SRman

Ha ha! I wish I could say yes as that's a nice compliment to me. As it is, it takes me long enough to get around to doing these things. I have to say Peter Mantle (PCM) has influenced my weathering style a bit. I tried the same line on him ("Can I give you some of mine to weather?") but for some strange reason, he declined my offer!!!! What I can say is have a go and try something yourself. Choose something where if it goes wrong you can easily repaint and start again - wagons are better for this than locos or coaches. Cheers, Jeff Lynn, Melbourne, Australia.

Another attempt from me: two parcels vans await collection.

Here are two more vans of the workbench, weathered using the same techniques as the previous two vans. For dirty roofs I use a lot of Humbrol #66, a very good all round weathering and roof colour - good for tyres on road vehicles too. For the previous crimson SR Van C roof I used the same grey #66 at full strength, then a very thin wash of the Revell brown #84. The next two vans have variations on the overall weathering, starting with the roofs using thin washes of Humbrol #66. The Fruit D (a Parkside kit I bought second-hand already built) had an all over wash of Humbrol #66 followed by a thin wash of Humbrol dark earth #29, then a little of the Revell #84 brown partly washed and partly dry-brushed around the door edges and lower sides, plus the underframes. The SR Bogie B had a similar but lighter treatment on its sides, plus a little dark steel around the axleboxes, springs and brake linkages. All of the vehicles had their wheels and brake blocks painted with the Revell brown. The Fruit D and Hornby bogie B are shown below, together with a pristine bogie B, untouched by my paint brush ... so far!

My attempt at realistic angles with an ex-SR 'N' class 2-6-0 hauling an ex-SR 'Van C' and ex-LNER extra-long CCT. It still looks a little like a model to me, so I'll have to work on that a little more.

More weathering! I bought one of the new Hornby extra long ex-LNER CCTs in BR crimson. It is a very fine model but way too clean - these types of vehicle rarely saw anything like a carriage washer between overhauls and repaints. I used the usual weathering techniques and colours (much the same as the 2 BIL in the previous post but with heavier weathering on the vehicle sides) but wanted to try a patchy effect on the roof. My attempts at that failed so I ended up repainting the roof with Humbrol #66 but thinned it towards the edges, allowing a little of the previous colour to show through. This is pretty close to the final result - I think I am happy with the overall effect. I must do this with a few more of the SR style CCTs/PMVs/Van Bs and Cs! Edit: One Van C in crimson done as well, using the same techniques.

Thankfully it does look like just leaves and twigs, Rick. I hope I can get to your next gathering. Oh, and I forgot to say "Welcome back."

More excuses - trains stopped by leaf fall ... again?????

There were still quite a few 33s without yellow panels of any sort in 1967. It was possible to see 33s in green with no yellow, green with small yellow panels and blue with full yellow ends side by side in June/July 1967, also side by side with the last of the steam locomotives on the Bournemouth line.

I bought quite a few Hattons decoders with a view to using them as function-only decoders in the likes of Bachmann's DMUs that require a decoder in the trailer/unpowered cars. However, I have used them in several locomotives and units and they are surprisingly good, especially in view of their price. They are not quite the equal of expensive decoders such as ESU, Zimo or Lenz but they are still full-functioned and reasonably smooth in operation, at least in the installations I have done so far. They don't seem to have any overload protection though; I have managed to blow up a couple already, although that is probably coloured by my use of cheap decoders to test 'iffy' subjects where I didn't want to blow up more expensive decoders.

The hush-hush top-secret Bulleid experiments with Maglev concepts!!

Personally speaking, the extras sound good but I can only afford one at this stage - already ordered in green syp. Thanks for the quick answer too.

Dave, I would have thought that as long as you didn't do E5001, the NRM wouldn't have any say over licensing the model. How are we doing regarding numbers for the funding of the model, at this stage?

Not on 71s but a few exceptions did occur, with the old crest on blue livery. I'm not too sure if it ever happened with full yellow ends but certainly there were one or two class 25s with blue syp and old style numerals and crests. As always, there are exceptions to whatever rules applied. However, I agree that this particular picture shows a green 71 with fye.

Hi Malcolm. This was a 'native' Lima offering - 'skinhead' 31 004 was its out-of-the-box guise. I did detail another Lima 31 and made up my own handrails from fine wire. They are coarser than the Lima originals and doing the ones with the bend in was a bit of a pain. The Lima handrails are very fine and very easy to damage or to lose, as we have both found out the hard way!! The carbon paper sound like a good idea for weathering effects and is probably really good for around the the exhaust outlets. Thanks for the kind offer to send some to me but I am in Australia, which could bump up the postal costs a bit. Thanks also for the compliments. Kind Regards, Jeff Lynn, Melbourne, Australia.

Having modified the livery and renumbered one of my Hornby 2 BILs so it represented a unit getting near the end of its life I decided that the bogies and underframe and its equipment were much too clean and shiny. In fact, this applies to all of the units, BIL, HAL, CEP, EPB and MLV! However, one at a time is the way to go, otherwise I get bogged down and lose interest again. The techniques used on this one were simply to use thin washes. My usual colours for this are Humbrol coal black (#85), dark earth (#29) and rusty browns (#100 or #133), and sometimes a bit of leather brown (#62) as well. I have also recently acquired some of the weathering washes so have been experimenting with those too. However, having said all that, I chose to use only a few of those for this project. For the roofs I used the Humbrol dark grey wash, which came up quite nicely. Buoyed up by the success of that, I tried the dark brown wash on the underframes and bogies. This was less successful as it dried very glossy, in spite of my having mixed and shaken the jar well. Next was a wash of Humbrol #66 over the bogies, underframes, equipment, buffers and beams, and inner ends. I also did a very thin wash of the same along the lower body edges, up to the side waist mouldings and jumper socket level on the yellow ends. After that was a thin wash of a colour I hadn't used for weathering before, a Revell dark reddish brown #84. Again this was done over all the same areas that had had the grey (except the previously done roofs). I also used this colour in less thinned form for the brake blocks and brake rigging. Again I applied a very thin, tapered wash up the lower sides to the waist moulding, thinning the colour right down to almost non-existence at the waist mouldings. The effect is quite good and I am not inclined to do too much more to this one. I did apply slightly thicker grey #66 to the step boards under the doors to emulate where people's shoes scuff them. The trick with all these washes is to build up the colour in layers, rather than applying it all at once. I noticed that the driving motor coach body was not properly seated at the inner end and fixed that up after these photos were taken.

I love the subtle weathering on the ballast wagons, Peter. It's all really taking shape now and looking very good.

I sincerely hope Colin is OK. If you are able to, Colin, please let us know how you are doing.

Very effective. Would you mind posting some details of the camera you used for that, please?

Mentioning the Minix model, and going off-topic for a moment: with a decent coat of paint, a bit of black around the insides of the window openings and wheel arches, plus painting the tyres, they come up a treat. Lengthen the axles slightly for an extra touch of realism, or even substitute Bernard TPM's white metal wheels and they are as good as, or even better than, anything from Oxford Diecast so far (not that the OD are by any means bad models!). I mention this in the sense that people are talking of modifying OD cars anyway. The Minix models can be found at swap meets and other sources quite cheaply, still, although the Oxford models are also extremely good value for money, and I am not knocking them in any way.

I set to work during school holidays to improve the roads in the village area. While there are a few lumps and bumps, edges to reinforce, and a rather sharp dip to sort out, plus improving a couple of the corners, I am rather pleased with the effect so far. So bear in mind there is still a bit more work to do (how many times have I used that line in this thread, now??) but it is still measurable progress too.

Sounds like you have until December 4th to complete it!!

Looking very promising, Pete. For what it's worth, I deliberately mount my Power Cab sockets the 'wrong' way up so I can see the LED rather than having it hidden half the time by the trailing cables. The manual does offer this as an alternative idea.

Thanks Tractor. I nearly tied my brain in knots trying to work it all out at first, but it eventually all fell into place! I emailed Jason (Stickswipe) with my solution so he could pass the idea on to others who buy his lighting kits. He also pointed out that he uses Zimo sound or non-sound decoders for some of his projects and they have six functions available. In my case I was modifying a locomotive that was already fitted with the ESU decoder so the Zimo solution was not an option but for anyone starting from scratch that would probably be the better way to go.

I'll have to check Parkin's book (if someone else doesn't beat me to it) but I seem to recall that there was a chocolate and cream mark 1 (Western Region, of course!) fitted with prototype B4 bogies back around 1963 or thereabouts.

I have spent some time over the last two days fitting a lighting kit to a Bachmann class 20. The wiring up was complicated by the fact that it has sound fitted (reblown by Howes), a bass enhanced speaker and a pair of wires leading to a two-pin socket which allows a second, de-motored class 20 with a larger bass reflex speaker to be semi-permanently attached. The lights include separately wired marker and tail lights at each end plus a cab light. The sound decoder is an ESU LokSound with only four external functions for five lights. I wired the nose-end marker lights (i.e. the headcode disc lights) and cab-end tail lights together, auto-reversing with just the tail lights at the nose end, so that's two functions used. The marker lights at the cab-end are wired to the aux 1 output, F11 on the decoder. The cab light is wired to the aux 2 output, F12 on the decoder. To run with the nose end leading there is no choice in having the tail lights showing at the cab end if the leading marker lights are lit. Other than that, leaving F0 on but hitting reverse so the cab-end is leading results in the nose-end tail lights coming on; pressing F11 turns on the cab-end marker lights. Turning F0 off leaves the marker lights on F11 turned on but means there are no tail lights showing, for use when in multiple or hauling a train. Overall, I believe I have achieved the maximum versatility/best compromise from having five lights on four available functions. The class 20 has been lightly weathered and actually has a cab swapped from another disc headcode model where I had modified the side windows from the original Bachmann recessed sliding ones to being flush mounted but fixed. It was renumbered to D8058 with the earlier style numbers (as per a photo of the real locomotive). The lighting kit came from an eBay seller under the name of Stickswipe, who was also very helpful.