2020 Review - Part 4

October

The output of new models slowed towards the end of the year, especially at my end of the operation as I spent more time concentrating on meeting requests for resin wagon kits and parts.

By now I had completed the prototype for the MOD flat wagon kit.

Himself spent a week volunteering on the FR and getting a look up closed at the new lining design on Welsh Pony.

We had always intended to finish ours in the green livery that was predicted all through the restoration, but now it looks like the running-in livery will be staying for a few years so we decided to take the plunge and apply that to our model, seen here with the black lining transfers around the edge being applied.

Himself also got round to a job he'd been meaning to tackle for a number of years, and overhaul the Steve Coulson working dioramas in our custody.

November

Progress can be an illusion sometimes.

Himself began applying the orange lining around the edge of the panels on Welsh Pony.

It looked fine on the tender, but once it added to the tighter areas like the cab sides it became painfully apparent that even the thinnest products from the Fox range would be unsuitable.

It was time for Plan B....

The delivery of the painted and lined cylinder covers for 130 to Dinas meant we could follow suit with confidence on ours.

There was more pipework added to the boiler unit which is the last part of the locomotive still under construction.

We can't complete it until we see pictures confirming the positions of all the pipes at the front of the cab.

December

Plan B for Welsh Pony meant stripping it right back to brass and starting again with a coat of primer and purple/plum from the airbrush.

We commissioned a set of bespoke transfers from Custom Model Decals and you can already see the results in some of the latest blog posts. 

I was kept busy with casting.

One customer asked if it was possible to produce some copies of the fake bogie frames we used on our Funkey diesels to disguise the N Gauge chassis.

An enquiry from one modeller turned into orders for 10 sets from all across the country, so that kept me busy for a few weeks.

Currently I am in the process of producing a prototype for a kit of the FR/WHR well wagon.

There's been good progress on the main body of the wagon.  

I'm hoping to finish it off with an etched brass deck covering but that may take a while to come to fruition.

That's the story of our 2020.

It was a year when it seems that railway modelling was given a shot in the arm by lockdown - within our homes at least - let's hope that in 2021 it might be possible to attend an exhibition again.

Wouldn't that be marvellous!

Jam Sandwiches

There's been a big step forward with Welsh Pony to round off 2020, with Himself applying the first of the main lining panels to the saddle tank.

They still need some tidying up on the corners but you get a clear impression of how they might turn out.

Because we seem to like doing things the hard way these panels are built up out of straight and corner sections, and the way the transfers have been printed onto the carrier film you have to cut them out as precisely as you can, which is tricky when they are so comparatively tiny.

The cocktail stick taped down beneath the tank gives you a sense of scale.

Just like on the real locomotive the main lining design draws the focus and you have to look really closely to spot the orange line around the edge.

Which makes you wonder whether it was really worth bothering with it?

 

2020 Review - Part 3

July 

 

As we moved into the second half of the year Livingston Thompson had been painted, lined and weathered and taken for its first test runs on Bron Hebog with the formation recreating the train when it was first towed from Minffordd to Blaenau Ffestiniog to try and kick start the restoration.

 

After a false start that ended up with the locomotive on display at the NRM in York where it remains.

 

The Double Fairlie story continued with Himself trying to keep pace with Boston Lodge on progress with James Spooner.

 

 

 

We're doing out best to adapt a Backwoods brass kit - although there will have to be the inevitable compromise on scale. 

On my workbench I was getting to grips with a new project in resin....

 

August 

Those Hula Hoop shapes were turned into the body of Maenofferen water tank wagon which sits on an extended 3 ton slate waggon chassis.

 

 

Almost immediate I was inundated with requests to produce a kit version....

 

And Himself used the first lockdown to reach the finishing line on another long term project, finally completing the painting and lining of our Backwoods Lyn.

 

 

 

The latest of our WHR saloons rolled off the production line, too.

 

 

September

 

Trying our best, once again, to stay synchronised with real world developments, Himself began painting our 130, starting with the bunkers and tanks which received their lovely crimson/plum colour and straw lining. 

 

 

After completing work on the tank waggon I was engaged on a request to produce a kit for the FR's small ex-MOD bogie wagons.

 

The first task was to find a way to produce the bogies.

 

The solution I hit on was to cast a piece which could slip over the very free-running Hudson bogie sold by Dundas.    

 

 

 

In fact, Dundas was doing very good business out of us with Himself deciding it was time to replace a lot of our slate waggon fleet as the 30 year old bodies became brittle.

 

This time instead of a uniform grey he decided to make them a little more colourful.

 

Merry Christmas / Nadolig Llawen

2020 Review - Part 2

April

I finished off the previous post saying we had plans for an old England engine kit and a dead chassis which were lying around in the bits box, and this is what we turned them into.

I've got a real fascination with the FR of my childhood in the 1970s and 80s.

While Princess may look splendid now in her lined out maroon livery, this is how I first remember seeing her, when she was freshly liberated from a plinth in Blaenau Ffestiniog.

This model is an unpowered tow-around which may make the occasional, fantasy trip up and down the line.

Himself also finished off the construction work on our own version of Van 51 using one of my kits, improved with a brass roof, resin ventilator and railings on the balcony.

And we started another one of my wish list projects, to create a model of Livingston Thompson at its nadir, when the remains of the locomotive were removed from storage in Minffordd yard.

The donor in this case was Langley white metal kit which had been donated for the purpose many years ago.

May

Out of the blue were were offered the chance to buy another Backwoods Garratt kit at a knockdown price.

As you can see from the picture it was a bit of a wreck, and we had no intention of getting it going as a runner, but it came with a Farish 08 chassis - which is always handy - and we had an inkling of an idea of what we could do with the very battered body...

 

I'd finished making and fitting the interior on Gwyrfai and by this time Himself was well advanced with the painting, which is an epic job on these observation cars.

The paint job was also complete on Van 51 which looked very smart and was just waiting for the glazing to be fitted.

June

Some running repairs were required on Bron Hebog when we noticed one of the crossing gates was damaged.

Himself knocked up a replacement out of styrene strip.

The very intricate transfer work on Gwyrfai was complete and all it now required was a coat of varnish.

And so while he was in the mood for tackling tricky transfers - and getting through incomplete projects - Himself started re-doing the lining on Conway Castle which hadn't been touched since before he moved to Scotland.

2020 Review

I expect you're probably already heartily sick of reading posts about how **** a year it's been - but don't click away, because this is not one of them!

One of the few Christmas traditions that isn't being altered this year is that I like to take a look back at all that we've achieved in the last 12 months on our respective workbenches.

I always find I'm surprised by how much we've got done and the things I'd forgotten about.

January

At the start of the year I was working on the latest WHR Pullman observation carriage Gwyrfai which I was scratch building mostly from styrene except for the curved front and roof which were to be bent from brass.

Himself was having an adventure in 3mm standard gauge building a very complex chassis for a GWR 2-8-0 tank for the Engineering Consultant.

February

A few weeks later and the body was at an advanced stage with a very crisply cast boiler and that classic huge bunker at the back.

And by this time Himself had also bent and soldered up the front for the Obs which was being offered up to test.

The idea was that once we were happy with the shape I could apply a thin plastic skin and beading to make it match the styrene body sides.

March

We'd been closely following progress on the rebuild of 130 at Dinas, and as reports were published on the web Himself would add more bits to our Backwoods kit build which had been started the year before.

In this picture of the boiler bands have just been fitted.

This was the point in the year when we entered the first lockdown, and Himself starting looking around for other projects to keep him busy and hit on the idea of doing something with an ancient white metal England engine body and a knackered Ibertren chassis from the bits boxes.

In the next post I'll show you what he ended up doing with it....

It's Fine

Himself has made a start at the second attempt at lining out Welsh Pony in its devilishly ornate livery.

This task required reserves of courage, determination and patience to be stockpiled before setting out!

He's using the lining components sheets we had supplied for us and has begun with the impossibly small orange line, and its black border, around the outside of the panels.

There's still some tidying up of the corners to be done - an enlargements like this are very unforgiving - but I think it's encouraging progress.

He tells me the curved line around the front of the saddle tank was particularly challenging.

Still, at least he's got something to keep him occupied during the inevitable January lockdown......

Eight Track

I'm ready to put the Funkey bogie frames into production.

The master was completed with the aid of styrene strip and a butchered 10BA bolt to represent the springs.

That was made into a mould and copied four times to produce a second master to enable me to make a full set for a locomotive in one casting.

That will save a lot of effort given the number of enquiries I've had about these in the last few days.

Funkey Business

I've another little commercial project to round off a busy year of casting.

This time a customer has asked if I can help him improve the bogies on the Farish chassis under his SAR Funkey diesels.

These have very big chunky bogie frames, but the N gauge model not so much...

It should be simple enough for me to copy and cast the same solution we used on our own models which was to divide the bogie frame into a top and bottom half.

The lower section, with the axle boxes and the suspension, is attached to the model's bogies which have been cut back at the sides.

The upper section, with the brake control gear and the sandboxes, is fixed to the metal chassis block.

Only when the model is going around a very tight curve are you likely to notice that only the bottom half is moving.

Once the masters are made it's a simple task to run off four copies.

Wagonry

There's not been much to report on the blog in the last week.

I was busy with more commercial casting, while Himself's been kept fully occupied on a top secret project to be revealed later this month.

Once my outside work was out of the way I have made a little more progress on the prototype of the well wagon.

Having previously cast the two side pieces I now needed to make some masters for the spacers which will give the wagon more strength.

These were made in styrene and then the first ones cast and fixed to the prototype.

The intention is for brass sections, etched with a durbar plate pattern, to be fixed on top.

My next task will be to sort out the bogies which - in true FR fashion - are not identical.

Plum Again

Himself is painting Welsh Pony for the second time.

Having been stripped back to brass and primed it's now been sprayed with the Lancashire and Yorkshire purple brown colour.

Now he tells me he's trying to pluck up the courage to have a second go at lining it our with the new transfers we commissioned.

Progressing Pipework

A few more parts have been added to 130 as the photo evidence emerges from Dinas.

The water injection pipes are in place on the frame below the cab, which have subtle differences to the other WHR Garratts.

The last major piece of the jigsaw before we can paint it is see for sure how exactly everything will be connected up the manifold on top of the firebox just in front of the cab.

g

Cover Version

130 is inching towards completion as photographs posted online give us more pieces of the jigsaw.

The latest part to be painted and lined with complete confidence is the cylinder covers.

The last major part outstanding now is the main boiler unit because we need to see confirmation of where the pipework will run from the top of the firebox into the front of the cab before we can finish off the details and begin painting it.

We've also now received the number plates from our friends at Narrow Planet which are excellent, as always.

Stripped Back

The Welsh Pony project has taken a step back ahead of - I hope - the final canter to completion.

Dissatisfied with the first attempt at lining out - and the residue it left on the surface after removal - Himself has got the paint stripper out and removed the original coat of purple brown gloss and the red oxide primer beneath, taken it back to brass and applied a fresh coat of grey primer.

This is all because we've received a sheet of bespoke lining transfers to try out.

As is our masochistic habit, we've decided to apply the lining from a combination of straights and corners, rather than one-piece prints that are available in larger scales.

That's our choice, and if you keep checking back on this blog you'll find out whether we live to regret it or not....

In the picture at the top you can see how the Mercian kit for the England engines comes apart for painting.

The motor is fixed into the body frame, rather than the chassis, and it's also worth considering that - according to the design - it should be mounted in a transverse position.

Well, good luck with that........

Diplomatic Service

Once again I'm being called up for commercial casting duties.

A regular customer is looking for an easy way to improve the interiors of his fleet of modern (I use the word advisedly) FR carriages and has decided the best way would be to get me to design and cast some seat and table units as I've done for the Superbarns and WHR carriages.

The carriages in question are the 'tin cars' and the Carnforth cars which from the early 90s onwards were fitted with what I always regarded as very elegant 'Diplomat' seats.

These were a great improvement visually on the bus seats installed in the carriages from their construction in the late 70s and through the 80s.

I miss the tin cars.

Lovely Lattice

Yet more infrequent blogging - apologies.

I'm still hard at work casting wagon kits every day while Himself has been completing more fiendishly tricky brass signals for the Greenock club's new Kirkconnel layout.

He's making sure he's putting in his best work on these because the task is being shared with the chairman and I've got a feeling the competition is spurring them both on.

There'll be more news soon, I hope on Welsh Pony and 130.

He Chutes

The last few days of modelling have been filled with more steady casting as I work to restock Narrow Planet with the full range of SAR wagon kits.

After a batch of DZs I've moved on to the most complex of my kits, the NG-Y ballast wagon.

The trickiest part to cast are the pieces which make up the ballast chutes at the bottom of the wagon.

Unusually this time I've been able to make a full batch without any mis-castings.

I must be getting the knack of this resin casting lark.

Chocolate Orange

Himself is already starting work on what I suspect will be a very complicated job of lining out Welsh Pony.

He's started with the gold / orange (call it what you like) band which runs around the outer edge of the panels.

The main part of the lining is going to need something bespoke.

The colours are so unusual that we can't really try replicating it with a composite made up from the menu of regular shades.

I've seen a few custom transfer producers are making sheets in larger scales but from my enquiries I've yet to receive a firm commitment to run some off in 4mm scale for us.

Hopefully we won't get stranded with a half-finished model....