Engineering PMV and CCT wagons

The CCT (furthest away) and PMV (closest) left at Amberleigh Halt, on what appears to be fine summers evening sunset (or just bad lighting!!!)

This week has seen much progress on the wagon front, not least the finishing of two models, the southern CCT and southern PMV, modelled in 1970/1980s departmental liveries. Although enjoyable projects, both of these wagons had flaws from my limited modelling - I have always maintained this a blog about my experiences of modelling - and these two wagons fit that bill perfectly!


The finished PMV, I am still not happy with the glazing though

On each of the wagons I had niggles with the finishes. On the CCT QPV staff Tool wagon I was less that impressed with my finish on the transfers. With the PMV I really messed up the glazing! So on both wagons I was 90% happy but that 10% really niggled me.


An attempt to rescue to the original glazing effort, using glue and glaze. A good lesson that if you rush things, it will show up

With the PMV I put a layer of glue and glaze over the windows and let this set before weathering the wagon. This did a lot to disguise the poor first attempt at glazing. This wagon was always destined for a heavily weathered finish, so these two factors I was hoping would make for an acceptable finish. The photographs show whether this has succeeded; the glazing is certainly better, but not perfect. I am now 95% happy, although there are still niggles with the PMV, such as a wonky hand rail, etc! I think that it is one of those projects I will live with, until I get around to replacing it - which will probably be in a decade or so!!


The heavier weather finish on the PMV

With the CCT I really only wanted to disguise the poor finish on the transfers using some subtle weathering. This I hope has been achieved. The CCT (now a QPV tool wagon) I was always happier with. I think that the weathering job has succeeded in blending in these transfer elements, so this one can stay!!


The CCT with the lighter weathered finish

Recently I took down my DCC test track (Amberleigh) and put this into storage. I realised that this is a bad idea - as I now have nowhere set up to photograph finished/developing models. So I balanced Amberleigh up on some trestles to take these photographs last night and held a lamp in one hand and the camera in the other. Needless to say it was all a bit make shift and as the result the photographs are pretty rubbish! Hopefully, Pottington Quay will have some scenic elements added before too much longer and this will then be used to take better photographs.


Departmental QQV tool wagon

On other modelling projects some progress has been made on my Class 121 DMU, with buffers added and underframe detailing started. I also finished my first tunny wagon, another wagon for my growing engineering fleet. However, I am now away with work for about three weeks or so, so updates will be sporadic at best.

Pottington Quay - a little more progress

View from one end of the layout to the other

A good weekend of modelling transpired. Great to have sometime at home and be able to just chill out and enjoy doing some modelling. The two projects that received the attention this weekend were Pottington Quay and the finishing/weathering of my PMV and CCT in engineering olive. The second of these I will post later in the week. Needless to say some progress was made on Pottington Quay.

As always my expectations of what I might achieve were completely over the top. The first task was picking up the Bachman Scenecraft Service Shed. This is an excellent model and after it was duly place on the shunting micro I realised that one of the sidings had to go. So another track plan was required.


A further rejigging of the track plan - this is the final version

The revised plan now has one siding, one line in and one line out. This effectively lost a set of points, reducing the overall number to 3. Whilst collecting the servicing shed I decided to buy a point motor. My original plan was not to bother installing point motors to save money. However, some automatic points seemed appealing, with a more automated layout in general. The gaugemaster point motor looks easy enough to install. But I do not understand if I require a capacitor discharge unit for every point, or can I wire all 3 points to the same unit?? If anyone knows the answer some advice would be appreciated, so please comment!!


My first attempt at scratch building - a warehouse to sit on the quay front

Anyway, in between jiggling track plans and contemplating track wiring, I was busy with the air brush weathering the PMV and CCT. And whilst each coat of paint dried on these wagons I was attempting to scratchbuild a passable representation of the Rolle Quay warehouse. I managed to finish this on the Sunday and tonight it might well get a good wash and does of primer. Has it been successful? The answer to this is I am currently unsure. I think it probably looks ok at the moment, but with some paint added it will show up all the minor blemishes.... we shall wait to see.


The entrance for the second track will be disguised by a signal box - yet to be constructed

Anyway, it is a first attempt, another step into a bigger world of modelling. It also fulfils its function of disguising the entry/exit points for the tracks into the micro. I now am about to start building a signal box and platform to stand behind the warehouse, another task for this week.

Pottington Quay, further progress

The finished Ambeleigh test track, all it needs now is a name board, another task for the weekend

Being home all week has meant that I have made further progress on Pottington Quay. I took the step of finally taking down Amberleigh, my test track layout, which has been running in the spare room for probably around 8 months now, as I needed to borrow one of the trestles for Pottington Quay. Amberleigh is now finished, with the exception of the addition of a name board for the Halt. It has been a great little project, but has now reached the end of its developmental interest for me. Hopefully, one thing left to accomplish with the layout is taking it to an exhibition, but for that I will have to wait for an offer......


Plan view, excuse the feet!

With regards to Pottington Quay, I started to build two structures this week. The first was a scalescenes card kit. These kits are excellent, but my ability to build them is not!!! It ended up in the recycling bin after one night I am afraid!! However, I did go out and take some photos of the warehouse at Rolle Quay and have started scratch building this structure. The dimensions are guestimates, based on the photographs, with the aim of producing a representation of the building. Whether it will look to scale once finished I am unsure!


Rolle Quay from the road side

I have used a plasticard base with stone cladding. This is my first attempt at scratch building, and I am learning all the way. It is starting to shape up, but I do not want to tempt fate yet, there is a long way to go. Regardless of this, I am really enjoying constructing something unique. I am definitely getting bitten by the building bug and now intend to scratch build a larger warehouse for the rear of the layout, possibly using modelling clay.


and my first attempt at a representation of the building

I have managed to gather the materials together for most of the rest of the buildings for the layout. I have the stuff to construct the quay side, the track plan needs gluing down and the powerbus needs installing and then the whole thing needs wiring up. Add to this a small signal box to build, combined with spraying the backscene, and the weekend looks a busy one in modelling terms. I am also hoping to finish of my engineers olive green CCT and PMV and build that warehouse. We shall see how far I get, but I will update to show all (any!)progress.


The warehouse from the river view

Pottington Quay - it's all in name

Pottington Quay, with the backscene now in place

At last a name has been decided upon for the shunting micro. Introducing Pottington Quay, based loosely on the quay front wall at Barnstaple. As the photos hopefully show I have made a little more progress, with the backscene now in place. The backscene is glued fibre board on a curve made from two sections of wood, meeting in the middle. The back scene is also relatively high, something I hope will give the layout some atmosphere. This is going to be sprayed white to grey, making it a very bland back drop.


View looking into the layout

The back drop is going to be bland because I intend to cover the back of the layout with some tall buildings and some trees. The centre piece of the layout will be a wagon repair works - using the Bachmann scenecraft single road locomotive repair shed. A trip down to the excellent model railway shop in Exeter promptly had this ordered, so am waiting on this to fix in place.

I also am going to (attempt) to scratch build my first building, being a warehouse to plonk right at the front of the layout, to disguise the entry/exit of trains. There is a lovely old warehouse in Barnstaple on the rolle quay, just a few mins walk from my office, which I am going to photograph today ready to attempt to scratch build. I picked up some sheets of plasticard and the like at the weekend and am ready to start....fingers crossed it won't be a complete disaster.


Slightly higher view showing the track layout

However, I am also going to purchase a few more warehouse type structures from the Scenecraft/Skaledale ranges to fix to the back of the layout. These are going to be placed on a slightly raised section, providing a nice back drop to the sidings, along with some decent foliage. I also need a signal box to place behind the warehouse on the quay, to act as a scenic break for the second track entry onto the layout. Tonight I am hoping to get the powerbus in place and start gluing down the track, hopefully some more progress updates to follow later in the week.

Back home at last - some movement on the shunting micro

Got a call to head up north, well to the midlands anyway, and headed off for two weeks of survey. Although the work was good it meant that I was away from all things modelling, including my shunting micro layout, for two weeks. Before I left home my son and I messed around with the track plan. He had the idea to change it slightly, with a second track coming into the depot. This is now going to run to a small diesel fueling point, to allow dmus and locos to shunt on and off the layout. I think this should be a fun little project, with lots of shunting interest. I am trying to work out whether all the points I have are electrofrog or not.....


Modified track plan for the shunting layout

The second photograph shows a new Hornby trout wagon on the layout to give an indication of the relief (the wagon is an absolute belter btw). The lower level is going to be an inter-tidal zone. The quayside was orignally going to be modelled with a wooden front. However, I ordered the Faller kit for a quay front today, which models the front as iron girders. I have also ordered some ready to plant buildings to place around the micro layout. One of the tasks I hope to achieve this weekend is to get to B&Q to get some bendy MDF to fit the backscene. Then I can start playing around with the position of the buildings and get the track wired up. If we make some progress over the weekend I will put up the post or two....and we also need to come up with a name....


The relief for the quay side at the front of the layout

PMV and CCT progress

The nearly finished PMV, with a few issues to be resolved...

I have made a little progress on my PMV wagon this week, painting the handrails and adding some transfers. Alas, sometime off in the week did not materialise, so I did not quite get around to finishing this project. I got out the CCT I had recently finished to compare it with the PMV. After not having seen the CCT for a while, I was slightly disappointed with its appearance, especially the varnish around the transfers.


The CCT in departmental livery

Both of these wagons are finished in departmental olive green and are intended to convey parts/tools to the wagon repair facility I am about to build as a micro layout! How prototypical this is I do not know, it really is just a little bit of fun!

The PMV also has had a very poor glazing job, with some glue and glaze blobs clearly visible on some scratched windows. In addition, the roof is a smidgen too short one one end, I might be being a little picky, but these little details really make a difference too me. So all in all I am not too happy with how either of these wagons have turned out!


The CCT. I find the transfer/varnish finish less than perfect on this. I intend to gently weather over the top of it.

So to the remedies. The CCT is going to have a light weathering of frame dirt and general dirt around the underframe and lower body, to blend in the varnish finish. The PMV is intended to be finished in a heavily weathered state. So I am going to add a layer of glue and glaze to the windows,before giving the whole wagon a heavy weathering, including windows.


The poor glazing job on the PMV. A good lesson in trying not rush modelling when tired/when you other half is nagging you to do something else!

I hope these improvements will alleviate the little niggles I have with these wagons. We shall see. However, I have to go away with work now for about 10 days, so it will be a while before I can get going on this wagons again. As a consequence my next update will be a couple of weeks away - see you then.

A Bachmann 03 enters service

Finished 03, showing off the weathering on the locomotive

This weekend I finally managed to finished off one of my long standing projects - not that this was a particularly difficult project, but the Bachmann class 03 has finally entered service. The biggest catalyst for getting this finished is the ongoing construction of my micro-shunting layout. The embryonic layout has seen little progress, but at least now there is one shunter to pootle about on the layout!


The 03 earning its keep shunting 12t vans at Amberleigh Halt

In my humble opinion, the Bachmann model is an absolute belter, except for two minor issues. The first and by far the most obvious, is the big hole in the buffer beam for the coupling. This is a nightmare and the plug in replacement does little to improve things. I had a long hard think about filling this gap. However, the rivet detail is very close to the hole and also with much time away from home coming up I was keen to get something finished. So I opted for the replacement buffer beam parts which come with the model. I am now wondering if this compromise is going to get to the point of complete annoyance, so I will have to start again. At the moment I can live with it, but it is less than perfect for an otherwise great model.


To weather the locomotive I took the body off the chassis and separated the cab. Not snapping the various pipework attached between the body and chassis was tricky

The second issue with the model is the chassis block is solid metal, right up to the plastic body. This means that fitting couplings is a little bit of a nightmare. Personally I use 3 link couplings, not too everyones taste I know, but they work for me. However, fitting 3 link couplings to this model is a real headache, due to having to cut away some of the metal chassis if the full coupling hook is to be accepted. In this case it would of meant cutting away the holes for the screws that attach the body to the chassis. In the end I had to cut the coupling right down and glue it with araldite to the body. The coupling had to be filed right down and the hole in the metal body considerablyopened out. As a consequence I decided to do this only on the rear of the locomotive, so it only has one functional coupling.


The shunter with its cab light on

Bar these minor niggles, I took the loco apart, painted the cab interior, then masked off various portions of the body. I weathered the cab, body and chassis separately, before reassembly for a final coat and some varnish. The chassis was all hand painted, including the wheels and the coupling rods, brakes etc. The roof was weathered in matt black. The body sides, grills, etc,had various sprays of sleeper grime, frame dirt and weathered black. All in all I am reasonably happy with the result, and am glad it is now a working model in my small, but growing, locomotive fleet.


Running light at Amberleigh

The construction of the micro layout has all but ground to a halt, due to friends and work taking up all the time. The next month sees me working everyday except 2 weekends, so it is doubtful any progress will be made on anything. However, to compensate for this,I am taking two days off later this week. The aim is some modelling indulgence, so hopefully I can make some headway in getting the shunting layout up and running. And then there is the issue of a shunters match truck to go with the 03....


A slightly elevated view, showing the weathered roof and bonnet