Dirty Pictures

Himself and Francis (aka The Chairman) have been playing with a new toy this week - a compressor for the airbrush. So their Thursday 'club night' was taken up with weathering instead of the usual blethering!

This is a new departure for us because until now all our models have been finished in ex-works condition but that wasn't tenable for the WHR construction stock.

So after studying a How To DVD carefully for a number of months they've taken the plunge and sprayed mucky paint over a few vehicles. Take a look below and see what you think.



In case you were wondering this is (or perhaps I should say, was) the WHR construction gang mess coach which started life as FR 'Barn' Observation Carr 100 in 1965.

When a new Obs 102 was completed at Boston Lodge the old 100 was punted up to Dinas to be used on WHR services. After a couple of seasons it was replaced by 101 which by then had also been cascaded from the FR fleet and 100 was mounted on ex-SAR bogies and used as a mess coach on the construction trains.

It was withdrawn, for good, when the railway was completed through to Porthmadog and the bodyshell was scrapped at Dinas. The frame will be recycled for another new build at Boston Lodge.

I feel it's a shame the carriage was scrapped, it was, after all, the first of the Barn observation carriages which I have always thought of as icons of the modern FR. Sure, the 60's bodyshells were only expected to have a working life of 25 years and so it had a good innings, but even so I wonder whether future generations will come to view the scrapping of the original 100 as we would have if the early preservationists had sacrificed a bowsider?

In a neat twist this model has a history which matches the prototype. It was once in frontline service on Dduallt as Observation Carr 100. It was built on the kitchen table of my student digs back in 1993. In time I made new, more detailed models of both 100 and 101 and the originals were retired. When 100 was transformed into mess coach 1000 at Dinas our redundant 100 was dug out and given a makeover.



The ex-SAR Guards Van, ballast wagons and B wagon (cycle carrying wagon) have been given a lived-in look too.

Bits And Pieces

Some more bits and pieces have been added onto the tamper in the last couple of days.

The model is getting to that, frankly, rather frustrating, stage where there are still quite a lot of details to put on but you no longer get those big visual leaps forward, until you come to paint it.

At the same time you know that if you put it in the drawer and give in to the temptation to start an exciting new project that all progress will cease for many a long month.

Rather than try and write down everything that I've done I thought I'd try let some pictures tell the story instead.

In a Sky News style I've deployed the 'wallerstrator' to point out on the photos of the real tamper the parts which have been added on.













Because of the way the chassis fits inside the model from below some of the details beneath the engine compartment have to attached to the Kato chassis instead of the bodyshell, thus:

Lyd Latest

As promised some pictures on the latest progress with 'Lyd'.

This model of the FR/WHR's new toy is being built from a Backwoods Miniatures kit.

It'll be a pure-bred Backwoods with no Grafar chassis grafted on as other respected 009 Manning Wardle modellers have done.




And in response to some questions from readers I can confirm that it is being modelled with the cut-down cab profile for operating over the FR.

An early observation from the builder (Himself - not me) is that the kit (for an original L&B loco) differs from the modern replica in the bunker area. 'Lyd' has coal rails on both sides but as you can see from the pictures the kit only has them on the left (as you look from the cab) so something's going to have to be done about that.

Alterations...

A wee bit of post-varnish touching-up required on the WHR Service Carr 2010.

Soon after the pictures of the completed model were put online I realised something didn't look quite right with the horizontal windows 2/3 of the way up the bodyside.

They'd been painted to represent wood (like the droplights in the vestibule doors) when in fact they're metal and finished in black.

Ooops!

Himself was quickly on the case, as you'll see below.



Surf by later this week for an update on the Backwood's 'Lyd' build!

Double Bogie

A small amount of progress has been made on the tamper in the last week.

Both bogies now have their various appendages.

The disc brakes appear only on the 'engine' side of the machine.

On the 'clock' side the Caernarvon end bogie seems (as far as I can tell from photographs) only to have two extended axle stubs. This is the unpowered, trailing bogie on the model.

At the Porthmadog end there is a big plate which covers up most of the bogie frame and has four quite meaty electrical cables or pneumatic hoses (?) disappearing up into the engine compartment.

Here is what the results look like on the naked Kato chassis.




(The observant reader will notice that during the process I managed to detach the power wires from the soldered joints with the pick ups on the trailing bogie - whoops!)

The next job is to come up with something to represent the calipers on the disc brakes and those mystery cables / hoses on the powered bogie.

At Your Service

The rolling stock is coming out of the paintshop thick and fast down south.



This is the WHR's 'service carr.' 2010. Some would say it's the most important carriage on the railway and I would contend it's the most sophisticated vehicle ever built for the UK narrow gauge.

A few years back the FR developed the concept of service carrs. which would carry no passengers but bring the guard, the catering and most importantly, the on-board lavatory into one vehicle.

On top of that 2010 is also a mobile power station. The central compartment contains a diesel generator which provides the power for fridges in the catering compartment and the lighting circuits for the rest of the formation. (Your average standard gauge preserved railway would be jealous of facilities like that!)



The generator sits behind the triple doors (with the vents above) in the middle of the carriage/

The FR has a similarly equipped service carr. 124, although it was built to the smaller FR 'Barn' profile.

2010 runs on ex-Romanian bogies which we are representing using Grafar N gauge Commonwealth bogies. We have turned ours out in ex-works condition complete with the white painted tyres.

Loaded Up And Ready To Go

Both AY ballast wagons have now had attention from the airbrush and the transfer sheet.

We were oh so nearly caught out by the lettering on the wagons. Forgetting for a moment that this is the FR / WHR we were dealing with we just assumed that they'd be the same on both sides. Well you would, wouldn't you?

Just in the nick of time we discovered they have the letters SAR on one side but SAS on the other.

I was a little confused as to why until I realised, of course, that it's bi-lingual. One side in English the other in Afrikaans.

(South African Railways / Suid Afrikaanse Spoorwee)

The false loads are certainly generous but not untypical of how they were often snapped while at work on the rebuilding project.

Nearly all our models are finished in ex-works condition and these will be the first of our models to get some serious weathering.

That's why there are little piles of loose ballast on the platforms at either end of the wagons, it seems some always spills during loading or falls off while on the move.