"Voiding the Warranty" - Mol's experiments in 21mm gauge

[Colonel]

Amen to the above. A chimney or dome slightly out of alignment potentially spoils the whole model. Epoxy gives a nice amount of time to ensure all is in place, while still offering decent strength.

[Mol_PMB]

It’s always a treat to get a new sheet of transfers from Precision Decals. This will keep me busy for a while! Some will be used on the Park Royals when they arrive. 
There are a few 7mm scale transfers in there too, but not for me.

[Mol_PMB]

Being very busy recently but needing some relaxation I wanted a few simple projects rather than grappling with models that had to work. 
So I raided my small stash of road vehicles and containers for a bit of kitbashing and repainting. 
These aren’t quite finished yet but the new transfers have brought them to life. 

[Mol_PMB]

A bit more progress on the container and lorry fleet. Some of these should add a bit of colour to a grey goods train. 

The road vehicles can carry other loads too, of course. 
None of these are perfect replicas of the real ones but I think they look the part. Each is based on a prototype photo. A bit of weathering is still required, plus maybe some labels. 

[Horsetan]

On 3/6/2026 at 4:12 PM, Mol_PMB said:

It’s always a treat to get a new sheet of transfers from Precision Decals. This will keep me busy for a while! Some will be used on the Park Royals when they arrive. 
There are a few 7mm scale transfers in there too, but not for me.

Did you have to supply your own artwork for this?

[Mol_PMB]

48 minutes ago, Horsetan said:

Did you have to supply your own artwork for this?

Yes, I created it on CorelDraw and supplied it to Precision Decals in pdf form.

Many of the items are printed in multiple layers, and the artwork needs to be multi-layer to suit. There's a learning curve to creating the artwork and setting up the order of the layers.

One half of my page used the following layers:

• White (where white is needed, plus to mask underlying paint colour for other ink colours)
• CMYK (multicolour for yellow, green, red and black bits)
• Opaque White (a second layer of white where to make the white areas more opaque)
• ER Pumpkin (a dedicated individual colour used on the steam loco numbers, over a white base)

The other half of the page was mostly for the Eau-de-Nil items where the recipe is:

• White (mask)
• ER Camel ('goldish' edging)
• ER Lime (individual green colour)
• ER Pastel White (2 layers of this to lighten the shade of the ER Lime to match EdN)

The whole A4 size page cost about £80 including postage, but there's a lot there and it's exactly what I want, minimising wastage. Per transfer the cost is fairly competitive, and of course many of these things aren't available elsewhere. Delivery time was about 2 days from placing the order.

 

Edit: the 7mm scale items on the sheet were for @Galteemore and I sent them on yesterday, so hopefully we'll see some of those on his models in due course.

Some of the vehicle numbers and class designations, plus the red dimension plates for the carriage ends and the yellow smoking labels, will adorn Park Royals where necessary. I also plan to use the black and white bands to backdate the BnT livery on one of them to the early BnT. Not sure how well that will work over an uneven surface - we'll see.

Edited Friday at 11:36 by Mol_PMB
last 2 notes.

[Mol_PMB]

I had planned that the first Park Royal I would attack would be a green one, but IRM have delivered all the BnT ones first, so I have tackled the early BnT livery variant first. Applied from September 1961 for a few months, the early BnT livery had a shallower orange band with the numbers on a black background above it. Class designations were also in use at this time. I have dealt with those changes using custom transfers. Also I did a transfer for the red-painted dimension plate on the ends.

Inside, I re-upholstered the seats in dark red (correct for the era) and added taller seat backs to the longitudinal seats in the vestibules. These make a difference to the external appearance too. And I've populated the seats with some passengers - one side look like they're off for a day at the seaside while the other side is mostly bored commuters.

Additionally I have regauged the bogies to 21mm gauge, and fitted Kadee couplers.

In due course I will apply some light weathering, but I want this one to look almost fresh out of works among the grubby silver and green stock:

[Mol_PMB]

On the IRM photos of these models I'd been thinking that something didn't look quite right, and it took me a while to realise that you could see right through the vestibule area. IRM have modelled the longitudinal seats in the vestibule, but have fitted shorter seat backs (compared to those in the saloon) so they don't block the windows. But they should block the windows! Photo from Ernie here, when new:

And from Neil Smith, in the late 1980s:

It's odd that IRM have gone to the effort of fitting some absolutely beautiful luggage racks above the windows in a position where they are almost impossible to see from any angle, and yet have omitted the vestibule seat backs. 

Fortunately it's easy to shape and paint some bits of plasticard to resolve the issue. I stuck them inside the bodyshell to ensure the positioning was correct relative to the window openings - make sure they don't foul the top of the moulded seats. This is a cruel close-up but shows my first attempt:

Here's a comparison of a modified coach and an unmodified one:

 

One thing I have not addressed on this model is the roof detailing. I might correct that on one of the green ones where I will need to repaint the roof.

I have also not yet tried to remove any of the glazing, and looking at the quantity and placing of the glue I think this will be impossible without breakage. It will require some tedious masking for the coach I plan to repaint entirely.