16t Mineral wagon ready for the permanent way and a little grampus progress in 0 gauge

Well this week in between bouts of manic work I have managed to finish a 16t mineral wagon for the engineers yard at Potting Quay. To be honest this wagon required relatively little to finish it off, some bouts of painting and a few transfers before sealing with a satin varnish.  The wagon was built and half painted in 2013 - only taking 2 years to finish it off.  So apologies for the poor photographic skills - but finally something finished and out of the paint workshops ready for layout.

Finished 16t mineral wagon that has been seconded to the engineers yard at Pottington.

More progress has been made on the 0 gauge grampus wagon.  The size of the wagon does mean it seems to take longer to paint - although I suspect that the detail of the wagon is just more apparent allowing a greater degree of subtly in the final finish. The wagon is nowhere near finished - but some of the elements of the livery are starting to come together.  It is great fun to work on a wagon of this size -and hope to get this one finished and another 0 gauge build into the paintshop before xmas. I have even purchased a couple of lengths of 0 gauge track and have been contemplating track plans.  However all this must stop for a month now, as I am off on some work travels - heading to the Med than Africa - so back in a month!

The 0 gauge grampus continues to make progress - adding in elements of the rust and weathering.

CCTs and parcels trains progress

Well just as the Bachmann CCT's hit the shelves, I have almost finished a couple of the Parkside kits for my parcels trains.  The first one was started by son before he lost interest in trains.  It is not a perfect build - but I quite like that, as it was a model we built together.  The second is the CCT with the plywood sides and I have also been working on the first of the 12t fish vans.

CCT with plywood sides showing the faded finish

I described in an earlier post how I had pre-shaded the wagons before painting.  Over this I have applied various coats of BR faded blue, and BR blue.  The two CCTs are ready, but the 12T wagons has had a further coat of faded blue on top.  I have put a couple of coats of varnish on these already so hopefully application of the transfers is not too far away, although I do have to pick out some of the details like handrails in white and also properly paint the underframes.  I also need to find somewhere with decent lighting to take the photos - sorry these are a bit dark.  I think that i will have to buy a Bachmann blue CCT just to see how it compares...

CCT ready for some transfers

Express parcels 12T van, showing the preshading under the coats of BR blue

A bit of 0 gauge progress

My paint workshop is currently pretty busy, with a lot of wagons ready to be painted and weathered. Ticking over in the back ground has been the build of a 12t fish van, which is to enter service in a faded BR blue livery.  This wagon is the 0 gauge Parkside Kit.  As I was modelling an 00 gauge parcels train I thought I would turn my hand to building a couple of these wagons is 0 gauge.  The kit went together seamlessly and is now ready for a wash and lick of paint.

12t van ready for a coat of faded BR blue

My 0 gauge grampus is also progressing and has been the subject of a couple of coats of paint from the air brush.  I have made a start on the bodywork, mixing in some coats of weathered black, light rust and dark rust.  The body work is almost there now and a start has been made on the underframe.  Hopefully this wagon will be finished in a couple of weeks, all dependent on how much free time I am allowed over the weekends.  I am thoroughly enjoying this little venture into 0 gauge and just having one or two items of rolling stock to work in the background will quickly allow enough wagons for a small shunting micro layout to be built.....now how long until that Dapol 08 hits the shelves??...

Grampus wagon part way through painting

Heljan western - taking a deep breath!

Sometime ago I put up a post of a second Heljan Western I purchased on ebay.   This model recently came out of the box.  As work was progressing well on painting the parcels wagons and the sturgeon wagon is complete save for the handrails, I though I needed a new challenge.

As the model is secondhand I am just having a go trying out some techniques for weathering/painting on it.  If it all goes wrong, I can just strip it down and repaint it.  So I un-clipped the body.  The detailing on the chassis has yet to be undertaken, and I put this to one side.

With the body un-clipped I splatted some white paint all over the paint job with a brush and then tried to take some of it back off with a cotton wool bud.  Once reasonably happy with this, I sprayed some faded blue in stripes over this.

Lastly, I made a mix of weathered black and frame dirt and applied this over the body, before wiping most of it away with cotton wool buds.  This is the first of several paint layers which will attempt to make a suitably distressed western down in Devon in the mid/late 1970s.  It did take a bit of deep breath to start this one - but now it is started I am keen just to try whatever I fancy.  Hopefully more progress on this one soon.....

SPV, CCT and a mineral wagon

Well I have done a little more painting with the airbrush.  I am just getting the hang of mixing the paints again, but all is progressing well.  I have done a little pre-shading on the SPV and CCT, after a quick coat of primer.  Both of these will feature a weathered, faded BR blue, which will be applied lightly over the top of the white primer and black pre-shading.  The first coat of faded blue will go on this evening, followed by a couple more coats tomorrow.

The other wagon on the go is a 16t mineral wagon.  This was started in 2013 and half painted then.  I am just trying to blend in the rust finish on this a little, but I am tempted to go for some of the new noch iron rusty finish.  I know others can manage it, but my painting of rust never looked that convincing!  Anyhow I will persevere with this one and see what I can come up with.

And one more thing - the relevant planning authorities have given permission for a new micro-shunting layout.  With Pottington Quay firmly in storage until next year, building a small layout for the winter is in order.....

Parcels train....

It has been a long time since my last post, but, we have moved into our new house and after a busy time unpacking - we have settled in.  Unfortunately, I think this house will be a stop gap, so we will probably move again in spring.  This is a bit of a pain, but until then I do have a winter of modelling to head through.

In the new house my thoughts have turned back to building a small layout, something just to run the models on and have a DCC sound locomotive idling in the background.  One of the principal traffic sources for the layout would be parcels stock from the 1970s.  Up until the 1980s Barnstaple still received a mixed freight up as the first train of the day, with some mk1 passenger stock and fruit Ds and/or 12t vans, with a newspaper wagon also attached.  So with my line to Ilfracombe having never closed down (if only in my modelling head!), a daily parcels train is plausible.  This will be used on Pottington Quay - when I eventually get this out of storage next year.

So I have been building a dedicated parcels train for shunting around my next layout.  I have yet to seek permission from the planning authorities, but I think it should be ok to build a 4ft by 2ft micro layout, with a small station and depot, and sidings for a parcel train to unload.  So far I have built 3 12t fish wagons (SPVs), 2 CCTs and I have a Dapol fruit D wagon unpainted.  On top of this I also have a CCT and a BY wagon to build.  This will be the first set of wagons to get attention, although I am spending more and more time building 0 gauge wagon kits too!  

Part finished CCT, with a faded blue delivery

Second CCT ready for the paintshop

12t fish vans to be finished as parcels SPV vans

Dapol unpainted fruit D

Hornby SPV

In very good news this weekend the air brush was fired up for the first time in a long time. A start has been made on the first 12t parcels wagon and one of thhe CCTs. The second CCT ws half finished with a faded blue delivery when I left Devon 18 months ago, so I am looking to finishing this one off.  All in all things are looking great and I am looking forward to posting regularly again over this winter and getting down to some modelling.

At last......

Well, finally we have settled on somewhere to start our new home!  This is really exciting news, not least that I now have a little bit of space to build a new layout...and almost as exciting - somewhere I can set up my modelling workbench again, (with working airbrush), to finish off all those wagons I have built over the last year.  The new layout will have to be small, but I am hoping to build a small shunting layout, around 4ft long.

In the meantime, I have been looking at photos of some of my old layouts, which has made me really excited to start modelling again in earnest.  And here is a photo that caught my eye - a class 03 at Amberleigh.  Undoubtedly, this locomotive will feature on the new layout - which will of course be set in the later 1970s in Devon!  Exciting times.  A further update when we finally get moved......