David Holman

Colour is such an emotive thing and so much depends on ambient lighting, to say nothing about the effects of dirt, fading and so on. The variations display really are significant though!

Thanks folks. The shiny metal is now covered with primer and (fingers crossed), now awaits a black top coat. If anyone can tell me the Barclays were given the Swilly dark green in the 1940s, then I have a can of Ford laurel green to go over the black, which should work. Otherwise, I'm going to need to do a bit of lining. Been fine tuning the chassis this afternoon to get everything running sweetly before reuniting it with the body.

Yep, that's a wow from me too.

Have been adding various bits and pieces this week - a case of studying as many photos as you can, because a lot of stuff doesn't make it into a line drawing, let alone a Worsley etch! In no particular order I have: tidied up the smokebox saddle, filling in gaps with thin brass sheet and solder added the four cab handrails, cursing myself for cutting off the thin strip of brass in the space. Had I just cut it in the centre, it would have been perfect for a simple fold back around the top of each handrail instead fiddling around with tiny bits of brass strip handrails along the tank tops fitted bunker extension pieces: on three of the class, it was the usual coal rails, but No4 had them plated over, so this is what I've done added vacuum pipes, from the spares box tank filler caps, made by adding a thin oval of nickel silver to a thick oval of brass smokebox lamp iron, simply made from a piece of bent brass strip cab beading, from phosphor bronze strip cab spectacle plates - thankfully in the etches, because they would be a swine to make otherwise a white metal brake cylinder, from the spares box various pipe runs along the boiler from cab to smokebox various operating rods, mostly I'm guessing for the sanding gear The cab interior still needs to be done, but have put in an order to Laurie Griffin Miniatures for a suitable set of castings, plus a sset of loco jacks for the footplate and something to represent the curious spherical valve [taps? sticking out of the front of the sand boxes. I'm also pondering on couplings, having come across the Zamzoodles, which are working chopper couplings and would really look the part. However, the curse of the turntable makes them problematic for shunting mixed and goods trains because, like Dinghams and others having two hooks together is not recommended, so I may yet be sticking with Kaydees. So, while waiting for my orders to arrive, have started on the Great Clean Up, prior to the first 'witness coat' of primer & then however many further sessions of filing, scraping and sanding in order to get a decent paint finish. The various implements of torture are shown below: The set of 'whiffers' [variously shaped needle files] are always useful, as is the dreaded glass fibre brush meaning I can look forward to the usual nasty little splinters in my fingers for the next few days. As already mentioned, the loco is going to be No4 and a correct set of Barclay builders plates have been ordered from the Light Railway Stores for well under a tenner [including postage], which is great value. I'd been looking forward to creating that rather splendid Swilly [very] dark green, but Patterson's book says the Barclays were black with yellow lining for No4, though if anyone knows different, please let me know. The remaining pictures show the loco ready for that first witness coat, so it will soon be goodbye to all that shiny brass and nickel silver.

Oh my. Well done Ken. This is where the 3D thing can be so effective, because you have already done all the hard work. Respect!

Alternatively get the Alphagraphix card kit of the Sligo brake van, for about four quid, in 7mm scale. They also do various other wagons for the same price.

So reassuring when things work as they should. Never heard of that gearbox tab before, yet so simple. Am inclined find a way of adding it to future builds. A couple of bits of brass, soldered to the outside of the gear box, engaging on a bit of brass wire fitted between the frames might do it.

Will such a thing work in making your own transfers? I wil be needing some L&LSR logos.

Amen to the above! Rule number one - never, EVER, start with a loco kit. A wagon much better and you could do a lot worse than JM's products. The golden rule of soldering is undoubtedly 'cleanliness comes before godliness' - hence Galteemore's suggestion of the glass fibre pencil. A necessary evil as you will forever be getting bits in your fingers. Flux is essential too - I use Fry's Powerflux paste because it stays where you want it, though it does leave a residue to clean up afterwards and other brands are certainly available! While I use 240 degree multicore solder for electrical work, my go to for kit making is 145 solder, which is ideal because if you want to solder several pieces close together, it can be useful to use different temperatures - I've got 80 and 188 as well for that very reason. However, no need to get ahead of yourself. Practice on bits and pieces first. Soldering can be seen as a bit of a black art, but it just requires care and the right tools. Another one is the iron itself - you will not be able to solder large or thick pieces of brass together with a 15 watt iron. I use mine for layout wiring, but have a 50 watt one for loco and kit building - though I work in 7mm scale, where my 100watt iron also comes in useful. Another tip - try not to pick up the iron by the hot end. Seems obvious, but we've all done it - and it really hurts!

Always sad to see institutions like this go, especially as it is because of the B word. There are still a few big guns around, if the adverts in Railway Modeller are to be believed, not least Kernow, who have been expanding of late. Something that is also very noticeable is the rise of the "We buy your model railway" concerns, which shows how the second hand trade is booming and there are a few folk happy to buy up stuff to sell on. Mind you, when you look at the cost of brand new, that is hardly surprising. As a builder, rather than a buyer of rtr, the loss of folk selling components is just as worrying. Maplin was the easy go to for electrical bits and pieces, while the gap left by Eileen's still hasn't been filled. As for getting hold of fine metal strip, it is becoming almost impossible without going on line. Such is progress...

Lovely stuff Ken and done with your usual panache for detail and neatness.

Slow, but steady progress this week, adding most of the remaining Worsley etches [cab steps and sand boxes], then making the major boiler fittings. I also had to cut a section out of the boiler, so it would slot over the motor-gearbox. Dome, safety valves and smokebox door, all came [to greater or lesser degrees] from the spares box. As a kit builder for many years, it is amazing how many bits you accumulate, though I've no longer any idea which kits they came from! The smoke box door seems about right for two of the four Barclays - the other two had a thicker version with the brackets much closer together, but beggars can't be choosers and I found a suitable 'dart' too. A point to remember here is that one of the handles should always be pointing at six o'clock. The dome is a white metal casting that was the right diameter, but just needed shortening a little, while for the safety valves another casting had the valves cut off and replaced by two brass castings. A curious thing about both items is that, by the 1940s, they were no longer is the positions indicated on the drawing - both having moved forwards along the boiler. Annoyingly, this meant moving the boiler bands to accommodate them. Not sure if they are in the exact position, as I don't have side on view of the loco, but three quarter views enable you to line them up with the driving wheels, so this is what I have done. No luck in sourcing a chimney, so out came my micro lathe and some round brass bar. My first attempt turned out to be too slim, though it may well be adaptable for one of the Swilly 4-6-2Ts I want to build. Came close to making a bit of a Horlicks on the second attempt too, but managed to rescue it via the application of some car body filler and then using various files in the lathe to get the shape right. After, a lot of work with a half round file to get it to sit nicely on the smokebox. As per my usual practice, all these fittings are fixed with 5 minute epoxy, which is ideal in terms of getting the positions right.

GER J15s are pretty engines, but to my eyes seem a long way from an Irish one. For one thing the dome on the former is well forward, quite close to the chimney, whereas it is well back on a 101. Very different tender outline too, while the loco body shape is likewise very different. However, far be it from me to spoil anyone's fun, it's your railway, to do with as you please and a J15 is a very nice model. Nevertheless, an alternative thought might simply to assume one or more somehow found their way to Ireland, after all, several went to France in the Great War and in their long lives they proved themselves to be very useful, go anywhere engines. Feel sure there must be a space in the CIE numbers list for a couple. Meanwhile, such a scenario might also beg the question of what else could have made its way over the water? Ideally, any steam loco with a high footplate and no splashers, probably. Stainer 8F, or any of the Standards? Exits, stage left, pursued by a bear...

Nice, very nice! Just as well you are not modelling 5'3 though, as a fair bit more surgery would be needed. From what I remember, even the full sized version had issues with wheels and splashers because of the broad gauge.

Know little to nothing about these wagons, but that weathering looks very good indeed.

Yep, the colours look really good.

Splendid and as you say, fiendishly difficult. A coach is a box (albeit with many add ons), a steam loco is a box with a boiler (ok, sweeping generalisations for both), but a railbus is another level in terms of all the complex curves and glazing. Road vehicles likewise, which is why we don't see many scratchbuilds of such things. Seriously multimedia and great to see a whole host of techniques brought together. Very neat on the trailer too and will have to look into the idea of a capacitor for my 2b. Shame they never ran the two back to back, Colonel Stephens style - it would solve the problem of turntables!

Many thanks, Brack. A couple of folk have sent me pictures looking down on the tanks, which confirm what you say. Also a reminder to me to adjust the front of the tanks! Thanks also to you Ken, for your kind words. Just wish my soldering was a neat as yours! Worsley etches haven't been too bad for me, the Barclay set cost me £50 and the combined tank and cab sides saved a lot of awkward cutting out. For me the biggest problem is always trying to identify the parts. Don't expect instructions, but it would be nice to know what each etch is meant to be, because (to me anyway), they are not always obvious.

A [very] long time since I had a train set for Christmas and these days, my wife knows only too well that my model making tastes are decidedly niche. However, there is still stuff I can put in a request for and two things came up this year. First was a proper bench vice, the sort that needs bolting to the bench, instead of a basic clamp. And very nice it is too and is already being put to good use. The other item is a kit - one of those laser cut plywood jobbies that you can buy in garden centres this side of the water. It's a pendulum clock [or will be, hopefully], one of a growing range of models that require no glue or anything else in the way of tools, but plenty of patience and careful reading of the instructions. Love watching the Repair Shop on TV, so am copying horologist Steven Fletcher's method of keeping all the various parts and sub-assemblies in separate containers. Having always wondered how mechanical clocks actually work, hopefully I'm going to learn a bit more about them.

We were away for Christmas, which seriously limited my modelling time, but since then have been getting back into the swing of things with the Barclay tank. First job was to finish off the chassis and as if it wasn't crowded enough down there, have now added front and rear guard irons, front and rear sanding pipes, plus an extra bit of brake rodding under the cab, ostensibly connecting to the brake cylinder, though as the latter can't be seen, it ain't being modelled! Another job was to sort out the bogie wheels. These are 4mm scale and have 12 spokes, but on the Barclay tank, there should only be 6 spokes, so a bit of fettling with a fine pointed craft knife and some needle files soon reduced the spokes to the correct number. The centre boss looks a bit chunkier on the actual loco, so have beefed mine up with some 10BA washers. So, after reassembling chassis and body, to check a few things against the drawings, it was now time to look at the bodywork. A few bits needed resoldering, but the next step was to add the tank tops. The Worsley etches contain a curious piece, somehow intended to make the entire tank tops into a single box, which [thanks to info gratefully received from the Questions thread], clearly isn't the case, as the two tanks are separate, with the boiler barrel in between. However, the etching does contain holes for handrail knobs and tank fillers, so I cut these areas away and soldered them flush with the top of the sides. Time to roll the boiler next, so after cutting a suitably sized rectangle from some 15thou nickel silver sheet, used my GW Models rolling bars to make a tube. More involved was cutting a couple of discs from 18thou NS, to fit inside the tube at each end. While I was at it, I drilled a hole in the centre of one of the discs & opened it out to take a 10ba bolt. I then carefully measured for another hole in the cab front, for the bolt to go through, thereby ensuring the boiler will sit level and central. None of these parts are in the Worsley etches, but a smokebox saddle is there, so this was folded up & soldered in place. Afterwards, I cut a rectangle of 10thou brass & rolled this into a tube to go over the boiler to represent the smokebox and then added a further disc to which the smokebox door can eventually be fitted. With the bolt at the cab end and the saddle at the front, the boiler/smokebox unit could then be sat in place to check all was square and level. I'd originally though that one of the Worsley etchings was for the smokebox, though an oval hole points to the fact that it is for the firebox, with another etch as the wrapper. So a couple of bits soon added to the cab & then, following some fiddly being to shape, the bunker rear was soldered in place as well. So, there we are - things are starting to take shape, but [apart from some fold up sandboxes and the cab roof], there is not much left of the etches, so pretty much everything else needs to be made from scratch - more than enough to keep me amused[!] for a while...

Oh dear, I seem to be dribbling. Am guessing you have it for 32mm gauge at the moment? Presumably wider frame spacers would work for 36.75? What the above shows is just how much thought and planning has to go into a project like this. All power to you, Ken!

Now that is very neat indeed - both in terms of concept AND execution.

Speaking of isolated, narrow gauge railways, what about the one near Clifden that was built to serve the Marconi wireless station? Seem to remember it was 2' gauge and mainly built to carry peat as fuel. A Dick, Kerr 0-4-0T steam loco was used, though perhaps more famous was the Lancia railcar on which Alcock and Brown were taken after crash landing nearby at the end of the first ever transatlantic flight in 1919. Apparently, the line had no passing loops, but there was a turntable at each end, in best Irish practice. Might make an interesting project - would be tempted to use 7mmNG, with Peco 16.5 track. Hornby 'Smokey Joe' engines are cheap as chips and easy to convert to the larger scale by adding a taller chimney and cab. Wagons and coaches [very much freelance] could be simple to bash from 00 doners, while something like the Lancia railcar is likewise possible with [say] a Corgi classic doner body. I once made a 'rail lorry' in this scale from the Lipton's Tea Van. However, for a Father Ted timescale, maybe a Bord Na Mona type diesel might be more appropriate, with a Landrover as the railcar? The great thing about freelance projects like this is nobody can say you are wrong!

At least it rhymes! One definition of sophistication is, when listening to the William Tell Overture, you actually think of the Lone Ranger. I know my place...

Fairly sure the Queens only ran on the Dublin to Cork mainline. Assuming the megafunds, several million euros, were not a problem, then it would all depend on track and bridge capacity, in terms of axle weight, then things like platform clearances and also where turntables of suitable length are available. If any. However, if enough money available to get the Queen up and running again, it may not be too big a step to ensure there are turntables at Cork and Dublin. That or triangles...