SRman

You have got me guessing your location now. Booval to the south and Ipswich workshops north west suggests you might possibly be in East Ipswich? Nice photos anyway.

Update: I have added a little microstrip to the top of the running board extensions and tidied up a few rough edges and joints. I also milled out a little of the insides of the body shell to get it to sit down that last half millimetre. I straightened up the odd slightly crooked handrail and retouched the paintwork. This is the result as it stands now.

Rails of Sheffield are already selling the first Oxford release at a tempting £84.50.

Changing subject again, DougN and I ran my S15 on his layout last week and decided to test its hauling powers, as well as my mods to the steps and draincock pipes. Doug's layout is a figure 8 double track with gradients on the curves. Inner radius is approximately 3rd radius but varies a bit. We gradually added a motley collection of four-wheeled wagons of varying degrees of freedom or stiffness, until we reached around 35 wagons. The S15 struggled at certain points with this load and had to be pushed over those parts. Reducing the load again to 30 wagons restored its ability to go round the layout completely without the Big Hands of The Gods descending on it. Running was smooth and consistent all the way, with a small amount of wheel slip, although the actual speed at which the motor was turning the wheels didn't seem to vary much at all, regardless of whether the wheels were slipping or not. That suggests it would do better with some added weight ... if one could find somewhere to actually add the weight. Running light engine or with a light load of wagons gave no problems with my slightly angled front footsteps and draincocks, but with the full load, we found it was derailing the front bogie at the top of the uphill gradient. This was due to the torque just twisting the whole locomotive on the track enough to cause the front bogie wheels to be pushed off by the steps. For Doug's layout, the answer would be to not fit the steps, or to fit them with a distinct outward crank, or, as Doug suggested, fit thinner (etched brass?) steps. Overall, the performance was very impressive and promises well for more "normal" loads. Equally impressive in the other direction, was Doug's Hornby K1 2-6-0, which managed only slightly fewer wagons. Having suitably impressed Doug with the S15, there is a chance I may have tempted him to buy a Southern liveried example.

Dare I show these? O2 0-4-4T 30182 pauses outside Newton Broadway with a PMV and Maunsell pull-push set. Sepia toned photos from the early 1960s. In the second one, 30182 has been turned and is heading back up the line. Edit: Damn! I should have taken that rear coupling off it!!

Continuing with building up (and decreasing, in the case of the 08) weathering effects, here are some more progress photos, taken on the layout near Newton Broadway station. In the case of the O2 I also 'doctored' two of the photos to resemble older images in black and white and sepia tones. They then give me some comparisons with the photos I am working from in various publications. The 08 shunter has had a partial wash and partial dry-brush effect with grey, Humbrol #66 (called olive drab). I had to use a cotton bud and turps to feather the edges over the top corners of the bonnets. I also used a few dry-brushed strokes of rusty brown along the lower edges of the frames and brake blocks and rodding. And to the O2, with a lot of grey (#66 again) washed and dry-brushed over most of the areas below the footplate, plus the running board top surfaces and smokebox. And the black and white versions of two of these: And the sepia tones. I think these look particularly effective, myself. As before, these are still works in progress, but I am happy with the way they are going, at present.

Continuing with building up of weathering effects, here are some more progress photos, taken on the layout near Newton Broadway station. I 'doctored' two of the photos to resemble older images in black and white and sepia tones. They then give me some comparisons with the photos I am working from in various publications. The present effect was gained mostly with a lot of grey (Humbrol #66) washed and dry-brushed over most of the areas below the footplate, plus the running board top surfaces and smokebox. And the black and white versions of two of these: And the sepia tones. I think these look particularly effective, myself. As before, this is still a work in progress, but I am happy with the way it is going, at present. (This post also duplicates a part of my workbench blog. Apologies if you think you are seeing things twice ... you are! )

That sounds great, Bif. Lovely work.

This is just a progress report on weathering projects. The photos were taken in fairly dim light with my HTC phone, so are not the best but illustrate what I have been doing and indicate to me what the next steps should be. I have slightly unweathered the Hornby 08 by dry brushing some BR blue back over the black washed edges and roof panels. It still needs a lot more work before I am happy with it, but I think it does look a little better than before. The Hornby S15 has had a little more Humbrol black wash added, over the smokebox, cab roof, footplate and running boards, tender top and cylinders, plus a very thin application along the boiler top. The Kernow/DJM O2 has also had some more of the Humbrol wash added to similar areas to the S15, plus the tank tops and bunker rails. At risk of boring everyone with these slow step by step illustrations, I hope to show that weathering is best built up slowly, in layers, which is pretty well how it occurs on the real thing.

I may be repeating myself here (apologies if I am - this topic is too long to trawl through to see what I said before!), but, agreeing with the posts before this one, I am not entirely happy with the looks of the front end, nor am I happy with the lack of corridor windows on the earlier issues. I did modify one DTC corridor side (a fair bit of work) but was hoping Hornby would come to the party and send out the promised replacement interiors. I have bought a few more old Triang-Hornby composite coaches just to get the first class parts of their interiors to do more conversions to my remaining VEP DTCs. Having said that, I now own five of them, two blue, two NSE and one blue/grey. I may not have bought any of them if they had been at full retail price, but mine have all been reduced price purchases (one second-hand), which makes them rather more acceptable for the compromises involved. In motion on the layout, running singly or in multiple, they still look quite good. The Bachmann CEP units still offer better value for money and better running qualities, and more accurate models.

You have really captured the atmosphere of the BR blue railway, Peter. As always superbly done.

Thanks for that one. It looks like it also received the "correct" rail typeface for its numbers, where I had guessed they would have retained the earlier condensed style. Mine is in dirty form so must have been in service for a while, so the arrows may well have been moved to the more conventional position (ignoring the now incorrect typeface for the numbers). Oh well. I think I'll leave it as is for now. It looks reasonably correct, even if the photo proves otherwise!! Interestingly, even at this early stage, the photo shows nice smart white handrails along the bonnet sides too, something a lot of the photos of other members of the class don't seem to have received until later, from my observations of the various photos. That, at least, is easily corrected on my model. I also have one of the small handrails over the filter grilles to straighten up. My close-up photos show it very clearly being bent, where using the naked eye I had not noticed this at all. Once again, thanks for the useful photo and info.

Having trawled the Internet and my books and magazines, I decides that the blue 08 I have been working on should be renumbered. D3219 seemed to be the most suitable candidate I could find that matched the body features of this particular Hornby model: wooden cab doors, external hinges on the body side doors, the correct number of footplate 'boxes', and Southern Region based for most of its life. I have no idea when it went into blue, so that is an assumption I have just had to allow. A quick renumber, using the same Replica Railways rub-on transfers as before, and D3272 became D3219. I have used several layers of Humbrol's black weathering wash, plus a layer of off-white dust from Tamiya, which was rather less successful in giving the faded, chalky paint effect I wanted. Another very thin wash of the Humbrol black has hidden most of the Tamiya wash. That's not to say there was anything wrong with the Tamiya paint, it just wasn't quite the right thing for the effect I wanted. At the moment the effect is a little too dark and dingy, and I want to get a little more of the BR blue showing through, so a little bit of dry brushing the centres of panels may be in order. I used a little of the Humbrol glossy oil stain finish as well around the fuel tanks and suspension leaf springs and a little on the crank pin and hinged areas of the coupling rods. The wheels need attention to dirty them down and blend them into the overall effect. Here she stands in full sunshine with a very cruel close-up to show me what I need to do to fix the weathering. This time, I used a strip of masking tape below the baseline of the numbers to make sure I got them straight on both sides. I noted the slight bend in the coupling rod on one side, and have now straightened that. Sometimes these cruel close-ups can be useful!

Can you stand one more from me? I have commenced some weathering on the O2, which has had all the brightwork toned down with the black wash, plus a wash of brown on some of the brake gear. I did black wash the cab lookout surrounds but that just looked tatty, so I removed the effect again. I'll have to try a different technique there. Much more needs to be done before it is convincing. A crew has been fitted in the cab. I must hook that vacuum pipe back, as per the suggestions a few posts ago (thanks for those, guys).

I have been doing bits of work on various projects lately. This probably belongs in my workbench blog, but seeing as I am showing them on the layout, it's not entirely inappropriate here. The Maunsell 0-6-0 d-e shunter 15203 has been sat down a bit on its chassis and a few more paint touch ups done. One handrail seems to have gone back out of kilter but I will fix that again soon. I have also commenced some weathering on these projects. I must emphasise that these are only the initial attempts and all need more work before I am satisfied with the effects. The S15 4-6-0 has had a crew fitted and some Humbrol black weathering wash applied to tone down the brightwork, cab roof and smokebox. Lots more work to do here with browns and greys before I will be able to claim it is finished! The O2 0-4-4T has had the pipework fitted at the front and all the brightwork toned down with the black wash, plus a wash of brown on some of the brake gear. Again, more needs to be done before it is convincing. A crew has also been fitted in the cab. And finally, the blue 08 has copped a heavy weathering using the black wash, some oily stains and a white 'dust' wash (which was not successful in representing the chalky paint effect I wanted! It got another thin black wash to compensate). Again more needs to be done but I am happy with the effect so far. I do want to redeem a little more of the blue again but that can be done by dry brushing. I also want to add a driver and a couple of shunters hanging on to the front steps and in an open cab door. After a bit more research and digging through photos, I think I need to renumber this one to D3219, which has a better match to the features of this particular model.

They did indeed. London Transport also often used redundant driving motors as tractor units and shunters, often in matched pairs.

Thanks Mal. Just for that, here's one more! This time it is with the front coupler and pocket removed, and all the brake pipes and dummy screw coupling fitted. There was some digging through online photos to find out what pipes to fit and where they went, and a considerable amount of swearing, retrieving dropped pipes, pulling them off the forceps when they glued to those instead of the buffer beam, discovering I've fitted the thicker pipe in the wrong place (it is the one now correctly nearest the right-hand buffer, as you look towards the loco), etc., etc.! I intend this locomotive to be mainly for Pull-Push working, so thought it worthwhile to detail up the front as much as possible, something I also did to a Hornby BR M7 0-4-4T 30108 a while back, for the same reasons. It is not practical to add all the buffer beam pipework to the rear of the loco as they would interfere with the bogie swing. Next up will be to weather the pipework on the whole locomotive, and later on, weather more of the loco itself. Beautiful as those brass/copper pipes are, they are too clean and obvious for what I want on what is to represent a hard-worked example of the class.

Regretfully, I won't be able to make it tomorrow. I had another gout flare up this week and while I am recovering well now, I'm still not all that mobile. I am absolutely positive your meeting will go well and will be very popular as usual. Enjoy the day (applies to Peter and to all who do go to the meeting).

I'm probably guilty of monopolising this topic a little, lately, but just to show that it's sorted nicely now, here's the O2, 30182, on a suitable Maunsell Pull-Push train Hornby coaches) with PMV (Bachmann) inserted in the set. The O2 had no problems with this light load and romped around the layout. The pics are chosen to illustrate various parts of the journey under its own power. I'll try to keep quiet for a while here.

Going slightly off-topic for a moment, a friend here in Melbourne has a near scale model of Exeter Central under his house. We test the rollability of stock by placing the item at the top of the 1 in 30 gradient and seeing how far they go. A GW autocoach (probably Airfix or Mainline - I can't remember which) rolls at high speed down the hill, through the back straight and two-thirds of the way around the return curve into the fiddle yard loops. A Wrenn SR CCT placed at the top of the gradient sits there, until given a nudge where it then rolls approximately 9 inches to a foot or so then grinds to a halt! It would be interesting to try some of the previously mentioned stock to see how they fare in the rollability stakes!

Short answer: yes, that has happened. Especially later in the lives of first-gen DMUs, there were many varied scratch formations made up just to keep things running.

To be fair, the Hornby Van Cs are not exactly free rolling, and my test train had one of those in the rake. The other items were the Parkside van I removed later, a CCT and two of Bachmann's new PMVs, plus the Bachmann BG. Overall a good test rake but probably not as free running a collection as , say, five or six free-running bogie coaches.

I have just tinkered a little more with my O2, concentrating on weight distribution. Incidentally, what I thought were springs on the rear bogie were, in fact, the electrical pickups. I decided to add spacer for the bogie pivot, using a section of brass handrail wire. This gives a small amount of springiness, and if wound tightly around the chassis pivot, won't be in danger of shorting out the pickups on both sides. I experimented with a double wound spacer but that lifted too much weight off the rear driver, so a single circlet of brass is proving sufficient. At the other end, I added a small rectangular section of lead, wrapped in insulation tape and glued lightly to the bottom of the smokebox interior. Finally, I cleaned the wheels to ensure that any dirt built up from the imbalance was eliminated. I reduced the parcels train by one van (a Parkside kit) and sent it around. There was a small amount of wheel slip in both forwards and reverse orientations, so I seem to have cured the problem at the expense of slightly reduced hauling power in reverse, but stronger performance facing forwards. It will certainly now cope with two or three free-rolling coaches.

Yes, there were LT buses - or at least one bus. That might even have been in Model Rail or Hornby Magazine.

I have looked at the exploded diagrams. The flat piece I think you are referring to has two T-section ribs running down one side. It is shown as going somewhere to the rear of the cab, but where exactly is not clear. I suspect it may be a baffle to seal off the coal space for when sound is fitted. but that is only a guess. The box like thing, I would guess, is a holder for a sugar cube speaker. There is mention of that in one of the magazine reviews. I still haven't worked out where all the pipes go.