SRman

Some new arrivals on Newton Broadway: I have received two parcels this week just gone, one from Hattons and one from Rails. One included two of Bachmann's new SR-style PMV vans, while the other contained a new Hornby BR (ex-SR) S15 4-6-0 locomotive. The S15 has been run in on the rolling road on DC, then fitted with a Lenz Standard decoder. I have fitted the brake rodding, and fitted then removed the cylinder draincock pipes pending modifications to allow the bogie to swing further. The front steps will follow suit, with modifications if necessary. It has only run a few circuits in 'revenue-earning' service, so far! Running with the BR blue vans is just possible as most of the S15s were withdrawn by 1966 while the BR blue was introduced just before that ... whether any of the parcels vans had been painted blue before the S15s had gone is a little questionable, but it doesn't look wrong to me. Also, I have been working on getting my London Transport 1920 F Stock train up and running (see my workbench blog for more details of the build to date). While the two trailer coaches have not yet been fully finished, requiring further painting and cleaning up of rough spots, and have no glazing in their windows, the four-car set has been able to run around the layout, and is seen here in Newton Broadway station.

My late crest 30830 has arrived; the parcel from Rails was waiting for me at home, after work. I ran it in on DC on the rolling road. With only six rollers, I put one under each driving wheel, one under the bogie trailing axle (to prevent it floating into the valve gear), and one under each bogie trailing axle on the tender. I then removed the tender body (only three screws needed to be removed, as the one under the leading bogie is accessible without removing the bogie) and fitted a Lenz Standard decoder. Address is set as 830, and CV3 to 25, CV4 to 20. CV2 was set to 0 (default is 1 on the Lenz, but that kicked the motor instantly into life on speed step 1 out of 128!). It ran very nicely on a quick test on the layout but it has not properly entered 'revenue' service yet. I fitted the brake rodding to loco and tender and also fitted the cylinder draincock pipework, although that will need cutting and adjusting to allow for my curves. They will be cut short to roughly where the trailing edges of the steps will be, and also cranked outwards slightly to allow more bogie swing. I test fitted the steps to see how much angle I could get but I have not, as yet, worked out whether they can be fitted and still allow sufficient bogie swing for the tighter curves. A little more experimentation is needed before fixing them permanently in place.

Perhaps they are leftovers from the churn era and just got abandoned out of use where they ended up.

Just keep an eye out for the ones carrying knives and forks!

In the past, I have fitted the steps in the proper place but angled outwards a little. That has worked with N15s and BR standards. I also tend to cut the draincock pipework shorter so it stops just short of the steps and can be pushed outwards by the bogie wheels as they swing into a curve.

No, the Rails parcel wasn't waiting for me ... but there was one from Hattons, together with a water bill and an electricity one. The wine somehow sounds more inviting than the latter two!

Not to mention even more expensive for those of us who model BR/Southern and London Underground (i.e. me!). My late crest S15 is winging its way from Rails of Sheffield even as I type this - with any luck, it may even be waiting for me when I get home from work this afternoon.

Keeping the ball rolling, here's the four-car set with the centre cars painted in bright red, but the roofs have received their first coat of Humbrol #66 grey.

The two trailers have had a little bit of filler applied to the roof joints, followed by a coat of primer. After removing any rough bits that showed up, another light coat of primer was followed by a coat of bright red (as a good base colour for the train red that will be brush-painted on afterwards. What this photo also showed up more obviously than before is that the side panel closest to the camera is not straight and needs to be removed and remounted. This demonstrates that taking progress pictures is not only for my own ego in showing off the models, but also a useful tool to show up any little errors or omissions before it's too late to fix them.

A minor correction to your post, Kenw: class 110 (and class 111) had two 180 hp Rolls Royce engines on board, so total per power car was 360, compared to the "standard" 300.

Yes. I shall have to have strong words with Peter, next time I see him, about making the rest of us look bad!!

Update: A quick first test run was mostly successful, apart from the last car dropping off in the tunnel. After adjusting one of the couplings slightly, the four-car unit ran well with no obvious problems.

And today just a few more minor touches: the couplings and underframe bits have been glued on. In this form, it can actually run on the layout, although still incomplete visually.

And now, here they are with bogies assembled and fitted, plus the roof vents in place. The painted bogie was recycled from the double-ended DM when I put a second Black Beetle into it, and needed a little adaptation and packing to get the ride height the same as the others. Next to do are the interior partitions, couplings and underframe fittings (which are fairly sparse on the trailers).

You may have difficulty getting the kits from Charlie (DC Kits) at the present time. He had a major fire a while back which means most of the kit stuff is in storage and inaccessible. I would suggest phoning him before placing any on-line orders.

Thanks for the compliments, both. Much of the drudgery of building these is removed in Radley's newer kit versions with their one-piece body mouldings in resin. What always slows me down on these kit-builds is glazing the things. At least with the F Stock, all of the glazing pieces are relatively short and easy to handle, and all are flat.

The LT F Stock trailer construction continued tonight. The side and door sections have been glued together and glued to the roofs. Both cars are still sitting loosely on their underframes. Has anyone ever wondered what the F Stock from 1920 would have looked like if they had been built in aluminium and left unpainted? Well, here you go! I suppose the next thing to do is to build the bogies and mount them on the underframes. I could also glue the roof vents into position too. A curiosity of the F Stock was that those vents proved rather too effective, so were blanked off fairly early in the life of the stock. There is a small amount of weakness in the centres of the sides, reinforced by the underframes and the tabs and recesses there. Once the interior partitions go in, they will strengthen things further, in spite of the fact that they are fairly soft and flimsy themselves. The whole is stronger than the individual parts.

Following on from the previous post, here is a pic showing the elements that make up each side. On the left I have left the items spaced out, while on the right they are positioned very close to the final effect. You can sort of see what I meant about the possibility of getting it even slightly wrong so making the sides too short or too long, and also the possibilities of getting the side components slightly out of alignment or crooked. The double-ended driving car had two more components per side (the cab side doors), while the single-ended driving car (motor or trailer, depending on period modelled) had one extra door per side - all that is rather academic if you build the resin kits from Radley Models as the body moulding comes with sides, ends, roof and internal partitions as one single casting.

I would say, "Yes." I intend to keep running my old Hornby Dublo/Wrenn, Parkside and K's vans in mixed trains because they still add variety to the mix. My efforts cannot match the finesse and detail of the Bachmann units, but when they are in a train that is actually running, they all blend in. Besides, it is still more fun to build your own and to be able to point at it and say, "I did that."

Having nearly completed the two driving cars for the London Transport F Stock, I decided to make a start on the two trailers. Bearing in mind I am on an antibiotic and a little under the weather still, so my hands are a bit shaky and my stamina is low, I decided to just do little bits at a time, The two trailers i have are original Harrow Model Shop white metal ones, which means there are three double doors plus four separate sections per side, two halves of the roof joined with a bridging piece (plus the vents to add later), and an underframe that has two extra end headstock pieces to stick on, it is just a little bit more complicated than the one piece resin bodies of the later kits from Radley Models. After that, both types of kit require the underframe details to be added and bogies to be assembled, and also the internal partitions to be added. With so many separate parts to the sides, I came up with a method long ago that used Blu-tac, a steel rule, a flat, hard surface and 5-minute Araldite glue, plus a modicum of cursing and swearing. That's jumping ahead a little. For starters, after cleaning up all the relevant bits with a file, I glued the two roof halves to their bridging piece, for each of the two trailers, and left those to set on a flat surface. Next, I glued the headstock pieces to the ends of the two underframes, while at the same time, gluing two coach ends to each of the roofs and propping those to dry with the coach ends held vertically. That's where I am up to now. The photo shows the two roof/ends sitting on the two underframes loosely. As you can see, the alignments are perfect. The sides will be next, and the reason for assembling the roofs and ends is so that I have the correct lengths to work to for the side assemblies. With so many separate pieces to fit and room for small movements relative to each other, it would be quite possible to end up with sides that are too long or too short by a few millimetres.

Frustrated by my own lack of motivation in building my London Transport train of 1920 F Stock, I ordered one resin body shell for a single-ended Driving Motor from Radley Models. I still have the older Harrow Model Shop white metal kits to build and one double-ended Driving Motor already built (also white metal). The resin shell was intended to speed the build of one more coach so I could at least run half a train with driving cabs still at both ends. However, having painted the resin shell red with grey roof, and assembled two bogies and an underframe from one fo the white metal kits, that's where it stopped again. All that was quite a few years ago. I have had a few days off work with a chest infection, but got bored and decided to attempt further work on the single-ended car to bring it up to a stage where it matched the existing "finished" double-ended car. This involved painting black around the window rims and down the door centre divides, plus painting the interior with green (I use Humbrol #88, which has a suitable bluish tint to pass muster), the floor dark earth colour, with plasticard strips hiding any holes, then glazing the lot. All that doesn't sound too hard, except my hands were shaking rather a lot and I had a nose bleed half way through! At least it matched the red exterior colour! Anyway, after a few trials and tribulations, I only have to glue some of the underframe bits and pieces in place to complete a two car set. Next, I have to construct two white metal centre trailers. I'll try not to let it take so long this time.

Nice photo, Michael. What's with the big 'X'es all over the place ... well, on the two rail vehicles, anyway?

Now, now, Rick. You know you can't use real gorse, or we'll end up with the problem they have in New Zealand. Come on, admit that you have used wattle as a substitute.

I have only just caught up with this, so it came as a bit of a surprise to me. I have had many good dealings with Howes in the past but they lost some of my business when they changed the online ordering system so overseas payments could not be processed. I'm sure that has also affected others not in the UK. This meant that one had to phone them up, or email with a list of items to be ordered, then follow with a phone call to give credit card details (it's not a good idea to include those unsecured details in an email). I sincerely hope they do continue in business for a long time to come.

Just to muddy the waters slightly, there was one exception to this: the hydraulic units of class 127 were originally coded as blue square but later changed to red triangle (re-used after the original Derby Lightweights of that code had long gone). They could work with blue square units but with special provisions for the gear changing on the blue square unit(s). That also means that class 127 trailers and blue square trailers could be used interchangeably - one of the preserved railways does indeed mix these types on occasions. The change of code came about because at the time the 127s were still coded blue square there was a failure caused by the blue square unit being attached at the back of the class 127. Being diesel hydraulic, there were no gear changes or gear changing apparatus on the 127, so the poor old blue square unit at the back was being forced to run at higher speeds still in first gear. Surprisingly, this was not very good for it mechanically!! In most respects the two types were still compatible, and the MU cabling through the centre trailers would have been identical as far as the signals they were carrying.