LNER CCT in BR Blue

I hope everyone is safe in well, in what can only be described as trying times.  Personally, this first week of lockdown has been difficult for me, being separated from loved ones since last week.  However, in amongst all the doom and the endless days of being locked in, I have finally found some time to do some modelling.  I guess it is important to always find a positive, although the situation is clearly very serious.

So this week I finished off a LNER extra long CCT, in classic BR blue parcels livery.  This project can only be described as a complete and utter nightmare!  The building and painting stages were relatively straight forward and I was feeling very smug with the progress.  However, I managed to completely and utterly wreck the application of transfers (I thought I was beyond this!!).  After this, I had to spend a lot of time sorting out the silvering, trying to disguise it with more weathering.  This lead to a large number of varnish coats being applied with various shades of sleeper grime or frame dirt added.  Anyhow, I currently live in a very dusty house, so the more coats you apply, the more dust you trap, which is of course exactly what happened.  Then when it was finished and I was putting the wheels in I dropped it and scratched the roof!

Finished CCT in BR blue.  It doesn't look too bad I guess.

Close up showing the excellent detail of the Parkside moulding.

Another close up showing the added handrails and detail.

The model is the Parkside kit, build with a few extras added, such as handrails.  I painted the wagon using Railmatch enamels applied from my airbrush.  The transfers are from Cambridge Custom Transfers.  I never seem to get these quite right and my applying of them was poor. So the verdict - I am glad it is finished.  The weathering is now too heavy for my tastes, but at least it is finished and runs.  The overall paint finish has to much dust trapped in it for my liking and the transfers still look a bit iffy.  It is one to re-visit maybe in a few years. However, I find once I have finished a wagon I forget about it, so maybe in a few months I will pick it up, put it in the track and think - this is not too bad!  I took some close images of the sides whilst taking a pick too, which really highlight the quality of wagon moulding by Parkside.  Overall a 6 out of 10 on this project for me, but another wagon finished and ready to go on the layout.

East Grinstead Model Railway Exhibition

This week I have been exhibiting my layout Charlton at the East Grinstead model railway exhibition.  Give the country is in a state of hysteria about Coronvirus, visitor numbers were healthy.  There was a really good range of layouts at the show and I met and chatted with a lot of people.  Charlton performed faultlessly again and I am feeling pretty confident about how I put the layout together.  It is its fifth show with virtually no maintenance and it continues to operate really well, although I need to fix a couple of minor things.  However, Charlton is a fiddle yard to terminus.  This is great fun to operate at home for an hour or two, but in an exhibition hall it is a very tiring layout to operate.  Footfall in the exhibition tailed off in the later afternoons, so I had some time to shoot a few little videos.  One of the things I liked about operating the layout this weekend was I have finished the third passenger coach.  This means the run around loop doesn't work, as the train is too long.  So I now have another locomotive stabled in a siding to run onto the end of the train and pull it away.  Not really prototypical, but much more fun to operate.

I am now keen to be able to finish off a few of the other modelling projects and start planning a much bigger layout.  Fingers crossed that a house move later this year will be the last in a long line and I can start building something that I can keep permanently operational.  Until then, I have no further exhibitions to attend.  I plan to build a small layout (3ft x 1.5ft) just to keep me going and use this micro-layout as part of a bigger plan.....

Class 25 on a short parcels train.

A western bringing in the 3 coach passenger train.

A class 22 running around a branch freight.

Thanks to all at East Grinstead MRC who made this weekend so much fun!

Hornby BR Blue Parcels Passenger Brake C

Sometimes life just gets in the way a little and any shape or form of modelling has ground to a rather unimpressive halt.  I had plans at new year to finish quite a few projects, but little headway has been made!  Fortunately, nothing stressful or negative has happened, it is just life has been too busy over the last couple of months leaving virtually zero time for modelling.  However, today I fired up the airbrush for the first time in an age.  There were a couple of wagons pretty much finished that needed a blast of varnish plus quite a few other wagons are nearing completion which need a bit of tidying up here and there.  I have an exhibition coming up this week at East Grinsted, so I was hoping to get a few things finished for then, but I have run out of time.

Progress so far on the faded and chipped bodywork - taken in awful light!

Anyhow, pictured above is a Hornby BY wagon, called a passenger brake van C by Hornby.  I had forgotten I had purchased this many years ago and found it a few months back whilst looking through the boxes of projects I have not yet got around to. I decided to have a really good go at doing some chipped and faded bodywork on this.  So far this has been treated to some white paint stippled on from a paintbrush, with some removal via a cotton bud with white spirit. The wagon has had an all over wash of grime, before some work with the airbrush using faded BR blue and weathered black.  There is a little weathering to go, but it is starting to shape up.  Hopefully I can get this one finished soon.