Chalton Progress - up and running

This week saw some substantial progress on the layout detailing front.  I lugged the layout around last week and kept knocking the very tall backscene, and working it loose.  So the first job after setting the layout up was to cut down the height of the backscene and reglue it securely with superglue.  This was actually really easy to do with a scalpel and was a quick job.  Yes the backscene is now a bit lower, but it doesn't half make it easier to carry the boards about.

The original backscene.

The overhang from the back.

During cutting down, with the height difference evident.

And the new height of the back scene.

The second job was to fit some static grass to the rest of the platform edge. I had completed half of the job here, with the second half not taking long.  I put down some blobs of PVA glue and then using tweezers put small clumps of static grass on these.  I then collect up the loose static grass, give it hoover and a blast of hairspray once the glue is dry.  I think it is very effective.

A somewhat bald looking platform edge.

Blobs of PVA glue with lumps of static grass added.

The platform edge with the weeds added.

I also managed to finish off the area by the tunnel, adding in more hedging and bushes to break it up a little.  I am pleased with how this area turned out, but I must paint the edge of the cobbles on the baseboard join.  Other than that, this area and board are all ready to go!

The tunnel end, although the baseboard join now needs painting - with the terracotta DAS clay showing.

The view back towards the tunnel.

And the other way to the station.

So with that all done, the layout had a few items of rolling stock added and I had a good old fashioned session of playing trains - it was great!  To my relief the electrics all worked first time too.

Class 22 on the morning parcels train.

Running out the station.

Class 22 on the evening passenger turn.

Class 31 brings in a short freight.

So items to finish are the trees behind the station, gluing in the station signs and adding the lights to the station.  I think that is probably a weekends worth of modelling and then it is all complete.  Close, but not quite there.  I must resist the temptation to start another layout before adding these final touches in!!

Class 22 running the evening passenger service from Exeter into Charlton.

July 1973 - the end of the line?

It is July 1973 and there has been a proposal to cut all services to on the Charlton branch, one of the last twigs on the Withered Arm, despite the station being revamped with new BR signage only 2 years earlier.  A class 22 enters the slightly overgrown station with an engineers train, with locals worried that this might be part of the salvaging before closure. 

Class 22 with a short engineers train - the beginning of the end??...

Charlton layout detailing progress (and a class 22 appears)

This weekend I managed to find a little time to set about completing some of the unfinished detailing on the scenic boards of Charlton.  The layout is fully operational, however there are a few areas of the boards that require some further detailing work.  The area that has witnessed a burst of activity today is the scenic board with the exit to the fiddle yard.  The area around the tunnel needed tidying up, as did the join between the backscene and the top of the tunnel.  A fence needed to be built around the car park for the office installed last week and these areas required blending together.  Rather annoyingly, the area between the office and the car park is a baseboard join, and this does require further work to improve its appearance, although it is getting there.

Detailing work focused on the area around the tunnel, the progress so far.

Some some bushes and static grass were added to the top of the scenery on the tunnel, to start hiding the join between the backscene and the top of the tunnel - this is 90% complete but still requires a little more work.  A fence was installed along the edge of the car park, made from some painted Ratio fence posts and plastic rod.  Some static grass was added against the fence posts and the along the edge of the office.   A small puddle/pond has been made in this area with PVA glue, although I think it still needs to dry further, it is still a bit opaque.  Again there is still some tidying up to do here, with some static grass to be added, but it is coming together quite nicely.  

View across the cobbles and the car park.  The new fence breaks up the scene nicely.

The office and adjacent car park.

The track around the tunnel still requires some tidying up, with some of the static grass removed today and some hoovering of this general area. The car park and the area of cobbles also requires a little work to blend it together but in general with the composition of the scene here.

The tunnel exit to the fiddle yard, I might re-attack the finish on the tunnel exit at some point in the future, it is somewhat monotone!

Brake van added for a sense of perspective.

So with this work undertaken it seemed fitting to run a few trains in this area and see how it looked.  In general, I am feeling rather pleased.  However, there is still more to do to finish off these boards, another day or so of effort I think.  Anyhow here are some videos of the trains running.  I really like the class 122 leaving the tunnel as it heads towards Charlton station.  Of note is the finished class 22, which I am really pleased with. The sound decoder in this sounds fantastic I think, and I will detail this model in another post.

Class 122 approaching Charlton station through the tunnel.

Class 22 running light through the tunnel, view from the office car park.

Class 22 having picked up a short freight train, heading back towards Barnstaple Junction disappearing through the tunnel. 

Charlton progress and the class 122 DMU running

A few weeks ago I posted some images of the finished class 122 DMU from Dapol.  This weekend I started on finishing off the scenic work on Charlton. With this finishing off at least started (I am doing it on a board by board basis - there are three scenic boards in total), I could not resist the temptation of the running a few trains at the same time, whilst the copious amounts of PVA glue was drying.

Class 122 running into Charlton from Bideford.

Ready to head back to Bideford, although the wrong destination is showing!

So here are a couple of videos of the class 122 running. When I was detailing the class 122 DMU the body shell paint finish reacted with a weathering wash, and discoloured.  As a consequence I had to apply a heavier weathered finish than I originally intended.  However, with the DMU placed on the layout and running around the finish on the DMU does not look too bad.  With the lights switched on and the Howes sound decoder ticking over, the DMU looks and sounds the part.

Class 122 DMU start up.

Class 122 heading back to Bideford, leaving Charlton.

The lights on this DMU look particularly good I think.  The sound decoder is slightly tricky to drive, and not one of Howes best, in my opinion because of this.  Whilst it sounds great, you have to time the DMU run into the layout carefully, in order to not get a gear change and more acceleration whilst stopped at the platform.  However, it is great to have a non-coach passenger train to drive around the layout and I need a bit of practice on this one I think.

 

Class 122 leaving the station with the lighting shown to good effect.

Class 122 running back into Charlton, later in the day.

And leaving at dusk, back to Barnstaple.  Again the lights look good in this view.

I also started up the class 22, in order to do a little bit of adjustment of the sound levels, with this project now finished.  On some great other news I have booked the layout into its first exhibition at the Bluebell Railway (Sussex) this June.  I am going to run a 1970s set of stock on this, including the class 22, a class 25, a class 42 (warship) and the class 52 (Western) on this weekend - but more on this to come.

Baby warship heading towards Barnstaple with a short parcels train (recently finished CCT).

Type 2s! A Dapol class 22 and a Bachmann class 25

So this weekend the layout still did not make an appearance!  Instead I have pushed a few models in the paintshop forwards a little, whilst waiting for next weekend for a full hit at the layout detailing. One of the projects I wanted to finish before the layout reappears is a Dapol class 22 in BR blue livery.  The original body shell was subjected to an all over wash of heavily thinned frame dirt/weathered black.  As with the Dapol class 122, this wash attacked the Dapol paint finish.  I was less worried about this on this body shell, as the locomotive was due for a heavy weathered finished, depicting the locomotive right at the end of its (short) working life.  

Factory finished on the locomotive, pictured some time ago whilst running in on Charlton.

Class 22 with the finished paint job.  Only reassembly to go.

Class 22s were fairly regular turns on the Barnstaple/Ilfracombe/Torrington branch lines in the late 1960s/early 1970s, and they looked in pretty shabby condition. The locomotives as pictured had a distinctive area of removed/weathered body paint at the centre of the body, and I have attempted to recreate this on my model.  Weathering followed the standard route of using Railmatch enamels to create a patchwork of faded paint, rescuing to do some degree the fading on the Dapol finish caused by the weathering wash.  Then various shades of frame dirt, weathered black and sleeper grime were used to weather the underframe and the bogies.  As per normal all paintwork was undertaken using my Iwata air brush.

The discoloured removed paint on the centre of the body is clearly visible here.

One of the weathered bogies.

I have a Howes DCC sound decoder ready to go into this locomotive alongside a Roads and Rails double Iphone 6 speaker.  The speaker needs to be soldered to the sound decoder and the locomotive needs to be reassembled, with the glazing, bogies and cabs requiring reassembly.  So this is a job for the evenings this week.

My first attempt at repainting and weathering a locomotive using an airbrush.  Whilst I was delighted with this at the time, with reflection it is a pint heavy!

Another little project that has made some progress this weekend is a long time class 25 repaint.  This model was featured a long time ago after stripping in 2016 (see May 2017 post), and was my first attempt at repainting a locomotive.  Over the last weeks I have primed this locomotive and pre-shaded the model with some weathered black.  I painted the ends first using faded yellow, before masking and applying some mixes of coats of faded BR blue.  With this locomotive I want to recreate a faded but clean BR blue finish.

Some wobbly edges!

So more masking and repainting on this locomotive.

However, after removing the masking yesterday there had clearly been a disaster.  I used some very old masking tape and this had not retained its stickiness (I suspected this at the time but decided to press on).  This resulted in some very messy edges between the faded yellow and BR blue.  So today I purchased some new Tamiya masking tape, and remasked the model for respraying these bad edges with faded yellow.  Anyhow onwards and upwards with this project, with the respraying of this model scheduled for the next couple of weeks.  If this finish turns out well I will treat this locomotive to a new DCC sound decoder.....if it doesn't go so well.....well the sound decoder can go into another class 25!

Lesson learnt - it is always worth using new masking tape that is still sticky!

Remasked body shell ready for respraying.

Looking good on the Dance Hall (!) - Finished Dance Hall Brake Van

Another wagon has rolled out of the wagon works this week, this time a Cambrian Dance Hall Brake Van.  This is been another long running saga of a build.  I started building this kit in 2015!  So a mere 4 years later it is finished.  The build for this wagon was not necessarily difficult but it was slightly awkward.  The original roof for the kit was an awful fit and an email to Cambrian models delivered a remodelled roof (excellent service by Cambrian).  The replacement roof was a better fit, although still not perfect!

Finished Dance Hall Brake Van.

And from the other side.

The end product of building this kit was not great, especially the long hand rails running down the length of the wagon.  However, I am pretty chuffed with the overall paint job.  A good paint job will hide a multitude of building sins, whilst a well built wagon can look awful with a bad a paint job.  The wagon is in the engineers fleet, finished in olive green with a a good smattering of sleeper grime over this, all sealed up with a satin varnish.  Transfers are a mix of Railmatch decals - what ever I could find that looked 'right'.  I like the depot name (Exeter) and the 'Southern Region' transfers on this, although the transfer application could have been slightly better in places.

One of the ends of the Dance Hall.

So another wagon finished for Charlton.  I am tempted to build another, now that I have finished off this one.  I think a second attempt might go a bit better.....but whether I will ever get around to it is another question.  I could only find one picture of this wagon being built, with the original roof in place and metal buffers visible.

The brake van part built.

I still have not got around to setting up the layout to finish this off, although I have started a bit of detailing and building for some various parts of the layout (fence post, trees, etc).  In the next few weeks the layout will be set up and the final touches hopefully added.  Until then (I need a clear weekend to do this) I am building some wagon kits in the evenings.  Recently finished is a LNER CCT, the last for the parcels train (at least for now!!).  This will be finished off with an SPV that is now in the paint boxes.  A lamprey and crab are currently being built and I hope to start a 15t southern brake van soon, to add a little variety to the brake van fleet.

Built LNER CCT ready for a good wash before painting.

Class 122 DMU all finished

Well the class 122 DMU saga has drawn to a close.  Today I managed to reassemble the DMU unit and add the final touches, namely destination blinds and the spedometer cable.  I did not like the destination blinds as supplied by Dapol, so I used some old Modelmaster ones I had, which had some good old fashioned south western destinations on them.    Unfortunately, I had already used up the Ilfracombe and Exeter ones, so I had to go with St Ives and Newton Abbot, close enough!! The transfers were put on using Microset and then sealed into place using Acclad 2 varnish.  The DMU unit has a Howes DCC sound unit fitted, alongside an Iphone 6 speaker.  I am looking forward to firing this up soon - sometime around next weekend when I set the layout back up.  

Class 122 complete with Newton Abbot destination blinds.  Note the driver in this view.

The other end with St Ives showing.

The DMU finish is nowhere near what I originally intended when I started out.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, the weathering wash I used on the original body shell attacked the Dapol paintwork (it was Humbrol thinners).  So I had to attempt to rescue the body shell, using a combination of some faded BR blue and weathering, using an airbrush.  So the final result?  I am not desperately happy with it; however, compared to how it was looking when I originally started and the paintwork started to disintegrate - I will take it.  So a lesson learnt with Dapol paint finishes.  Time to order a class 121 and try again me thinks....

End detail.

Full view of the body side - it doesn't look too bad I guess.  The passengers are clearly visible in this view.