Van With A Plan

My Dundas kit for the VoR van arrived just in time for the weekend and I managed to snatch a few minutes to see how I could use it as the basis of a model of the vehicle as it runs on the WHHR now.

The main issues to address are that these days the van has lost its matchboard sides, replaced by large, smooth panels, and windows have been cut into the ends.

The look out duckets are also gone.

My plan all along has been to make a new body shell from styrene, but looking at the injection moulded parts - which are as fine as you'd expect from Dundas - I decided it would be a shame to waste the solebars and the footboards which are nicely detailed and a stronger part than I could make myself in styrene.

So what I've decided to do is to try and cut them off and then graft them onto the bottom of new sides and ends.

I've already got as far as measuring and cutting out the blanks and making a hole for the window in the single door on each side.

Now I shall be getting out the fine strip and starting on the panelling.

Killing Time

I had a odd situation this week where I had an evening with an opportunity to spend a couple of hours doing modelling, but no obvious project to be getting on with.

This is most unusual.

If my Vale of Rheidol van kit had arrived I would have made a start on the BR blue WHHR van, but it hadn't, so I couldn't.

So instead I decided the best way to make use of the time was to get ahead of the game and get out the resin and cast the pieces for Superbarn 120.

This is an enormous gamble because I haven't yet seen any decent pictures of the latest FR carriage being built at Boston Lodge, let alone looked at it in person.

Perhaps it shows I'm getting complacent in my old age?

Fiddly Furniture

I've had (yet) another of those spells where you suddenly realise to your horror that you've not got any meaningful modelling done for the best part of three weeks.

(I my case I blame the Easter holidays, a visit from relatives from the other side of the world and finding myself used as an unpaid chauffeur for the kids.)

Clearly this situation is unacceptable, and with Himself otherwise engaged this week the blog would have ground to a halt if I didn't pull my finger out and do a bit of work.

So I've been getting on with assembling the seats for the new observation car 152 from the castings I made around a month ago.

It's quite fiddly work completing the sixteen seats for the rear saloon which need to have the arm rests created out of small pieces of square section styrene strip.

Twelve of them are fixed back-to-back to be located at the window pillars.

The carriage body is with Himself to have the brass roof and the front window pillars made up in brass so these seats will be set aside until it comes back to me for the interior to be fitted,

Garratt In The Gap

Having fixed the last bits of rock onto the sides of Cutting Mawr and added various bits of infill and foliage to finish it off Himself decided to pose 138 and a selection of carriages in there to show it off.

One of the things which really pleases me about it is that it's hard even for me to tell at a glance which are the genuine pieces of rock and which are those which had been cast in resin.

I have to run my fingers along them and feel for the cold ones just to be sure sometimes.

It's a vindication of the decision to try to save weight by making copies, although it's perhaps not the most cost-efficient way of doing it because you do get through a lot of RTV and resin.

I hope you enjoy these views because it's only possible to get angles like these when the layout is disassembled.

And if you'd like to see if with your own eyes then come along and see us at Narrow Gauge East at Bressingham in June.

On The Wind Up

It's provocative enough us giving a run out to our model of Russell on Bron Hebog and we could see even more muttering with what I'm thinking about as my next project.

If the pictures had emerged a couple of days later you'll have thought the WHHR painting their ex-Vale of Rheidol guards van in BR blue livery was an April fool.

I've always had a thing about the blue livery on the Rheidol, it takes me back to my childhood, and one day I'd really like to have a model of one of the Swindon engines in that condition.

We'll need a brake van to run in the WHHR train I'd like to assemble, and this van has made it to Beddgelert on the test trains, albeit in a brown colour scheme.

There is a Dundas kit for these vans, although they're in original condition with matchboarding and lookout duckets.

My plan would be to employ chassis from the kit and use the sides as guides for making alternative sides from styrene.

Welsh Weather

So in the end we poked around in the collection of old paint cans, as you do, and thought we'd give this a try.

I think it'll do the job for now.

It's very neutral and to my eye at least gives the impression of a dull, overcast day.

(Not that you ever get many of those in the top left hand corner, of course....)

Scene But Not Seen

Himself has finished the woodwork for the backscene.

That was the easy bit!

The difficult bit is deciding how to decorate it and I don't mind admitting that we're both in a bit of a quandary.

What sort of colour or effect should we be going for?

Any advice or suggestions are most welcome because the situation here, frankly, is that one of us is colour blind and the other hasn't progressed much in the artistic department from drawing stick men in playschool.

There's the potential to ruin with some very subtle scenic work on the layout with a backscene that sticks out like a sore thumb.

Hmmmmm.