Painting, Windows and Finishing

I'm not great at the painting, but being a mug I decided a two-tone livery would look best on the coaches, and brush-painting that took me a while! That was followed by a little weathering with dirty washes and weathering powders. The windows are the original Eggerbahn mouldings which have a ridge round each window, the only way that was going to look right was to paint it to look life a frame. More fiddly work with a brush, especially with the bars on the end door windows!

 

At Brighton I had picked up a bottle of "Micro Kristal Klear", which is a PVA-like glue that dries clear and does not mist plastic glazing. This was ideal for sticking the windows in, once in place the seat backs were stuck in place that hides the bottom of the glazing. The other feature of the glue is that it can be drawn across small openings to form the glazing, which I have tried with the Skylark spectacle plates, it can be seen drying in the picture above. If it works well I've got quite a few locos with unglazed spectacles...

 

Despite my best efforts keeping all the bits together I found I'd lost the glazing for the guard's compartment doors. I cut new glazing from clear plastic - set in an part open position, as all the other opening windows are open, so it would look odd if they were closed. A piece of microstrip finishes the frame.

 

Having added coal to the bunker and a driver figure inside it was time to stick the roof on the Skylark. The curvature of the plastic roof is slightly too much, so here it is being held in place while the epoxy dries!

Sussex Downs Members' Day Exhibition

The Sussex Downs 009 Group will be holding a "Members' day" exhibition in Haywards Heath on Saturday the 16th March, from 11am until 4:30pm. See the full poster here.

The club's layout, the "Everleight Light Railway", featuring several stations, a brickworks and quarry, can be assembled in different combinations for exhibition. However for the Member's Day it will be featured as a 50-ft long arrangement for the first - and probably only - time!

Other attractions include at least 9 other layouts in 009 and other scales (some well known, others not!), the 009 society sales stand, and specialist traders. I won't have one of my layouts there this year but no doubt I'll be behind the club layout, one of the other member's layouts, or even on the door. So please do drop in if you can, it promises to be a good show.

The Wealden group's Arundel show

The Wealden Railway Group's annual show in Arundel is at the opposite end of the exhibition spectrum to Brighton! The smallest of shows in a scout hall, and featuring modest layouts mostly built by the group's members, it is a friendly and informal show that is always worth a visit.

I didn't get the names or builders of the layouts but here's a couple that caught my eye. The photo above is of a simple German-based layout in H0, now I know nothing of German railways but clearly it was set pre-WW1 and featured some lovely stock, such as this fascinating steam railcar. The scenery and detailing was superb, and proved that a German layout doesn't have to look like a Faller catalogue!

This 0-16.5 layout (Felsham) showed that an interesting layout with a nice setting can be built in a compact space in this scale - I reckon about 4' x 1'. The locos and some of the stock looked scratch built too, or at least adapted to make a unique and convincing freelance line.

There were about 10 layouts and a diorama so at £3 (including a drink) this show is a bargain! However if you missed it you can see my photos here - though I may have missed one or two layouts.

A day out in Brighton

I took my son over to Brighton for the Model-World show today. This isn't really a model railway show at all, it's an entertainment event, and a very commercial on in many ways. But then it uses the Brighton Centre - usually home to top music gigs, shows, and party conferences, and is popular enough to have people queuing round the corner to get in (tip - find the back entrance, just don't tell anyone!). The other thing that is different is the range of models on display - trains, boats, planes, cars, tanks, fairgrounds, doll's houses, sci-fi - you name it and someone has made a model and brought it for display.

Not just models too, in this picture you can see two separate miniature railways giving rides, a mini Carousel (for little kids) from Hollycombe, on the left a coach from the nearby Volk's Electric Railway, and outside is a full size traction engine. Demonstrations too, such as this one of radio-control lorries and diggers, moving soil from one place to another. I know these are just big toys (who are we kidding, so are trains), but fascinating to watch, lights and sounds included.

This is all great for children: my son had a go at sailing a radio control boat, colouring a picture of a lifeboat at the RNLI stand, racing a slot car (he won too, more by the "tortoise and hare" method than the Lewis Hamilton effect), and making an Airfix kit. Well actually I helped rather a lot with that last one! But it shows how "hands-on" this show is, and why it is so popular. From my perspective the selection of model railway layouts, while good, wouldn't justify the entrance price, but as a day of family entertainment it is great.

Talking of the model trains, my friend Tim Sanderson from the local 009 group was showing his "Elmgate" layout, a super little layout I've previously had the pleasure of operating, and good to see 009 represented. In fact it wasn't the only 009 layout there. Amongst the other layouts were two separate models of (or at least closely based on) Buxton, one in 00 and one in N, and showing why it is such a good prototype to pick. You can see more photos here, though I didn't manage to photo that much with an excited boy in tow. One model that I did really like though was this fine diorama of Dolgoch station on the Talyllyn, in a large scale and capturing the character, even without any running trains.

What the heck, get on with it...

I said I was waiting for warmer weather to prime the recent projects ready for painting, but as the ghostly apparitions below show, I decided to press on anyway! Perhaps because of seeing that Chris Ford has started and finished his Skylark in the meantime...

 

Preparation involved a scrub in warm water with a few drops of Cif cleaner using a toothbrush (I'm talking about the models here). Since it is still cold out, and spraying has to be done in the garage at the bottom of the garden, the technique was to keep me and the cans of paint indoors between coats, and the model too every couple of coats.

The brass balcony railings had a few light coats of etch primer, this is very thin so it was followed by the usual Halfords grey primer to get an even coat, which was also used for the roofs and the loco. The coach bodies though were treated to white primer. Priming is very useful as it shows up all the surface blemishes, I was pleased to find very few except a few stray blobs of glue on the Skylark. With them cleaned up and another quick spray I'm ready to start painting the top coats.

More exciting developments in 009

Following on from the announcement that PECO are releasing ready-to-run 009 wagons and coaches, the March edition of Railway Modeller carries the news that Heljan will launch a ready-to-run loco for the scale!

They have chosen the Manning Wardle 2-6-2 tanks of the Lynton and Barnstaple Railway, which is no surprise given that PECO are producing wagons and coaches for the same line. But it is a good choice, an elegant and popular loco that will sell well to collectors, and in different liveries (the later version may follow later too). It's a good size and design for many "freelance" 009 layouts, and I can see it, with the PECO stock, attracting many to 009. I can also see the outside-frame chassis being useful to some!

No price or availability date yet, but it is great news for 009, and I'm sure one will be on my Christmas list one day!

Making a start on the O&K

With the weather still too cold and damp to start spray painting in the garage, and enthused by the Landswood Park article, I thought it a good time to start on the Nonneminstre Models O&K loco kit I got last year.

With the main parts spread out it is clear there is a fair amount of flash to clear up, and probably a bit of fettling to get the parts to fit together well. However the detail of the mouldings is as good as I have ever seen in a white metal kit. The same can't be said for that poor driver figure though...

 

However I should start with the chassis, which is supplied assembled without pick-ups, and for 16.5mm gauge. The instructions say to push the wheels in for 14mm gauge, easier said than done but I found placing a wheel face onto a piece of wood with a hole for the axle, and hitting the other end of the axle with a hammer, got the job done! I have a KB scale gauge which includes a back-to-back check. However the axles were then a very tight fit, so I found it necessary to file the sides of the chassis block very slightly.

 

There isn't space for the pick-ups to go behind the wheels at 14mm gauge so they act on the tread, so it is suggested to fit them to the underside of the chassis, though I didn't want as they may then be visible. The instructions do say "We reckon those working in 14mm gauge are wee bit able!", hmm, thanks for the confidence but I'm not so sure.

The pick-ups are made by soldering springy wire onto a piece of PCB stuck to the chassis side in such a way it won't be visible after assembly. The instructions suggest soldering one side direct to the chassis, but I didn't want to solder it to white metal. I wanted to be able to disassemble the chassis without removing pick-up wires, so a notch was cut into each side of the chassis block so the wires can route to the motor through the same hole in the footplate.

 

With the footplate and bottom keeper plate attached the chassis can be test run. The first attempt didn't go well, the motor couldn't seem to overcome the resistance of the chassis. So I stripped the chassis down including removing the motor and layshaft, and spent some time filing back the chassis block and adjusting the pick-ups until it could be freely rolled. The second test was much better - now running smoothly - although it needed a lot of weight to make the pick-ups work well (although the track was dirty too!). With all that gearing it will be another slow runner...