Early in the Day

It may not have escaped your notice that there hasn't been much model railway activity recorded here of late (well, not much activity at all really). That really is because there is nothing to report, so please don't think I'm hiding the construction of a new 30ft extension to 'Shifting Sands' down in the shed ready for a big reveal in the spring - I'm not! Perhaps when I wrote the piece "The last one for now" about the last O9 wagon I had completed I somehow tempted fate?

With other distractions about the house now at a low, I have put some thought to building something.  Not minded to start a layout or item of stock, I have chosen to build a diorama in a display case that can double-up as a photographic background for O9 stock.  After a few sketches and false starts, I have composed a scene that will (for display purposes at least) accommodate my original locomotive and stock from my early days in O9. The name of the piece 'Early in the Day' reflects both this and the depiction of the start of a day's running on a miniature railway:

This use of the early stock in many ways is a result of the ongoing work I am undertaking with the uploading of the content of my old Fotopic site to the blog, if you haven't yet rediscovered this content it can be found at the top right hand corner of the page.

The overall size of the diorama will be 32 cm x 17 cm, giving plenty of depth for photography, a fault I soon found with some of my earlier dioramas:

The shed building is envisaged as something rather understated and may be inspired by a building I photographed back in the summer.  The weekend after re-acquainting myself with 'Katie' at Cleethorpes we headed back to the Lincolnshire coast for a week-long holiday in Skegness. Here is a town with a rich miniature railway history but sadly now without a line.  This shed and a nearby slabbed platform are evidence of the last 10 1/4" railway on the south promenade (and the 12 1/4" tramway that replaced it) now most of the formation was now lost under grass:

Incidentally, a walk on the seafront at Chapel St Leonards proved fruitless for a former site for a railway referred to in two articles in 'The Narrow Gauge', I discovered on my return home that we had been looking at the wrong end of the promenade!  Still intrigued by all these lines I sent a few emails on my return home to those who would know a little more and posted a plea on the 'Miniature Railway World' forum. The results of this brought a few nuggets of information and some vintage photographs. With my curiosity largely satisfied, whether I take any of this research further really depends on the motivation and time to do so, a bit like railway modelling really…

Colin

Preservation in Miniature

I've alluded in a past update to a project to restore my early miniature railway models, from my 'experimental' phase almost 10 years ago, to something close to their original condition.  This involves the first 'Intrepid'  being lowered to as-built ride height on a dummy chassis and my Routemaster based coaches being given new bogies.

Here's the target 'look' - the yet to be named locomotive with the Routemaster stock in tow:

The bogie donor is a Del Prado UP locomotive, sadly the cast chassis block is too long for this project. Interestingly the body of this has a separate roof panel in just the right place to sit a miniature railway driver...

The bogie details were stripped back and modified to resemble the conversion carried out originally on Bachmann bogies.  2mm Evergreen channel added over the top edge, plus new bufferbeams and other details in styrene.  In the background MicroTrains 'Archbar' bogies are having the mountings altered to suit the Routemaster coaches and hook and loop couplers replacing the MT originals for between coach couplings (i.e. the cheapskate way!):

A styrene chassis frame will hold the dummy bogies in place, this will locate into the fitting used on the frame I built to fit the present Atlas chassis (now what will happen to that....?!)

A waft of primer over the bogies and chassis frame was followed by a spray of matt black on the frame itself, whilst the bogies were painted using Valejo acrylics and everything subsequently varnished using Humbrol 'Matt Cote'.  A bit a dry brushing here and there has brought out the detail in the bogie sides:

The dummy couplers are Bachmann mouldings as supplied with wagons in the US N range, they are bit on the chunky size but do the job (i.e. are cheap and non-functioning).  They don't look so bad with the body in place.  This picture is an attempt to re-create one that I took for 'Model Train International' several years ago which has featured on the blog before:

The coach bogies were also toned down with Matt Cote and a bit of drybrushing, three coaches have been treated this way, this photo is of coach number 1 which was repainted a couple of years ago after a disastrous attempt to re-livery it in Maroon.  The underframe was modified at the same time to better resemble my loose prototype of the ex-Sutton Miniature Railway coaches.  This is set off by the 'Archbar' bogies that closely resemble those of the Sutton Stock:

The completed train presently has pride of place in my display cabinet.  Which reminds me, I better find something to fill the other shelves...

To Intrepidly Complete...

I hadn't realised until I had a conversation at Narrow Gauge North this morning that is nearly a month since I updated O9modeller.  So what have you missed?  Well, er... not a great deal!

Intrepid (II) is now complete, treated to a coat of Citadel (Games Workshop) satin varnish with no ill effect on the enamel paints used for the secondary colours, hopefully as a result of leaving them plenty of time to dry before overcoating.  Smaller parts such as the air horns were fitted and glazing added mostly using parts from the kit.  A tip to pass on here is to use a black marker pen around the edges of those curved corner windows, this really reduces the prismatic effect.  A second tip is to use 'Kleer' floor polish to coat the windows inside and out to get a good transparent effect.

The cab door windows are the only ones not used from the kit, 20 thou clear styrene was used for these, the divider bar is a strip of silver car trim line.  Nameplates are from A1 Models.

A comparison with the original loco was inevitable,  The new loco is on the right!  The original is now undergoing some work to restore it to it's 'as built' height (basically without the grey solebar) for display purposes.  I'll write some more about this project in due course.

I've also completed the Hudson framed open wagon, seen here temporarily carrying oil drums, however events may have overtaken this one, more in a future update!

An finally my industrial i/c loco is progressing in the paintshop after several setbacks, including an almost total strip-down and repaint, the colour now used in Halfords Ford Meadow Green.

And if that isn't enough of an update, I'll post some thoughts from NG North later this evening....

To Intrepidly Go...

I've had a few setbacks on the painting front of late - which I have put down to being a bit out of practice, but I can now say that this is on the right track:

Since a second sprayed coat of blue (I said there were setbacks...), this has had three coats each of the roof and solebar grey, and red bufferbeams. Details have been touched in, including the headlights (which will get a dollop of Araldite once varnished) and door handles. Transfers are a mix of the Dapol whiskers and SMS transfer lettering, applied with MicroSet and MicroSol:

This is a key project for me in many ways, whilst it is the first item to be finished since I got back into the swing of things, it is also perhaps the last dedicated item to be built for 'Shifting Sands' - future projects are still in the dreaming phase!

In Triplicate

At the Wakefield exhibition last weekend I grew weak at the knees at their legendary club second-hand stall and came away with an N gauge Bachmann Spectrum F-Unit for the agreeable sum of £15.00.  Thinking back to last year's show I seem to recall doing something similar, indeed I may have chosen not to buy two on that occasion...

This style of F-Unit chassis formed the basis of my first O9 loco back in 2003, when I purchased one very cheaply at a Toyfair as the basis of my first steps in O9 motive power.  With a stylish body formed from Dapol railbus and drewery shunter parts I felt that the resultant loco captured the spirit of 1950s and 60s 15" gauge design and wouldn't have looked out of place at Dudley Zoo or Fairbourne.

These were early, perhaps pioneering days for me and much procrastination followed as to what the layout that would inevitably follow would be.  At one stage the whole project hung in the balance but despite a half-hearted plan to sell up and return to 'OO', the blue diesel was not going to be sold.  What eventually emerged was of course 'Shifting Sands', but by the time the layout was complete, the blue diesel had started to look a little on the small side next to 'Cumbria', my Ratty inspired steam tram locomotive.

A rebuild saw 3mm added to the height of the loco with a new frame below the body, and at this stage an Atlas mechanism was installed.  The main reason for this change was that at this time I was using a set-up of old H&M control equipment and the setting required to get the best from the Atlas mechanism matched those used for the Kato 4w chassis found under many of my other locomotives.  The original Bachmann chassis ended up under a 'twin' built for Andrew Blackwell.

Last years chassis purchase ended up under my 'Christmas Project' of a third locomotive. The long term intention for this was to actually replace the original locomotive in the 'Shifting Sands' fleet and allow the original bodyshell to be restored to it's original appearance for display with my older coaching stock.  With the purchase of a further chassis, and another railbus and drewery shunter kit to hand to build another loco, the story is unlikely to end here!