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  • SouthernRegionSteam

    Coastguard Creek - 15 months of planning!

    By SouthernRegionSteam

    Hold on to your socks - this is going to be a lengthy one! (In fact it's so long, I've now split it into 2 separate posts - the next will be up soon...)   I think it's fair to say that you are all long overdue an update on Coastguard Creek. Due to other commitments, no real progress has been made since the last post way back in March 2021; almost 15 months ago! If anything, things went backwards for quite a while, as I kept finding more and more inspiring locations that I really wanted
    • 8 comments
    • 3,298 views
Engine Wood

The Ghostly Goods Shed

Since finishing the signal box, I've been working on the railway goods shed for Callow Lane. Several years ago, I bought a Townstreet plaster-cast kit, which I felt has a sufficiently 'Midland' appearance to it. I'm aware it's not in the styles of the M.R. goods sheds at Bitton or Yate, for example, but I like it, it cost a lot of money at the time, and so I'm going to use it on my train set.   The gist of these kits is that you fettle the individual cast components to get a good fit, then glu
Captain Kernow

Captain Kernow

1
Will's workbench

More tunnel portals

Unteren Hirschsprung Tunnel (West) by Will Vale, on Flickr   I dunno, you wait ages for a blog entry, then two come along at once! With two months to go until the exhibition, my progress really needs to make the leap from "glacial" to "avalanche".   My current focus is the track bed (see previous entry) and civil engineering - once those jobs are out of the way I can finish the basic landforms and get the profile boards on. The main things required are four tunnel portals, some retaining wal
Will Vale

Will Vale

0
Will's workbench

Track and ballast

Ballast by Will Vale, on Flickr   This always feels like a make-or-break point for layout building. You've got to do it, but once you have going back is impossible, or at least wildly unpleasant. I have ballasted Z track before, as seen here on Igelfeld, but the ballast I used was pretty coarse. I was happy with it at the time, but given that the new layout has closer-to-scale rail profile, I felt it needed closer-to-scale ballast as well.     Before getting into that, I laid the track wi
Will Vale

Will Vale

3
Karhedron's Blog

Fettling the Dapol Hall

Hello,   As has been noted, the new Hall from Dapol leaves a certain amount of room for improvement. Whilst it is a huge improvement on the old Farish model, it is let down by an annoying number of small detail errors. Over the course of the autumn, I plan to try and rectify some of these. So far I have identified the following problems with Gossington Hall (lined black, early crest) that I think I can fix.   1. Wheels too shiny 2. Missing fire iron tunnel 3. Blue spot for weight, should b
Karhedron

Karhedron

2
Churchill8F's Blog

The Fat Controller - Review

Anyone who has seen the range of wind-up "Thomas & Friends" toys produced by Tomy for the Japanese market will have seen several figures are made to match the engines. Of these, the one I am drawn to is Sir Topham Hatt, also known as the Fat Controller.       As you can see, he is a tad bright and glossy, but some work here and there does wonders. One thing to be addressed is the solid base he is cast on. Simply removing it improves the figure quite well, and as such makes for a n
Churchill8F

Churchill8F

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Fen End Pit's Blog

D16/3 brakes on tender and dummy valve gear

Back from the summer holidays and a small gathering on Friday evening allowed for what are pretty much the final bits of brass to be put on the D16/3. First to go on were the front guard irons and then the brakes on the tender. I had some fun because of the earlier issues with the folding of the internal tender chassis which was slightly on the dink owing to the 1/4 etching rather than 1/2 etching of the components which made folding it up damn near impossible. in the end I had to enlarge some
Fen End Pit

Fen End Pit

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In the works

Painting and lining 7mm mk1's

Making the most of the last of the hot weather here in France before autumn sets in, I am spraying and lining a few mk1's for somebody. These are from the brass range distributed by Tower models and are made by San Cheng. Although no interiors are fitted, from the outside they look very nice models. As it only takes 5 minutes to take a photo, I'll take a few to show progress.     After unpacking from the sturdy well packaged boxes this is what you get :     Among them are an FK a
Howard Smith

Howard Smith

2
Chris Nevard's Blog

Kits of the Sixties!

nevard_110909_BQ_IMG_1203_WEB, a photo by nevardmedia on Flickr.   Upon my return to the hobby a decade of so ago, a very kind gent sold me around 50 kit-built wagons and half a dozen Maunsell and Bulleid passenger carriages for the price of a round of drinks. As required, I've been slowly refurbishing selected items to bring them a little closer to current standards.   Behind Radstock (with oversize buffers from Gibsons to avoid buffer lock on sharp wharf curves) we have a rake of kit-buil
Chris Nevard

Chris Nevard

5
Dukedog's Blog

Taking stock (3) LNER Van

One of the last few outstanding kits to be put together on my bench is this Parkside ex L.N.E.R. wood bodied van.   For extra detail and robustness I have used some parts from one of the excellent etches supplied by Dave Cleal of Mainly Trains.   Here's the underframe showing some of these excellent etched bits.     And another shot of the van complete (apart from axle box covers) ready for painting.     Finally here's the finished job complete with Modelmaster transfers, slight
Dukedog

Dukedog

2
Hundred of Chagford Tramway

Chagford - Building Homes for the Workers Revisited 2

Hi All   The first photograph was the result of the previous attempt to paint the cottages.     The next photograph is using the macro and flash with a simplified setup, without tripod shown below and the next photograph below it used macro and no flash. Both were taken in front of a window, i.e. much more light.         The problems with the last attempt at painting the Chagford Gas Company houses, was due to technique is applying the brick colour and the photographic techniqu
Lisa

Lisa

5
Ramblings from the Man Cave

Int Milk Brillyant

I guess some of you might have been wondering how the kit design was going. If not then maybe you will be interested enough to read on anyway. I've now built enough to know that all the permutations will work and only some very very minor changes will be needed before I reach a final version. Here's the proof     Left to Right: Diagram O4, Diagram O6 (O5 with end door conversion), Diagram O1. I stopped building when I ran out of parts. Everything else will need to be begged bought or otherw
richbrummitt

richbrummitt

5
Dave at Honley Tank's Blog

Annealing & Forging

Posh words? Techno waffle? Well yes perhaps, but they are really only technical words, each describing a very simple engineering process. In my last post I referred to “forging” the lamp brackets from 0.45mm diameter brass wire. The straight brass wire we get from people like that friendly Eileen person is technically called “hard drawn” and that simply gives an indication of how it’s made. But it does mean that it is “hard” which word in this application means no more than it is not too easy
Dave at Honley Tank

Dave at Honley Tank

0
Chris Nevard's Blog

Scammell Tri-van

nevard_110909_scammell_IMG_1178_WEB, a photo by nevardmedia on Flickr. Few of us need an excuse to pick up yet another diecast road vehicle for the price of a pint (though this one is the price of 2 pints because it's made of more bits!).   So here we have a Scammell 'Mechanical Horse' aka 'Tri-van' (Oxford Diecast 76MH006 British Rail) sat posing in the cobbled yard at Brewhouse Quay. This one has been de-railwayised with the removal of 'British Railways' and toned down with Testors Dullcote
Chris Nevard

Chris Nevard

3
halfwit's Wondrous Wagons!

Airfix Mineral Wagons - part 1

Inspired by Fen End Pit I'm building four old Airfix mineral wagons using Bill Bedford sprung w-irons. The first job has been to replace the floors with a piece of .040" plasticard 29.5 x 63mm, partly because the original floors are undersize and partly to save me the effort of cutting away the moulded ribs. Axle positions and centre lines were scribed on the floor before the body sides were glued in place;     Then I could use these lines to position the w-irons, helped by a Brassmasters
halfwit

halfwit

6
Redgate's Modelling

3MT Mogul - a Decision

OK, the decision seems to have been made. The Airfix kit and Bachmann tender appeared yesterday and last night I offered up various bits of kit to the chassis and boiler.   There is a difference in mould quality, I had hoped that by using an original airfix kit the plastic might be crisper than the Dapol kit, oh well.   A few issues to consider: The motor is wider than the outside dimensions of the firebox lower/ashpan The nice painted backhead does not fit the airfix footplate - and t
RedgateModels

RedgateModels

7
barrowroad's Blog

Bristol Barrow Road

It's been a while since I posted anything about Barrow Road what with holidays and sorting out the garage not to mention helping my son move to London for a new job.   Yesterday evening I hosted an evening for several members of this illustrious community who wanted to see what progress had been made since their previous trip.   What progress? - well not a great deal on the layout although I am making some, if slow, progress with the trackwork. Last night Morgan brought the 8F, now 48079,
barrowroad

barrowroad

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Churchill8F's Blog

Stepney - Pictures

As promised the other night. Not much of an update, but my camera messed up on the front on shot. Will update this at a later dad to rectify that.       I'll add a picture of the real thing so you can compare it. (Attribution: Bluebellnutter at en.wikipedia)         Jack   Source
Churchill8F

Churchill8F

0
Brackhampton Snow Hill

Getting started on the baseboards

Just a series of shots showing the baseboards as they start to creep along the back of the shed. The main basebaords are made from 3 inch strips of 12 mm ply, two are glued together to form L girders and two of these girders form the sides of each section. Single 3 inch strips then span between these. The track will be laid on 12 mill ply boards with 6 mm mdf stips along the sides, (just like Eastwood blog - sort of). Part of the trackbed has already had this treatment, which explains the earthq
rovex

rovex

0
Redgate's Modelling

Class 3 Mogul - A Viable Project?

The Class 3 tank engine sitting on my shelf gathering dust has been bugging me for some time. A somewhat impulse buy when I happened across Trains4U whilst around Peterborough with work.   I didn't need it to complete the collection, I have my old faithful Triang/Hornby example that was really what got me "into" BR Standards.   So, about that gap in my collection - the Class 3 Mogul 77xxx. Recent eBay bargains brought me an Airfix 76xxx kit and a Bachmann BR2 tender for less than 20 quid. S
RedgateModels

RedgateModels

7
Jessy1692's modelling bits and pieces

Super Deltic progress (excuse the grammer & spelling, been along week!)

Evening folks, Following on from my last entry, iv spent the couple of nights using up vast quantities of filler to patch up the missing body work on the Super Deltic Heres how it was looking on Tues night, i decided to get out the drills and saws and put the new windows in which have been hacked out of the deltic, The horrible Khaki green stuff is milliput whcih this project seems to be devouringat a tremendous rate.   leaving it overnight to harden off fully i commenced with the smooting
jessy1692

jessy1692

8
ess1uk's Layout Ruby Road and other waffle Blog

interesting train

whilst out and about in Norfolk/Suffolk recently i keep seeing the DRS top and tail class 47s working to Lowestoft from Norwich. wish i had a train like that, 2 cl 47s a DVT and 2 coaches, quality. pictures in my gallery must be costing the TOC a fortune to run, but nice to see something other than a Sprinter
ess1uk

ess1uk

1
albertzzz's Blog

The Hobby of a lifetime!

No matter, what hobby you pursue, the end result is same, i.e. gaining great pleasure and satisfaction. What also works in favour of practising a hobby is that, it has no deadlines, no rules and no pressure to perform. Spend as much time as you want. No one is going to talk about the end result. All you have to do is to please yourself. Hobbies offer other benefits as well. One can develop new skills and discover unknown talents. Individuals can expand their horizons, make new contacts, develop
albertzzz

albertzzz

0

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    • john new
      Painting some Dapol/Kitmaster workmen.

      By john new · Posted

      Next step completed after the six needed for a track gang have been painted and their foot pedestals clipped off. They will be fitted to the club layout (Axford) as a spot sleepering gang.   First lesson learnt by the experience - it will be easier in future to trim the foot block and drill for the pins before doing the painting.   The reason for the track gang is the l/hand divergent track on this board no longer goes anywhere as it now feeds a single entry sector plate. The
    • bcnPete
      Making Mountains

      By bcnPete · Posted

      This is fabulous Mike.   Thanks for sharing your techniques and it looks stunning in the setting - as Mikkel says, my kinda place!   A nice story and I do hope that they have success.   Love it in BR blue mode too 😀
    • gwr517
      Edwardian motorcars (2): British Ford T Late 1912

      By gwr517 · Posted

      Thankyou for the info.I want a British car but French or American would be OK. My "Dr" from Motley End could do with one of those modern contraptions! Railway modelling causes us all to be very aware of every aspect of life in our chosen era. Its part of the attraction. I could give your Postman a lesson or two in handling parcels also!
    • Mikkel
      Edwardian motorcars (2): British Ford T Late 1912

      By Mikkel · Posted

      Thank you Chris and Mike for the input on wording, "motor cars" it is then.   Douglas those 1960s car rallys sound good. There's an annual vintage fair here in Denmark that we sometimes go to. Here's a 1926 Ford T from a couple of years ago.       Returning to the DAPR 3D prints, I have been in touch with Ben of DAPR. He says that they are still available if you enquire. He also has them with the roof drawn up, and in pickup versions.   He says he co
    • gwr517
      Edwardian motorcars (2): British Ford T Late 1912

      By gwr517 · Posted

      No but a modeller freind has owned and restored 3 early T models. Also I was draged to many Veteran car rallys in the 1960's. My dad being a fan.I have owned 50 cars and 24 m/cycles but only one car and one m/cycle were vintage, a1925 Bullnose Morris and a 1926 AJS bike. I have riden a few veteran bikes in rallys though., great fun.

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