Flying Scotsman 4472

Just finished some pallet cement and curtain side cement wagons for a customer. Here are some pictures for you guys.

I finaly got Dunluce Castle finished and as Heir flick pointed out to me the other day I become a bit of a steam nut so here a some pictures hope you enjoy.

( Yes Heir Flick I had to weather her I couldn't resist )

Both locos were weathered what I did notice when taking photos of the real thing and what a lot of painters seem to leave out when weathering is the old orange paint starts to come through the new black paint from wear and tear so I recreated this effect in the weathering process

Once the build work was finished they both received a coat of white primer

The cab ends were painted yellow and then masked off

After market brake wheel was added

Plastic handles and lights were added

Well after Ian from MIR sold of the last of the 071's he kept 2 for his own private collection I was lucky enough to get one of the kits of him for myself and also get the job of building the 2 of them. 072 would go back to Ian and 071 would find a new home with myself so here are some build pictures and some finished pics of the end of an era I got my first 071 class 20 years ago white metal running on an Athearn SD9 chassis and she still going strong the 2 locos I built are running on Proto 2000 SD9 chassis.

Some roof detail for you the white metal air horns that come with the kit were binned for brass ones also the white metal air intakes were binned for ones made from plasticard

Just like the real thing lifting loops were added to the roof

With been that busy building and painting for people my own work has been put on the back burner for a while but I finally got around to building and painting my Hunslet from the group buy from MIR. I built 102 Falcon in the last livery she ran in. I didn't go to town on the weathering as I wanted to portray the model as if the RPSI had rebuilt her and got her running again when she ran in her last livery she didn't carry her name plates (falcon) but I added them back on because I feel if she was running today for the RPSI I think they would have put them back on

I decided to take a leaf out of Georges book and use a white back ground in my pictures I quite like the effect myself

A couple of customers are getting a nice present from Santa

Some other things I've been working on

Hi guys I got some ammonia wagons to build and paint for a customer. He wanted 2 clean and the other 4 weathered the barrier wagon was already painted by the customer and will just be weathered before sending everything back. Hope you enjoy

Finished pictures of Mk3 EGV

A few more pictures on the progress of the mk3 EGV

The windows were cut out of the donor coach and the brass overlays were glued and clamped in place and left for 24 hours before any more work was carried out

The roof was then prepared for the etched brass details

Brass wire and some brass rod were used to make the loops and exhaust

The EGV was then given a coat of grey primer and trial fitted to the bottom of the coach ready for painting the brass hand rails and door handles will be added later

OK guy's some of the lads on here have been asking me how I built my last Mk3 EGV so I have decided to do a step by step picture guide with the one I am building at the minute now I'm not a professional builder so the way I do things might be different from those in the know so any help from the professional builders would be welcome

So here we go I will be using a Lima mk3 dinning coach and the kit is a Model Irish Railways brass sides and roof grills

The first thing we need to strip the coach down to do this we need to remove the roof first gently prise of the coach ends holding the gangways then using a small blade or something pointed and sharp gently prise out the top corner of the coach side. Now if you are just doing a straight forward coach repaint you need to be very careful so as not to scratch or scrap anything but we don't need to worry about that this time as you won't see any of that once the brass sides have been fitted.

Once you have prised out the corner place something flat in there to keep it out. Then repeat the process on the other side

Slide the flat objects gently towards the centre of the coach and as you do lift the roof off from that end. Once you have the roof of you can lift the seats out and this will give you access to the clips that hold th bottom of the coach on once this is done you will be just left with the bare shell of the coach body. You can see in the picture that I have been taking the roof of this one quite a lot from the scratches on the glass the more you do it the better you will get at it.

To make sure the brass sides sticks to the coach body you need to key them with sand paper (this picture is before and after)

To get the curve on the bottom of the over lays I use a pice of plastic tube. Tape it all the way along the bottom of the inside of the overlay then turn it face down a gently roll it forward about 1-2 cm The tape pulls the brass and with gentle pressure using the rolling pin action you will get the bottom to curve make sure your surface is soft and that there is no dirt that will dint or damage the front of the brass

You then need to trim off the window frames and sand the sides of the coach so they are flat after this measure up the brass overlays and mark where you need to cut the windows out the next few pictures will show you how I did this

The next step is to cut the windows out and then glue the sides to the body making sure everything lines up. To stick the overlays to the body I use Evo Stick Contact glue and just before it goes off I place the overlays on to the body this gives you time to make any adjustments then clamp it and leave it over night.

086 with a nice new rake of Mk2's

Some bits and pieces that got hit with the weathering stick