Straightening a bent thing

Having looked at the new loco in the cold light of day I realised that the footplate had a droop in it towards the front. This actually gave it a character which I quite liked as I'm intending this to be a pre preservation condition loco. However there was really too much wonkiness to finish it into a working machine. With slight trepidation I prised the tool box off the footplate and grabbed the front of the footplate with some smooth jawed pliers and bent it upwards... thankfully all was well and it didn't just fall to pieces as I'd feared it might.

Try as I might I couldn't get the chassis to sit square inside the body. I thought that the front part of the chassis was too tall so I scraped away at the inside of the boiler to make room for it but whatever I did it still wouldn't sit square. I still can't work it out but in the end I packed up the ends of the chassis so it sits very slightly higher; this then meant that the couplers were too high so had to be removed and lowered.

Raising the body slightly left the chassis looking too exposed so I've added a further section of styrene under the footplate. Not sure if it looks right, it needs to be primered again anyway as I changed the whitemetal roof for a styrene one to help move the balance over the wheels.

If the bits for the tumble drier don't arrive today I may get a chance to do some more work on this tonight.

Week away and ByG

I've been away on hols the last week but managed to smuggle a small tool box into the luggage. I put the bare essentials in it such as a knife and cutting mat, small drill bits and archimedean drill, some files.

The box

Construction underway

The last few summer holidays I've been on I've built a loco and named them after the place we were staying so I have Staithes, Burnmouth and now Beckfoot. I pretty much finished building the loco which was a fairly straight forward build of a kit for a Southwold Railway 2-4-0. I shortened the boiler and fabricated a new smokebox out of styrene and a smokebox door casting. My version sits on a ROCO 0-6-0 chassis and so the footplate casting needed some shortening which I did by cutting a section out of the middle and glueing it back together adding some styrene strip to the edges and underside to strengthen it.

Getting there

I haven't worked out how to secure the chassis to the loco yet but other than that she is basically finished. The night we got home I gave her a waft of grey primer and painted the smokebox black so she could run in works grey at the exhibition... talking of which...

Arnold Lane Wharf in action

Beckfoot posing

The exhibition was a two day affair but unfortunately I am so stupid that I forgot about it when the family summer hols were being booked so I could only attend the Sunday, however I enjoyed myself and the layout behaved itself. There were some other very nice layouts including three other 009 ones with live steam featuring too!

When I got home there were some nameplates from Narrow Planet waiting for me, I finally finished my new Skylark, Nettie.

Went for a ride on the Ratty while on hols too

Adding colour...

I took some pictures of Arnold Lane Wharf yesterday with a decent camera. Here are some of them.

Nettie with some wagons

The whole thing

The Kerr Stuart

Nancy and Peggy - The Amazons

Nancy and Peggy again

Lord Stoner

IC known as 'small red'

'Big Red', 'Small Red' and 'Ena'

Steam railcar set - Nursie

Syd

After dark

And now in black and white...

I'm pretty sure that I now have all the major buildings for the road behind the station in Port Lucy. I have some more painting and weathering to do but fundamentally they are done. The next step is to make a removable mini baseboard that will just fit on top of the basic baseboard where the buildings are now perched. It is too far back to do anything with it where it is so it has to be a module with the tram track and all the electrics contained within it. I stole the idea from Nick Welch which he details in his splendid book, Ffestiniog Odyssey.

 

 

I've just had the weekend off and was looking forward to getting some modelling done, maybe some ballasting or some wiring... nope domestic stuff needed doing and so I did very little. What I did get done was to finish the painting of my second Chivers Innisfail coach. I decided to go for a completely different look to the first one so this one is the un refurbished version.

 

The two coaches together

 

Ruth and Nettie down on the wharf

 

I'm pretty pleased with the faded green paint on the coach, it needs some vac pipes and a fleet number but is essentially done. Sadly the loading gauge is slightly too big for Arnold Lane so they will be part of the main line fleet.



Fade to grey

I plumped for the grey Brigadelok as it looks the smartest to my mind. Shame it will probably end up black and grubby.

I've now had a chance to do some testing of the beastie and had no problems with the rear overhang on my curves with either short wagons as seen above or with a rake of passenger coaches.

 

She easily sailed up the big hill with theses three coaches which is as much as will ever be needed. It won't usually be a passenger loco anyway. I can report that the running is as smooth as the other new Minitrains locos which is gratifyingly slow and smooth.

 



The new building arrived from Ireland and will be the perfect view blocker for the tram.

Since I took this picture I've also had the 'Caledonian Hotel' arrive which is another scenecraft building but this time in low relief. With a bit of a re jig I think I've now got all the Port Lucy buildings, some need painting and detailing but otherwise its good to start work on the town in earnest.

Three little maids from Germany

So which one do I keep? One will become Agnetha, I suspect I'll have the grey one and convert it later. It needs to lose the fairy lights in the lamps and it definitely needs some coal rails or a greedy board type arrangement. Hmmm...

Modellers block

I've had lots to do around the house and at work over the last few weeks so I haven't got much modelling done and I haven't felt much like it either. However I've been off work this past week and so amongst the decorating etc I have had a good tidy up in the garage and also done a bit of work on the big layout.

I finally got round to finishing off the woodwork round the back of Port Lucy which keeps the backscene boards in place and has a light on a pole. All much more solid.

Apart from that I've been trying out building arrangements for the town above the station. I need to make this as a separate module so that I can get the tram track and its associated auto reversing module installed and working. It looks like I need some low relief buildings to go behind the station building and perhaps some other buildings to hide the right hand end of the tram line where the tram hides while waiting to reverse.

Another thing I've done during the great tidy up is to clear all the cack of my workbench so it is usable again. To prove that, I got out my weathering box which has a variety of weathering powders and pastels in it. My two newest locos got subtly weathered. Nettie and Lucy (MK2). I also added a little age to the two VoR bash coaches.

Over a few evenings I've also painted the new loco shed for Port Lucy. It looks quite good, needs a few details like oil cans and maybe a noticeboard but otherwise its done.