Wigan - slight return

After the madness of getting Underhill Town ready in a huge rush and so working every spare minute on railways I was ready for a break from it and had a pile of other thing building up which required my attention, like house repairs and sorting out the garage so there is room to store the layout. Fortunately for me Mrs Lord Stoner is very good at DIY and much keener than me so we got all the work on the garage done and it is now more waterproof and looks much neater too.

I can't find a finished picture but this is halfway there

 



Anyway with work starting to calm down and some other things out of the way for now I have finally felt the urge to do some modelling again. Despite vowing to stop building locos and layouts I've started two layout projects and a loco. One of the layouts counts as a rebuild and the other is for work so I'm not as wilful as I sound, however the loco is just because it is nice.

 

This is the 'rebuild' layout.

The new rebuild had an oddbod selection of bits of PECO and some KATO tram track on it and it was nominally a test track but it wasn't very good and so it got ignored. I decided that it was about the right size for some Minitrains track and so I've started doing this with it. It won't end up as anything sophisticated but it will be something to play with when all the rest of the railway is packed up in the garage.

Look, quickly, its my workbench without too much clutter

 

On the subject of the garage; one of the benefits of tidying up and sorting through all the crap and stuff in there was that I found my workbench again. It has now moved into a more useable space and I will endeavour to keep it clear and actually use it from time to time. I have several things in the 'to do' list which are not suitable for the lap tray work bench so maybe they will get done now.

 



This is the non railway side of the garage where I have been skiving

Running in boards from Narrow Planet

 

The running in boards on the Isle of Stoner Railway were made in Word and printed out at home but I've never really been happy with them as they are, for obvious reasons, only two dimensional so I asked Steve at Narrow Planet if he could replicate them in etched brass and this he has done as you can see. I am in the process of painting them at the moment but have so far made them look dreadful so the next step is to strip the first attempts paint off them and try again. They will be great when I get them right.

 

 

The pictures above are of pre production samples of the new PECO FR style slate waggons which came to visit the Ffestiniog over the recent Victorian Weekend. The top image is of them balanced on a real slate waggon at Tan y Bwlch. I was lucky enough to be able to take them home and have a little play with them and very nice they are too. I believe they should be available very soon.

 

The loco I've built is a Rushby's Resins 30 HP Kerr Stuart which is a new resin kit to suit the Tomytec HM-01 chassis. The kit went together very easily and has made a really characterful little loco. I'm still in the process of painting it but would thoroughly recommend it.

This is the basic paint job on the Kerr Stuart attached to the other project I've been finishing off, namely the pair of 3D printed coaches. They are loosely based on the 3ft gauge R&ER coaches. The print comes as just a body and roof so I have added a PECO wagon chassis, seats from styrene and door furniture. The grab handles are Langley etches and the actual door handles are brass rod cut and bent to shape, they are probably a bit on the chunky size but it was all I could do to fabricate and fit these little buggers. Several were dropped or pinged off into the ether during construction. I had previously made the brake coach with duckets from a PD FR coach kit and I had mounted it on a different chassis which had made it a bit tall so I took this opportunity to make it the same as its running mate. A little weathering and I'll be very happy with them.