Some Locomotives.

I thought I'd add a bit more detail about some of my loco fleet.

Kato chassis; the original version of these had been about since the 1980s, these newer ones are superb runners thanks to high quality motors, flywheel drive and compensation, all for around £20! 

3D printed freelance Kerr-Stuart style diesel,  on Kato chassis. 

Baguley-Drewry inspired 6WDM. A1 Models etched "scratch-aid" kit, running on a Bachmann "Brick" Plymouth chassis. Cab cut down from the bottom as otherwise it would be too tall. Hatches on the engine cover are BR Mk.1 buffet car vents, comments have been made that they resemble missile hatches on a submarine, so I suppose the loco should be called Trident. Exhaust is turned brass, from an 03 detailing kit.

 

Left: battery-electric loco from a Rushby's Resins kit, on a Kato chassis. I still need to add cab doors to it, probably wooden stable doors with the tops open, and a suitably legless driver.

Middle: EuroNG 3D/etched body kit on a Minitrains Gmeinder chassis, built with small cab doorways (there are a couple of different options in the kit), tarps made of fine fabric. 

Right: my version of the Minitrains Gmeinder. Unpainted kit, cab altered to something near the prototype, quite a lot of detail added, all from photos of real locos.

Another battery-electric. A1 Models kit, etched brass parts on a laser-cut core. Buffer beams and couplings from Chivers Finelines bits box, valance from Evergreen styrene. Kato chassis (again).

There are several other part built locos lurking in boxes and drawers, I may even get around to finishing some of them, eventually!

Biggest lack at the moment is steam traction; there are two or three kettles, and I need to get at least one running to give the water tower something to do!

Never Mind the Bollards.

As I use Greenwich Couplings in 009, there are magnets for uncoupling on the layout, two on each siding and one on the line through the platform. 

Some time ago, I added the wooden (actually whitemetal) post to act as a position marker for a magnet on the wharf siding in the foreground of the photo below, as well as an oil drum for the siding by the wall:

For various reasons, I hadn't got around to fitting the other markers, but with an exhibition appearance about a month away (details to follow in another post), it was time to extract a digit.

So...this evening, while looking for something else(!) I found a little pack of model ship fittings I'd had for some time, among which were several bollards (probably capstans really, but that would spoil the post title). The useful thing about these is that they have quite a low profile, and are less liable to be hit by protruding bits of locos, etc., this being particularly relevant in the one shown above as it's in the vee of a point and can't really go anywhere else.

As they come, the bollards have a sort of cruciform mounting thing so they can be pushed into place on their intended ship (Titanic, if you must know), I removed the four sticking out bits from the latter, to leave a round mounting peg. A 2.5mm diameter hole was drilled to accept the peg, and I also used a 7mm diameter wood drill bit to add a recess so the bollard would sit lower, see photo below which explains this more clearly!

Bollard fitted, and painted cruddy brown, also you can see the coupling loops lifting, and the blue oil drum poking coyly and out of focus above the open wagon:

Here you can see all the markers I've fitted so far, I still need to decide what to use for the platform line marker:

Finally, I've painted the soil areas in the garden, which are no longer bright blue foam, but Woodland Scenics acrylic "earth", which is what I also painted the bollards with, due to laziness:

Nearly There...maybe!

The last item on the Portakabin to paint was the roof.

I've no idea what colour it should be, so I went for a rough mix of Humbrol Tank Grey and Dunkelbraun enamels, to try to replicate some sort of bitumen type paint. To make the job easier, I fixed the underside to a wooden take-away food knife with double sided adhesive tape. I may add a bit more fading etc., with different shades of blue, as well as highlighting door handles, etc. and (suggested by Bernard Taylor) a notice board inside to give the impression of an interior. The roof needs fixing down at some point, but I'll probably use TakBlak or similar to allow access to the interior in case I want to add figures or whatever. 

It looks quite good on the layout now, I think. 

More Portakabin.

Today, I've fixed in five of the six windows on the little Portakabin. I used Revell Contacta Clear for this; it dries clear and once set, any excess can be scraped carefully from glazing using a wooden cocktail stick or similar.

I also decided to fit a partition about ⅜ of the way along the building, from .040" Plastikard.

I'll try to glue the last bit of glazing in the morning, hopefully before it gets lost.

Progress...and About Time Too!

Back in whenever the last post was (March, apparently) I had installed the Ross-on-Wye backscene and put the layout in the box then...nothing happened, at least, not to this layout!

A side effect of having so many interests within the hobby is that one minute I can be making headway with a project, and the next I've practically forgotten that it exists; the APA box layout's been particularly prone to this.

Anyway, it's now late August, and I've actually got the box off its shelf and done a very small amount of modelling, but first I fitted the 6400K LED striplight, bought from the Light Fantastic DIY shop at Lydney, which is the perfect size for the layout. It comes with two small springy steel brackets and screws, which I quickly fitted to the top front rail of the APA box, clipped the light on, plugged it in (it's 230V, so no separate power supply and only one lead to lose) and...wow, the whole scene is flooded with light!

Something I've been struggling with is the building that sits to the left of the water tower; the space is very narrow and fronts directly onto the "main" line, so it wasn't really an option to use an unmodified kit for the building. I was also keen to include something that, to be honest, jars with the "timeless small town" vibe, so...a Portakabin it is.

Knightwing, bless them, sell a very nice injection moulded kit for one, but there was no way it would fit the space, so I cut sides, ends and roof down as far as possible and added a door in the left hand end, resulting in something that is (hopefully) plausible. 

And there, for several months, matters rested, as I couldn't decide what colour to paint the thing, until I went out on a bike ride and found this, between Ross-on-Wye Fire Station and the beginning of the walk/cycle trail that is on the course of the old Ross-Monmouth railway...

A few weeks later, I had a go at getting something like this effect (though not so faded), starting with Humbrol blue enamel, then going over it with a Games Workshop layer paint in a slightly different shade.

The window rubbers were then painted in Chris F's favourite Panzer Grey, and this is the result...

Next job will be to fit the windows and some internal partitions. I don't really want to add interior detail beyond representations of doors, but will see how it goes.

Next little job was to add some colour to the pair of N scale laser cut crossbucks that have been kicking around for a while; they're quite large in N, but ideal for 009 as small "home made" warning signs for a narrow road crossing an even narrower track. Etched letters are filled with Humbrol Scarlet, GW white for the fronts. I may leave the wooden uprights au naturel...

Time For A Trim...

Not me, the Gaugemaster "Pretty English Town" backscene, which just happens to depict the town where I live. Each of the three sheets is 12 inches high, whereas the space I need it to fit in (between the top and bottom side and end members) is about 8⅛ inches. Rather than simply cut 3⅞ inches off the bottom of the sheet, which would "lose" rather a lot of the town scene, I took off about ¾" off the top first (much more and the church steeple would hit the top member and divide the sky in two) then removed the remainder from the bottom. I then tried the trimmed backscene sheet in place, and put the layout in the box to see how things looked. I've also trimmed part of the left hand sheet to continue on from the town sheet and go round the corner to cover the other end of the box.

So, what does it look like?

Like this, is the answer:

I'm quite pleased with it so far.

The church is St. Mary's, the large building in front of it is the Royal Hotel, which does a nice pint of Butty Bach. Off to the left is Penyard Hill, with much of the town of Ross-on-Wye in the foreground. Our house is behind the church, less than 10 minutes walk from the Royal. Think I'll head off for a pint in a bit...

PS: Not a great photo, but this shows the left hand section of the backscene roughly in place. There's a bit of extra length to give room for adjustment if necessary. 

Back in a Box.

Having totally failed to update this blog for several years, here's an update. 

At some point, I got fed up with working on the layout in its box, so I removed it. 

To do this, it was necessary to dismantle the box, which I then dumped in a shed at the railway station where I worked.

It sat there until I left the job last year, losing a few parts in the process. To be honest, it very nearly ended up going to the tip, but I thought it might be useful for spares for my other, complete, APA, which was by then being used to store the layout in for the duration of the upcoming house move.

The acquisition of a Gaugemaster photographic backscene (two, actually, but that's another story), mostly because it depicts the town we were moving to, set me thinking about perhaps going back to the original, boxed, presentation, especially since the layout would live in a damp, dusty garage for much of the time.

Having got the layout perhaps 85% complete, it's becoming more vulnerable to damage during handling and storage and now (having moved) there are more possibilities for the thing to be exhibited, so boxing it again makes a lot of sense.

But what to do?

The original box had bits missing and had been modified, with various holes for tracks to go "off-stage", electrical connections, etc.

A check revealed that the two hardboard panels for the sides were missing, along with one of the eight screws that go through the ends and into the side members, holding the whole shebang together. 

One of the two track holes (exit stage left) still lined up, so no problem, but I must have slewed the exit stage right track a bit at some point. I'll most likely solve this by widening the hole a bit, and it'll need disguising with a tree either side (or similar) anyway. 

The missimg side panels issue is easily solved; I don't need a solid panel on the viewing side of either this or the other box, so I nicked one side panel from the other box, leaving an open side. I may sort out a couple of clear panels to keep dust out during storage, or maybe I won't. 

Here are a couple of progress pics...

The sorry remains of the old box, in the background is an 0-16.5 layout in progress:

The floor, side panel nicked from the other APA, side members and ends are screwed together, and a test fit shows the layout still fits...the other APA can be seen sulking in the background: