A wet Saturday afternoon on the work bench

When I started railway modelling back when Adam was a lad if you wanted decent looking rolling stock you had to either scratch build it or use kits.
The only RTR stuff available was either Tri Ang or Hornby which in those days were intended to be sold more as toys for boys rather than railway models.

Since then RTR stuff has come on leaps and bounds each year the accuracy and standard of detail improves.

Take this Bachmann ex Southern Railway Van, The chassis is superb. Long gone are the big moulded details like brake levers and brake gear. Even the vacuum cylinder has levers and rodding fitted. The vacuum pipes and body detail is also much better now than it was only a couple of years ago.

Anyway, I picked up this van on my last visit to my local model shop. With Pen Y  Bont and my new layout(s) you can never have too many vans.

It was cats and dogs on Saturday afternoon so instead of layout building out in the shed I decided to do a quick make over on this latest item of stock.

My first job was to remove the tension lock couplings and replace them with Smiths instanters.
Removing the couplings is easy, just two screws and they are off, with no mouldings left behind to carve away.
A few seconds work with my circular saw attachment in my mini drill cut a slot in each of the buffer beams to accept the shanks of the coupling hooks which were then glued in with two part epoxy.


To make it look a bit more different to a standard RTR van I painted the roof in Railmatch "Dirty Black."
The body sides have been given a wash of Humbrol matt black and thinners. A little dry brushing of Humbrol light earth colour and light grey on the under frames and lower body side tones the "plastic" look down a bit. A dab of dark grey on the vacuum bags to tone them down and job done ...For now anyway.
I'm still not 100% happy with it, it needs something else, like chalk markings or posters to bring it to life.
That will come later and be another post here some time.
Still, not bad for a couple of hours work on a wet afternoon.

Cheers for now!
Frank

A case of mistaken Identity!

I've had my May 2012 edition of Model Rail a few days now but only got around to reading it in any detail last night.
I just happened to notice a familiar picture at the bottom of page 112 .
Caption
TRANSPORT EXTRAVAGANZA
"Taking place at the Manchester Museum of Transport on May 19/20, the show features 20 quality layouts including Frank Collins' Cambrian inspired layout  Pen Y Bont."

Now this came as a complete surprise to me as, as far as I was aware my layout had not been invited!
Maybe I had been invited but had forgotten about it, No, checked the diary and emails Nothing!
it was then I decided to ring the show manager who's mobile number was published along side the article.
I spoke to Peter Crichton a thoroughly nice bloke.
Peter explained that MR had made a boo boo!
Yes there is a layout called Pen Y Bont attending this show but It's not mine! It's a 4mm scale 009 (?) narrow gauge layout and MR just thought it was mine as it had been in their magazine (Issue 150 if you want to know)
Anyway I had a long chat to Peter and he's interested in having my version of Pen Y Bont there next year or 2014.

Pen Y Bont also features on page 127 of the same issue of MR as part of an advertisement for Modellers Mecca my local model shop.
Not my choice of picture mind, but that of Lucy the shop proprietor.

No connection with that business other than a very satisfied customer. Well worth a visit if you are in the Midlands at any time.





That's it for this entry
More jottings soon!
Cheers
Frank