GWR tunny wagon

Some beautiful good North Atlantic weather has meant that work has been very wet and tiring and this has limited the amount of modelling I have done. Projects are progressing, but nothing has been finished. However, in between detailing a class 50, building a 16t mineral wagon, repainting the class 25 and detailing a class 08, I have been painting a GWR tunny wagon, available from Chivers Finelines.

This wagon is very similar to a grampus wagon and the kit literally falls together. The livery this will be finished in is a very weathered engineering olive green. So far three coats of paint have been applied to the body and two to the chassis. Hopefully an update soon of the finished wagon.

GWR tunny

Bachman 20t Engineering Brake Van

Another engineering wagon is ready to join the southern engineering department. this one is the pre-weathered Bachmann 20t brake van, finished with an engineering code. This is an older Bachmann product and although a good model, has some dated features. the most obvious of which are the moulded handrails, rather then separately fitted wire ones.

Weathered brake van, now in the engineering fleet

The original Bachmann weathering is the best I have seen on a wagon, it is multi-tonal and fairly realistic. Rather than stripping it off, I decided just to weather over the top of this finish. I think that this is just about as much fun as you can have with an airbrush. I used railmach enamels, using a mixture of weathered black, sleeper grime and framedirt, and sealed with railmatch satin varnish. Overall, I think it is now a more realistic finish, although, with hindsight I wish I had replaced the handrails and the buffers. The only cosmetic surgery was the adding of the three link coupling.

Original factory weathered finish, not too bad...

But I prefer this finish

Other projects are waiting for a bit of attention. The class 25 repaint is waiting for decals, as is the southern tunny. A GWR tunny is in the paintshop and a 16t mineral wagon and sturgeon are in the process of construction. The class 08 detailing is ongoing and is currently at the point of having its cab detailed. So there is plenty going on, but absolutely no time. Work is flat out again, which is a good thing when you run your own business, but this will leave no time for modelling at all the next few weeks.

13t Engineering wagon and a class 08 with working lights

A long time has passed since my last post. Although I have managed to get around to doing a little bit of modelling here and there, modelling has certainly been second to pretty much everything else. However, this weekend I managed to finish a couple of projects and further some others.

Another 13t wagon in the southern engineering fleet

Firstly, I finished my second 13t mineral wagon, now being used within the engineers fleet on the southern region. This is the Parkside Dundas wagon kit, which I have finished with a mixture of weathered black, rust, sleeper grime and frame dirt. The transfers are model master decal ones. I notice that the sheet with the 'E' has probably seen better days,with the decal not properly adhering - however, I can live with that for the moment! I am pretty happy with this one and it is another one to add to the growing engineering stock.

The second project I have furthered is the detailing of the class 08. This has involved attempting to add to the Express Models lighting kit. This has been a slightly frustrating project, however, after many attempts, I am nearing the body detailing stage. I decided to add the lighting kit first, as previous experience has taught me that a lot of handling of the locomotive/fiddling around is required to get these kits working. I am now ready to add the buffer beam pipes and add further detailing components.

Hooray working lights!!

Lastly, all these photographs have been taken on the the next layout we are building - Pottington Quay. It now has some track glued down and is partly operational. So progress on all fronts. I have almost finished another couple of projects, so hopefully it will not be so long before my next update......