Tullygrainey

Mighty! Just exudes GNRI. Nice one Patrick

A gem, Patrick. Lovely work.

Lovely stuff. Following this with interest Patrick. It's great to have a window on your work.

Wonderful!

Progress on the BCDR coaches has been a bit sporadic lately. Having started out with etches only, I've now gathered castings for springs, buffers, vents, axle boxes and vacuum pipes from various sources. I've also started on the second coach, hoping to get both to the painting stage so they can be done together. Having said that, a third one, a 5 compartment 3rd on order from Mousa Models, arrived sooner than expected, a nice surprise so it's in the queue now too. There's a lot of repetitive work in coach building which for sanity I tackle in short bursts. Each of the brake thirds has 12 door handles, 12 grab handles, 14 drop lights, 14 ventilation panels ... you get the picture. All belong in the 'little things sent to try us' category. This is the current state of play with the second kit. The 12 torpedo vents are white metal castings from Alan Gibson(4M722) and the 6 lamp vents are improvised from 10BA brass washers and cheesehead bolts with the slots filled with solder. Four of these are trimmed off flush on the underside of the roof and two screw into captive nuts in cross members to hold the roof in place. Rattling along in 3rd class, Alan

You're definitely not alone Patrick. I imagine we've all confronted this perfection-vs-the-time-required dilemma in some shape or form at some stage. The deciding factor will be whether you can live with what you end up doing or whether it still bugs you months later. My most recent encounter involved making a mess of a paint job (as I am wont to do), spending time trying to fix it but eventually rubbing out and starting again. As a compromise between accuracy and the time required to get there, would it be possible to clad your stone quoins (or some plain, appropriately shaped plasticard) with a suitable shade of brick paper? The lack of 3D relief might not be evident, given that the rest of your building has plenty of texture. Cheers, Alan

That medal you earned for persevering with the AJ couplings… I think we should add a bar to that

Shame. Ah well, as long as it moves

Perfectly realised. A coherent and believable scene with real atmosphere. Lovely stuff David. You may have already posted about this but did you manage to get the crane shuttle module working?

Not to mention the oil and hydraulic fluid leaking from that old JCB

The brakevan looks well. You deserve a medal for your perseverance with those AJs. I think I’d have given up long ago. But it’s clearly been worth all the effort.

Excellent. A great layout emerging there.

Lovely work Patrick. There's probably a joke in here about The Sandman and working at 2am. But I won't make it

Lovely detail and finish. A real charmer. If you hadn't mentioned the scale, I would have assumed it WAS 7mm!

That's very useful. Thank you Angus. The clearest photo I've seen was apparently taken in 1951 just before withdrawal, so it would be reasonable to suppose that as you say, there might've been a few changes over the course of 70 odd years! Regards Alan

A quick question which I hope someone can shed some light on. The coach I'm currently building is an Oldbury Brake Third, built around 1880; It has 6 compartments in total - 5 passenger compartments and one for the guard. In all the photos I can find, only 3 torpedo vents seem to be visible on the roof. Is it possible that there were 3 on each side, alternating thus? Cheers Alan

There are guides for the bearing carriers behind each W iron, just visible in this pic. The BCDR practice of outside W irons possibly made this extra layer necessary. The irons are too far apart to retain a standard OO gauge pinpoint axle

Verging on the impossible

Looks pretty good to me.

Mystery solved. You were absolutely right David. Six bits of strapping for the bottom of the W irons. Should've been soldered on before any folding up of the chassis and impossibly fiddly to attach now. The first one I attempted pinged off into a parallel universe somewhere and will not return. The rest have now been labelled 'not required on journey'.

Thanks David. I think you're right in saying it's a set of 6. I haven't been able to see anything corresponding to them in the photos I have or in DC's lovely drawings. The one side-on pic of this particular vehicle (in Coakham: Irish Broad Gauge Carriages, pg 81) is murky in the solebar area. They may end up residing in my 'spares' drawer

More BCDR coachwork. The Oldbury Brake 3rd has two full-length steps on each side. After some head-scratching, a period of confusion about which step was which and then a fair bit of faffing around, I managed to get them assembled. I’m recording the process as much for my own benefit (I’ve got another one to do) as for anyone else who might be tackling one of these for the first time. Each assembly has 6 struts to hold top and bottom steps parallel to one another. Each strut has 2 half etched lines for folding and there are half-etched pads on the undersides of the steps into which the struts are soldered. I think it’s easiest to make up the step assemblies as separate units before attaching them to the chassis and also to solder them while still flat, before bending the struts, so… Solder struts to the underside of the bottom step, half-etched line downwards… Turn the whole thing over and solder the other ends to the underside of the top step, half-etched line upwards… Fold the bottom step up through 90 degrees… Then fold the top step down through 90 degrees… et voila! The whole caboodle attaches to the chassis by soldering the top step to 4 little tabs folded out from the sole bar. There are four half-etched pads on the underside of the step to help locate it correctly. However, on my set of etches, assuming I’ve understood the build process correctly, these half-etched pads are on the bottom step rather than the top, which would put the steps in the wrong place. This was what confused me in the first instance. It doesn’t really matter - they’re not essential and no kit builder was harmed in the process but this bit of the build really challenged my capacity to visualise in three dimensions. I haven't soldered the steps to the chassis yet because I still need to source appropriate axle boxes from somewhere. Stepping out, but cautiously Alan PS Does anyone know what this is?

DAS ist gut!

Looking good Patrick. Nice photo - two sides of the one quoin. (I'll get my coat)

Thanks for this JB. Very useful. I like brownish and dark browny-red. It will help disguise the explosion in the solder factory which the interior currently resembles. I've partitioned off the guard's compartment. Do you know how the rest of the interior was partitioned? Did each door give access to only one compartment or was it a more open arrangement?