Weathering

It’s a sign

~ andyj82 ~ 4 Comments

20181201_083833So before Manchester show a few weeks ago I wanted to get Tarring Neville’s sign finished. I was very lucky to have a good friend surprise me by making a sign for Herstmonceux and so it was decided that Tarring Neville would need one too.
The idea was to make something that looked like it had been mounted on a building but had been found years later looking a bit worse for wear. Fortunately we had just replaced the bargeboards on the house and I kept back a few bits of the old ones that had a lovely pre-weathered look. A rough size was worked out and I glued and pinned three bits together and added some edging. I then scored along the bottom edge and snapped it off to represent some damage.
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The lettering was pencilled on but changed my mind after this picture was taken and put YARD OFFICE instead of just office. Once the sign was paint I started to distress it with some sand paper a hammer and a knife. The newly distressed areas were given a wash of dirty brown/black paint to make it look slightly rotten and aged. Some mounting holes were drilled in it with one being opened up a bit more to look like it had been ripped off the wall.
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The last thing to be do was make a miniature one and mount it on a building on the layout.20181110_212223

Really enjoyed Manchester show again and was good to chat with so many people. Tarring Neville picked up an award for “Best scratch built model” for the partially demolished building by the loading dock. Was good to see Black Lion Crossing at last and had a good chat with Geoff Kent about his Conflat L’s which I’ve been looking to build a couple of.
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Merry Christmas to all the readers of the blog and best wishes for the New Year.

Starting early?

~ andyj82 ~ 5 Comments

In a month or so Herstmonceux will be at Railex so it’s time for me to start getting it ready. Now some of you might be thinking that it’s a bit early to start preparing for the show but Herstmonceux hasn’t been out since Exeter last July and could do with a bit of a freshen up. A few new trees need making and planting, some of the other vegetation could do with some work and the whole layout could do with a good clean.

I have also been working on some items of stock. The I3 has been on the list of needing fixing for a while. Turns out the motor mount had broken so this was fixed and some tidying up of the weathering. My Std 4mt 2-6-0 had had its motor and gearbox pinched when I built my last K Class so this has been replaced. The Birdcage set and the LBSCR Pull-Push set still needed floors adding and a spot of weathering after being used at Exeter. Something else I wanted to do was go through my wagons and sort out some of the weathering on them. A lot of my wagons had had a quick job done on them so they were usable on Herstmonceux and I thought it was about time I gave them a better going over.

There is still plenty more to be done. The D3 is getting a new motor and High Level gearbox plus a pile of new wagons need finishing off. Should be a busy month or so.

Post Uckfield

~ andyj82 ~ 3 Comments

 

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So Uckfield show has been and gone and Tarring Neville’s first outing went pretty well. Firstly I must say a big thank you to Adrian and the Uckfield club for such a good weekend and putting on yet another top notch show. The layout behaved itself and picked up lots of nice comments from exhibitors and the public. It was interesting to fool a few locals like with Herstmonceux, into thinking the railway was really there.
As you can see from the picture above and my previous post, another loco has joined the cement works fleet. Its a Hornby Peckett but just like Chris and Oly over at otcm I couldn’t just leave it as it was out the box and it was in bits the same day Chris dropped it off! Mine is loosely based on Stanley as I wanted to do one with dumb buffers. I didn’t get time to fit its new whistle and works plates before the show but at Uckfield I had all three running on Tarring Neville (Cheers guys)..

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As usual though I didn’t manage to take many pictures but Adrian has put up a retrospective here with pictures of all the layouts and Redkiterail has some pictures on his Flickr site. It was good to see Oly’s excellent “Six Quarters” in the flesh and I really liked “Surrey Arms”, definitely two layouts to look out for!
Hopefully I will get a few more bits done before Tarring Neville’s next outing in a few weeks at Brighton MRC’s show.

A Wright Honour

~ andyj82 ~ Leave a comment

Recently Tom Foster, Chris Matthews and I spent the day with Tony Wright and his layout Little Bytham . I’ve followed Tony’s articles over the years and he has been an inspiration to my modelling, so to be invited to see his work up close and operate his layout was a real privilege! Tony’s Little Bytham is an on going project but already looks like a work of art to me. As Tony explained not everything on the layout is his own work. He likes to do some “horse trading” with friends which is a good way to get things done on such a large project. As you can see from my poor picture it is rather a vast layout!IMG_5037We all arrived with some stock which Tony kindly allowed us to run on his layout. Tom had brought along a few of his Pannier tanks that he has been working on for his Cwm Prysor project. You can read more about it and the Panniers here https://tfmodelling.wordpress.com/ DSC_2321Lucky for Chris, Tony had a ingenious gizmo for him to re-gauge his wagons. These plus the Class 47 are being worked on for his current project which I look forward to seeing and operating. https://otcm.wordpress.com/

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It was nice to give some of my locos a good run and it was great to received some lovely comments from Tony about my stock. Dsc_2307 Dsc_2328 Dsc_2336Dsc_2317

Running Little Bytham with its Eastern Region stock and being able to discuss all aspects of it with Tony made it all the more interesting. Finding out one of the BR Mk1 GUV’s was a MTK kit and that some of the other beautiful stock was 40 odd years old was quite a shock. There were a few mishaps from the fiddle yard operator but Chris soon got the hang of it! and I got marked down for not noticing I had not set some signals. This all lead to good banter and contributed to great day with friends, old and new.
I’d like to thank Tom for arranging the visit and of course thank Tony and Mo for their hospitality. I would also like to thank Tony for allowing me to use a few of the pictures he took on my Blog.

Rhubarb and Custard?

~ andyj82 ~ 2 Comments

A while ago I had decided that I wanted a BR Mk 1 set for Herstmonceux and that it had to be Blood and Custard livery. Why this livery and not the usual BR Green? Well I like the Blood and Custard livery for starters and I think it looks smart on the Mk 1’s.
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Also at the time I only had one other rake of coaches in this livery so it would add a bit of colour and variety to the layout.

To begin with I started looking for set numbers of the 3 coach sets. The set numbers ran from 515 to 574 and were mainly formed BSK- CK-BSK. One small problem with this was the 3 coach sets didn’t arrived till 1957 and I try to keep Herstmonceux pre 1956!! Luckily for me the 4 coach sets arrived from 1952 onwards and were formed BSK-SK-CK-BSK. Information on the Set and Coach numbers can be found here http://www.semgonline.com/coach/CoachSets.txt

With a local(ish) set number decided on I sourced the coaches needed. These are all early Bachmann Mk 1’s with the horrible thick roof weld lines and after a bit of reading up on the net I decided to tackle this issue. The thick weld lines were carefully trimmed with a Swann Morton No 17 blade.

Original Roof is at the bottom and the trimmed at the top.

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Also added to the coach was a dynamo belt. The idea was picked up off Jim Smith-Wright’s site http://www.p4newstreet.com/improving-the-bachmann-mk1s-part-1-brakes.html. Jim’s used the Masokit etch which also has the brake linkages but I decided to use a bit of scrap etch.

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With these bits done all that was left was to add transfers for the new coach numbers, set numbers on the ends and give them a light weathering.

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So that’s one more set of coaches just about finished for Herstmonceux and I think effort to trim the weld lines down is well worth it. The basic weathering is done but I still need to add a bit of variation to the roofs plus a bit more on the underframes. I may go back and add the brake linkages at a later date but for now i’m happy with them.