The Body Shop

While Himself has been playing about with the pipework on the Garratt I've been getting on with gluing together the three new Super Barns which have been ordered by a regular client.

As you can see I've started the process of cutting out and fitting the styrene floor / chassis units for them. The one at the back of the shot already has one in place.

In this view you can clearly see the lumps of styrene which I fix inside the body shell which set the height of the floor and stop it disappearing too far up inside the carriage.

One the basic floors and false ceilings are cut out then the next job will be to make up the corridor connections.

This is a bit of a bind because haven't yet thought of a way I could cast them so each of them has to be made from scratch from a number of pieces of styrene strip.

Pipework

Himself has been getting on with the Garratt again and started tackling the mass of plumbing on the side of the boiler unit.

I can't pretend that I know what all the bits are or what they so, so I'll invite you mostly just to enjoy the pretty pictures.

The one comment that Himself has passed on to me is that he has to - and I quote - "fabricate a lump that goes at the firebox end of the end of the exhaust steam ejector pipe that runs from the smokebox RH side. Did something similar for 87. The very small group of pipes will go on after painting."

I hope you understand what that means because I certainly don't.......

Oh, and one last thing. Yes, he does know that some of the handrail knobs have fallen off!

Return Of The Super Barn

So, I'm back to building resin carriages again. This little lot will keep me busy for at least the rest of the month.

It's a batch of 3 FR Super Barns (103, 108 & 121) for one of my regular clients who's furnished me with a wish list as long as my arm and will keep me tied to the workbench for a year and a half.

It will be interesting to see if these go together quicker and easier than the first four I made. (One was for us and there was another customer who also wanted models of all three of them.)

Unlike our latest Super Barn, which Himself has recently rolled a brass roof for, these will have aluminium ones recycled from Pint-sized beer cans which - naturally - have to be emptied first.

So it's not all hard work!

Topping Out

So the third house for Oberon Wood is almost ready to be sent south to be painted.

The roof sections - made from Wills slate sheets - have been cut and fitted.

At the rear this has also involved making the dormer window and the chimney as well as the small shelter above the back door.

All that is left now is to finish off the capping tiles on the roof and add the gutters and down pipes.

It'll probably be a few weeks before I make a start on the fourth house because I've got some work for a regular client I need to get cracking on with.

Brass Roof & Bogies

I think Himself might have been a little wounded by my comments a couple of days ago about unfinished models languishing in drawers because he has suspended work on the 3rd NGG16 to complete the resin model of 108 which I handed over to him when he was up in Glasgow recently.

As he does not approve of my beer can roof technique he has prepared a brass cover for this carriage.

He's also included some snaps of the adaptations we carry on out the Parkside Dundas Vale of Rheidol bogies to try to make them look more like modern FR carriage bogies.

He adds new false frames and extensions made out of styrene and also fits them with brass bushes as otherwise the pinpoint axles do bore out the holes in the plastic bogies when stock does as many miles as ours is expected to.

The effect is quite convincing at a distance although the wheelbase is far too small.

I do intend to get around to making my own accurate modern FR bogies using the etched brass outline / resin cover technique I use on the SAR bogies on the wagon kits.

It's one of those many things crowded onto the back burner, although Himself keeps on at me to lift it onto the front burner because he finds adapting these plastic bogies rather tiresome.

Tear Down These Walls

Well, I suppose it serves me right for getting cocky about finding faults with the Artistic Director's plans for the latest Oberon Wood houses.

At the weekend I discovered I had made a mistake by not studying the plans carefully enough and making the house a couple of mm too narrow with the result that I had to rip it apart and graft on some extra pieces in a couple of places to correct the error.

I expect Francis will have a good chuckle about that when he reads this.

You may be able to notice the additional strips on the far left hand side of the house in this picture and also either side of the window at the top right hand side.

Fortunately, because I've been gluing this together with Limonene rather than Mek Pak - on account of having run out of Mek - it was much easier to pull the joints apart without doing any major damage as Limonene is a much more gentle solvent which melts the plastic a lot less.

Correcting this cock-up took the best part of a day's work - although I should point out that for me a day in this context means a few minutes snatched here and there between family duties. I don't get many long, uninterrupted sessions at the workbench these days.

Despite the setback I've still been able to make a very satisfactory amount of progress.

As you can see the upper left dormer section is now in place and the garage front and porch have been completed.

I've also been able to put the brick pattern styrene in place to represent the couple of rows which can be seen below the render. A lot of what you see here will end up being buried in the scenery which means we are, in a very real sense, modelling the foundations of the house too.

On with the roof next, I think.

House Progress

Starting a new project is great because you always appear to make very rapid progress with it compared to the seemingly endless snagging list you find when nearing the end of a model build.

It's all a trick of the mind, of course, but I expect that explains why so many of us have so many unfinished models sitting on the shelf or tucked away in drawers - something which I regret we too are guilty of.

I do generally try to be disciplined and finish something off before I start on another.

The new house is in that satisfying stage at the moment where it is developing very quickly.

I've now got most of the outside walls in place.

The strange shape of the building is becoming apparent now. There is a big overhanging dormer structure to go on the upper front left and the other three sides of the garage to complete.

At the rear the northern half of the building appears to be suspended in the air because it still needs to have a secondary sheet glued on behind onto which I will attach the brick courses which are visible just above the ground where the render stops.

I'm afraid I do have to report that I found a minor discrepancy in the Artistic Director's beautifully drawn plans which meant the big side piece with the windows was cut the wrong shape at the bottom.

I obeyed all the rules about measuring twice and cutting once, but that only holds true if the thing you're measuring is correct of course!

The beauty of working in styrene though is that once I worked out what was wrong it was simple enough to graft an extra piece on and no one will ever know.

Apart from the thousands of people around the world reading this blog, of course....