So before I went away on my summer fieldwork I managed to finish off the detailing of my Bachmann class 25 dcc sound locomotive. The locomotive was purchased about 7 years ago and came with factory installed sound. Whist this was ok, it is a bit naff (in my opinion) compared to what is available through other sounds specialists. Consequently, I sent the chip of to Howes to be reblown and set about detailing and weathering the locomotive.
The finished locomotive pottering around the Charlton layout.
As it looks out of the box. The plastic shiny finish on the locomotive makes it look very toy like in my opinion.
Shunting some wagons at the station. I think the locomotive tick over and move off sounds are first class.
I fitted the accessory packs as per the instructions and fitted 3 link couplings, before dismantling the locomotive into the chassis block, body and the two bogies. I masked off the chassis block except for the solebars, buffer beams and underframe, and then weathered the locomotive with a combination of Railmatch enamel paints. As per normal I applied some tonal variations of faded blue and yellow over the body of the locomotive, before applying an all over body wash of frame dirt/weathered black roughly mixed. Most of this was wiped away before final detailing with the airbrush. The underframe and bogies had shades of weathered black, underframe dirt and sleeper grime sprayed over them.
The body shell during detailing with some of the spraying of the faded colours evident. These are then blend in to overall finish with the airbrush.
More running around here!
Overall, I think this locomotive looks and sounds pretty good. I did manage to finish off another class 25 a couple of years ago and ideally I will have these two to operate my layouts. The problem is, the other class 25 is not sound fitted, so it is odd to run them together on the layout, with the sound effects really bringing another level of realism to the layout and a greater level of fun in operation. I guess that means another sound chip is in order. I currently has a class 122 DMU in the workshop being sound fitted and I am about to start a class 22 detailing and sound fitting, however, the layout does need some attention. As for the rest of the weekend, I have an unlimited amount of modelling time, and I hope to add some further details to the layout. More to follow here soon......
