SRman

And just about complete, now. The Sturgeon A with some additional rust coloured weathering, and with a rail load added, using some cut lengths of rail and some plasticard strips cut to represent wooden battens. Just a few minor paint touch-ups to go and it is ready for service with my model Engineers Department.

In answer to a query on another forum, but for the record here, here is an underside shot of the Sturgeon A, showing the bogie extensions carrying the NEM pockets and 'fishtail' couplings.

I have been contemplating the Hornby S15 and the weathering to date, which came out just a little too brown for my liking. I mixed up some Humbrol coal black #85 as the predominant colour, with a tinge of Humbrol #66, olive drab, and even less Humbrol #62, leather. The whole lot was then mixed with some matt varnish and 'watered' down with turps to form a grey, almost black wash. I am much happier with the result, but I'll leave it to you to judge for yourselves.

Hi, and sorry, I did mean to mention the transfer manufacturer. They were from Cambridge Custom Transfers (http://www.cctrans.org.uk/products.htm). I chose the Southern Region variant of the sheet S2B/C, but John Isherwood of CCTrans does offer variations for each region. He is also a member of RMweb and does post fairly regularly. The transfer sets are often aimed squarely at the Cambrian Kits range. Cheers, and Season's Greetings, Jeff Lynn.

Normally after spray painting an item, I would brush paint the final coats of paint to fill in any holes or gaps in the spray coats. However, because I want to model the Sturgeon A in a heavily weathered and slightly battered condition, I didn't bother with more black paint, instead going straight to the greys (Humbrol #66 and #79) and browns (Humbrol #29, so far) in washes and dry brushed streaks. The initial results are shown in the next two photos. While I should have added the transfers before weathering commenced, it doesn't matter too much with this build, as there are more layers of weathering to go on. This is the stage it is at at the time of typing this post. Still to do: more rust is needed on the metal parts (of the real thing - they are all plastic in the kit!), more shades of grey and brown for the insides and outsides of the wooden planked bits, and more weathering on the floor, before adding the rail load I have earmarked for this wagon.

The Sturgeon A has now had the first coats of paint. After masking off the couplings, I sprayed some automotive grey primer, followed by matt black from the same source. This will eventually be followed by various shades of black, grey and rust colours to weather it down a bit.

For anyone interested, that last photo is of the tram terminus with two B class trams, at the end of Elizabeth Street, where it meets Flinders Street in Melbourne's city centre. That's the side of Flinders Street station behind - something of a Melbourne icon and Rick's occasional workplace! The London Transport pannier tank in the top photo is a long way from home, but not entirely out of place as it was an ex-Great Western (and BR Western Region) locomotive to start with.

A few interestin' furriners there, Rick. Wishing you and your family a Happy Christmas and New Year too.

The actual building phase of the Sturgeon A has finished with the addition of the door springs on the other side, handbrake wheels and 'V' hangers (representing an air braked wagon). I have only fitted the outer 'V' hangers, but have not mounted the corresponding inner 'V' hangers as they would interfere with the bogie swing. This wagon is now ready for painting. It will go into either very dirty black or very dirty departmental olive green.

Has it really been a year and a half since my last entry on the Cambrian Kits Sturgeon A? I have been putting off doing the fiddly door springs for that long. I have now fitted the springs on one side. One more side to go ... then there is a second wagon to build!

I would suggest browsing Replica Railways' range of transfers for the numbers. They cover a fair range of modern image and sectorisation numbers and symbols/crests.

Check the impedances, but usually they are 8 ohm, so connecting in parallel is the way to go. If the round one is 4 ohm, it will need to be connected in series with the sugar cube (which are all, to the best of my knowledge, 8 ohm). Be prepared to experiment a bit as some speaker combinations work very much better than others. For balance, I prefer to mix the same impedances, so two 8 ohm ones would be my preference. I know I have said this before, but finding the right speakers and combinations of speakers for any given sound project is very much a trial and error thing, with getting the best out of sound projects being something of a black art rather than a science, because of the vastly different installation parameters involved with model trains. One thing I do recommend as being a "must do" is to seal the speakers and enclosures properly. Even the most feeble speaker is improved by that simple task. Blu-tac is fine for this, "black-tack" (Homelux Bath Seal) is even better as it is stickier and more flexible.

A further note on my E6007 model. Harvey from The Hobby Shop, Faversham got in touch with me again, and said that as the brake gear is not listed as a separate part, they are organising to send me a replacement bogie frame as a complete assembly, through the Dapol agents, DCC Supplies. This is excellent follow-up service from The Hobby Shop and I would like to note that I have also had excellent service on several previous occasions from DCC Supplies. When I swapped the brush wire feeds, I also used Decoder Pro to program the light brightness (using a Lenz decoder, as mentioned previously). The initial (default) setting was 240, so I lowered the setting for forward and reverse to 120. This improved things a bit, but I still considered the lights to be a bit bright, so tonight I have further reduced it to a value of 50 ... this is proving to be much more convincing. As a temporary measure, I also decided to blank off the cab light contacts, so these are now inoperative. I have not had any response to my email to Dapol themselves, but I would still expect them to do something to rectify the faulty PCB circuits. If they don't do something in a timely fashion, I may do the modifications to the cab light circuits posted previously in this topic. It's something I am quite capable of doing, but would still rather not have to.

I prefer to mix the types so I can take advantage of the bass or treble qualities to give a better overall mix of sound frequencies.

Oh. I thought you meant the other mug!

There are instructions in the box on how to change the headcodes. They even provide extra clear "glass" for the purpose in the add-on parts bag.

Approaching Christmas and the holidays, I decided to start a small tidy-up. One result of this was these two unusual wagon loads of people ready to be distributed around the layout or added to locomotives as crew. they are in suspended animation but will resume their lives once I find appropriate places for them. One man has already found his way into the cab doorway on the 08 shunter!

My pair have a Bachmann sound-fitted powered unit (so speaker remains as supplied) and a large bass reflex speaker in the dummy unit, wired between the locomotives in parallel with a 2-pin connector. The sugar cube speakers weren't available (to my knowledge) at the time I did mine. One or two of those will probably give a better sound than mine, given the space constraints (mine sounds rather weak and tinny when the bass reflex one is disconnected). Bryan of Howes did a special twin-start sound file for me at the time.

Reminds me of the old joke about an Englishman in the Northern Territory wanting to go for a swim. He asks his Aussie mates, "Are there any sharks?". "Nahh ..." So in he dives. "... There used to be some sharks in there but the crocodiles cleaned them out!"

I bit the bullet and followed Olivia's Trains website suggestion, and swapped and resoldered the brush connections to the PCB. That has fixed the directional problems. The motor now goes forwards when 'forwards' is selected on the controller (i.e. the radiator fan end goes to the front), and the headcode lights now light up at the forward end when going 'forwards' and the 'rear' end when going 'backwards'. Of course, forwards and backwards are relative terms when talking about double-ended locomotives and units! I'm a little happier but I am still of the opinion Dapol need to fix this properly. Next, I'll deal with those cab lights ... later!

I have emailed Dapol about the brake gear assembly error on mine (which seems to be a one-off error) and also the faulty PCBs, which seem to be a universal error on all variants of their 73. One would hope that they will manufacture replacement PCBs which work correctly on DC and DCC and allow the directional lighting to match the actual direction of travel, and offer those replacements under warranty to anyone who wants them for their purchased class 73s. TheHobbyShop has also posted and I will be sending the details of the brake gear error to him - top marks for responsiveness and follow-up service.

I have posed my Lima early blue one, E6012 against E6007, and the blues are quite different. I still maintain that it doesn't look wrong on E6007, although the shade of yellow on the warning panel is definitely too lemony, as has been mentioned for some of the other liveries. While the model is very nice, I feel there are just too many niggles to make me buy another, unless Dapol lift their game a bit. Edited to fix my usual dyslexic typing errors and to add the photo.

Mine also arrived today from Faversham. It is currently sitting on the rollers being run in on DC, before any thought of fitting a decoder. I found one rather odd fault on mine. One of the brake shoe links was hanging a bit low. On closer inspection, the factory has fitted two left-hand right-hand shoes to the bar, where there should be one left and one right. Rather than send the whole model back, after ascertaining it ran as it should, I decided to do a little hacking. I carefully removed the brake assembly and twisted the offending shoe off its spigot, drilled it out slightly to clear the glue out, then reversed it and superglued it back again. While the detail is really on the wrong side, it barely shows and won't in normal service anyway. I will contact Dapol and the Hobby Shop and let them know of the error, with the hope that they may be able to supply the correct bits. If they can't (or won't) then it's not an obvious fudge. As for the blue, I think it looks OK on this livery variant. One other comment I will make (favourable, this time!) is that the framework behind the centre grilles is nicely done. It doesn't seem to show up in most of the photos shown so far, but it is there. Edited to correct the 'direction' of the brake shoes referred to.

A little while ago I was lamenting not being able to find the locking bars for some C=Rail containers I was building and decorating. Well, I recently placed an order with C=Rail for some of their new Freightliner containers, plus some extra locking bars to complete the previous builds. The two 40' containers for Hanjin and OOCL are now complete, apart from possibly a bit of weathering. The pre-finished Freightliner containers from the late '70s and through the '80s are shown here mixed in with some more modern containers. The finish on them is superb. I still have two of the kit-built tank containers to finish off in there!

That's what i was hoping to be able to do with mine when it arrives. Could you post a pic of the cuts and connections you made, please, mc? Pretty please?