In

There's certainly some head scratching required putting together the Dundas brass kit for the WHR Pickering brake coach, the replica of which will shortly be rolled out from Boston Lodge for the Welsh Highland Heritage Railway.

I hadn't realised that this was as much a case of a 'scratch aid' kit as you'd get with the Worsley product.

One of the issues we've had to overcome is how we'll get an interior in there.

The body has more strength than other brass carriage because there there wide taps top and bottom which fold up and guard against the sides getting pushed inwards and becoming misshapen.

However it does leave you wondering how you are supposed to insert full width compartment dividers and bench seats?

So the solution Himself has come up with is to cut pieces out midway along along the sections at the top of the carriage.

I can then make up the interior in short sections which can be lowered, one by one, into the carriage and slid into position.

A roof will have to be fixed in position as the last thing after painting and when the interior and glazing are fitted.

It's a much more inconvenient way of doing things than with out scratch built carriages where we maintain access at all times so the glazing is the very last thing to go in.

Dinas In A Box

An update for you on progress with the newest stock box, which is now finished and home to most of our Welsh Highland rolling stock.

As I explained in the previous post, this box is a little wider, so each row can fit four saloon carriages.

So the top four rows are filled with the two main corridor service sets.

I'm sure there will be any number of people ready to write in and explain that they're not in the correct order, and I'm also very aware that the original set of Winson carriages have undergone radical changes from how we depict them here in the condition they first ran.

Long ago now we reached the conclusion that the best way to retain sanity while attempting to model the contemporary FR / WHR is to finish a model in the condition it first appeared, or the condition it is at the point you complete the model - and just live with it.

That's why our NGG16 87 will remain in grey. (And also because I like it like that.)

The new box is so commodious we've also got our WHHR set in there as well as my original pair of ballast wagons, scratch built long before the idea of making a resin kit for them ever occurred to me.

The Pullman car Bodysgallen is a bit of an outlier given that it's now stored out of service, but it's too nice a model not to run on the layout so we'll have to think about the best way of sneaking it into a set.

Big Bonnet

We're indulging in another little fantasy - well, in fact, quite a large fantasy - with our latest loco project.

Ever since we ran one of the giant Lyd2 Polish diesels from the WHHR as a guest loco on Bron Hebog  I've fancied having one of our own.

Following an offer to build a bespoke chassis for us I've gone ahead and bought one of the Worsley Works body kits.

I warned Himself that it wouldn't be wise to build it until we receive the chassis but, as usual, he can't resist tinkering so as much of the body as he dares is already made.

There are those that say these machines would be very unkind to the permanent way on the WHR mainline, and others who declare they won't fit.

I couldn't claim to know enough about either, but just as we run Russell on Dduallt even when it would never fit just because it's fun, so we will do so with this beast on Bron Hebog.

2019 - Part 4

We rounded off the year with a first showing of Bron Hebog in Scotland at our own club's show in Greenock and with the debut of our new set of WWHR carriages.

Unfortunately only Russell is able to pull the whole lot up the hill. Gelert and the Baldwin have to have the load reduced....

130 is really starting to come together, although once again Himself is waiting for the real one to be finished so we can be completely sure about all those little details.

I'd finally got round to making a start on the second WHR Pullman observation car which is being given the name Gwyrfai.

November

Progress on the carriage has not been rapid but did get most of a day to myself to start adding the beading to the side pieces.

Himself decided that after many years broken on a shelf it was time to get our original Blanche back into running order, a major operation which required the strip down of the chassis and replacement of a gear wheel.

He was also getting on with the very intricate task of lining out the FR Observation car 152, the completion of which has taken most of 2019.

December

To bring the review up to date, as you've been reading in recent weeks I've been making an effort to complete the first model of van 51, which has sat for many months looking like this.

And Himself celebrated the completion of 152 with a line up of our three Pullman obs, hopefull to be joined by a fourth next year.

Thanks for reading our updates during 2019 and we look forward to sharing more of our modelling with you in 2020.