Parcels service: 12t parcel van finished (finally)

A merry xmas to everyone and best wishes for the new year!  Following on from my post several months ago about painting a series of vans for parcels traffic on Pottington Quay, I have finally managed to finish the first one.  It is a 12t fish van that has been converted to an SPV van for parcels traffic.  This wagon was built about a year ago, so it is brilliant to finally see it finished.

Overall I am reasonably happy with this one, but again the transfer application was not perfect - despite being applied to a super gloss surface, however, at normal viewing distance I don't think it will be noticeable.  I made a real effort with the livery application on this wagon, with something in the region of 20 different coats applied via air brush and also using paintbrush washes.

On top of a black pre-shading a faded livery was applied before weathering.  It is difficult to now see the tonal variation in the original livery application, although the light where this was photographed was not brilliant.  After this various coats of (all railmatch paints) sleeper grime, frame dirt and weathered black were applied, before a final satin varnish finish.  

As well as this wagon I have been working on two CCTs, both in BR blue.  The first of these is is already finished with the final varnish currently drying.  The second CCT has had the decals applied and is waiting for the roof and windows to be added before further weathering.

I have got another 2 of these 12t parcels wagons already built waiting for the paintshop in 00 gauge, as well as 1 in 0 gauge.  Using the lessons learnt from this wagon, I intend to upscale and finish the 0 gauge wagon using pretty much the same techniques, and when I have finished the current batch of wagons this will be the next project.

Another project which has been going on for way too long is the sturgeon wagon in 00 gauge.  This is now 95% finished, except I cannot find any 10.5mm disc wheels anywhere, and I only had two spare buffer heads to hand, so I need to order some more.  Both of these items (the buffers and the wheels) are made by Romford and both seem difficult to come by at the moment.  Anyhow, as soon as I track some down, I can get some primer on this one too.  Although it took ages to finish this wagon, it is a pretty simple construction and builds into a really good wagon.

The christmas break has afford some modelling time and there are also two 0 gauge wagons and an 00 gauge starfish wagon in the paintshop, as well as 00 gauge and 0 gauge brake vans under construction.   All in all it has been a productive few weeks and I hope to finish off at least two more wagons (and perhaps the Western) before returning to work.

16t Mineral wagon and a dogfish

I returned from my work trip to Africa earlier in December, and a months break from modelling really arrested any momentum I had with projects.  Since returning though I have slowly started to get back into the swing of modelling and the paintshop over the last week has been pretty busy.  I have 2 CCTs and 12t fish wagon all nearing completion, although the 12t fish wagon has had some horrible silvering on the transfers....I am not quite sure why this has happened as they were applied to a gloss surface, using micro set/sol.  One of today's tasks is to attempt to fix this issue.

16t mineral wagon

Anyhow, earlier in the week I got out my 16t mineral wagon and took a couple of better snaps of it.  This one is another wagon for Pottington Quay when it comes out of storage (which is only a few months away!!).  It was also my birthday in November and a late birthday present arrived - which was an 0 gauge Heljan dogfish.  This is a pretty good wagon - although the font on the data panel looks wrong to me (others have commented in this too), so I might replace this with some Railtec transfers.

0 gauge Heljan dogfish

This model will go with the 0 gauge grampus, which has now reached the transfers stage, and the 13t sand wagon is now in the paintshop.  These wagons will form the basis of a new 0 gauge micro layout and I aim to keep building new wagons throughout next year, and finishing some old ones - not least the 25t Pillbox brake van, started this time last year.  Whilst I still really enjoy 00 modelling I am finding myself more and more interested in 0 gauge modelling - and am looking forward to the Dapol 08 so I can have something to shunt these wagons around with.

16t Mineral wagon ready for the permanent way and a little grampus progress in 0 gauge

Well this week in between bouts of manic work I have managed to finish a 16t mineral wagon for the engineers yard at Potting Quay. To be honest this wagon required relatively little to finish it off, some bouts of painting and a few transfers before sealing with a satin varnish.  The wagon was built and half painted in 2013 - only taking 2 years to finish it off.  So apologies for the poor photographic skills - but finally something finished and out of the paint workshops ready for layout.

Finished 16t mineral wagon that has been seconded to the engineers yard at Pottington.

More progress has been made on the 0 gauge grampus wagon.  The size of the wagon does mean it seems to take longer to paint - although I suspect that the detail of the wagon is just more apparent allowing a greater degree of subtly in the final finish. The wagon is nowhere near finished - but some of the elements of the livery are starting to come together.  It is great fun to work on a wagon of this size -and hope to get this one finished and another 0 gauge build into the paintshop before xmas. I have even purchased a couple of lengths of 0 gauge track and have been contemplating track plans.  However all this must stop for a month now, as I am off on some work travels - heading to the Med than Africa - so back in a month!

The 0 gauge grampus continues to make progress - adding in elements of the rust and weathering.

CCTs and parcels trains progress

Well just as the Bachmann CCT's hit the shelves, I have almost finished a couple of the Parkside kits for my parcels trains.  The first one was started by son before he lost interest in trains.  It is not a perfect build - but I quite like that, as it was a model we built together.  The second is the CCT with the plywood sides and I have also been working on the first of the 12t fish vans.

CCT with plywood sides showing the faded finish

I described in an earlier post how I had pre-shaded the wagons before painting.  Over this I have applied various coats of BR faded blue, and BR blue.  The two CCTs are ready, but the 12T wagons has had a further coat of faded blue on top.  I have put a couple of coats of varnish on these already so hopefully application of the transfers is not too far away, although I do have to pick out some of the details like handrails in white and also properly paint the underframes.  I also need to find somewhere with decent lighting to take the photos - sorry these are a bit dark.  I think that i will have to buy a Bachmann blue CCT just to see how it compares...

CCT ready for some transfers

Express parcels 12T van, showing the preshading under the coats of BR blue

A bit of 0 gauge progress

My paint workshop is currently pretty busy, with a lot of wagons ready to be painted and weathered. Ticking over in the back ground has been the build of a 12t fish van, which is to enter service in a faded BR blue livery.  This wagon is the 0 gauge Parkside Kit.  As I was modelling an 00 gauge parcels train I thought I would turn my hand to building a couple of these wagons is 0 gauge.  The kit went together seamlessly and is now ready for a wash and lick of paint.

12t van ready for a coat of faded BR blue

My 0 gauge grampus is also progressing and has been the subject of a couple of coats of paint from the air brush.  I have made a start on the bodywork, mixing in some coats of weathered black, light rust and dark rust.  The body work is almost there now and a start has been made on the underframe.  Hopefully this wagon will be finished in a couple of weeks, all dependent on how much free time I am allowed over the weekends.  I am thoroughly enjoying this little venture into 0 gauge and just having one or two items of rolling stock to work in the background will quickly allow enough wagons for a small shunting micro layout to be built.....now how long until that Dapol 08 hits the shelves??...

Grampus wagon part way through painting

Heljan western - taking a deep breath!

Sometime ago I put up a post of a second Heljan Western I purchased on ebay.   This model recently came out of the box.  As work was progressing well on painting the parcels wagons and the sturgeon wagon is complete save for the handrails, I though I needed a new challenge.

As the model is secondhand I am just having a go trying out some techniques for weathering/painting on it.  If it all goes wrong, I can just strip it down and repaint it.  So I un-clipped the body.  The detailing on the chassis has yet to be undertaken, and I put this to one side.

With the body un-clipped I splatted some white paint all over the paint job with a brush and then tried to take some of it back off with a cotton wool bud.  Once reasonably happy with this, I sprayed some faded blue in stripes over this.

Lastly, I made a mix of weathered black and frame dirt and applied this over the body, before wiping most of it away with cotton wool buds.  This is the first of several paint layers which will attempt to make a suitably distressed western down in Devon in the mid/late 1970s.  It did take a bit of deep breath to start this one - but now it is started I am keen just to try whatever I fancy.  Hopefully more progress on this one soon.....

SPV, CCT and a mineral wagon

Well I have done a little more painting with the airbrush.  I am just getting the hang of mixing the paints again, but all is progressing well.  I have done a little pre-shading on the SPV and CCT, after a quick coat of primer.  Both of these will feature a weathered, faded BR blue, which will be applied lightly over the top of the white primer and black pre-shading.  The first coat of faded blue will go on this evening, followed by a couple more coats tomorrow.

The other wagon on the go is a 16t mineral wagon.  This was started in 2013 and half painted then.  I am just trying to blend in the rust finish on this a little, but I am tempted to go for some of the new noch iron rusty finish.  I know others can manage it, but my painting of rust never looked that convincing!  Anyhow I will persevere with this one and see what I can come up with.

And one more thing - the relevant planning authorities have given permission for a new micro-shunting layout.  With Pottington Quay firmly in storage until next year, building a small layout for the winter is in order.....

Parcels train....

It has been a long time since my last post, but, we have moved into our new house and after a busy time unpacking - we have settled in.  Unfortunately, I think this house will be a stop gap, so we will probably move again in spring.  This is a bit of a pain, but until then I do have a winter of modelling to head through.

In the new house my thoughts have turned back to building a small layout, something just to run the models on and have a DCC sound locomotive idling in the background.  One of the principal traffic sources for the layout would be parcels stock from the 1970s.  Up until the 1980s Barnstaple still received a mixed freight up as the first train of the day, with some mk1 passenger stock and fruit Ds and/or 12t vans, with a newspaper wagon also attached.  So with my line to Ilfracombe having never closed down (if only in my modelling head!), a daily parcels train is plausible.  This will be used on Pottington Quay - when I eventually get this out of storage next year.

So I have been building a dedicated parcels train for shunting around my next layout.  I have yet to seek permission from the planning authorities, but I think it should be ok to build a 4ft by 2ft micro layout, with a small station and depot, and sidings for a parcel train to unload.  So far I have built 3 12t fish wagons (SPVs), 2 CCTs and I have a Dapol fruit D wagon unpainted.  On top of this I also have a CCT and a BY wagon to build.  This will be the first set of wagons to get attention, although I am spending more and more time building 0 gauge wagon kits too!  

Part finished CCT, with a faded blue delivery

Second CCT ready for the paintshop

12t fish vans to be finished as parcels SPV vans

Dapol unpainted fruit D

Hornby SPV

In very good news this weekend the air brush was fired up for the first time in a long time. A start has been made on the first 12t parcels wagon and one of thhe CCTs. The second CCT ws half finished with a faded blue delivery when I left Devon 18 months ago, so I am looking to finishing this one off.  All in all things are looking great and I am looking forward to posting regularly again over this winter and getting down to some modelling.

At last......

Well, finally we have settled on somewhere to start our new home!  This is really exciting news, not least that I now have a little bit of space to build a new layout...and almost as exciting - somewhere I can set up my modelling workbench again, (with working airbrush), to finish off all those wagons I have built over the last year.  The new layout will have to be small, but I am hoping to build a small shunting layout, around 4ft long.

In the meantime, I have been looking at photos of some of my old layouts, which has made me really excited to start modelling again in earnest.  And here is a photo that caught my eye - a class 03 at Amberleigh.  Undoubtedly, this locomotive will feature on the new layout - which will of course be set in the later 1970s in Devon!  Exciting times.  A further update when we finally get moved......

Wagons, wagons, wagons big and small

Still not much going on in my modelling world.  I have plenty of enthusiasm for modelling, but have little time/continuity at the moment.  I am spending a hefty amount f time travelling for work and this really disrupts any momentum. In lieu of any real modelling I have been building the odd wagon kit in the evenings, whenever I have a spare hour here or there..  I am still spreading my time between 00 gauge and 0 gauge, building two or three 00 kits to every one 0 gauge kit.  Recently, I have finished a series of open wagon builds.  The first was the corrugated ends 13t open wagon kit in 00 gauge.  This kit is the standard Parkside kit and is built without the hood cover, the ends being filled where this was to glue on.  A really simple but lovely kit to make.  According to Parkside over 8000 of these wagons were made for BR and many had a second lease of life in the Engineering fleet.  I am aiming to build 3 - 4 of these for use on spoil trains.

Another wagon build finished off recently was a 13t steel bodied open wagon.  Again super simple to build.  I think this one will be finished in a faded bauxite livery.  I would be delighted if Parkside released a 7mm version of this too!

Lastly, a 12t pipe wagon is being constructed in 7mm scale.  This is again a lovely kit to build and I think the 7mm bug has well and truely bitten.  These wagon kits just fall together and I cannot wait to get the airbrush out and paint weather these bigger kits.  The idea of a 7mm engineers yard/diesel depot has become very persistent.......although I am trying to resist purchasing a 7mm diesel kit

0 Gauge sand Wagon

Over the last few weeks I have been been building yet more kits.  I have got a bit stuck with the SR brake van and my enthusiasm for dabbling in 0 gauge ebbed a little.  Instead I cracked on with more 00 gauge wagon kits.  However, the part finished Parkside 13t sand wagon got finished one evening this week.  This project just needed a dedicated few hours to see it through, and only having the odd hour here or there I did not want to spoil it by rushing.  Last weekend saw a dedicated evening of modelling and building this model is now finished and gets added to a growing number of projects awaiting the paint shop.  

With this wagon finished it has certainly rekindled by enthusiasm for building some more 0 gauge kits.  The Dapol class 08 is on order and I am very tempted to put an advance order in for a Heljan 0 gauge class 25 - but I need to check first whether it comes with a factory fitted DCC socket - the previous releases have not and this has stopped me parting with hard earned dosh.   The idea of having to hard wire lights and decoder into an expensive 0 gauge locomotive I find a little daunting.

Anyhow coupled up with the  grampus wagon I am starting to wonder about building two layouts consecutively in the future.  A small 0 gauge shunting plank and actually getting around too finishing the larger 00 gauge Pottington Quay.  All layout building/wagon painting is on hold until we move into our new place, which has been put back again from this summer.  However, when we do move I am definitely keen to build a little 0 gauge plank layout and run some of these wagons - a small engineering siding me thinks.  Until then, I guess I will keep building away and dreaming of future layouts.

more wagon progress

I can't believe a month has passed since my last post.  Time flies when you are having fun - or at least really busy.  However, modelling has not been at a complete standstill.  I have been continuing to quietly build away at my wagon kits - the odd evening of progress here and there.  I am currently finishing off the second Vanwide airbrake wagon and have built the second of my blue spot fish vans for use in parcel service. The engineering fleet has also seen the construction of a 13t open wagon with corrugated ends.  Small progress in 4mm scale - but enjoyable.

Workbench at the moment - more wagons for the paintshop

 Another project that is progressing is a 7mm wagon kit - this time a 13t open sand wagon.  I have a free afternoon today - and hope to finish off this kit.  As ever it has gone together perfectly.  Another little project for today is building a 4mm scale Parkside 12t pipe wagon.  I plan to build about 3 of these over the coming weeks - of which two will be engineering wagons and one will be finished in bauxite.  I am going to get a couple of the Bachmann 12t pipe wagons as well.  By all accounts it is a fantastic model - although very expensive at around £17 - but it will be good to compare it with the Parkside kit.

A second hand model on ebay.  I always feels more confident about playing around with an older/second model rather than a shiny new one.

I managed to sell a few bit and pieces on ebay recently and have picked up a couple of second hand locomotives at very reasonable prices.  One of which is this lovely Heljan Western.  In my opinion Heljan locomotives have the bet performance of all 00 gauge locomotives.  I am planning a very faded blue version of this locomotive - which in my mind will be at the end its career shunting some engineering/goods wagons around my shunting yard.  With that and my Class 37 locomotive rebuild about to start (honestly!) - I have plenty to keep me occupied.  I must really get some form of layout on the go....

SR 25t brakevan, Grampus and VEA airbrake

Finally I have got around to doing some bits of modelling.  It is still snatches of time but the enthusiasm for modelling has certainly come back.  Life has involved less travelling recently - except for a pre-xmas Africa trip, although it is still quite transient.  However, although I am still not somewhere permanent and most of my modelling gear is still in storage, I have gotten around to building a few kits recently.  I have ordered myself a few kits over the last month or so, both 7mm and 4mm, and have been quietly building away in the evenings.

Grampus - ready for the paintshop

First up is the grampus wagon a 7mm Parkside kit - complete with wheels and couplings.  Great little kit and when all tidied up in the paintshop I think that this will look fine.  To go with the grampus I purchased a SR 25t brake van.  This is definitely a more fiddly construction and at the moment the body is not quite snug to the chassis - a product of me rushing a little in bad light to try to get the body built one evening.  As it stands it has had some filler added and some filling and filing should sort it out.  I should know better than to try to rush these things!  I intend to finish this one in bauxite and build another for an engineering olive paints scheme.

SR 25t Brakevan

Last up, I got back into the swing of some 00 gauge with a 4mm VEA air braked wagon.  This is currently having some new hand rails added and needs some buffers (any suggestions who does these?)  Anyhow it is going together smoothly and I plan to finish it in a late bauxite livery. I also have a 12t open wagon on the bench - and yes as you probably guessed it is to be finished in some form of grubby engineering livery!  A couple of BR spot vans and another VEA airbrake are waiting on the workbench too.  I plan to squirrel myself away on Sunday and watch the rugby whilst building some models - sounds like heaven!

VEA airbraked van nearing completion ready for painting.

I still do not have my painting gear set up.  This is going to have too wait a while until we buy our new house (an ongoing saga).  So until then I am lining up the wagons and hopefully that class 37 ready for the paintshop in a few months time.  I am also very tempted to buy an 0 gauge heljan class 33 in BR green (cheap and the only version left in the shops) and strip it down ready for painting into BR blue - that would definitely keep me occupied for a while.....I am going to need something to push these wagons around....

0 gauge grampus ready for the paintshop

A few days back in Devon before xmas allowed me some time to finish off adding the detail to my 0 gauge grampus wagon.  I found the footstep support to be a nightmare to fold over from the etched brass fret- and sure enough wrecked it.  I managed too bodge something else together from some spare plastic - but it did highlight to me the need to get the right tools for the job - a hold and fold tool is surely required!

 Finished Grampus with detail added

The wagon went together easily - all imperfections are a product of my modelling.  There are a couple of small areas to give a quick touch up to, then it is straight into the paintshop with this. I hope to get my airbrush properly set up again within a month or too - so hopefully it will not be too long until I can get this little project finished.

Folded door springs

After the Grampus, I started building a SR25t pillbox brakevan in 0 gauge now.  This one is to be finished in departmental olive green. I think I might have been stung by the 0 gauge bug - a string of 0 gauge wagons have been ordered to build a little shunting layout.  I am desperately trying to resist the urge to buy a Heljan class 33 or 31, and a Dapol 08 has been ordered.  I like the idea of building a small layout where I have a limited amount of rolling stock, but pretty much everything is hand built. We shall see, butt I am very much enjoying building in this larger scale and thinking about what  would like to buy/build next!

In 00 gauge there has been no progress recently, except for starting an odd Parkside kit - everything else is on hold.   I am tempted to consider selling off a large proportion of my un-detailed 00 gauge fleet...but I am only tempted at this moment in time......