David Holman

Lovely stuff. Amazing what can turn up - when I bought my two, they were the last that Northstar had and he only let them them go when I agreed to buy both. For me, the artwork on the etchings is still some of the best I've ever worked with and suspect it was probably an early use of CAD. Hope you enjoy the build as much as I did. Indeed, still find it hard to believe someone would do a kit of such an obscure loco in the first place - but then they are rather splendid!

Can only echo everyone else's comments, Ken. Hope the modelling is proving to be good therapy - the results are certainly doing the rest of us good!

Worsley Works do etches, though not sure this is one of them?

That looks interesting - thanks Ken. The model boat shop in Chatham Dockyard yielded a few goodies on Saturday, including some nicely printed ventilators and a likewise 3D 'lifeboat'. These have been added to the Acla, along with a bit more tidying up of the hull, ready to start painting. This is proving challenging, mainly because the model is actually quite heavy, so needs careful handling. Talking to Gordon, another tip he shared is that he never uses black when painting, so the hull of the Acla is actually a dark grey. Am using Humbrol enamels & it is nice to see more of the model emerging with the addition of some colour.

Louvres are the spawn of Satan and should be banned from existence.

Just goes to show how designs evolve. I have drawings of an earlier Vital Spark, where there is no wheel house, just a big tiller at the stern, comp!early open to the elements. I still wonder why it would be a neat idea to put the funnel in front of the wheelhouse on the Puffers, but someone's eventually seen sense. There again, we only have to look at some of the early petrol and diesel railcars to see that thinking wasn't always logical. How many railcars did Walkers build before they finally decided to put a driving cab at each end, as on Sligo B? What on earth were they thinking when the D82xx and D84xx locos were designed, with what must be terrible views for the driver? My favourite is those Northern Ireland railcars where the driver perched on a kind of cupola on the roof. Visibility must have been terrible going backwards! Great picture, which for me shows there is nothing wrong with a bit of interpretation, so thank you.

Somebody's copied my ship!

Interesting comment on that running strip. Looking at the Vic, there seems to be no need for that lower strip. Will check some more, but could be a bit of filing is required.

Steadily chipping away at fitting the bits and pieces from the kit this week. First job was the mast and derrick. I adapted the castings with brass tube, pins and 10ba bolts so the the derrick can swing from side to side as well as up and down. I then did the same thing to mast, so it can be unplugged from the ship's hull for safety. Probably one of the finest model shipbuilders around is Gordon Gravett, who actually did it for a living and having met up with him at the Uckfield show this weekend, it was great to talk further over the phone later this week and get some advice. On his demo stand at Uckfield were two stunning models of Somerset & Dorset colliers - very much along the same lines as my Puffer hybrid. The detail he has included is amazing & I was keen to find out where he gets some of his bits & pieces. Turns out I have a very good option locally in the Model Shop in Chatham Historic Dockyard, so a visit is planned to see what I can find. I also quizzed him on things like handrails, ropes and rigging. Just as Broithe suggested, elastic thread seems to be the way to go on the latter here. Another aspect was how to do water - both colour and material. I'd been brooding on using some of the Woodlands Scenics resin, but Gordon suggested using 2mm acrylic sheet, carefully cutting out the outline of the hull, so it sits in the water, rather than on it. However, that is for the future. The rear handrails have been made using the white metal castings from the kit, which needed careful drilling out, plus 0.7mm brass wire The last couple of days have seen work on the two sets of steps, which have had to be scratch built, using various bits and pieces from the spares box, plus their associated handrails. A few other items like the anchor [and its davit] and mast head light have been added too. The aim is to get as much detail added as possible before painting, with the rigging added last. It's not a good idea to try painting [especially airbrushing] once the rigging has been attached, as it makes it go hairy.

Quality!

Love the muted colours and the sense of space in the first and last pictures.

Quart into pint pot epitomised!

Work continues on the Acla, though it has taken longer than I thought to get to the kit parts. Indeed, trying to decide when to prime the hull and likewise paint other bits has stirred the grey matter somewhat this week. Then, when I did get the Halford's rattle can out, it showed a fair few flaws that needed sorting. It's not called a 'witness coat' for nothing... There was also the matter of a bit of extra detailing for the wheelhouse. Managed to find a duffle coated figure in my box of little people, so, with a repaint [including a bushy beard], he now stands at the wheel. Clyde Puffers has pretty vestigial controls - a stop/go lever and another to engage reverse seems to be about it. With Acla being more 'sea-going', seemed appropriate to to have something a bit more sophisticated. So, we have a compass binnacle and a connection to the engine room - though both are actually white metal milk churns! No matter, they can barely been seen anyway - its more about just creating an impression. Today, I did actually get around to adding some bits from the kit - some of which I can identify, others, I don't have a Scooby. Steam pipes, ventilators, hooter and capstan are all fairly obvious, as is the funnel of course, but quite what the difference is between a fairlead and a bollard I'm not sure and Samson posts likewise. The instructions for fitting the rudder and steering gear were pretty vague - so I took the easy way out and omitted most of them, I'm afraid. Steering gear on the Acla is much more 'internal' than external! What I can't avoid is all the rigging on the mast and derrick. This is going to require some careful planning, as I'd prefer to make this bits either removable, or capable of folding down for transport.

I've been concentrating on trying to get the balance of the superstructure right on my coaster. For me, the trouble with a Clyde Puffer is it looks unbalanced with its low bow [almost no forecastle] and the wheel house right at the stern, with the funnel in front. Clearly it worked, but not for me. So we have a higher forecastle and the wheelhouse is now in front of the funnel. All done with plastic sheet and strip. I've ended up discarding the stern superstructure, as it would have been too much of a faff to mount the wheel house at the front of it. Instead, made a new one and I think it all looks better for it now. Apart from the forecastle, nothing is fixed down, including the steam winch, which I made up ages ago. Most of the rest of the work should now be using the castings and fittings from the Langley kit, though I'm probably going to need a couple more ventilators, several ladder type steps and quite a lot more handrails. I've been looking at my road atlas of Ireland, in search of a suitable name for the coaster. After discarding various place names, bays and mountains, realised the answer was staring me in the face: "Acla". This is the Gaelic for Achill [island], which is very much central to the little ship's route from Broadhaven [Port Ross?] down to Westport. Hope you approve JB!

Just heard we have lost one our most creative modellers, thinkers and writers, with the news that Iain Rice died on 8th October. There is a short obituary online, but others are sure to follow. For me his books and articles were eagerly looked forward to as he always had something interesting to say and likewise in colourful prose too. One of his last works, his book 'Cameo Layouts', will I'm sure remain a standard text for many years to come. Many thanks for all your ideas, Iain.

Puffer/Coaster Am almost ashamed to admit that I bought this Langley kit of a Clyde Puffer the best part of ten months ago. Others will keep kits for years, but I much prefer to get on with what I have, so it is unusual for me to have an unmade kit this long. However, the time is now right to get it built - so here goes. I doubt that many, if any, Clyde Puffers ever made it to the west coast of Ireland, while I'm afraid I've never found the design particularly attractive. However, in Chatham Dockyard we have VIC96, a post war naval tender very much based on the Puffers and to my eyes, far more attractive, so this is going to form the basis for my model. There is a picture of the VIC in my Northport Quay thread. It is not going to be a slavish copy & this also adds to its allure, because what I'm trying to create is a small coaster, able to ply its trade between Broadhaven, Westport and Galway. The numerous offshore islands give a degree of protection from Atlantic storms, while there are enough small communities that would no doubt have benefitted from a weekly visit from a little ship. So what's to be done? The only model ships I've ever built were Airfix kits in my youth, but am hoping the skills I've built up since then are transferable! The main tasks are to build up a much more substantial forecastle, plus altering the stern area so that the wheelhouse sits in front of the funnel. The Langley kit is based around a large, heavy, resin casting for the hull, so the first job has been to carefully saw off the small extensions on the bow and then build up the new shape with plastic sheet. The photos below show how far I've got today. The main problem is that there are very few straight lines on the kit, so new pieces need to be carefully filed to fit. Note however, that this is just a subframe [60thou sheet]. An outer layer of 20thou will go on top to represent the hull plates, rivets and so on. Have used cyano to attach the plastic to the resin hull, plus additional ribs made from 80x100 strip to reinforce things.

Finally getting back to doing things on the new layout, spurred on a little that it is the Uckfield Show next weekend and it is booked to appear there next year... It's been little bits and pieces mostly - trying to complete key bits of the scenery, prior to building the coaster. So, we have the [non-working] weighted point levers, handrails to the steps going down the quayside and a new set of buffer stops by the tunnel mouth. All very much hand made.. The weights on the point levers are a couple of washers soldered together, while the pivot is a short piece of brass wire and the side frames are plastic sheet, filed to shape. The step hand rails use locomotive handrail knobs and brass wire. Where the handrail rises above the quayside, I've contrived a couple of large wooden block to put the top knob in, because it is right on the baseboard joint. This will hopefully be less likely to be knocked off than a wire post - or indeed to puncture the hand of anyone assembling the layout! The buffer stop meanwhile is recycled from Arigna Town & is very much a locally made affair, as were so many around Ireland. I've also painted out a section of hillside with sky, as it was rater dominating the backscene.

Thoughts and prayers for all those affected.

Great project!

Much depends on the nature of the work. Is it cosmetic (paintwork or body damage), or is it mechanical (motor, gears and so on). Also, what are the models, specifically? Older stuff is probably easier to repair, being essentially simpler. Modern models are wonderful, but can be complex and not so easily fixed.

Have long thought that 0n16.5 is a great way into scratchbuilding and it certainly got me going. Plenty of cheap chassis available for mechanisms (which run better too in the larger scale), while hacking bits of bodywork and adding things like a new cab or taller chimney are easy to do. Such models may be at the freelance end of the scale, but you learn a lot and techniques soon become refined enough to enable having a go at something closer to a particular prototype, or indeed building a loco kit. Most of all, it can be good fun and you end up with a fleet of individual models that do not come out of a box, but still look good and work well as Tullygrainy has shown here.

Hope you didn't do what I did when researching how to paint my nuns. An internet search resulted in some very interesting suggestions of how to dress up for the weekend!

Looks pretty darned good to me! Sound advice too.

A pox on spellcheckers! Foynes also comes up as found, sounds, fitness and corners. Suspect it works by translating Cantonese into Serbo-Croat, via Martian and Klingon...

This may appear elsewhere, but a report in Railway Magazine for September, p102, says the Found a line is to be repaid and rebuilt as part of the Irish Rail development plan for freight.