Tullygrainey

Wonderful modelling. That's a very drunk passenger in the last carriage.

That’s a useful tool David!

More PPs. The boiler came ready rolled which was a real help. It just needed tightening up a bit on the rolling bars. Boiler bands can be a bit of a struggle to fit. Three cheers for fibreglass pencils to clean up the mess afterwards. The boiler needed quite a bit cut out of it to clear the motor, gearbox and wheels. The danger is always cutting too much away and leaving an unsightly gap somewhere so it's a time consuming exercise - boiler in, mark it up, boiler out, cut a bit, boiler back in again, fit the chassis, check for clearance, repeat until done. The smokebox has three layers and needed a lot of heat to get everything soldered up. I had the temperature controlled iron turned up full and still it was struggling. A trial run at Loughan Quay PPs.mov Time for a tidy up, more fibreglass pencil and a scrub with scouring powder.

That’s what underbellies are for. A place to hide all the solder Lovely work

That’s shaping up beautifully. I like the tight arrangement of the industrial buildings. Lots of shapes, levels and angles. Even in mockup they look great.

I wish I had the definitive answer to that one! The challenge, as David says, is that there's no 'concrete' colour as such since age, texture and weathering affect the colour and appearance of concrete in widely varying degrees, not to mention the ingredients used to make the stuff in the first place. My experiences in wrestling with this suggest to me that a single flat colour won't look convincing. A mixture of shades in the finished surface will look much better. I generally use cheap artists' acrylics from tubes in three colours - Mars Black, Titanium White and Raw Umber. Mixed in different proportions, these can produce an infinite variety of suitable tones. The process is distinctly trial and error. I just prod away until it looks right to my eye. Thin washes allow different colours to show through in random places on the final surface. I think we're agreed too that talc can add a bit of texture. Some dry brushing using the raw colours and sometimes some yellow/green to hint at moss or algae also contributes to the overall look. For largish areas of concrete, remember that it will likely have been laid in bays, with lines of tar between the sections. For modelling this, I scribe lines into the card surface and run black paint into these. Cracks can be modelled by drawing lines with a pencil. I'll leave the last word to the Grand Master, Gordon Gravett in his book Modelling Grassland and Landscape Detailing (Wild Swan, 2013). "For concrete slabs, I use Humbrol matt enamels: No.110 Natural Wood, No. 64 Light Grey, No. 34 White and just a touch of No. 81 Pale Yellow in varying proportions".

More work on Kieran's GNR(I) PPs. Pickups fitted and shouted at until they worked reliably... IMG_3925.MOV ... then a start made on the superstructure. Tricky stuff this, with a lot of soldering edge-to-edge in two planes. Difficult to keep it both straight and neat. This one will need a bit of filler here and there. The instructions recommend making cab beading from soft copper wire soldered round the edge of the curve, not on the face of the etch. I found this just about impossible to do neatly so resorted to my usual method of using scrap etch strip and filing it back. The little crankpin splashers were a job in themselves, each one laminated from two bits then soldered in place on the main splashers. I spent as much time puzzling over the instructions as I did making them. As is often the case with etched kits, head scratching and soldering require roughly the same amounts of time.

By the time you’ve finished the Bredin, you won’t even notice the burns any more Great progress JB!

Ah,

Wow! I've found the High Level Coreless motor range to be high quality and a pretty good replacement for the late lamented Mashimas. There's one with a 30mm barrel and they all come in around £30.

No, it's a High Level iron core. It's painted matt black to help disguise its presence under the saddle tank.

Patrick's Countess of Antrim is back with me for a little remedial work. The attached video is the Countess's chassis. Can anyone explain the strange groaning noise it makes on startup? It's not dry bearings or gearbox noise or anything of that mechanical sort because it didn't make these noises before it was sound-chipped. The noise is still there when the sound is turned on but largely masked by the chuffing. Is it some sort of mismatch between motor and chip? Incidentally, my BCDR 2-4-0 No 6, with a similar sound installation and motor does exactly the same thing. IMG_3947.MOV

Kadee actually include this Heath Robinson contrivance in the instruction sheet for their under track magnets

Frustrating is right! Hope the damage isn't too severe.

I used the Kadee top of the sleepers magnets on The Stone Yard, my O:16.5 layout and they work pretty reliably though I usually confine myself to particular combinations of wagons when exhibiting. The idea of creating resistance to help prevent random uncoupling is probably a key factor. The locos on The Stone Yard are pulling white metal wagons which have plenty of weight to keep things in tension. I gather the rule of thumb for wagon weight for UK modelling in 4mm is around 35gms. Kadee couplers are of US origin and I read somewhere that in the US, the NMRA recommends a guide weigh for wagons of 75gm. Maybe that's what we need to aim for. Mind you, I've tried that and some of my locos run out of steam pulling more than three 75gm wagons round the tight curves of Kilmore's non-scenic bits Postscript: The Kadee top of the sleepers magnets are designed for Code 100 rail. They're too tall for the Code 75 on Kilmore.