Slaters O Gauge Milk Tanker Built

The layout I am building has a small dairy siding for the delivery of milk to the railway and I am building a small train of milk tankers for this imaginary facility. I expect I will need somewhere up to 6(?) milk tankers for this train, although building these will be a slow ongoing process. Anyhow, I have finally finished building the first milk tanker from the Slaters kit. This is one of the best model railway wagons I have built, being a superbly designed kit. However, it is quite an involved build and constructing the first one was a bit of a learning curve. I am hoping that the subsequent builds will be a little quicker (and a little better), now knowing some of the knacks that are required for the kit.

The build of the wagon is now finished. The body/underframe/ladders are not yet glued together and will be painted separately.

The kit was built as per the instructions, with the exception of the strapping that I constructed from plasticard strips rather than the brass castings. This was just an oversight by me not reading the instructions properly, but once painted I doubt it will be noticeable. On the ends of the plasticard strips I glued some brass rod, which fits into a brass socket glued onto the tanker solebar. I wish I had drilled out thee brass sockets first whilst hey were still on the frets, before gluing them in place. At least I know for next time. The ladders were also tricky to build and will need some careful fettling to get them to sit squarely on the tanker. In the photos there are also some extra holes on the tanker ends that have subsequently been filled in.

End view of the milk tanker. The drill holes on the horizontal beam have now been filled in.

In its current state the tanker is not yet glued to the underframe and the ladders are not yet glued in place. The plan is to paint/transfer the underframe, tanker and ladders separately, before a final assembly. The milk tanker tanker and the recently completed herring wagon will have a good wash this afternoon and head into the paint boxes. In terms of the paint boxes there are a number of wagons that are getting close to completion, with the SPV now ready for transfers and a lowfit wagon getting close to having the painting finished. So I have plenty of projects to keep me busy during the Christmas hols and hopefully I will be able to finish a couple of these projects.

O gauge Layout progress

So the layout has been set up all week and I have managed to make some progress with various tasks. I had already ordered the backscenes for the layout, which are a series of foamex boards onto which I will glue the backscene. Last weekend was spent cutting the foamex boards to size and adding in wooden struts to support them. These are all now cut in and yesterday I started gorilla gluing the foamex backscene boards down. The light blue colour is a thin protective film that pulls of the backscene. I have left most of this in place for the time being, as it will protect the surface whilst I undertake more detailing on the layout. Just adding the backscenes to the layout has started to transform the whole look of the baseboards.

The backscenes being fitted to the layout. This is a really big step towards completing the layout.

In the area around the tunnel I have started building up the elements of the scenery for an embankment, using some foam packing. The foam packing has been glued to the backscene/baseboard. One of todays tasks is to layer plaster bandage over the top of this. I will need to protect the tunnel using some low tac masking tape/paper before starting this job. 

The tunnel and embankment starting to take shape.

Yesterday I also visited my local model shop in Bideford (Osbournes Models) and picked up a grampus wagon kit to build, alongside a painted figurine of 'Vera'. Taking a snap of her against the tunnel made me realise just how big the O gauge tunnel is, using the figure for perspective. The tunnel is probably out of keeping with the scenery of the Withered Arm, but hey ho, it will do - I must confess I quite like its monumental proportions!

The monument tunnel heading towards the fiddle yard.

The other bit of detailing I have been doing is the quay front  water. I have built up the water using layers of PVA glue and I painted this a light yellow colour. The outcome is not to my liking and the water does not look deep. So the plan for today is to add a layer of AK Atlantic Blue water gel on top of this to see if it will provide some depth to the water. At full tide the water in the estuary certainly has a blue colour on a summers day, so I am hoping the blue water gel will provide a pleasing water front scene. The joins between the base boards are difficult to do with the water gel/pva glue, but fingers crossed I can make it look acceptable.

Current state of the quay front.

So a full day of modelling is planned and the layout will be able to stay up into next week, allowing me to make some further progress in the evenings. My hope is that I can get a lot of basic scenery elements done this week, before the layout comes down over xmas (there is not enough room). However, come the new year, I should be able to crack on with the detailing of the layout, whilst adding in some of the buildings.

O Gauge Pill Box Brake Van in Olive Green and the Layout set up again!

Having completed an awful lot of the house redecorating, I have finally had a decent amount of modelling time recently. I have been managing to paint fairly regularly on the weekends and the occasional work day, meaning that some of the wagons and locomotives in the paint boxes are slowly being finished off. The first wagon I have recently completed was the Parkside SR 25T Pill Box brake van in departmental olive green livery. I started building this wagon in Christmas 2014 and finished building it in 2021! The wagon is painted with Railmatch enamels and I used RailTec transfers. These were all sealed in with matt and satin varnish coats; the varnish coast were slightly rushed and consequently there are a couple of areas of the finish that niggle me. However, from normal viewing distance it looks fine and I am pleased to have started my engineers train in O gauge.

Finally finished the pill box brake van.

The other really pleasing thing, is that I have finally set up my O gauge layout again to continue the detailing. I had to put this away a little over a year ago, as we were starting some seriously house renovations and it was tucked into the corner of a room and covered with a dust sheets. Of course the dust got everywhere, but the dust sheets came off yesterday and I gave it a good hoover. I plugged it all in and I am delighted (and slightly relieved) it all worked fine. The layout runs all the way across the lounge, but working at a slight angle it all fits across the lounge. So after a good track clean, I can finally run some trains again. It was fantastic to see the class 25 and 03 pottering around the layout - the both sounded and looked great. The plan for today is to run some passenger stock to get a feel for the dimensions of the track plan and then get stuck into the layout scenery building. I have to build an embankment by the tunnel, alongside finishing the quay water area and then I will install the backscenes. There is also a new turntable fiddle yard to wire up and get working. So there will be plenty of glue and mess across the weekend - which sounds great to me!

Class 25 pottering around the layout by the quay wall.

Overview of the layout being set up (beer in hand of course!)

My first detailed O gauge locomotive rolls into the station!

I think the driver is keen to back to Exeter to clock off - class 25 leaving the quay side!

A new modelling room

Over the last couple of months I have had virtually no modelling time, as pretty much all of my time has been taken up between normal work (the 9-5) and redecorating the house. The house redecoration has been a long old project, with every room requiring a complete reworking. We are now 75% of the way through this process and one of the rooms I was allowed to undertake recently was my modelling room. Decorating the railway room next was a strategic move, getting train boxes out of rooms that would soon be coming up to being redecorated, whilst providing me with some space to actually undertake some modelling. The model railway room is the small box room in the house, but I am not complaining. There is enough room to have my DCC test track permanently set up and a desk, with my air brush also permanently set up. Having access to the air brush is a massive bonus, as I will be able to paint anytime I work from home. All the paint boxes with half finished models are stacked to the side of the desk and I can now start to work through these models (although I do need a new compressor).

Whilst splashing some paint on the walls of the spare room, I also took the liberty of ordering some bargain kitchen units and I topped these with some of the old worktop kicking around from the recent kitchen refit. These cupboards are the ideal storage space for all of my O gauge stock. This is a game changer for me, as my models have gone from being stored in plastic boxes that were stacked up in various rooms, to being completely accessible again in the modelling room.

The cabinets are used to store all the rolling stock. The DCC test track will fit over across the top of the two units.

The airbrush is now permanently set up and operational on my desk.

So I now have a fully functional railway room - this is a major step forward and I am delighted! The next jobs now are to get yet another baseboard kit built up, so I can fully setup the DCC test track. With this set up, track laying can be finished and the process of detailing this little layout can start. Alongside this, I can finally finish off some of these models that are half painted, whilst also getting some of the O gauge locomotives DCC sound installed and detailed. I am really looking forward to the next few weeks!

O Gauge Wagons - Herring and Milk tanker

So there has been a little more progress with wagon building over the last couple of weeks, with the Herring wagon now finished off. This is the 3D printed Skog kit and I raided a lot of bits from the spares box to finish this one off. It seems to have turned out OK although I am not sure if the endless filing has sorted out the 3D printed lines, the only real negative about the kit. It is heading to the paint shop now and I will wait for a coat of primer to see how it looks. However, I am currently decorating my new railway room, so it will be a few weeks before I can get the air brush up and running again.

The herring wagon is now ready for a wash and is heading to the paint boxes.

The other wagon kit that has seen some good progress is the Slaters GWR milt tanker. This is a lovely kit to build, although it has taken quite a bit of time to progress it this far. I am now heading towards the finishing stage with this kit and I need to work out how on earth I will paint it. I am guessing I will need to paint the tank and the body separately and then glue them together at the end. For now, I am going to finish getting it built, as I have spent far too much time thinking about how to paint it and not enough time actually building it.

GWR milk tanker slowly creeping towards completion.

Otherwise, modelling has been pretty slow recently, as the house decorating slowly grinds on. We are getting the hallways/landing finished in the next month and then that is that, for a at least 6 months. By November I should have a fully operational railway room, with the test track permanently set up on one side. I have ordered some cabinets to store all the O gauge stuff in and I will move my OO gauge finished models to the loft. Also in November I am finally going to erect my O gauge layout downstairs and try to remember where I had got to with it. Not least it will be brilliant to finally run some trains. 

O gauge wagon building - GWR milk tanker and Herring wagon, plus a small platform

I have managed to make some sporadic progress on building some wagons O gauge in the last few weeks. It is all slow going, but it has been very enjoyable. I have two kits currently on the go and both have presented challenges in different ways. The first of these is a Slaters GWR milk tank. The construction of the chassis is now just about complete. I found this quite fiddly to build and I think the instructions could have been a little clearer. However, the chassis is now rolling freely, although there were a few leaps of faith with the brake gear. I plan to build a rake of these, so the first one was always going to be a learning curve. I am now looking forward to building the body of the wagon and working out how to paint it!

GWR milk tanker chassis, just about finished, although it needs tidying up in places.

The second wagon I am building is 3D printed Herring wagon from Skog. The availability of 3D wagon kits is rapidly increasing and I was keen to have a look at one. There is no doubt that 3D printed rolling stock will become a mainstay of railway modelling over the next decade and this rise in cottage industries will allow ever more wagon types to be modelled. The first impression of the kit was favourable, but it is not without its issues. There are not a huge amount of parts for the kit and the most noticeable aspect of all the components are the 3D printing lines.

The Herring wagon kit.

The wagon hopper was a single printed piece and on closer inspection, the solebars were clearly warped. To try to cure this, I pit the wagon in clamp and applied some gentle heat from a hair dryer. This worked to some extent, but it also bent some of the wagon struts.

Trying to sort out the warp on the solebars.

To build the wagon, I have been raiding my spares box. The axle boxes and V hangers are from Slaters sprues and I still need to purchase some buffers and install the coupling. The printing lines on the body side were very noticeable and I have spent a fair amount of time sanding them down, although there is more to do. I intend to use a thick primer for the first coast of the wagon, mixed with some varnish and see if this will tidy up some of the rough sides of the wagon. Anyhow, it is shaping up and I should be able to finish this off in the next week or so and get it in the paint boxes.

Herring wagon so far.

Finally, I have managed to knock a small platform together for the micro layout.  This was a pretty simple build, just using some pasticard and Slaters embossed stone. However, I somehow managed to build the platform far too low, so I have raised it up with some spacers that will need to be disguised when this is built into the layout. As for the micro layout, well it is being extended by 3 feet! I have the baseboard ready to build and hope to get the track down and laid next week.......so hopefully some quicker updates to follow.

The small platform for the micro layout. 

Heljan Class 03 - saved and in service!

About a year ago, I finally managed to set up my layout and get some trains running. The layout was only partially constructed (it still is!) and there was no fiddle yard. My Heljan class 03 was being driven around the layout and performing poorly. I presumed I had a fault connection on the track somewhere and headed under the baseboards to have a look, when the locomotive suddenly came to life and drove off the end of the layout, smashing into a hard wooden floor. It was a bit of sobering moment - the chassis skirt and several buffers were cracked/broken, the roof was dented and the locomotive no longer would run.  Nothing for it then but for a complete strip down and rebuild, alongside some weathering. Taking the locomotive apart really made me admire the number of hand fitted components that goes into building one of these locomotives, alongside wondering whether I would be able to get it back together.

The separate parts of the cab and lights.

The chassis for the 03, about to have a good wheel clean.

I started with rebuilding/repairing various cracks/snapped of details on the chassis/buffer beams and I kindly had some spare class 03 buffers donated to me. I set about painting the body and chassis separately, using a combination of AK interactive weathering washes, alongside my air brush. Everything was finished and sealed with a satin varnish.

Body painted and ready for reassembly.

Putting it back together was a lot easier than I thought it would be and in the end it went back together pretty quickly. I took the opportunity to add a stay alive to the decoder alongside giving the wheels a good clean and this has really helped the running of the locomotive.  

The finished locomotive - I am pretty happy with how this one turned out!

The final result - well it is not perfect (there are still a couple of areas that bother me and I might well revisit these one day), but overall I am really happy with it. I now have another locomotive to run on the layout and I have also purchased a traverser (Tim Horn) to stop such incidents happening again! 

Finished class 03 running on the DCC test track.

I still have a lot of projects on the go at the moment, although several of these are getting to the transfer stage, namely an SPV and 25T SR brake van. I have also made a start on the buildings for the micro layout and getting these finished and the micro layout track painted and ballasted is a priority. As a dcc test track, the micro layout works really well - but it needs some scenery to stage the rolling stock - it all looks a bit bare at the moment.