On My Workbench Archive, September - October 2007

Wednesday 31st October 2007

The remotoring project on 90040 The Railway Mission is finally complete, with the decoder being added, it is now part of the fleet on Wells Green TMD once again. I did in fact start work on remotoring this loco back in April but as usual it has taken me a long time to finish the project! 90040 stands alongside the other latest 'creation' but I am fighting my natural urge to weather it and fit screw couplings!

On My Mp3:Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Music Gets The Best Of Me

Wednesday 23rd October 2007

Look what they gave me!

Here's the courtesy car I received whilst my car's booked in for its service - a Ford Ka Studio 1.3! It's quite nippy although as one would expect from a courtesy car it lacks all mod-cons and drives like a pig!

However I am very tempted to model this horrible but loveable little thing for Wells Green TMD!

On My Mp3:Avril Lavigne - Hot

Monday 21st October 2007

The Uckfield MRC show

This was probably the best show I've exhibited at in quite a while, everybody was so helpful and there was an excellent set of layouts present too, including Paul Wade's Tonbridge West Yard and Stapleforth Mainline by Mike & Lizzie Hughes. I seemed to have an extraordinarily large amount of helpers on the Saturday and it meant that I didn't even have to do anything more than lift a couple of boxes as the rest of the gang constructed the layout!

Two new pieces of rolling stock made their debut this weekend, with Loadhaul black/orange 60038, show above, and below, the Crewe Electric Depot internal use shunter IEMD 01. The '60' performed faultlessly although the same cannot be said for the '08' however, with some very dodgy running over the pointwork!

The Ford Focus has been allocated prime position on the layout outside the depot, but it has displaced a blue Mercedes 'Sprinter' van which has nowhere to go!

And finally...Tonbridge West Yard operator Barrie Swann and Wells Green TMD operator Dave Kent couldn't resist performing in front of the camera!

On My Mp3:Sugababes - 3 Spoons Of Suga

Friday 19th October 2007

Not so good!

Yes, tomorrow Wells Green TMD is off to its latest exhibition outing at the Uckfield MRC, held at the Uckfield Civic Centre, TN22 1AE. As is traditional, something normally goes wrong right at the last minute, and this time was no exception!

At the last exhibition outing back in August, I noticed the pantograph on 86228 Vulcan Heritage kept getting caught on the raised edge of the main scenic board as it tried to leave the fiddle yard and drive into the depot scene. I then promptly forgot about this observation, and it was only until last night when I tested 86228 that the memories came flooding back.

I didn't fancy tinkering with the pantograph to change the springing, so out came the files to remove the offending bits of low-hanging wood on the layout! About 20 minutes later and with lots of dust, I am pleased to report that 86228 Vulcan Heritage can now happily run the entire length of the layout - phew!

So please do say hello if you are coming along to the show!

On My Mp3:The Lightning Seeds - Marvellous

Friday 12th October 2007

It's getting there!

With the detailed cab interior added, all that is left to do is add a bit more weathering on the bufferbeam area and its ready to go! This was one of the earlier dodgy batch of Hornby '60's which had the rotating buffers, annoyingly I've had to resort to gluing these in place to prevent movement.

As with the previous 60's modelled there are newspapers, drinks cans, high visibility jackets, driver's kitbags and bits of paper in either cab.

Window blinds have been made from offcuts of card secured in the windows by Microscale's excellent Kristal Klear product which is perfect for the task as any fingerprints on the glazing can be simply wiped off without any damage, unlike other solvent based glues for example.

As I'm feeling rather poor, (scary car insurance renewal due soon!) I have broken from my tradition of only fitting Lenz Gold decoders to my non-sound DCC locos, and have instead opted for 'just' a Silver decoder! Of course the 'Gold' and 'Silver' decoders are pretty similar and I have never really used my decoders to their full potential but fitting a 'Silver' instead of a 'Gold' still feels inexplicably like a backward step somehow!

Progress on Wells Green TMD's catenery has also been pretty slow due to problems obtaining further supplies of brass, then finding the time to solder it all together, but one day things will get there!

On My Mp3:Aly & AJ - Potential Break Up Song

Tuesday 9th October 2007

Another 'Grubby Tug'

It's been a few weeks since any real modelling was shown on this site, mainly due to starting back at University, which was then followed by a period of time being cut off from BT Broadband!

But during that time I decided to get on with the modelling and have finally finished off this Loadhaul '60' done up as one of my favourite class members, 60038. Regular readers may also remember I have modelled this as Bidean Nam Bian in Trainload Metals colours too, all I need is the same loco in full EWS livery as AvestaPolarit and I will have 'completed the set'!

The detailing process was much the same as on my previous '60' project, 60028 John Flamsteed in plain triple grey, with the weathering process very similar too. These photographs show the 60038 in semi-complete state, with the fully detailed cab interiors yet to be added, but this has since happened and I am pleased to say that even the lighting still works, which is a miracle considering that when I detailed EW&S-liveried 60017 a while back, I'd managed to break three of the LEDs!

On My Mp3:Sugababes - Rocks [NapsterLive Session] CD1

Thursday 27th September 2007

Loftus Road's all gone a bit Cornish!

After the previous week's frustration at the club with Loftus Road not functioning properly, it was quite refreshing to hear Pete Hollman and friends had 'fixed it' so it was now time to bring up some trains to run on the layout!

I've always wanted to have an opportunity to run my china clay 'CDA' rake away from my home layout Goonhilly Parkway and rarely have access to a layout big enough to comfortably accommodate the rake! As we were testing the DC mode on Loftus Road I brought along some of my un-chipped locomotives in the form of EWS 66076, and GWR Green 60081 Isambard Kingdom Brunel to work the china clay train. But when I saw that Pete Hollman and Chris Sweeney had brought along 'proper' China Clay traction in the form of '37's, putting them on the front was an opportunity not to be missed!

Even more as Chris' loco, (left) is none other than the Kernow Model Rail Centre's model of 37670 St Blazey T&RS Depot, a long time china clay machine and Pete's 37411 (right) which coincidentally was a member of the same pool in the early 1990s too - albeit in Trainload Distribution livery at the time though!

Here you can see the discarded 66076 and 60081 whilst the 37s take the train!

On My Mp3:Men Without Hats - The Safety Dance

Monday 24th September 2007

Too Shiny!

Most of the week's modelling time has been devoted to the little black shunter - IEMD 01 (08824). There are only a few changes carried out since the last photograph shown, but the cab interior has received some detailing, weathering and a driver added too!

To ensure details like the electrification flash transfers and running numbers remain protected, I gave the loco a nice coat of matt varnish. But as you can see, things didn't quite go to plan - its all a bit satin! So I'll need to have another go, before I can get onto the fun stage - the weathering!

On My Mp3:Sugababes - About You Now [CD 1]

Monday 17th September 2007

Progress on Loftus Road

There's been quite a bit of progress on Worthing MRC's Loftus Road with lots of tricky problems being solved lately, almost to the point that last Thursday we thought that we could run a test train round!

However things were never to be that simple, there are still a few big bugs that need to be ironed-out as it were - particularly concerning the modular fiddleyard (a new 'standard' fiddleyard that can now be used on any club layout), which needs to be interchangeable between DC and DCC. Pete Hollman tested out some old Gaugemaster controllers on the layout, which promptly got frazzled! But the problem was traced back to the controllers being re-wired slightly strangely - so I'm told.

Following threats of legal action and possible violence I am not allowed to publish any juicy pictures from last Thursday, so here area few plain boring ones, just showing the layout and not the irate, frustrated people battling with the wiring!

On My Mp3:Booty Luv - Boogie 2Nite

Tuesday 11th September 2007

Taste the difference!

What a difference a day makes! With about an hour's modelling time split over two days the '08' has been transformed into something almost verging on classy! I do love the plain black liveries on Class 08 shunters - making the locomotive appear quite humble and certainly different from the multi-coloured main line locomotive classes, although the extended 'wasp' warning stripes on the '08's side-mounted equipment boxes do help jazz things up a bit!

On My Mp3:Siobhan Donaghy - Ghosts

Friday 7th September 2007

A nice bit of 'bodging'!

For a long time now I have always wanted Wells Green TMD to have its own ' depot pet' Class 08 shunter, and after years of putting it off, it felt like the right time to get round to modelling it - hopefully it will be in action at the upcoming Uckfield exhibition on October 20/21.

Choosing the protoype was easy - the internal-use 'IEMD 01' based at Crewe Electric Depot (the 'real life' Wells Green!), which is the former 08824. January 2006 saw the locomotive painted in an all over black livery with EWS red doors, and it is this livery in which it will appear on my layout.

Don't be confused by the previous yellow/black colour scheme on the donor Hornby '08', readers with a long memory will recall that I had originally planned to turn this 'Gronk' into a model of an RT Rail shunter on hire to a company in Cheshire, but I have now changed my mind!

IEMD 01 has a different arrangement of bodyside cabinets to that of the donor model, so I started hacking away the old cabinet and fabricated the lower grilles from an old A1 Models Class 60 grille set, and thin pieces of plasticard replacing the side doors on the '08'.

The model has since been given a coat of all-over black, and doesn't look too dissimilar to 'Diesel' from Thomas The Tank Engine!

On My Mp3:Sugababes - Freak Like Me

Saturday 1st September 2007

Soldering update!

I can just imagine everybody is on the edge of their seats longing for the next update on how my bent pieces of metal are taking shape!

In case anybody is actually interested though (had a really boring day at the office?!), here are a couple of images showing the centre section of the gantry now the two pre-constructed sides have been joined together, although it is reassuring to see it vaguely resembles a model of a gantry rather than some overscale ladders as seen on previous site updates!

There's still a little bit more work to do which includes adding some more diagonal cross-bracing on the gantry, but I'm nearly there!

On My Mp3:Tubeway Army - Are 'Friends' Electric?

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