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.....

Twin Tanks

Now the Covid rules have changed for (almost) all of Scotland we are allowed to poke about inside each other's houses once more, and I've had the chance to inspect what Himself's been up to in his den.

A project I haven't featured on the blog for quite a while is a number of 3mm scale kits he's building for the Engineering Consultant.

This pair of ex-GWR 2-8-0 tanks are made from different kits (sorry, I can't remember what they are) and represent two varieties, the 42XX and the 5205 classes.

Swindon aficionados will be able to tell you all the differences, starting with the obvious one which is the outside, or not, steam pipes.

They do look really rather good and remind me again what an attractive size standard gauge 3mm scale models are.

Western Weather

The permafrost in the west of Scotland this week has seen off any hope of getting some varnish sprayed onto completed models (Himself isn't allowed to use the airbrush inside the house!) so instead he's been applying some transfers to the 3mm models he's been building for the Engineering Consultant.

I've always thought the Hawksworth carriages are among some of the most attractive designs ever to run on the British main line network, it's a shame there weren't more that reached preservation.

The lining on the waist and at the top was a bit of a trial by all accounts, due to the transfers breaking up continually - perhaps due to age?

Fortunately the 2-8-0 tank couldn't have a simpler livery because he's been asked to finish it in unlined black.

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....

Rolling On

With Himself locked away in his box for goodness knows how long I suppose at least there’s the chance to work through the backlog of unfinished projects.

(Who knows, he might even line out Conway Castle which was last touched before he moved to Scotland!)

In the meantime the 2-8-0 chassis has been getting more running in using the rolling road I bought him a number of years ago.

Glad to see it getting some use.

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.

2-8-0 To The Paintshop

The large 2-8-0 tank - so synonymous with the South Wales valleys - is just about complete.

Himself is planning to strip all the motion and wheels off before painting the frame, which is why the crank pins are not cut to length yet nor the rods secured.

Painting shouldn’t be too much of a hassle - the Engineering Consultant wants it in unlined black.

It’s not the end of our adventure in 3mm standard gauge, however.

Himself has two more carriages and an (allgedly) simpler 2-8-0 kit to build after this.

Tanks & Bunkers

You’ll have gathered from more ‘not-a-Prairie’ pictures that there’s precious little happening on my own workbench, about which I am feeling increasingly guilty...

Now the chassis is sorted Himself has moved onto finishing off the detailing on the side tanks and the cab.

The one thing that does really impress me about this kit is the quality of the resin casting of the boiler and there’s some lovely detail at the back of the cab too.

There's Lovely!

I missed a day’s posting - sorry about that, there was some minor constitutional tinkering which was keeping me occupied on a professional level - but I hope you’ll agree this was worth waiting for.

The pride of the Valleys is moving at last!



Himself has completed the slidebar / crosshead assembly on the other side and worked out a method of fitting pick ups (again no I instructions).

This is the only stretch of 12mm gauge track we have to test it on, so it’s not a fair assessment of it.

The crank pins still have to be cut back and the motion secured, but at least we’ve proved it works.

Hopefully the remainder should be more straightforward.

Trouble In The Valleys

Himself is a man in need of a plan.

He reports that he was getting on well with the 3mm 2-8-0 GWR 42xx tank for the Engineering Consultant until progress ground to a halt.

Note to self: NOT a Prairie - doh!

He had the brakes attached, connecting rods made up and fitted (very fiddly) and all working.

But because the kit is shrunk from a 7mm version the cross heads and slide bars - which were white metal parts in 7mm - are too small to copy in 3mm and a common etch has been supplied in place without much guidance.

So he has some head scratching to do to find out how it goes together correctly.

As as aside, he says it makes putting together an NGG16 look like a walk in the park....