Recent modelling work has been a bit restricted to a little painting, a little wagon building and a little layout detailing. However, I am close to having a wonderful summer of beaches and modelling to hand, with a little academic writing thrown in for good measure; all glorious things to occupy my time! After what can only be described as a horrific couple of years in academia due to COVID, I finally have the luxury of some time to really get my teeth stuck into some modelling. I have written a list of modelling projects I want to complete over summer. These are principally to weather and sound chip a class 25 and class 03 diesel locomotive (O gauge), finish building 4 O gauge wagons and get the O gauge and OO gauge layouts to a completely operation state, with backscenes installed and ballasting finished. I will be able to take off at least two weeks dedicated modelling time, so I am feeling optimistic I can achieve some of this and start updating my blog regularly again.
So with these grand plans mentioned, I have made a start on the Heljan Class 25. When this model came out I paid £500 for it; quite honestly the price tag has made me feel a tad nervous about attacking it (or at least dismantling it), but I needed to just get on with it. I took a dep break and made a start. Taking this locomotive apart was quite difficult, there are so many moving parts. I managed to snap one piece of window frame, which came away with the glazing. I quickly glued this back in (it is barely noticeable) and resolved to not removing any of the side windows during weathering (they will have to be masked with maskol). I also managed to snap one of the central cab windows, totally destroy the supplied printed headcodes and lose one of the lights. It felt like a bit of a disaster to start with, but now I am quite relieved. I hope I have the modelling skills to make a good job of this and the locomotive is no longer a shelf queen, but now it is a model that I can grub up and experiment with in O gauge.
Other projects tick away in the background. I have ordered all the point motors for the OO gauge layout and will set a day aside to get this layout running again. I also am extending the O gauge layout by another 3ft, alongside finishing some buildings and building some O gauge wagon kits. I have also ordered a new O gauge class 03 after seeing some pictures of them on the Hemyock branch. So hopefully more updates to quickly follow.
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