Paint your wagon

I haven't done much modelling this week, what with one thing and another. However what I did do was paint my three new wagons.

Unpainted

Painted and sitting with the two steel ones

And then weathered

One in service at Underhill 

Mostly showing off

Well, the motor from Germany duly arrived but was the wrong one, only by a very small margin but wrong nonetheless. I put out a call on the NRGRM forum and a solution was found. Stand and Bill of the 009 Society were coming to exhibit at the Borth y Gest show and Bill has a plentiful supply. A deal was struck and Lucy B. ran nicely all weekend. So a big thanks to the chaps.

My three green and lined locos

This week at work we had stock of some of the new Bachmann 009 models so I took the opportunity to bring one of each home to take some pictures. So far we have the two sets of slate wagons which are very nice but very pricey in my opinion and two ambulance wagons and two D class opens in a variety of very well applied liveries.

I think I prefer the weathered, grey ones but with a bit of weathering the red ones will look nice too.

Stan and Bill, saviours of Lucy B. with their display next to Arnold Lane

On the Saturday of the show we had an honoured guest in the person of Mr Hiroshi Kato president of Japanese model making giants of the same name. He spent a long while at the show and paid great attention to all of our models; he also had with him working early prototypes of the forthcoming Englands and Fairlies. The body work was only a very rough 3d print outline and the chassis were a couple of experimental versions but they ran superbly and really whetted everyones appetites. It was very good of him to let us play with them.

 

Here they are on the 009 test tracks which they proceeded to stroll round with great ease

Here is one of them down at the wharf

Later on in the weekend we also had a visit from the Alpha of RTR 009, it didn't run quite as well

Paul Holmes had his Borth y Gest layout at the show and Mr Kato showed great interest in Paul's scratchbuilt locos. Fair enough, they are astonishing.

The show was a great success with over twice as many people as usual attending over the two days. The 009 boys and I were in a side room along with Tomos and the F&WHR sales stand and I had a very enjoyable time playing trains and nattering, so a big thanks to everyone involved. I'm sure we'll be back next year about the same time. The refurbished hall made for a much more pleasant experience too and I wasn't frightened to go to the toilet!

You'd think I would have had enough of 009 after spending two days solid at it but being the odd bloke I am I came home and built the three kits I bought at the show. Two 009 society three planked wagons and a Chivers wooden open too. All went together very nicely and just need painting now...

 

Green engines and a coach

This week has been paint and transfers based. I finished off the L&B obs and it has entered service. It shows up the other two now so I'll have to replace the moulded handrails on the ends and give them a coat of black.

Here is the rake in the platform at Underhill

While I was testing the new PECO rake I also took the green and cream rake for a trip out too. Having fettled up the bogies on the Five 79 Inisfail coach it also runs much better and makes a good addition to the two Dundas bashes.

Lucy B. has had some more work done and I have to say it looks rather splendid. I bought a turned brass dome off evilbay and it was just the right size to replace the printed one. I've also replaced the printed spectacle glass frames with a set of etched brass ones by RT models. They were just the right size, I've also glazed them with Glue and Glaze. The trickiest bit was the adding of the lining to the side tanks. It is Modelmasters n scale orange/black/orange. They are the waterslide variety and have to be cut to size and slid into place. I don't use any water as I've found that Decalfix works better.

Having buggered the motor, I'm now waiting for a spare one to arrive from Germany. The plates are also imminent.

While I was at it I also added the rest of the lining I had to the NP Bagnall. I'd have liked to do something on the tanks too but I've run out of corners.

Having got the PECO obs finished I looked at my Snapper Bar re-liveried coach and decided to de-Festiniog it and make it more use on the IoSR. I removed the FR crests from the doors and the Snapper Bar wording from above the doors. I've then repainted with near enough matching paints. It looks ok from a working distance. It has also had the hand rails on the end replaced with brass and the ends painted black. The roof has gained torpedo vents and I replaced the moulded on lamp tops with spare Dundas VoR top hat lamps.

Don't it make my blue Hunslet browny red?

I'm acutely aware that there has been a lot of froth on the internet this week about the announcement that KATO and PECO have teamed up to bring us a ready to run England and even more surprisingly a double Fairlie. I knew about this for some while with my work hat on and indeed know some other things that would create even more froth, however mum's the word. But all this got me thinking about my Brian Madge 'Britomart', it has been looking pretty tatty for a while and the cab had broken loose too. I'd never been happy with the paintwork as the real one has intricate lining which I am not able to even contemplate reproducing.

So... I decided that a repaint and a rebuild were in order. The chassis is a good, smooth runner now it is run in so I didn't mess with that, except to replace the couplers with RT models lost brass PQR ones. They are a big improvement and really look the part.

The loco came apart very easily into three major sections, i.e. the chassis, the boiler assembly and the cab. Once in pieces the cleaning up started, I removed the name and works plates and the handrails came off along with the chimney and the safety valve casting.

The plan was to conceal the identity of the original and to rename it 'Daisy', I'd been planning on doing this for a while so had the Narrow Planet plates to hand. The major difference that I could come up with for an Alice class was to add a dome to the boiler. I don't think any were originally built with them but 'Velinheli' now sports one; although I believe that the boiler is originally from 'Maid Marian'. I'm not about to get into the lineage of quarry Hunslets though. I had a dome made by N brass in my loco fittings box which looks about right and with a little fettling up it worked fine. Initially I made a mistake and drilled a hole centrally for the dome. This left the tank filler out of whack so a second attempt moved it forward a little. It also left a hole in the tank top needing to be filled.



The other additions to the boiler were a new cast chimney and turned brass smokebox door darts. The door furniture was a big improvement but the chimney was just too small. It looked OK without the cab on but was evidently wrong once all was re assembled. I think it is an RT models Waril one. Nice but wrong.

With new handrails fitted, this time not with the loop round the chimney as another difference I painted her. I tried a variety of colours but none looked right, I wanted that faded Dinorwic sort of look so I ended up blending a scarlet and a brown to make my own colour. It still isn't quite right but it's closer than anything I could find in a paint and look very not blue. I will add some weathering once all is settled and dried hard and I get the nerve to spoil a pretty reasonable paint job. I'd like to add lining but as mentioned before I don't have the nerve.

Meet Daisy

I've also been adding some detail to the 3D print on a Fleischmann chassis loco I built a while ago. I'm waiting for name plates from Narrow Planet but it will be called 'Lucy B'. I wasn't quite happy with the look of the loco and couldn't quite pin it down so I've added a handrail on the front of the smokebox and a turned brass whistle. Both have just added a little detail and I've cheered up about it. Plates will be the finishing touch.

Meet Lucy B. next to the lighter green Lucy

It's a bit tricky adding crew to locos with the Fleischmann 7000 chassis as the motor takes up all of the cab below window level. The way I've got round this is by gluing pieces of styrene to the tops of the motor magnets and then a sheet of black card on top of that. The moving bit of the motor protrudes just higher than the magnets as I've found out before. Crew are the cruelly chopped at the waste and stuck on top of the card. Needs windows glazing too.