SRman

A little more refinement to the plate girder bridge: an initial coat of paint has been applied to hide the white plasticard, and the brick support pier has been trimmed to better suit the bridge layout. The Vollmer embossed brick card has been trimmed and folded to suit, and a temporary infill piece of brickwork added to cover the gap left between the pier and the stone retaining wall. I have also done a little more with the level crossing but no pics taken yet.

Darn! I was hoping to catch up with you at the next meeting, seing as Doug and I both missed Manfred's one (Doug's daughter's concert clashed). I still have that class 37 for you if you still want it.

Autocoach: my past experience with Hattons is that they do correct their errors and include refunding any return postage in that. If they haven't responded to emails, try a quick phone call (international calls are not all that expensive).

I would have thought the sound ones would be fitted after arriving in Britain.

Jonny, that photo shows perfectly what I said about the 24 (and 25/0) windscreens being shallower and the handrails underneath being that much higher up the front. The three locos are almost perfectly posed to allow the comparisons. It also shows that drgj has done the right thing with building up the centre door 'hump'. And one more thing it shows is that the original Hornby fronts and cab side windows are a little too square-cornered.

I got mine at Rails of Sheffield's pre-order price, although that has now gone up now they are in stock. Bearing in mind we antipodean modellers have to pay a lot more for post and packing, but we get VAT off in many of the mail order shops, the eBay prices are not so competitive over here. A quick search on eBay revealed that "amandajane" (AJM Railways) works out cheaper overall, including postage, for buyers on this side of the world. Amanda provides excellent service and responds fairly promptly to emails or queries. I intend this as a helpful hint, and not to denigrate "kitlady", who also provides an excellent service - I have had happy dealings with both dealers.

Darren, the mould lines are a result of the 'slides' that allow for the snifting valves or their omission, rather than being anything to do with the chimney.

It is looking very good. I did the same thing with side windows on my earlier conversion. Even though DRGJ's shows up the shortcomings of mine quite badly, I still prefer the Hornby cab end to the Bachmann model, which always looks too flat and wide. Maybe I'll redo mine one day, insired by the vastly improved appearance of DRGJ's effort. Edited to fix up typos for DRGJ's name - twice!

Saturday, August 15th, Rick.

Help! Andy, they're all ganging up on me!!!! Doug and Peter, I think I'm running out of time to get the upper level going before the August meeting. Rick, I hope you can make it to the meeting too, and I'm glad you are starting to feel a little better. 8)

For Mal and Pete: the Bulleid 'tin' HAL is the Ayjay Models kit running on a Hornby 2 BIL chassis. I bought several of the cheap BILs from Kernow to allow multiple running with the Hornby BILs and HALs without the hassles of different motor characteristics entailed by using the Black Beetle motor bogie previously fitted to the 'tin' HAL. I would love to fit flush glazing to the Bulleid HAL but have not the patience at the present time. There is also an unpainted Bulleid 2 HAP in the background of some of my photos, from the same source and utilising another pair of Hornby chassis. For Peter (P.C.M):

Freshly arrived this morning is a Hornby 700 class 0-6-0, 30315 in late BR livery. I ran it for an hour in each direction on DC power on my rolling road, then fitted a TCS DP2X-UK direct plug-in decoder. It ran very sweetly indeed with the TCS decoder, with only the inertia/momentum settings tweaked, as is my norm. I used CV3 = 25 and CV4 = 17. It ran in service for the first time hauling a parcels rake of mixed four-wheel and bogie vehicles. There were no clearance problems with my third and fourth rail installations. All in all a very pleasing purchase. I spotted the crooked tool box in the tender in the photos. I had to reglue it because I knocked it off while adjusting the tender drawbar to the closer setting. I have now straightened it up again. Sometimes these photos can be useful for showing such things where they would not otherwise have been noticed for goodness knows how long! (I posted this entry in the Hornby 700 topic as well - if you thought you'd read this before, you were probably right!).

My BR late livery one arrived from Rails a short time ago. It is presently on the rolling road on DC. Even on the lowest setting of my old controller, it is racing away, albeit very smoothly. Initially it exhibited a slight side to side swaying but that seems to have mostly cured itself after an hour of running. I managed to knock off one of the tender tool boxes before I had even got it onto the rolling road, while adjusting the tender drawbar to the closer setting, but all fixed now!! Next, I will have to do battle with the decoder fitting! Edit: adding to the above: I ran it for an hour in each direction on DC power on my rolling road, then fitted a TCS DP2X-UK direct plug-in decoder. It ran very sweetly indeed with the TCS decoder, with only the inertia/momentum settings tweaked, as is my norm. I used CV3 = 25 and CV4 = 17. It ran in service for the first time hauling a parcels rake of mixed four-wheel and bogie vehicles. There were no clearance problems with my third and fourth rail installations. All in all a very pleasing purchase. I spotted the crooked tool box in the tender in the photos. I have now straightened it up again. Sometimes these photos can be useful for showing such things where they would not otherwise have been noticed for goodness knows how long!

Taking a break from the bridgeworks, I decided to improve the realistic photographic opportunities by improving the tunnel and blocking off the background visible through it. There is still much baseboard work to do so this is by no means the final solution, but it does what I want for the moment. The tunnel mouth needs to be opened out very slightly to clear modern 23m stock, particularly the class 166 set I use as gauging vehicles. I have used a crude internal wrapper of card with Superquick engineers' blue brick paper glued inside. I also painted the wooden support behind that and positioned it as best I could to block off the view of the white wall behind it. The first photo shows the 'behind the scenes' clutter and bodgy bits ( ) while the other two show the scenic side, with the BR E4 0-6-2T hauling parcels stock in the last one.

Hi Peter. I think it needs to be a girder of some sort, although not necessarily the Wills style plate girder. It could be a much plainer 'H' section girder, although to disguise the thickness I would use only a very thin 'U', so it would be as if we were looking at only the outer side of the 'H'. Anyway, here's that last idea illustrated:

Continuing the work on the plate girder bridge sides, The next photos show how I have added the plasticard base and the Wills top plates. I'm no civil engineer, but I thought the very long span on the far side should have extra support or bracing to be realistic, so added an extra layer of the top plates. The first photo shows the side without the top plates fitted, and the plasticard base only partly fitted. The next two show the sides tack glued in place with Blu-tack to hold them while the glue sets. The next two show the upper sides in what I hope to be the final configuration, but as yet unpainted. I also cut one Wills panel in half to see what that would look like as another layer along the sides of the wooden deck. It is only Blu-tacked in place here. An alternative idea is to do a 'U' or 'L'-girder with the flanges facing outwards horizontally. The jury is still out on this! Either solution will require a little rebate cut into the brickwork to represent a support buttress. Edit: Another thought occurred to me: I could use some of the Wills panels sideways, so they would be shallower but longer between ridges. That would be easier as cutting all those panels accurately in half is a little daunting!

I believe the Southern Region started the trend of painting the ends the same as the body colour, somewhere around 1965, or possibly even earlier. Other regions followed suit later. I slightly back-dated my Invicta Models Bachmann maroon CCT by painting the maroon ends into black, to better represent the 1957 - 66 period. I also believe that the SR was a little inconsistent with the ends on the CCTs and PMVs, but it is sometimes difficult to tell what colour the ends were in photographs because of accumulated dirt and grime. Come to that, it is sometimes almost impossible to tell what colour the sides are on the SR vans for the same reasons!!

Inspired (and shamed) by Peter's (P.C.M.) rapid progress with his scenic break bridge (see his post at http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/1560-llanbourne-north-wales-in-the-80s/?p=1939133, here is my progress report on building up the plate girder bridge sides, using the Wills vari-girder kits. I bought quite a few of these kits with a view to replacing those temporary, recycled sides which were acting as place-holders. I have used up two complete kits so far, plus a few sprues from the third kit. The nearest sides are virtually complete, but the other, longer side is single-sided so far. I have to duplicate the panels to provide the double thickness, then add the top plates. I am using some 40 thou plasticard to form a lip at the bottom, to allow a little overhang at the sides of the bridge. At this stage, I am thinking that I will probably use some half-height panels for the lower overlays, to be attached directly to the wooden sides of the bridge deck. Note that I changed the topic title as the layout can no longer be considered "new"!

Perhaps that shoud also be at Platform 9¾! It really is a superb photo.

Thanks Rick. I will have to get a couple of the Bachmann SR type CCTs too. I currently have a mix of Wrenn (ex-Hornby Dublo), K's and Parkside kit-built ones in service, plus a couple of Hornby's van 'C' in green and crimson. I may be able to retire some of those once the Bachmann ones come along to put them to shame. I have a good variety of bogie parcels stock (NPCCS) besides those, including the old Triang-Hornby gangwayed bogie van, Hornby and Ratio Bogie 'B' vans, BR BGs in various liveries, one each of Hawksworth, Stanier, Thompson and Gresley types, and a couple of BR GUVs.

Two things to show off here ... or really three things in two photos! One is my new maroon CCT from Invicta Models. I have already painted the ends black to back-date it slightly. I also toned down the wheel faces a little with paint (although you can't see it in this photo!). It is a very nice model but I had a little difficulty ascertaining which of the add-on detail pipes and fittings went where. I eventually found a photo that showed my guesses were correct. I have also now eliminated the gap under the bridge support girders, using layers of plasticard with recesses built-in to accept and locate the girder ends. The girders are vertical and parallel, in spite of what it looks like in the photo: a combination of the back walls being angled, and the lens distortion towards the edges of the photo make them look quite out of plumb! A quick coat of buff and black paints makes the job look more complete. I was also going to start on the plate girders above the track level, replacing the temporary, recycled ones I have had Blu-tacked in place so far. However, I haven't found where I put the new girder kits! They aren't in the box I thought they were in, so I'll have to keep looking. Also showing in the pic are my Bachmann LT pannier tank, which is still crying out for a little weathering, plus two ex-BR brake vans which came from the Bachmann train sets. Both were numbered the same, so I used some Modelmaster transfers to renumber one, before weathering it to provide a contrast to the original. I really need to renumber two of the three identical low-sided wagons I have as well. The Modelmaster sheet has quite a few suitable alternatives. Maybe later.

I agree regarding the effect of the translucency of Hornby's finish, but since these vehicles were very rarely cleaned, a layer or two of weathering helps the realism and reduces the 'see-through' effect. These are their crimson/carmine SR van C and LNER CCT that I have done. With apologies for taking us slightly off-topic.

That's looking really good, Peter. Won't it damage your stock when you drive off the end of it though?? It also puts me under notice that I must get some more of my own bridge construction under way too, preferably before August!

I'm still running pre-grouping trains at the moment and have been working on some Smallbrook Studio LSWR 'road van' kits (see my blog for the details). Here I have posed the 18T D.1542 van with a Hornby LSWR M7. The van is all but complete now, after receiving another coat of matt varnish this morning. I have accidentally omitted one door handle on each side, so those remain to be done before I can say it is properly finished. I also tweaked one of the photos to give it an older feel.

When I fitted a Howes' ESU LokSound decoder into one of my Hornby Q1s, and like those mentioned above, in the tender, I also had to discard the Hornby weights to make room for the decoder and speaker. To add weight back in, I used a layer of "lead" ball bearings glued in the coal space, followed by some real coal on top of that. While this makes the Q1 tender feel a little top-heavy, it has proved to be quite stable and has presented no running problems to date. The 700 and T9 tenders would probably be even better using this technique as the coal spaces are lower down (in absolute terms), therefore putting the weight a little nearer to where it belongs.