The LNER Lowmac has been through the weathering shop and received a load. I would like a traction engine or steam roller in time, but this will do for now as I have it in stock. Jim provides chain, etched hooks and in this kit etched shackles too (I didn’t get any in the implement wagon, but I suspect that its an older kit). I do like the way that Jim continually improves and enhances his kit’s!
I took the opportunity this morning to take some posed photos of Papyrus after her day out yesterday.
I took them with and without artificial lighting. – She’s a little long for my photo plank!
and lastly the damper lever now it’s fitted…
I took the A3 along to the O Gauge North West show at Leigh today for a run on the test track.
The optimistic gents on the test track hitched her up to 44 wagons and she sailed away beautifully. Quite surprisingly they let me run her for around half an hour or so (I had expected a few laps at best). So I came away with a much inflated chest.
A kind gent, Pete (Greenglade of many modelling parishes) posted a view from his 5″ gauge drawing on the Guild site. this has allowed me to add a bit more detail to the ash pan damper lever (I was nearly right in my guess).
It now looks like this
Continuing last night’s roll I made this, fitted it and while I had some epoxy mixed I smeared some on the tender buffer heads, the underside of the fall plate and the top of the tender inner chassis (with the thinking that if I use plastic screws to fasten the tender top on it’s another potential short source eliminated. Whilst handling I noticed that some of the tender brake shoes had come loose to they got treated to some epoxy too.
I also worked on the reversing lever – a look in the spares box found me a milled nickel link that I reduced in size and tapped one end 12ba to take a former 4mm scale crank pin that I think came out of a Mainline B1 (never throw anything away!!!). I just need to cut the revering lever to final length now when the glue has dried (hopefully this morning).
As I mentioned in a previous post one of the bits that have been lost along the way is the etch for the lever arrangement that sits under the fireman’s side of the cab on the A3 (and A4’s) which I think may be the ash pan lever?
In the kit there was a single layer etch that looked (as far as I can recall) a bit like this:
Thankfully having seen a photo of a Finney A3 posted by Richard Lambert which showed quite clearly the missing part I remade one from bit’s of scrap brass:
It’s not quite as elegant as the one on Richard’s loco but it’s infinitely better than the original etch.
I still need to file down the top arms to form pins to fit in holes in the footplate.
I have spent a goodly amount of time today updating most of the pages on the main site which has also seen a change of theme. Please take the time to have a look
She’s alive!!!
A couple of dodgy videos showing that she does move after all – after removing the offending plugs I still had issues which were narrowed down to one of the rear drivers shorting all sorted.
Apologies if anyone doesn’t like Harry Potter the sound track was on the radio in the background
In between painting a herd of cattle for the cattle wagons that I have on the go at the moment, I revisited the weathering on the LMS/Midland Railway open wagon that started my weathering journey off.
In the background I have been slowly and patiently beavering away on the A3 so as not to destroy my enthusiasm if all hasn’t gone well.
While I haven’t had much to post recently I have been beavering away at a couple of projects the first of them being a couple of Parkside LNER Fitted Cattle wagons. One of them I built some time ago but I recently built another and I have then made a start on weathering them.
This is the inside of one of them as it was before I added a few more rust stains around the blot heads – I have tried to go for a look of regular scrubbing of the inside. Scrubbed wood is something that I am very familiar with because in a former life I was a butcher and scrubbing the wooden cutting block was a daily feature of my work. This particular wagon is the one that I did originally and it was painted with Halfords Red Oxide primer and satin varnished before adding the transfers
For completeness this is the second recently built one which was painted with Vallejo Game Color Dark Fleshtone and again satin varnished before the transfers.
I have used two differing techniques on the exteriors with these – the first one was made grubby and work stained using a mixture of Vallejo black, Flat Earth and Dark Sea Grey which was painted on and then cut back with meths.
The second had a couple of wash coats of dark fleshtone, german orange and cream to lighten and fade the base colour before applying the mix above for the grubby in service look.
I still need to paint the roofs and sort out couplings for one of them – and fill them with cattle of course.