David Holman

Excellent stuff, many thanks to both of you. Must go back to the Valencia photos. As for a fishy smell, wonder if any of those vaping oils come in that flavour?!?

Professional painter and liner Ian Rathbone shares a great tip in his books on the subject. Wait until the paint has gone half hard (up to 24 hours with enamels), then lightly wet a fine brush with thinners and you can then use it to remove any over painting or blemishes. Fiddly, but works a treat. Pushing the brush against any over painting lifts the paint a little; wipe the brush on a cloth and repeat the process until satisfied. Precision Paints are fine, but beware ordering by post. Delivery cost is eye watering if you only want small amounts.

Back to black The loco has been primed & the top coat added, along with red buffer beams and the numberplates - Blutak for now. It seems to me that Irish locos tended not to wander from shed to shed over their lives, so with Galteemore's F6 being No 42, decided to apply the same number to my earlier version. The idea is that a couple of F6 were tried out on the Belmullet line because of its similarity to the Valencia Harbour route. However, I've never really liked any loco I've built in that first coat of black, it just looks too dense to my eyes. Hopefully, the application of some lining will help, though this brings up the same issues I had with the 101: white/red/white lining appears not readily available. Fox Transfers do straight lines in this combination, but curved corners for some reason are red/white/red! Hopefully a bit of brush and bow pen work will sort it out, thought its not my favourite occupation.

Some very neat modelling here - well done you. The only thing that stands out a little for me is the sides of the rails are shiny. Paint them a nice rust colour and they will blend in really well with the rest of the modelling.

Many thanks JB, I have a few semis/softwood on the roster, including a couple of GSWR ones, but if anyone has photos or plans of ventilated ones, I'd be only too pleased to have a go at building a couple. The idea of a pair of six wheelers with vans in the same livery has a nice feel to it.

Am interested to know how fish traffic was carried on the GS&WR, in particular in the early 1900s. My F6 2-4-2T is nearing completion and I already have two six wheel coaches to go with it, in purple lake livery. Hence thought it might be nice to add a couple of fish vans, ideally fitted ones so there would be no need for a brake van. Any ideas/thoughts welcome, please - including and livery differences compared to non-fitted wagons.

The little F6 is taking shape now, with most fittings added. It's a runner too, as pick ups were fitted this afternoon & wired to the motor. I used my mini lathe to turn up a new dome, as the casting provided is a good scale six inches too thin according to the drawing. Wasn't sure about the chimney either - in original form, the F6 chimney tapered towards the top; later versions are the other way round and photographic evidence suggests they were replaced with the latter before rebuilding with a straight sided smokebox took place. In the end, decided to use the casting provided, but did a bit of gentle fettling to reduce the size of the top flare and make a more pronounced top lip too. Something else that needed trimming was the water filler casting. Photos in the Oakwood Press book on the Valencia Harbour line show the filler was lower before raised coal rails were added. Before fitting the pickups, the chassis was cleaned up and sprayed with etching primer [Halfords rattle can], then used 5 minute epoxy to add small pieces of pcb to the frames to take 0.5mm phosphor bronze wire. Driving wheel pickups are easily hid up in the side tanks, those on the front and rear pony truck are tucked behind the wheels themselves as there is nowhere else to put them. It seems to run really well, though the gears are a little noisy at the moment. However, there's no lubrication yet, so hopefully a bit of gentle running in, along with some grease will quieten things down. Initial testing suggests the F6 should be ok with two six wheel coaches, but if not, there is plenty of room in the side tanks, boiler and firebox for ballast.

Looks like a fair bit of fettling has been going on, not least the loco chimney. Never mind the two foot rule, both models certainly merit much closer study. Lovely work.

More challenges It seems to me that, as the basic parts of a kit come together, so do the chances of it not happening as intended. A couple of degrees out of alignment, a millimetre or so the wrong way and [just as everything should be lining nicely], suddenly problems appear. I remember once getting lucky with a 7mm scale white metal kit of a narrow gauge Baldwin 4-6-0T - nothing lined up, but somehow the sum of the parts was greater than the whole and it looked fine. Not so here though, for having made up the boiler and smokebox units, assembling them on the footplate showed all was not well. The boiler was simple enough to make, especially as I still have the club's set of rolling bars, while the smokebox has a neat inner frame to help you along. However, because I am modelling an F6 in near original condition, this has meant making it 'waisted', rather than straight sided, so this has meant making a new front, complete with oven type doors. The biggest problem here was adding the strapping, hinges, handles & so on, which was really fiddly and I ought to have used my RSU instead of a conventional soldering iron. I tried adding rivets using my GW Models press, but this didn't work out well, so they were sanded off & I'll eventually add them using ones from an Archer's transfer sheet. So far, so good, but in assembling the pieces problems arose. At the firebox end, there is a 3mm gap, which is supposed to be filled by bending out saw toothed sections on the firebox, but it didn't look right to me, so instead I've added a short section from curved brass strip and then filed it to be a nice fit. However, both the drawings and photos show the joint should curve down to the boiler from the firebox top, so I used a piece of 2mm brass wire, plus lots of solder to emulate this. As it stands, some filler will be needed though to get the right shape. At the smokebox end, there is a very noticeable drop down to the boiler, which should be in three shorter steps. Had I been thinking ahead, I could have cut two discs from 18 and 15thou brass sheet, which would have had the bonus of closing the gap at the firebox end. Instead, I used 0.9mm brass wire, bend around the join. Once soldered in place, this was carefully filed to a square profile, then a second ring of 0.7mm wire was added on top and given the same treatment. I then needed to add a new front boiler band from thin brass strip and did the same to the front edge of the firebox. Finally, I used a piece of small section L shaped brass, bent round a piece of one inch pipe to make a piece of beading to hide the join between the firebox and cab front. Still with me? Well done, because the work was indeed as tedious as this must read! One correction I now need to do is to grind off the top steps on the coal bunker, as early on their lives, these engines had no upper coal rails, so the steps weren't needed. However, I have a question for the cognoscenti among you - the water filler sits in the coal space, so would it have been originally as tall as it was later, to stand above coal rails? Speaking of corrections, am pretty sure I'll need to turn a new chimney, while the casting for the dome looks decidedly anorexic - compared to the drawing, it should be a scale six inches more in diameter. Life is complicated they say, that's why it is fun. Allegedly....

Works really well, Ken.

That's your own house in the background then...

Great work and love to see people trying new things and learning new skills. Experimenting is what it is all about, though also worth remembering that sometimes, the old fashioned paint brush is the best tool for small areas like the gangway doors.

After the challenges of the main bodywork, the chassis has proved relatively straightforward. My order from Premier Components arrived on Monday, containing their excellent machined gearbox, but now fitted with a Canon 1833 motor instead of the previous Mashima, which is no longer available. I'd also ordered some more axle bushes/top hat bearings and various bits and pieces recommended by the Alphagraphix kit. I've used Slater's bushes in the past, but the etched holes in the frames require significantly more reaming out to make them fit. The frames follow the usual Alphagraphix practice of being a single fold up etch, which always works well and gives a very square base to add all the other stuff. This includes a clever motor cradle: for 36.75mm gauge you add the top hat bearings the wrong way round, soldering them to the cradle [not the frames], so the whole cradle pivots downwards if required. The cradle also doubles up as the ash pan sides and means the motor and gearbox are neatly hidden between the frames, leaving plenty of room for extra weight in the side tanks and boiler. The motor drives the leading driving wheels. The front and rear pony wheels include a simple springing system [a bit like on the 6 wheel coaches] and there is enough side play available to go through my 6ft radius curves and points. After a bit of gentle reaming of the bearings, all wheels now rotate freely. Being a four coupled loco, there is only a single pair of coupling rods to deal with. The etches need to be paired up for double thickness, but once done and added to the driving wheels, a quick test showed these also run freely. Despite building over 60 locos in various scales and gauges, I'm still really pleased, if not surprised, when this happens first time, but is certainly proof of well designed etchings. Brake gear was [as usual for me], a bit of a faff - I just never seem to have enough hands or fingers! However, it went together well enough and includes representation of the linkage from the vacuum and hand brake controls in the cab. The body work sits well enough on the chassis, as shown in the photos. Very little cleaning up has been done so far, apart from washing off excess flux, which certainly shows the benefits of soldering joints from the inside, wherever possible.

Well done Ken, always great to see folk pushing the boundaries. Does the green track base also involve alchemy?

Good for you, Phil. I have an airbrush and compressor, but have never used them enough to master the technique, not least because of what I can get away with using automotive rattle cans.

Sounds like operation is more your thing than buildings and scenery at the moment. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but as jhb says, realism means observing the prototype and trying to emulate it as closely as you can. About 60 years ago, the then editor of Railway Modeller, Cyril Freezer, wrote about scenery and buildings being much less important to those wanting to run an intensive service. 10 x 10 is a great space to do that in 00.

Clean, sharp and just looks so good.

Fascinating! Many thanks Ken and others. The quality of 3D printing has certainly improved massively in the last couple of years. Will look forward to seeing how these wagons progress.

The wagons look great, Ken. How long does each one take to print? Not sure it would be practical to resin cast sides and ends for open structures like these, so certainly the way to go. However, just for comparison, a set of resin castings for a van take about 30-40 minutes to set, with about another half hour to assemble into a box, so am wondering if I need to consider changing to 3D printing any time soon?

Well, if the bodywork was a bit of a challenge, the cab roof was a decided pain in the fundament. It is a single etching, which needs forming over the outline of the front, side and rear of the cab. Easier said than done - not because there was anything wrong with the etch, rather that no matter how accurate it was, errors in construction easily result in gaps or short comings. In my case, I can only think that the tabs and slots used for the bodywork didn't quite line up because there was a bit of leeway in their fitting - hence the one piece cab front/roof/end didn't sit right and not only was there a gap between it and the firebox top, but side tanks didn't mate up with the etched outline on the cab front. So, what to do..? In my case, I decided to solder a new fillet to the inside of the cab front, then carefully file it to match the profile of the firebox top. I ground off the etched sections which are supposed to line up with the water tanks and similarly ground off the beading on the cab front, around the firebox top. With hindsight, a better idea for the kit would have been to provide this beading as a separate curved etch, so it could be used to cover any small gaps between the two. I will now need to fashion something similar from brass strip. Curving the whole section and then soldering it in place took me the best part of four sessions. However, 'tis now done and hopefully careful application of filler and sanding back will ensure the final coats of paint hide any blemishes. Meanwhile, this morning an interesting parcel finally arrived, in the shape of a 12 inch pizza box. Inside was my order for a new turntable from Kitwood Models. It's been a while since I first asked for it, but what seems to happen is that Kitwood wait for a certain number of orders to accumulate, before embarking on production - in this case a run of sixty or so. The box contains a wealth of laser cut timber parts, along with an electric motor, necessary gears and plunger pick ups, brass wheels, etc. The kit is actually sold for American [or Australian] outline 0n3 scale, but hopefully, with a few cosmetic additions, I can make it look the part for 36.75mm gauge. Indeed, it may just take precedence over the F6 for a while...

Well done for including this often ignored, but essential feature. Fiddly, even in 7mm scale, I was very glad to find the SLNCR often boarded over their rodding runs at stations.

Me three, also in 7mm. The aim is to do it in plastic sheet/strip, with whitemetal fittings. Only need one or two, so not thinking resin casting with it.

Indeed and Patrick's layout shows how well good presentation works on large layouts too; also why pictures need frames.

Not difficult to see why this scale/gauge combination is so attractive.

Last time, I was wittering on about doing the presentation aspects of the layout, but thinking about it, decided it could probably wait, not least because DIY supplies are getting expensive at the moment, particularly wood and board, so prices are going up too. Hence, attention has turned to the F6 kit instead. I'm still waiting for extra components for the chassis, so in a break from my usual practice have started with the loco body. As with other Alphagraphix kits, this one is well thought out, with instructions that indicate whoever wrote them, actually built the kit as well - not always the case in my experience with other manufacturers! However, the curved footplate, cab, bunker and tanks mean this is not an easy kit to make, especially compared to the J26. The footplate is very fragile until the tanks, bunker and [especially] the cab splashers are soldered in place, so there was a fair bit of muttering and grumbling while it was all coming together - not unlike Galteemore's experience on his model I suspect. Fingers crossed, it is all sitting nice and square, but such things can still come back to bite you as other parts are added. Must admit the firebox is a curious affair, with the front end etched as though it had been cut with pinking shears. The triangular bits are bent inwards and filled with solder, before filing flat, so until the boiler is made up, I've no idea how this works out. Equally, Roger's stuff has always worked out before, so watch this space...