O gauge Lowfit Wagon and a platform shelter

So not an awful lot of progress has happened recently on the modelling front. Part of the slow down has been the adding of a new puppy to our household. She is fantastic, but does take up a lot of time! Modelling time has mainly been spent trying to finish off some of the buildings for the layout. I am hopeful I can get the layout set up for a few weekends relatively soon. When this happens I want to be able to add various buildings and get them blended into the scenery quickly. So I recently (finally) finished off the first diary building for the layout. The second main building for the diary is very much still in construction, but I should be able to get this finished off this year. I have also spent a few evenings knocking up a small shelter for the platform. This was made with some off cuts of foam card and plasticard strips, with very much guestimated dimensions. It still needs a little tidying up but should be finished this week.

The dimensions of the platform shelter are a guesstimate, but it looks about right to my eye.

Platform shelter, showing the sloping roof.

I have also finished off a slaters 12T fruit van. This was built as per the instructions and will be used in the enparts engineering train. 

12 Fruit van, which will be used in the engineering enparts train, in olive green livery.

Otherwise, I am not really building any more wagon kits at the moment. I love building wagons, but with limited modelling time I want to finish painting some wagons and locomotives for the layout, not to mention needing some coaches to be detailed and weathered. I have finally treated myself to a new air compressor (an Iwata Sprint Jet) and am going to work my way through a quite long list of detailing/respray/painting projects before starting anything new. I currently have about 6 wagons in the paint boxes,  the class 33 having a respray, a class 122 awaiting detailing, the engineering olive BSK to repaint and a class 42 warship ready for weathering. So quite along list of things models to paint! Currently, a lowfit wagon is the closest to completion, with the weathering nearly finished and getting close to having the transfers added.

So some sporadic progress. Hopefully I can get the layout set up soon and really press on with some of the detailing. In the meantime, I have plenty of projects to keep me going!

O Gauge Class 33 Repaint into BR Blue

So a bit more progress has been made on the class 33 repaint. I have repainted a few body shells in 00 gauge to reasonably good affect, but an O gauge body shell seems like a daunting prospect. Anyhow, I have finally finished applying the initial coats of faded yellow to the class 33 cab ends. Sunday morning was spent with scissors and tweezers applying the lining and trying to make sure it was straight. After putting on the initial lining, the ends were masked off and I started spraying the body shell with BR Blue.

The painted locomotive ends, ready for masking off. The lining and masking tape that were used are in the bottom left of the picture.

The thin white strips are the lining tape, before an area mask off, using thin masking tape.

Even after the first initial coat of BR blue, the impact of the pre-shading is apparent and I am optimistic this will provide some great tonal variation on the body shell when it is completed. There are several more coats of BR blue, faded BR blue and very faded BR blue to go. Great fun to see this shaping up.

First coats of BR blue applied over the primer and pre-shading.

So fingers crossed when the masking pulls away there will not be some terrible join in the lining. I forgot just how much fun it is to respray a locomotive and add in all the tonal variations and weathering detail as it progresses. I have the DCC Loksound V5 sound chip from Howes to install and I have finished weathering the chassis, so this is now ready for reassembly. The transfers from Railtec have also arrived, so maybe this locomotive might get finished in the next couple of months.