Sturgeon, GWR tunny, SR tunny and a 21t departmental wagon

Whilst finishing off my class 25 over the last few months a few other projects have been ticking away quietly in the background. These have mainly involved building a few more wagons for my ever expanding departmental fleet of rolling stock.

Currently in construction is a 21t mineral wagon (Parkside) and a sturgeon wagon (Cambrian). The sturgeon build is taking a while and I have built it slightly differently to the instructions - but so far so good. It is going to require a bit of filler though I think. The 21t wagon is nearly done - I am just waiting on couplings then I will give it a wash and a coat of primer.

The two other wagons are an SR tunny wagon and a GWR tunny wagon. The SR wagon has had it transfers applied this week and I will give it a blast of acrylic varnish this morning. The GWR tunny is painted, but requires a gloss varnish fir the transfers t adhere too. Hopefully, a further update on these wagons in a finished state before long.

Sturgeon

SR Tunny

GWR tunny

21t mineral wagon

Bachmann class 25 repaint finished (updated!)

As described yesterday I have finally got around to finishing the next class 25 for my layout. This project was a complete paintstrip and re-paint, the locomotive being a bargain for £30 from my local model shop second hand. This included a pre-fitterd decoder as well! This is the older Bachmann model without working lights and 8 pin decoder socket. It runs superbly well and now I hope looks the part to.

With this locomotive I attempted to develop a faded paint look, started by using a weathered black pre-shading. The BR blue was then about 3 coats of BR blue shades mixed to varying degrees of being faded and applied in an uneven manner over the top this pre-shading. The decals were modelmaster ones, again not perfectly applied, but acceptable. I have now invested in some microsol/set - hopefully this will improve the look of future projects.

Weathered/repainted class 25 at Georgeham Halt running light

Lastly a light weathering job was airbrushed over the top of the locomotive after adding the decals. All the livery and weathering was undertaken using railmatch enamels. All in all I now 90% happy with this one - I am especially pleased with how the BR blue livery looks faded over the body side. Another model complete and onto the next project today - which will be finally be adding some decals to the tunny wagons - more progress reports to follow soon I hope.

And finished class 25

The original Bachmann paint job

The BR blue livery during application before transfers

13t open wagon

Hi all. Apologies for the lack of recent posting - the xmas period and the flu have put pay to a lot of plans! Anyhow, as things settle down in the new year hopefully some semblance of normality will return. Unfortunately, I made no progress with the track laying on Pottington Quay over xmas - which was one of my key tasks to complete. Several smaller projects are now reaching completion, but I have nowhere to run my trains except my small Georgeham.

Shunting at Georgeham at night

One small project that recently finished was the weathering of a small 13t high sided open wagon. This is the Bachmann model in late bauxite livery, which has now been seconded into my department stock. A simple little project really, just change the couplings and several layers of weathering via the air brush.

Finished 13t wagon

More excitingly(!) I have just about finished my class 25 - this will appear soon. Just reassembly to go. Hopefully, I can get this finished in the next week. The sturgeon wagon and class 50 are also progressing well, so hopefully more to report soon. I have also noticed that Dapol are producing a class 121 single car DMU. In my opinion it is high time that a major manufacturer produced a top-end model of this DMU - I am looking forward to the deliver of this model and getting a few for myself. Now who is going to produce a cross country class 120 unit....

Merry xmas

Merry xmas one and all

Class 08 DCC with working lights and a 12t Van

Well a very relaxing weekend of modelling as transpired. I have managed to get two projects finished, the class 08 shunter and a 12t goods van.

Finished class 08 shunter, note the windscreen wiper masks

The class 08 project has been a bit of an epic. I reckon I started it about two years ago and it was one of those projects that just lost momentum and stalled for several years. The model came with an 8 pin socket. However, as I wanted to fit the Express Models lighting kit I decided to cut this socket out and hard wire the decoder, making more room for the lighting kit.

Front end, this is the end with the working lights. Note the buffer beam detail

The fitting of the lighting kit is hard-work, not least due to the tiny amount of room available within the locomotive. In the end I decided to go with only working lights at the front of the locomotive, due to the complexity of getting the lights into the cab/rear of the locomotive. It sounds like a bit of a cop out, but I could not get the body to reassemble properly with the full kit inside.

The class 08 shunting on Georgeham

With the front lights working I reassembled the locomotive and added buffer beam details and a few gubbins underneath the chassis. It must be said that even with only half the lighting kit in the loco, and a large amount of the chassis metal block cut away, it still is a really tight squeeze.

Note the working light!!

The weathering was done over the top of the Bachmann factory finished weathering. It was undertaken over the space of probably 2 - 3 weeks, in a non-intense way. The rear windscreens had wiper masks from PH Designs, and a few spays of weathered black frame-dirt and light rust were applied to help all the components blend in together and accentuate/improve the factory finished weathering. I weathered the locomotive fully assembled, so I took care to mask the wheels etc, before I started. After sealing the weathered finish with Acclad varnish I gave it a test run and it works perfectly.

Overall I am pretty happy with this effort. Like everything in life it is no perfect, but it is getting closer and I think (hope) my modelling is getting better. The body is still a tight squeeze on the chassis and this is my only concern with the model. But this is the first bit of stock ready to go on Potting Quay - specifically a shunting micro layout. I should also add that the model with a TCS decoder in performs faultlessly. It traverses points with ease and was a joy to run around on my micro test layout earlier.

The other project I finished today was the weathering of a 12t goods van. This is one of the standard Bachmann wagons which has had 3 link couplings added. With this wagon I applied a weathering wash to the whole wagon, a mixture of thinned weathered black and frame dirt. Once this had settled in all the nooks and crannies I accentuated this weathering by spraying weathered black over the raised detail/roof and frame dirt over the body sides. I don't think the photos do it justice (I am rubbish at photography!!), but I am delighted with the finish on this one. It will be the standard way I weather a number of these good vans for Pottington Quay.

Weathered 12t van

Class 25 update

Today I got some time to paint a few of my models which are in the queue for the air brush. The class 25 repaint is nearing completion and I have to say, I am hopeful of how this one might turn out!! The photographs show the model before the first bout of weathering, after application of a faded BR blue livery and transfers.

It is all coming together quite nicely. The model was separated, with the body and the bogies removed from the chassis. The bogies and chassis were merely weathered over the top of the factory finish, whilst the body was stripped and repainted.

The application of weathering on this project is going to be quite light. The pre-shading underneath the BR blue provides some perspective for the weathered finish, and I only intend to apply some frame dirt and weathered black to the body sides to portray a little bit of grime for a locomotive in service.

Sorry the photographs are not the best quality in the world, but hopefully they do provide an impression of what the locomotive will look like when finished. I will try to finish this project off next weekend, so hopefully a further update then of the final version.

Other projects are also progressing well, so hopefully it will not be too long before there is a finished BR blue class 08 on here too. This is being weathered at the same time and is only a couple of coast away from completion and there are a range of wagons nearly completed as well. Now I really must get on with some track laying and soldering so I have somewhere to run this stock!

Class 08 update

Recently I have been working away at a few modelling project simultaneously. This means that no projects have been finished recently, with each one inching along slowly. I have slowly been detailing a class 08 in BR blue and this project is now close to getting a proper weathering over the factory-finish weathering.

Front end detailing

The model is the the Bachmann and 08 and I have spent sometime time adding details, as shown in the Model Rail issue a couple of years ago. All the pipes have been painted up, some underframe detailing parts and added the cab interior painted. The model has also had the Express Models lighting kit added.....more on this in a later post.......The glue and glaze is currently drying on the cab glazing and then it will be assembled for weathering.

Front/side view

Normally I remove the body from the underframe for weathering and remove the wheels. However, in the case of this model it is quite problematic to remove the wheels, so this time I am going to mask off the wheels and then weather the whole model in one hit. Maybe I will get this finished this week....

Back end detailing and cab interior