Castle

Hi Polly, As you intend to show GWR then I most definitely would go for engines like the Duke. It is fairly unusual to see a preservation era main line loco shed so the ability to show people what might be their favourite main line loco on shed will be a bonus and a real crowd pleaser too I would think! As long as there might be a couple of spots for a certain blue King and then a Mk 1 Castle in the future maybe?! All the best, Castle

Hi Adam, On behalf of one of my fellow Didcot volunteers, when is Bonnie Prince Charlie (or the 'Tug Boat' as he is known at 81E due to his ship's whistle!) going to be available please? Thanks! All the best, Castle

Hi Mark, That looks really great - I must admit I was tempted when I found out about the kit but there is too much GWR / WR stuff on the Little Didcot workbench without adding this too! If you need any more reference material, I have loads of pictures and videos so send me a P.M. All the best, Castle

Hi Mark, I have just found this entry - I don't do blogs much but I will keep an eye on this one now I know it's here. Glad you enjoyed the Poland stuff on Little Didcot! All the best, Castle

Hi Polly, GWR express passenger engines are always green, well, almost always... The mighty blue spud! All the best, Castle

Hi Polly, As far as I know, Clun has never been black. There were two castles that were reported as being painted black during WWII but this was before No.7029 was built. I hope this helps! All the best, Castle

Very nice Julia, very nice indeed! All the best, Castle

Hi Dave, With my Western bias, many of my suggestions have already been made (47XX, 94XX, 15XX, the Gas Turbines and so on) not that I need all of those but I am sure they will sell very well for you. Despite all the moaning about us Western modellers, there are quite a few of us out there and anything from the region should be good. Two suggestions I would make would be in the rolling stock section: A decent brake down crane would go down very well. They are very evocative bits of rolling stock and most railway modellers would buy one. Let's go really out on a limb - DCC operation? The potential play value would be enormous! Now, I would like the Cowan & Sheldon LMS version from Didcot but maybe that's being greedy! How about some of the more esoteric bits of rolling stock? The ROTANK wagon at Didcot has always fascinated me and there are loads more weird wagons like it in the history books. The GWR flat wagon seems a little under represented too - LORIOTS and the like. As they are capable of taking any number of weird loads then this too is the sort of thing that appeals to us modellers in my experience! Just a few thoughts... All the best, Castle

Hi James, Sounds like a great project - please post the results on RMWEB! I have a number of shots and film of this engine so if you are short a detail or two then let me know and I will see if I captured it. All the best, Castle

Hi All, What do you mean it's been over a month? Time for a little more Prairie Procrastination then! Oh, well I have been a little busy so sorry about that everyone! A friend of mine came over today and we did some work on one of his wagon kits but in between times I weathered and reassembled little No.4144. It still needs cab windows, crew, coal load and one or two other odds and ends but it's nearly there now! The impression I was going for was lightly work stained so I hope this is what comes across. So many of the large prairies I saw in photos had the oil leak from under the cover on the smokebox I thought it would be nice to include it. I will TRY to not make it so long until the next update... Thanks for looking in! All the best, Castle

Hi Polly, The Nunney Castle livery should be ok - just remove the lining below the footplate and the British Railways in Egyptian Serif font transfers are available from Fox as are little Ws. The only other trick with her is that she has a tender that has been modified in preservation. This means a bit of work to the top deck as she has increased water and coal capacity. Pictures on line will reveal the differences. I hope this helps! All the best, Castle Edit: and the obvious air pump on the running plate, the OTMR box on the back of the tender and the additional pipe work, air through pipe, air brake pipe and so on... Oh, and the recent addition of the mechanical lubrication (I think this is slightly too late for your time period though). Sorry - forgot those bits! She is one of the most modified Castles on the main line!

Hi Andy, If the mould is silicone and the casting is 2 part polyester resin, in THEORY it should never stick in place as the two materials are designed to be mutually exclusive as you would imagine! The other thing to do would be for you to get 5 or ten of each multiple part you want and then to make another mould that can cast many bits at once. At this size there should be no appreciable shrinkage problems and it will speed things up a whole lot. I hope this helps! All the best, Castle

Hi Andy, Glad to see that the mould making is coming on so well - well done! Be careful about mixing very small quantities of resins and silicone though, as counter intuitive as it may seem it can be harder to get a good mix of the two parts or the rubber and catalyst. If you get a situation where you do end up with a poor mix of resin that won't go off (which leaves the mould sticky), carefully scrape out as much as you can, make up a properly mixed batch and then pour in as normal. It should set the non-mixed stuff off. I hope this helps! All the best, Castle

Hi Polly, We are not shark infested in any way at Didcot! There were ballast plough versions of the TOAD but I don't think any survived into preservation. All the best, Castle

Hi Missy, Just caught up with this post - absolutely cracking job there - well done! All the best, Castle

Hi Polly, Seems like you are getting to grips with the weathering there - good job! The other thing to look at would be the Tamiya weathering master powders. I use these all the time and find them very easy to work with. As has been mentioned before, a coat of matt varnish before and after is in order. Have a look early on in the Little Didcot thread where I do a run through of how I do weathering on a 5 plank open. I'm not saying it. the right way to do things but it is my way of doing it and it works for me! I hope this helps! All the best, Castle

Hi Mikkel, Now this IS nice! Super job! All the best, Castle

Hi Scott, As I said, its all very easy to do and just requires a slightly different approach. Follow my build and I won't lead you too far astray! Post up the results for us all to enjoy! All the best, Castle

Hi Scott, It is a slightly different way of working as you have the majority of the work done for you. The trick is to make sure that the finish is up to par as with the WSF, there is a very slight 'grainy' sort of texture to the surface. I had a bit of an experiment with the stuff and it seems that the best thing to do was to give it all a light sand with some fine wet and dry (used wet to prevent clogging) prior to painting and then a couple of coats of Halfords grey primer, another light sand with the wet fine wet and dry and then a final light coat of primer to finish. Job done! The FUD has far less of this but would make the product prohibitively expensive. It is the quality of Shapeways machines and the way that Hazelwood Models orients the prints I am told prevents the vast majority of the stepping effect that can be associated with this technique. You are basically doing a finishing job. The only other issue is that WSF and FUD are very strong but incredibly light and the nature of the shape of the prototype is that it is a case of stuff the weight in where you can! They are great little kits that are very easy to get good results with and as I have shown, you could load it up with any sort of outsize load and gets very interesting train in your collection. Get a set and if you have any questions then post here and Dazzler Fan and I will talk you through it! I hope this helps! Hi 81C, As long as its GWR green... All the best, Castle

Hi Scott, If you like these ones, you will also love the rebuilt centre wagons that I have as test prints at the moment. The rebuilt buffer beam conversion sections are REALLY nice! As you need to have at least two massive girders per bridge then you have to have both sets... That was my excuse anyhow! Sorry I missed this chatter over the weekend but I was made most welcome as the guest of the support crew of this fine machine over the last couple of days for which I am very grateful. We has an absolutely cracking run on Sunday and the loco performed beautifully in the capable hands of Mr Churchill and company at the helm. All the best, Castle

Hi 81C, I have a 61XX to do first... A bit of a pain that really, I have done all this knowing that I have to do it all over again! At least I know where the pitfalls are now I suppose! All the best, Castle

Hi All, Prairie Procrastination (part 1 of 3) Chapter 2: Blowing off the cobwebs... Back in May last year my two friends and I did our versions of Didcot resident No. 4144. The two lads did theirs and were happy and I decided that I really needed to do a bit of work on the chassis of the machine and I left it by saying that I said that I was going to very soon "turn my attentions to the chassis and ponder what to do about things such as the sanding gear and the cylinder drain cocks"... And then life got in the way and stuff happened and other models turned up and so on and little No. 4144 languished at the back of the display cupboard unfinished. Wanting a little something to chew on today which needed little thinking about, I liberated said unfortunate from its limbo and dragged it back to the workbench having realised that it was in serious danger of being beaten to completion by the real locomotive project... There were a number of issues I had with the frames a they sat - firstly was the chunky cylinder drain cocks which were very over scale. I broke out the brass wire and the styrene strip and got busy replacing. Its not as finessed as an etched replacement but it is a bit better than when I started! The other big omission for me was the water balance pipes and the injectors. These are situated under the cab floor and I can see that when Airfix originally designed the model, there was no way that these were commensurate with train set curves. There still has to be a bit of give and take fitting these so I came up with what I figured was a reasonable compromise. I cut the profile of the balance pipes out using the drawings in Russell in thin styrene sheet. These I stuck to the frames with some cyanoacrylate. I also had some Alan Gibson Workshop GWR injectors in stock for this job too. They are actually Pannier ones but as they are mostly hidden behind the cab steps, wasn't a problem. These were stuck behind the balance pipes and this resulting arrangement is shown below. Admittedly, the balance pipe should be much thicker but the way I have done it leaves a good deal of 'swing' for the rear truck but still looks far better than the vast open space left there before... A final application of some scrap etch to make some guard irons - the pony trucks are not the prettiest with their coupling socket and I think these lift them a little bit. A dismantle and a bit of work with some brass wire got me here with some new sanding pipes. Time to break out the weathering me thinks but that is for another day... I then had a balance of all the bits together to get a feel for where I was going and it came out like this. Notice that her various innards are still piled up to one side! As it is now dismantled, I figure that I HAVE to paint and weather it before it all goes back together and as I hate having lots of little bits of expensive engine hanging around then there is a little self motivation there... All the best, Castle

Hi Fatadder, Mainly Trains does a whole etch of various D/C brake components that I have used before. They include the bits you want. I hope this helps! All the best, Castle

Hi La Scala, That is an ace project - a really interesting locomotive and a fascinating thing to see trundle over the Welsh narrow gauge lines. I will make a point of going to see her when she is finished. Thanks for showing us! All the best, Castle

Hi La Scala, Apparently not but they do look very similar - quote from the referenced page: "A common misconception is that the C2 is similar to the PX48 locomotives still to be found in Poland. The PX48 is a considerably larger locomotive. Some PX48s were exported to China and more were built there under the designation 'C4'. However, several locos of the PT-4/KP-4 classes still exist in Russia and Eastern Europe." They are definitely cut from the same cloth though it would seem! Not being too well read on the narrow gauge scene,I hadn't come across that very interesting project before - looks like I have some reading to do... Thanks! All the best, Castle