SRman

New models are suddenly coming into the shops thick and fast! While I haven't ordered all of them, I do have a few pre-orders which are turning up, or about to turn up. The latest is the Realtrack First Great Western class 143. It does have a tenuous connection with the Southern theme in that its destinations are Paignton and Exmouth, the latter of which used to be Southern Railway/Southern Region territory. 143 618 is seen here posed with 150 219, after having been fitted with a Lenz Standard+ decoder (that was a little tricky, especially as I fitted the plug the wrong way round on the first attempt!). Still to come in the next month or so are the LBSC E4 from Bachmann, and the BR 0700 from Hornby.

Latest arrival via eBay is this detailed and weathered Heljan Hymek. I always liked the early blue with small yellow panels and white window surrounds, so when this one came up at a reasonable price, I bid for it and won. It has had a brass fan and grille added, all of the end pipes and screw coupings put on, and separate etched numerals attached. It ran absolutely perfectly when tested on DC power, then again after fitting a Lenz Standard+ decoder (which had a side benefit of fitting neatly under the fan housing added by the original modeller). It was sold as being without couplings, but I knew I could do something about this to make it fully operational for my own use. It has also had the headcode light bulbs removed. As a temporary measure, I have attached couple of the Parkside NEM coupling adapters, packed up with a couple of squares of 60 thou plasicard to get the right height. This necessitated bending some of the buffer beam pipes aside slightly, or in one instance at each end, actually trimming the pipes. Longer term, I have ordered the necessary parts from Howes in Kidlington to restore the lights, replace the early brass wheelsets with later Heljan plated examples, and the sprues with the coupling components to restore the ones attached to the bogies, which will mean removing the Parkside adapters again. I won't bother replacing the marker light/tail light illumination. My research indicates that the number D7007 chosen by the original owner is inaccurate for this livery with the white window surrounds (it had blue ones, which looked absolutely dire, in my opinion). The research also indicates that I will only have to change one numeral under each cab side window to make an accurate choice for this livery. D7027 or D7047 are suitable candidates, although other numbers may also be easily changed (I have the necessary etched stainless steel numerals, bought some time ago to detail my green Hymek ... one of those 'round tuit' jobs!

All of the photos I have seen of Olive/sage green SR locomotives suggest that the wheels were always in lined green.

Mine was equally as bad! I had it running haulage tests with some Hornby and Bachmann Seacows and Sealions in Dutch, Mainline and EWS liveries.

Please bear in mind I did this many years ago and some of my detailing is quite crude by current standards (in particular, the fuel and water tanks and the tail lights I simply painted on!). Here is the Hornby 25 converted into a reasonable facsimile of a class 24/0. Looking at this now, I feel that the windscreens are still a little too deep and the handrails not moved up quite enough.

It adds to the character, although I agree that it gives a somewhat front-heavy, unbalanced look ... reminiscent of the GWR 56XX 0-6-2T locomotives. Both types look very purposeful in their own ways.

The 24 and 25/0 cab windscreens were shallower than later builds. It took me a while to work it out, but the handrails at the front were also around 1mm lower on the later builds, thus maintaining the same visual distance between the horizontal handrails and the lower edges of the windscreens. When I did my conversion of Hornby 25 to class 24/0 many years ago, I used a little filler along the lower edges of the windscreens (not the central one, though), and drilled the new wire handrails approximately 1mm higher than the original moulded ones. I used a lot of filler inside the cab roofs before filing them down to shape. I don't have any pics to hand to show this, but will try to get a couple later, if anyone is interested.

I use Blu-tack or the stickier black stuff (Homelux Bath Seal), thus holding them in place while allowing me to change my mind on wehther to have the panel present or not.

Further progress with the Bachmann class 150/2 re-livery, using Electra Railway Graphics vinyl overlays. The job is nearly complete, with just a few finishing touches required. I haven't used the door overlays, although I intend to use the driving cab door ones, once I can remove the handrails. At present, they are First 'Barbie' blue blending into the Provincial/regional Railways blue! Application of the vinyls generally went smoothly, although the toilet window doesn't line up properly. There are a few bubbles I missed and the gutters over the doors gave me a few problems, but from normal viewing distance, it looks fine to me. I missed pre-painting the filler recesses in the middle of one side on each coach. Will fix that later.

Taking a leaf from gwiwer's book, I scored one of the valance panels and "hinged" it outwards, as often occurred on the real things.

Personally, I liked the green livery best, but the blue syp plus white cab windows also looked good. Without the white it looked dire! At risk of hijacking the thread, I did post a pic elsewhere of a might-have-been maroon livery I did to a refurbished and modified Triang-Hornby model. I hope no one objects to my repeating it here, just for a bit of fun. I have a Heljan model of D7007 in blue syp with white in transit from eBay. It looks like I will be renumbering slightly to correct that as it appears from the list that D7007 was in the plain blue syp. Many thanks to Neil (Downendian) and stovepipe for posting their very useful lists of Hymek liveries.

I recently ordered one of the Realtrack Models class 143 units in First Great Western Local Lines livery. To go with it, I decided that I wanted a class 150 to complement it. Bachmann have already produced a class 150/1 in FGW plain blue livery, although that seems to have sold out. I may still be able to get hold of one in the future, so there is no point in doing one myself ... yet. That leaves a 150/2 in the more interesting, but superseded 'local lines' livery. With that in mind, I kept an eye on eBay for a relatively cheap 150/2 that I could use, having already ascertained that Electra Railway Graphics (ERG) produce the necessary vinyl overlays. I located a Regional Railways unit in Rails of Sheffield's eBay shop and made an offer, which they accepted. At the same time, coincidentally, I bought a Bachmann Silverlink class 350/1 from Rails website shop on special for £99 or so, with a view to doing a second class 450 conversion, also with ERG vinyl overlays. The two sets of vinyls were ordered from Adam at ERG, and he very kindly offered both sets with postage at an inclusive price. So far so good! The 450 conversion has been dealt with in my previous blog entries, so I need say no more on that. I commenced work on the 150/2 by removing the bodies and pushing out all of the door glazing, with a view to pre-painting the doors in pink. The ERG vinyls include overlays for the doors but I prefer to simply paint them. I used an initial coat of a standard Humbrol light pink, followed by a coat of the correct 'Barbie' pink. I then used one of the side overlays to test out what areas would need any paint touches. The vinyls seem a fraction short, so I used First 'Barbie' blue to paint all of the necessary end and door edges to blend them better with the vinyl overlays. I know that the 'Barbie' blue is not quite correct but it is close enough to do what I need from it. The other vinyls will follow once the paint dries. Here is the initial one that I did, though. As usual when I am trying to do these jobs, I have just snatched the photos somewhat hastily on the mobile phone camera, so the quality is not the best. It does show what I am talking about though, so they will have to suffice. Once I complete the job, I'll take some better ones of the finished product.

Well, I have now ordered another 350/1 at the special price, and have already received some more Electra Railway Graphics vinyls for the 450, so another conversion will be under way shortly. Total cost will be in the region of £135. The current guestimated price of a 450 from Bachmann on Hattons website is £200 and may even be higher than that. I reckon I'm ahead, in spite of the extra labour involved ... well, modelling is supposed to include a bit of that anyway, isn't it??

You are a brave man, Iain! This looks very interesting and I'll look forward to seeing the results. I love a good "might have been". There is one good thing about doing this sort of project, too ... that is, no one can say you got it wrong if you have to bodge something as you go!! (Not that you will have to do that, of course!)

After taking many of my photos of trains at the 'west' end of the layout, I decided that the unpainted plastic tunnel mouth deserved a bit of treatment. The result (so far) is this: A little more work is needed before I find it totally convincing, but it is getting there.

Agreeing with Brian here: here in Australia, we also have to contend with the time differences (9, 10, or 11 hours, depending on the time of year and state of daylight saving at each end). When the stock comes in, has the aforementioned pre-orders dealt with and is listed, it sometimes sells out before we get the chance to see it online! One example of a near miss for me was when the first lot of Hornby BR green liveried bogie 'B' vans came in, I saw them on the site but I was at work. I never order from work! Got home that evening and the first model had sold out/disappeared from the shop site, while the 'A' version was down to less than a handful of models in stock. I ordered one very quickly! Checked back a little later and those also were gone. Some of the models never make it on to the shop pages ... at least, not during my waking hours. Of course, none of this is in any way Hattons' fault, it's purely down to the vagaries of living on the other side of the world.

Both the Bratchell Model kits of classes 455/8 and 456 covered in my blog entries, in Network Southeast livery, running "in multiple" through Newton Broadway LT station. I had just fitted the unit ends with Parkside kits NEM coupling adapters and Kadee #18 and #20 couplings, respectively. The couplings are mounted directly on the bodies, rather than on the bogie extensions, as is the case of the intra-unit couplings. Unit 455 835 has a Replica Railways motorised chassis, while 456 007 is actually unpowered. Both videos are straight off my mobile phone but I will try to get some better footage later and string it together into a single, more coherent clip. http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vnk2ZNXTrhw?version=3 http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6qNcjSBqpI?version=3 If you have been reading my blog entries, then don't bother clicking the video links as they are the same ones I posted in the blog.

Both the previously shown Bratchell Model kits of classes 455/8 and 456, in Network Southeast livery, running "in multiple" through Newton Broadway LT station. I had just fitted the unit ends with Parkside kits NEM coupling adapters and Kadee #18 and #20 couplings, respectively. The couplings are mounted directly on the bodies, rather than on the bogie extensions, as is the case of the intra-unit couplings. Unit 455 835 has a Replica Railways motorised chassis, while 456 007 is actually unpowered. Both videos are straight off my mobile phone but I will try to get some better footage later and string it together into a single, more coherent clip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vnk2ZNXTrhw?version=3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6qNcjSBqpI?version=3 I am also putting these same clips on my layout thread, so apologies for the duplication.

Brilliant modelling and photography, as always, Peter. Keep up the great work.

The brake van is a ballast brake made from the Cambrian Kits SECR 'dance hall' brake. The kit comes with the necessary parts and provision for the conversion.

A couple of pics of my BR late crest example, 32500. I found that I had to tweak the wheel-back pickups slightly as a few of them weren't quite stretching the whole distance when the axles were pushed to their sideways extremes. Otherwise, my late crest black one is a superb runner. I fitted a CT Elektronik DCX75 6-pin decoder to mine. Initially it was a bit slow and pulled weakly on DCC (but was fine on DC, before fitting the chip). I have had no previous experience with CT Elektronik, so had to do a bit of digging on the Internet to see what needed to change. Anyway, after playing with a few of the BEMF and PWM settings using JMRI Decoder Pro, I now have a powerful little locomotive with a reasonable top speed that will move fractions of a millimetre in one second on speed step 1, albeit a little "chattery" when doing this ... a few more refinements to the tweaking should fix that. Once I have some 'definitive' settings that I am happy with, I'll post the settings here, if anyone else is interested. I need to keep track of them for myself as I have the LBSC version of the E4 still to come, and another CT Elektronik decoder awaiting the E4's arrival.

Hornby and Bachmann also have some longer couplings available, which will simply plug into the existing pockets.

They could have the headlights as Heljan have done the moulds in the past for that variation. We won't know for sure until they release pictures of the actual models.

Would the Ayjay kit cost that much? Their 4 COR kit is around

I dunno, Dave: could you actually replicate that paint finish in 4mm scale? You could introduce a new product description: "weathered and battered"!!