Europorte GBRf Class 66.

The second of the current issue of Dapol N gauge Class 66s is right up to date as a ‘Europorte’ liveried example. Presented as 66 729 ‘Derby County’ and complete with separately etched nameplates. It will be working on Dudley Heath at The British Festival of Railway Modelling next month. Following the fitting of a 6-pin decoder, light lubrication and an hour of running in on the layout, it’s ready to go!

 

The Brighton Line’s finest…

In OO gauge (1:76 scale) from Hornby – it’s a definite improvement over the 4-Vep! Here’s a peek at the BR blue and grey model.

First impressions are very good, including the three centre trailers which are equally well finished. There’s a lot of attention to detail and thankfully, as an EM gauge modeller (amongst other scale interests), the wheel sets have proper pinpoint axles and not such deep flanges for those using finescale OO gauge track – no running on the rail fixings unlike the 4-VEP. Don’t forget to visit the 5-Bel restoration project web site here.

Time to knuckle down to it…

The Festival of British Railway Modelling is but a few weeks’ away…time to stop playing with the trains and knuckle down to it. Before I do, here’s a bright container to clash with that Dapol Class 66…a new release from Bachmann under the Graham Farish label…

Observers will note the lack of ballast around the junction at Dudley Heath. I have painted (most of) the rail sides…some will need touching up later.

Some final platform clearance tests (excuse to play with more trains). Seriously though, preparing stock is as much an important part of the run up to an exhibition as anything else. Note that mast bases and cable troughs are in place and painted.

Most of the platform structure is also in place ready for fencing, structures detailing and weathering…

I cannot delay any longer. It is a good idea to fit as many track structures as you can before ballasting: equipment bases, troughs, OHLE mast bases and so on. Mix a variety of concrete coloured paints to create different shades of colour to represent new and old covers for the cable troughs to introduce some variety. All of the ballast (Woodland Scenics fine grey) is glued in place with Scenic Cement and left to dry for a good few days. It can then be weathered with a wash of thinned paint or dry brushing the surface of the ballast, my preferred method.

‘Day and Night’ Class 66

Wow! That’s some printing job in N gauge. It’s a Dapol Class 66 finished as GBRf 66 720 with it’s special ‘Day and Night’ graphics applied to the sides – the result of a competition for children of GB Railfreight staff.The dark side of the model. In other words, the ‘Night’ graphic showing moon and stars – pretty bright in reality.On the lighter side: the ‘Day’ graphic with hills, rainbow colours and birds.

Apart from the locomotive body sides, the rest of the locomotive is finished in GB Railfreight colours with orange cabs, blue roof and the new company logos. On a model, it is strangely attractive!

I guess the idea of the design is to show that GB Railfreight operates both day and night. Some die-hard enthusiasts may find such colourful graphics a little startling and not to their taste; however it is a one-off and who knows how long the locomotive will wear these graphics? In the meantime, Dapol has really done a great job of them, recreating the vibrant colours on both sides of its low emission Class 66 version of its model with sharp printing over the fluted sides of the locomotive. The model itself has the usual features including 6-pin DCC connection, full lighting and a slow control motor. Will it make it onto Dudley Heath, I wonder?

Progress on Dudley Heath

The N gauge layout will be heading to The Festival of British Railway Modelling exhibition in February, warts and all. The event is held at the Doncaster Racecourse and is only a few weeks’ away. I had to pull my finger out and make some progress on some important features including the station platforms at Dudley Heath which are now complete following some messy work with Hydrocal and pigments.

It’s great fun doing this sort of structure modelling. The appearance of the layout is transformed pretty quickly by the addition of structures and civil engineering features. Ballasting is complete now the platforms are in place and other engineering features built in, including cable ducting troughs and equipment box bases.

Atlas bridge job.

Alas offers a very useful plate girder bridge in both single track and double track styles together with extensions and bridge track. Perfect for one location of my Montana Rail Link layout.

A small section of baseboard top was removed and the pre-assembled bridge dropped in after some preparation. All of the parts were painted and weathered before assembly, a useful technique knowing that spray painting scenic features when in place can be tricky and messy to boot!

The kit is comprehensive and clips together in the main; the final assembly being completed with four screws.

All of the mouldings are neat and fit together well, including the bridge track panels.

This picture shows the bridge components painted grimy black over dark grey and weathered with Pheonix Precision Paints ‘rusty rails’ colour. A dusting of brake dust and under frame dirt from the same paint range was applied to the deck and track panels.

Assembly complete and ready to drop into place.

Here’s where it is to be located. The baseboards were already cut for the project when the tops were fitted at the start of the project.

The existing track is removed and trimmed to length to accommodate the bridge track panels. Accurate measurements are needed at this point.

Tracks one and two of the MRL 4th Sub main line are truly severed at this point. By the way, the bridge is being located on the double track section between Missoula West and DesMet. DesMet is where the 10th Sub diverges from the 4th Sub water level route.

I do not like having the layout out of action for too long, so the new bridge was dropped in place pretty quickly.

 

Everything is reconnected, the bridge track rails provided with power feeds from the bus and trains run once again. The next job is to complete the abutments and build the road. In the meantime, ballasting at the west end of Missoula Yard is ongoing and enough track to start work on the second deck of the layout has now been obtained. Anyone working with Atlas code 55 N scale track will know it has been in short supply in the US over the last couple of years, so finding it for a project in the UK has been nearly impossible – until recently.

Another change undertaken the dark and impossible Christmas to New Year period involved the relocation of an internal light switch in the layout cabin along with a few other electrical things. To enable a better staging yard arrangement for the N scale MRL to be built, I changed the choice of entrance door from the side to the front of the building quite some time ago – Sarah’s idea. With that change came the need to locate the main light switch – something I stupidly failed do at the time! The resulting stumbling around in the dark at this time of the year to find it on a wall far remote from the doorway when entering the cabin (and when leaving it too), became intolerable and the relocation of the switch is a sensible move and enables further improvements to the N scale MRL layout. It clears the way for the second staging yard.

The first staging yard representing the east end of the layout (lower deck) was built along the wall and across the old entrance door without the need to move any electrics. By blocking off the old door, a yard long enough for 12ft trains was possible (longer but that would be a waste of track because the maximum train length is 12 ft). The picture below shows the narrow shelf accommodating 5 long staging tracks. An identical one needs to be built above it for the west end of the layout and guess what…that hitherto mentioned light switch was in the way!

Track painting.

There are some jobs on a layout which do much to improve its appearance but are regarded as boring or mundane by many modellers. Track painting (and ballasting) are two such tasks which when done well, will transform plastic track sleepers (ties) into realistic looking track. On my Montana Rail Link 4th Sub N scale layout, I have many, many yards of track to paint and ballast…the layout’s lower deck has reached that stage where there is a lot of this sort of repetitive but important work to do.

There’s only one thing for it – put on some music and set to work. I find this sort of work enjoyable because I can switch off and relax whilst completing many yards of track, usually in a few hours. I use a yellow brown rust for the rail edges and frame dirt for the sleepers. This can be varied with some dirty or grimy black. I do not like painting my track too dark a colour and some lighter coloured brake dust will be sprayed on it after ballasting.

Rust to the rail edges takes away that un-prototypical shine. Vary the colour as you work.

The track on Montana Rail Link is usually composed of wooden sleepers and heavy flat bottom rail – there being few lengths of track using concrete sleepers from the era I model. The shiny plastic sleepers are painted a dull brown colour. I will highlight some to represent newer (darker) sleepers or older (lighter) ones to create some visual interest.

Don’t forget the ends of the sleepers. Once dry, this track can be cleaned and ballasted. Below is a view of the final result. Paint is cleaned from the top surface and the inside edge of the rails with a cloth dipped in IPA before a gentle polish with a track rubber. Stubborn paint patches can be gently removed with fine grade wet and dry paper if needs be. Suddenly, the plastic appearance of ready to use track looks like hard used permanent way.

 

Dapol’s Class 22 – out at Warley…

Here it is, in OO gauge: the North British Class 22 locomotive  - a perfect small layout and branch line locomotive. Dapol will be making the green one shown here available for sale at the Warley model railway exhibition at the NEC (this weekend) where it is probably going to be one of the key new model releases of the show. In the meantime, enjoy the pictures if you cannot make it to the NEC.

More scenery and back drop painting experiments…

The real challenge for my modelling skills has been the painting of back drops on my Top Deck layout to look something like the high chalk downs overlooking the Folkestone area. Even with the help of reference photographs, it was always going to be an ‘interpretation’. I am no artist and was hopeless at art in school, so it was either keep the back drop white in colour or take a deep breath and have a go! The key was matching the summer colours of the Woodland Scenics to the artists acrylic paints currently available from my local art supplies shop and finding the right paint brushes for stippling etc. The pictures shown here were taken as work proceeded so I could examine my efforts away from the layout and identify problems with my work. I can always find plenty of those, but have to temper expectation with skill level!

This layout is the third deck of a three-deck layout, positioned 70 inches from the floor. It’s a shelf layout design, so to enable me to reach all areas of it, is relatively narrow at 22 inches wide. The main line tracks leading into Martello Tunnel at this point are only 3 inches from the back drop. How to achieve a good blend between three-dimensional scenery and the back drop with its high hills was also something that occupied much thinking time!

Thankfully, the real location has a lot of scrubby trees and gorse on the hills, so I have a great deal more painting to do on the back scene which will help with perspective. Also to be added is the distant outline of various buildings, mostly houses, on the hillside and partly concealed by trees. That is why the back drop looks relatively bare at the moment. My aim at this stage was to assess the blend between scenery and back drop and already these pictures show the need for darker shadows under the painted trees to create more contrast.

The blue Class 47 is a new addition to the fleet…a ViTrains model simply repainted and weathered to run as part of my early to mid 1980s fleet. The ballast colour is a bit uniform, but when the shot was taken, it had just been placed and glued!

My faithful white 4-Cig No. 1742 emerges from the tunnel portal running in the Up direction. Ideally, the far corner of the back drop boards should be coved. However, the number of trees to be placed on the hill over the tunnel will disguise that. The scenery materials, glues etc sitting in the back ground are occupying the space to be used for the three train roads and three berthing sidings, Whilst they run back beyond the tunnel portal, which is contrary to the full size location where they end just beyond and curving away from the portal, I could not afford to loose the train road length, hence the compromise! The main line curves away round the back of the room after entering the tunnel; space being needed for the 48 inch radius curve. I shall dress the resulting hillside above the train roads at this point with shrubs and some chalk exposed between the greenery to finish it.

There is a bit of white chalk cliff showing on the back drop in this view and the side section will have more tress painted in together with an outline of the Martello tower on the skyline. There will be more buildings painted in too, mostly the upper storeys and roof lines. I am yet to find the right colours…

When the back drop painting, track ballasting and scenery work along the rear area of the layout is complete, I will commence work on laying track on the bare boards to the front of the scene. In the meantime, there has been changes to the way I operate the Top Deck layout…the incumbent Lenz equipment is being changed for radio control which will make operation of the Top Deck much easier! More on that soon!

 

Hubble ‘Bubble Car’

A Western Region delight – the Class 121 ‘Bubble Car’ in N gauge by Dapol, another Autumn release to drool over and the first of two single car units that have been in development for a while now, the Class 122 being the other.The design is the same as previous multiple unit releases from Dapol including the underfloor drive mechanism allowing the modelling of most of the inter.

The roof is easily unclipped from the body allowing the fitting of a light bar in the roof. The standard Dapol light bar design simply plugs into the circuit board which is concealed, together with the 6-pin DCC connection, in the luggage van/guards end of the car.Detail is well defined and subtle, including the door hinges, handles and framing whilst the body shape is nicely profiled, including the shape of the ‘Derby’ cab. Roof detail has the panel joins represented by shallow grooves.Under frame detail is well cut in and defined given that part of it is used to hide the underfloor mechanism.In all, a great looking model with excellent technical features ensuring reliable running and power collection. Some modelling budgets are likely to be strained by this recent development and I hear Dapol has more to announce this morning too, so hold onto your hats!

 

 

 

 

 

 

More MacRats!

A ‘production’ (as opposed to a pilot scheme) Class 26 now emerges from Dapol in N gauge, with the detail changes to to suit. Detail is as per a late era locomotive (1980s) with modified windows and removal of reporting discs. At the same time, Dapol kindly allowed me a look at its BR green era Class 26 model which is supplied with separate head code discs and the correct oval buffers. Numbered D5301, it represents an pilot scheme loco.

I have not fitted the discs to the green model just yet. The gangway doors are modelled along with all of the marker lights too. A DCC socket is included as part of the electronics which will keep those marker lights burning if desired!Note the differences in the two models: shoulder grilles, fan grilles, buffers and cab front detail. The late era version of Class 26s, both pilot scheme and production batch locos lost the train reporting discs and the cab door windows.

It’s a very attractive model in any colour but don’t let it’s cute looks fool you – tests on a large layout and under exhibition conditions demonstrated that the mechanism under the body was very competent. The five pole motor, all wheel drive , all wheel current collection via stub axles and a big die-cast chassis frame produced superb running and haulage.

Railfreight red stripe livery: a popular scheme and one that sits on the model beautifully!NEM coupling pockets are part of the model’s specification. Couplings are easily unplugged and the headstocks detailed with the detailing parts included in the box.A great addition to the Dapol range and one that is tempting from the layout building angle. Now living where I do in the Scottish Highlands – should I?