Ex-GWR Brake Third (1900 - 1904) built from a plastic Ratio kit, with a few additions of my own. Internal partitions and seating have been fitted with a working tail lamp by drilling a 1mm hole through the lamp bracket on the end of the coach and is illuminated by gluing a red LED inside the coach end. The lighting is powered from a 9 Volt `PP3' battery inside the goods/guards compartments with a switch and `battery charging terminals' hidden under the coach floor between the vacuum reservoir tank and the brake cylinder. The windows of the goods & guards compartments are painted black on the inside and will be less noticeable once weathered, this model is to have several coats of `dirt & grime' as it is to be used in the formation of a Breakdown / Engineers train which were always filthy!.
10ton goods van with damaged `felt covered roof' I was given this model for nothing, the roof was missing and both axles and wheels were destroyed, The body was slightly damaged and the undergear was broken. I got a replacement wheelset from another `rescued' wagon, repaired the undergear with some styrene microstrip and built the roof from three layers of card covered with a piece of fine `Emery Paper' (normally used for abrasive polishing) painted matt black with acrylic paint, Once the roof was dry, I `ripped up' a hole in the new `felt' roof with the tip of a scalpel to make a few cuts and a small screw driver to tease the edges of the `hole' out to the desired size, The excess was cut away with the scalpel and the card that was made visible where the `felt' had been removed then had `boards' scored into it carefully with the scalpel, the whole thing was then given a coat of `dirt & grime' weathering. I will be making the chassis and undergear a bit more `Rusty' when I've got a few more `Muck & Rust' weathering jobs to do..
10ton open private owner wagon. This is another model I was given for nothing which had been damaged by children. I carefully cut out the door with a sharp scalpel and reglued it in its open position. I also removed the broken `Hornby standard' couplings replacing them with my own simple hooked brass rod couplings which allow the buffers to be used properly when propelling stock. This photograph was taken during unloading on the Helensburgh goods siding.
10 ton Cowans Sheldon manually operated `hand crane' in its first Undercoat awaiting repainting & detailing. This model was purchased in poor condition at the 1999 Netley Marsh Steam Fair for 25 pence! It required regluing the two halves of the cranes plastic mouldings and getting the knots out of the fine lifting chain. The two halves of the crane moulding were very different shades of brown plastic and have been repainted with a mixture of light brown and rust red acrylics. The chassis is of solid cast metal construction which gives this particular model plenty of weight, the chassis required repainting as its original chipped gloss black finish looked terrible! I used black and several shades of brown acrylic paint with a little thinned black enamel for oil staining. I will give this model several layers of weathering until it looks as filthy as the cranes I have seen and photographs of engineering equipment in many books.
S.R. 1st & 3rd compartment coach. (Triang R121/223, numbered as s3153s) So far I have added seating, lighting & glazing featuring some windows left partly open, there is still a lot to be done to this coach as it requires some more weight, `anti buffer lock bars' proper metal wheels, some door handles & handrails, pipe & hose detailing and a repaint.
The `anti buffer lock bars' are simply a piece of brass wire fixed between the buffers of bogie stock to stop the buffers of adjoining vehicles from locking behind each other on the tight `out of scale' curves on most model railway layouts (this method is also used successfully on locomotives) with each item of stock having a `hook' on one end only, consisting of a bent piece of brass wire/rod that is simply held by gravity over the loop of the next vehicle.
