murphaph

The Bachmann mk2a's were fairly priced and seem to have sold. A few of these up on UK eBay now too at £50 but UK only postage. Might be of interest to anyone with that facility.

The bleakness is magnificent. You can almost feel the blast of the north Atlantic wind.

Thx Robert. I have a feeling the postman is delayed a bit because of the flooding in Western Germany.

Thx guys. There are a few masking errors but weathering will cover them. I can learn to weather on these resprays rather than on a factory finish coach. There's a bit of waviness but it's mostly the coach itself. I hadn't realised how irregular the sides are on these coaches. The roof/side interface is actually far better on a Lima! Anyway the finish is largely thanks to these paints. They cover very well so I didn't need to apply as many coats so there is noticeably less of a step between masked areas. The coats are so thin the outline of the original warning flashes which are tampo printed can still be seen under the white, orange and black coats! So next time I'll actually strip the paint off these. I think I'll do both numbers in both IR and IE.

So this is the Bachmann mk2a FK body after spraying with the Oesling paints mentioned above. I think I'm going to stick with this combination for IR resprays. The paint is very nice to spray with. Just thin to skimmed milk consistency with plain tap water (as recommended by the manufacturer). I added a few drops of Vallejo flow improver but Herr Oesling says you can use the tiniest bit of washing up liquid to do the same. I didn't have tip dry once using this paint, painting at 22 degrees and about 55% rh. Unmodified side: Blanked centre door side:

I love the backscenes. Where are they from? Have you considered putting stone walls/hedges directly along the interface between horizontal and vertical to create the illusion of looking over the wall/hedge into the distance?

Lovely bit of atmosphere in that scene.

Nice weathering too, especially that GSV.

Yeah I have been considering the bogies as a major use case for a resin printer actually. It would be easy to print off several at a time even in a small desktop printer. Almost no work compared to making up brass bogies and fitting with cosmetic sides. There are decent 00 scale designs available on the web for small money (€3 or so) for non-commercial use (mk1, mk2, mk3 all covered). I think these designs could "easily" be widened out to 21mm and printed off (they are for Hornby coaches so the hub part might need modification for say Bachmann or MM coaches). The more I read about 3d printing the more I like what I see.

Lol I also just received this odd badge of honour. I spent yesterday cursing (to put it very mildly) at the car while changing the passenger side drive shaft! I was not reacting well.

Poorly refined Russian diesel bought by CIE? Or was that an old wives' tale? In the buses it certainly smelled, unique. A stroll along Middle Abbey Street or Fleet Street would leave you with mild brain damage back then.

Not surprised the sales have picked up the pace with these pics. Outstanding.

Yeah it's a shame they are so far off. The way I look at it, either you stick with the wrong shades and try to maintain commonality at least within the different types or you respray the whole lot, which is not particularly appealing to me.

I caught the last bit of evening sun to take some quick comparison pics outside. The coach body is painted in Vallejo game air fire red. For comparison this is RAL 2011 from Modellbau Oesling on the right, sprayed over a Vallejo air white on a Bachmann mk2a FK. On the left is a MM Bachmann mk2a SO:

I suppose different strokes for different folks. I like to match anything I paint to the RTR versions of same, where possible. Some folks will prefer as close a match to the original tones, whatever they were lol. I can plonk this body alongside a selection of RTR models in daylight tomorrow if anyone is interested.

I guess it's personal. I prefer rugged boxy American diesels over flat sided European ones generally.

I already tried it and found it a bit too orange compared to anything available RTR (it's much more orange than say the Bachmann MM mk2a's). This one was done with it but without a control in the picture it probably won't help much: I'm currently evaluating a RAL 2011 from Modellbau Oesling. It's drying at the moment.

Thanks a lot for the quick feedback. I can plan accordingly now .

Fantastic. The 4 IR Tippex ones are the ones I ordered. They look the absolute dogs you know whats. I never really liked the A or C classes in real life but the models have drawn me that bit closer to them.

Holy moly that was quick. I will have to be faster on the second batch. Congratulations! John I presume the open wagons are intentionally unnumbered so they can be renumbered using transfers. Why have you decided to number the brake vans? Will you be doing similar to IRM and with each rerun/batch issue a new number or will the number remain the same? If you plan to release renumbered versions every so often I would just order one each time but if you don't plan on doing this I'd order a few in the next batch.

VAT yes because the Canaries are outside the EU VAT area but now a parcel going from GB to the Canaries is also subject to tariffs. In the model railway world these are often 0% but most products do attract tariffs at something other than 0%.

Yeah makes sense George. It really looks like hard CA though. But it's all over the glazing so it would have surely clouded it like you say. If you really can't find a car primer in white then Vallejo do several base colour primers under the Hobby Paint brand.

So I primed that Bachmann coach and then paused again because i really do not want to use rattle cans any more. My environment is just not great for them. I like to work in my basement and it just seems that the rattle cans kick up too much dust in the spray booth. I much prefer the finish from the airbrush anyway. So my problem was I couldn't find a RAL2011 deep orange (which I find a very good match to the Bachmann/MM mk2a's) in a water based acrylic. In a rattle can, enamel or alcohol based acrylic it was available fairly readily but I struggled to find a water based acrylic until I found this small German manufacturer, Modellbau Oesling. I read a few reviews on German model rail forums and they all seemed happy with the products so I ordered a set to do IR coaches. I also ordered RAL 7030 which is a dead ringer for the toilet window grey on the Bachmanns when I hold a RAL colour swatch against it. For good measure I ordered a primer and a matt varnish. The paints come in 30ml glass jars and cost €4.30 each so similar per ml to Vallejo. They were extremely well packed. Every jar was wrapped individually in a sheet of newspaper and three jars were placed in each layer, separated by more newspaper. Probably the best packaged things I've ever received. I placed the order before the final on Sunday and they arrived an hour ago. That's some service. He seems to offer most colours in gloss or matt. If I can I take gloss to give a smother surface for the transfers without an intermediate coat of gloss varnish, then just dull everything down with matt at the end. I will report back on my experience using them. I suspect Herr Oesling could mix up any RAL colour if asked nicely. All the jars seem to have a serial number!

I hope Martin allows the check rail clearances to be set manually to EM tolerances but keeping the 21mm track gauge of P4. It'll be interesting to see how the check rails are handled full stop

I don't know if it's been mentioned already but Martin Wynne has been busy adding direct 3d printing export capabilities to Templot. The talk is of going straight from design to printing the sleepers and chairs to thread and lay directly. This is pretty awesome I think and I will have to reconsider using soldered PCB sleepers in the visible areas of my layout: https://85a.uk/templot/club/index.php?threads/3d-printed-track-from-templot.218/post-1873