Friday Update: Six Five Twenty-two...

Big commissions take up space, and so this week I’ve mostly been working on the pair of 45mm gauge Ruston LB, as their wiring and bodywork comes together…

However, before we get to that here is the Judith Edge 1/76 Yorkshire DE2. Fresh from the paint shop it sports orange bodywork and yellow/black wasp striping on each end. Gloss paint in my experience sticks better on primer when painting metal kits, and gives a good surface for masking stripes and adding decals. Things will be dulled down significantly when I add the weathering! This model is a peculiar one to look at, it’s cab looks too small for the body and I am looking forward to finishing, it has a lot of character that can be worked with when weathering.

I’ve been spraying the GP20C-eco in the evenings, and will share more on that soon. I always like to have another project lined up though, so I’ve sourced an Athearn RTR GP35, detail parts and decals to model a GP35 to GP38-3 rebuild on the New Brunswick Southern. Re-working less detailed, older models is a lot of fun and reminds me of why I love North American modelling in particular, with its generally standardised diesel models that are well supported by the detail and after market companies. The internet makes sourcing these parts a darn site easier than when I was a teenager mind!

The Ruston LB pair, one cabbed, one underground version progress, fitting all the components within the bodywork of the open cab example caused some head scratching. In the end, the DCC decoder and piggyback board sit in the exhaust conditioner, the receiver and DCC interface sit under the drivers seat (yet to be fitted) and the batteries in the engine. This is a much easier job in the cabbed example, with more space under the seat to fit it all in. There is still plenty of detail to add to them both before they’re ready for paint, I expect to put them in primer next week now. 

After the recent sale of my OO gauge I have sourced the first pieces of a new experiment. I will be sharing more on the blog in the coming weeks, but for now, I’m enjoying day dreaming of what will follow. I hope you all have a good weekend, I’m off to the Statfold event tomorrow, so if you’re there then you might see me. Whatever your plans I hope you can fit in some trains. Until next time, more soon…