Loco inspection pit

How deep is a locomotive inspection pit ? I dunno, but a quick enquiry on the DOGA e-mail board and after a little chat, received this from Colin:

I toddled down to Hither Green depot and sweet talked the guy in charge. I measured the pit to be 3' 6" deep.bottom to rail head.

So there we have it, in 4mm scale 14mm.

My pit has to be inserted from the bottom of the board so I cut some brick plastic to the right size and then made shorter Daler board walls and floor to cover the bits not in the woodwork.

Steps at the end were scratchbuilt from plasticard. They are a bit rough but hidden in the shed no one will notice. Step making is fiddly but easier here. I cut the sides and stuck them to the pit sides then joined them with strips of thin (0.5mm I think) plasticard and lots of solvent to weld the whole lot together.

And I did remember to check the construction fitted in the hole. It did with only a little extra filing...

Engine shed part 4 - Roof and detailing

How is this roof supposed to fit ?

I appreciate that I've deviated from the kit instructions quite a lot by cladding the interior with brickwork and sometimes this has got in the way of the location aids provided, but I hadn't expected to have to reduce the height of the sloping parts of the back wall by a couple of mm to get the roof sitting flat. In hindsight I think the idea was that the tiles overlap the front and are flush with the edge at the back, but that would just look stupid to me so I hacked away at the wall to fix it. The results look pretty nice to my eye.

To get a nice fit I worked from the top down. The ridge is a nice strong moulding and once it's glued in place, fitting the vents is easy. On their own they aren't awfully strong but once attached to the top, this braces them up nicely. Finally the main tile panels go in and the roof is done.

Lower down, the windows have gained some chad toppings, why this wasn't part of the original moulding I don't know, and a cill appears at the bottom. Around the door the working hinges have been replaced and faux metal straps fitted over the holes. With my a little more thought, I might have decided to leave them alone as a little thinning might have been enough. On the real thing this is pretty chunky metalwork as it needs to be to support those heavy doors.

Finally, the huge moulding marks on the doors have been skimmed with filler and then give an good sanding.

Engine shed part 3 - Windows

In an ideal model railway world, people would produce replacement parts for popular kits. That would mean I'd have been able to buy some nicely moulded replacement windows for the engine shed. Sadly, despite buying several different makes, none of them fit the holes in the side of the building.

Airfix supply some reasonable mouldings which are intended to fit from the inside. There is a flange around the edge to stop them falling out. If you look inside it's horrid but then when this kit was designed, that was the realm of super detail so no one bothered. I am fitting an interior so this at least had to be removed.

Test fitting showed I was going to have to thin the moulding down by nearly 2mm before it fitted in the hole flush with the inside and slightly inset from the outside. A 6 inch course file did most of the work with finishing off on a sanding block fitted with fine paper. This process makes a surprising amount of mess, but it's worth the effort I think.

Engine shed part 2

Some days you have to wonder about old model makers. I mean with the prototype sheds still standing and available to look at, how did the Airfix model makers get the bricks wrong ?

For those who don't understand brickwork, the way the things are laid is called the "bond" - you can read more about it on Wikipedia here. Most railway buildings use what is called "Flemish Bond" where you see a mix of stretchers and headers (the sides and ends of the brick). The Airfix shed uses stretcher bond, a form more commonly seen on modern cavity wall buildings and never as far as know seen on engine sheds.

Worse the bricks are too big. They are probably suitable for S scale but not 4mm. Still, I can't change them now even if I could be bothered. Just goes to show though that not everything was better in the old days.

Anyway, I pondered this problem and decided to ignore it. Inside the shed will be 4mm scale Slaters Flemish bond bricks. &mm ones were considered but are just too big to match the outside. OK so they won't match the outside but I can't be bothered to worry about this and doubt that many people will notice anyway. Except you lot and that's only because I told you.

Engine shed part 1

Very early on in this project I decided that I wanted to use an Airfix engine shed. Not converted to something weird but as an honest to goodness engine shed. Just to show it could be done.

My inspiration came from Martyn Welsh's layout "Hursley" which appeared years ago in issue 40 of Model Railway Journal. This might sound daft, to compare an Airfix building with one of the finest model railways ever made but there is logic to this. You see the preview photos showed the inside of the shed had been fitted out. It also provided nice clear shots to give me an idea of the changes to be wrought on the basic kit to bring it up to scratch.

Anyway, one of the most important things I had to do is line the walls with bricks. Airfix, bless 'em didn't bother with interior detail. Not that they couldn't you understand, they just didn't in those days. So the first think I had to do is build up the inside of the walls with plasticard. 2mm did the deeper bits with some 1mm around the windows. I've not been to careful here as the work will be covered in the next stage. Just hope I don't regret that in the long term.

Municipal Green

I have a theory about colour. It is that should you not know what to paint some model metalwork, use green.

Not any green but that particular shade of green favoured by engineering companies and municipal organisations. Sort of Brunswick green but perhaps a little lighter. Bit like British Racing green too. Did GB just buy a big pot of it in the 1940's a decide to use it all up I wonder ?

In support of this theory I present exhibit A, a peeling iron railing I spotted locally. Under the layers of modern black paint, what do we see ? Municipal Green.

I'm not sure how you'd replicate this paint finish on a model. At a guess I'd suggest you would paint the spear rust colour. Sprinkle some salt on this, paint it green. Add more salt. Then paint it black. Once dry, wash the salt off. If anyone tries this, please let me know !

International Large Model Aircraft Rally - RAF Cosford

A bit of a departure for me this one. It's all my Dad's fault. Once upon a time he was a youth interested in aircraft. Time in the Observer Corps and lots of illicit visits to airports, the sort of thing you'd get arrested for now and nearly did then, followed and explains why his photos are of things with wings and propellers rather than wheels and buffers.

Anyway, we'd both seen photos of larger model aircraft and really fancied seeing the real thing. When I say large I should explain that in this case size really does matter. You need a 6ft span before you don't get laughed out of this club. Get to 20 feet and people really take you seriously.

Cosford is easily reached from Leamington thanks to a stunningly fitted out Wrexham and Shropshire train. When we arrived it was a bit drizzly but even so there were a couple of jets buzzing around visible in the distance. And when I say jets, I don't mean planes that look like jets with windmills stuck on the front. I mean model jets with real jet engines inside them for power. They could shift too and sounded fantastic too. Well, fantastic is your idea of quality sound is a small jet engine on full chat screaming around a few feet up in the air.

Entry was 9 quid, which probably seems pricey to model railway enthusiasts but I doubt hiring an airfield is cheap and you have to do and awful lot of health & safety work to put on this sort of event so paying for the miles of orange fencing has to be covered somehow.

We walked across to the event and were surprised just how bit it was. At the time the jets had been replaced by a couple of bi-planes complete with Cindy doll wing walkers. These waved both their arms and  legs. It was quite funny to see them waving to the crowd as the planes taxied back to the flight line. They made smoke (the planes not the Cindy's) too just like a proper aerobatic team. From the ground ti was difficult to tell these were models.

At a guess there were at least a couple of thousand people visiting, possibly double that. Someone later told me that there were over 200 planes on display too. I can well believe this and it's a whole lot more than the dozen or so we expected. Trade was pretty comprehensive too, at least 40 tents were on hand to provide shelter during the showers and relieve people of their money.

The day improved quickly and the 4 ice creams vans on hand did good business. For me the highlight was the Victor and Vulcan bombers in the air. While appreciating the grace and shape of the Vulcan, the Victor always looked a bit odd. To see one fly though, even if it was a miniature (18ft span) version, was a sight to behold. It looked a dream in the air. Pity that all morning the commentator referred to it as a Valiant. Presumably during lunch someone dragged him to the Cold War Gallery where they have examples of the real thing and explained...

What I don't understand though is what makes anyone wake up in the morning and say, "I fancy building a half sized biplane. I've got an old microlight engine in the shed I could power it with." Nor how after three years building, you can power it up and point the front end skyward. There were two crashes during the day, a Foker triplane was completely lot thanks to a radio problem and  a WW1 British biplane crunched repairabley as it's owner tried to land it in cross winds. These guys aren't afraid to fly though. rarely was there only a single aircraft in the sky, many times you could see half a dozen or more. Most memorably were the air racers with 10 people flying around an oval course at the same time !

The range of prototypes was amazing too. A couple of airlines for example - Comet and 737 (I think), or a weird prototype bomber. Lots of WW1 planes but very few duplicates. Power came from both IC and electric engines. A Flying Fortress had a sound system fitted so the drone sounded like the real thing and covered the silent brushless electric motors ! Several planes did more than just fly with bombs and parachutists emerging from underneath.

This was like a proper old fashioned air show. But one with planes from all ages. If inspired, it was one you could anticipate taking part in next year too. There are quite a few almost ready to fly aircraft for sale. By the time you've kitted one out I doubt you see much change from 500 quid but them when you think of the price of a good model boat or railway layout, or worse a classic car, then the prices look very reasonable. For the scratchbuilder entire forests of wood were on sale and it's pretty obvious that most of the models in the sky owed more to this than and Chinese factory. Another thing spotted was that the age of the modellers building and flying the planes was quite a lot younger than that seen at model railway, boat or engineering exhibitions. Maybe this is the future !

To give you an idea how good this event was, we'd arrived at about half eleven and planned to get a look at the museum during the day. We got half an hour before it closed at 6pm. Next year we'll go earlier and forget about the real planes. They will be there another day.

I took a lot of photos. Some of them are here

Large Model Association website

RAF Cosford