Friday Update: Fourteen Eleven Twenty-five…

A week of contrasts. I’ve been working on a 6ft long cameo layout and my own Graham Farish 08. We’ve had bright sunny mornings and dark wet and blustery ones. That’s November in the Dee Valley I suppose but I’m not looking forward to December, it gets darker every day. Enough of that though, you all come here to see what’s been happening, so grab as coffee and I’ll start…

The week has really seen progress on two projects - the first, the Winter edition of Dee Valley Mail (you need to join the Llangollen Railway Society to see that) and the second, Kenny Hill.

I haven’t shared the plan for this yet, I realise, so I’ll do that tomorrow. For now, the stats! 6ft long cameo box, 1ft deep, 1ft tall. Single track. Australian HO. Constructed in my usual manner, the only two tweaks being the use of ply (for weight and strength in this longer format) and an aluminium L girder in the pelmet that helps support the lighting and stops things sagging.

The main feature of Kenny Hill is the gradient. Rising to a summit from each end, I was keen to make this a visible climb but equally worried about trains and their performance. Testing ensued, with Irish stock, wagons with weights in, even my industrial 0-4-0st helped out. In the end the centre is about 1” higher than the ends, so that’s a 1” rise in 3ft, or by my basic maths, approximately 1 in 36. This means trains slow on the climb but don’t gallop away or face drive train problems on the descent. Note the interloper, stage right, more on that later.

Whilst perhaps I should have been fitting pickups to the NGG16 instead I pressed on with scenery. The formers came from a box that arrived the day before, hot glued in position, the spaces filled with screwed up bits of packing paper and board off cuts - all coated with the first layer of plaster bandage you can begin to see some of the scene emerging in the moonscape! A long way to go but I’m happy I’ve spent a concerted effort on this for the week.

So what was a Bachmann 37 doing lurking in that photo? Well here, posed on Beaverbrook, you can see I have acquired a ‘bargain’ example from Kernow. Bargain, only in the modern sense of a large discount over RRP! It was still expensive! I was keen to have a triple grey liveried model for my weathering book and 37s do have some interesting weathering patterns. Back in the box for now, as I’m not ready to start contemplating content for that just yet.

Interestingly I was excited before this arrived. My first ‘childhood’ liveried OO model for some time. However, opening the box I was left cold. Nothing about this example excited me. 

Reflecting on that, I wonder why? It looks like a 37, it runs quietly, smoothly - albeit a lot of drag in the mechanism, I’m told this suits modern decoders. Well detailed, riding low on the trucks it has visible mass… I suppose it has no home, and was bought for a weathering project, that might be part of it. I don’t feel all though… talking with friends if a similar age we remember the Craftsman white metal detailing packs and carving handrails off our Lima diesels to replace with wire… later weathering, even repainting. I have found this same energy and work in N scale - but in OO most ‘modern’ RTR has all the detail on, or in the box. There is less craft, less opportunity for personalisation. Interesting…

The week of layout building also extended to an hour on Dim Byd. My co-conspirator had mocked up a prefab garage drawing so I printed it out to check for size, alongside some Peco bullhead that has been cut to length. The promise of that sketch, already in the composition.

Finally, 08 number 9 has been dumped in IPA and work started on a more involved repaint. This will become an ex BR loco in hire service with RMS Locotec. It was one without one of the cabinets on the front - these pop off as they’re plastic mouldings but it leaves some holes and an indent. The thinnest styrene I had was still too thick, but I’ll smooth it down during painting and priming. Here you can see it cut to shape and superglued in place, with the first bit of filler applied. 08 (or 09] number 10 below - will also get this treatment when I convert it to 09012, so a trial run too, it is nice to be working on a ready to run conversion again.

No plans apart from a hair cut this weekend (!) so I’ll enjoy digging into the three copies of Rail Model Craftsman that arrived from good friend Chris in Canada this week. Perhaps some work on the 08, maybe a ‘Friday de-brief’ later on YouTube too… we will see… for now, hopefully your coffee mug is empty and you’ve enjoyed that wander through work here - until next time, more soon…

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