Thursday, January 08, 2015

A big 02 diesel in BRM and photos from down under

Thanks to the festive season messing up deliveries, as I write, I haven't actually seen my copy of the February issue of British Railway Modelling magazine.

Sorry to ruin any conspiracy theories, but those of us living away from the office don't get it delivered by horseman carrying the copy on a purple cushion, it comes out with the subscription copies same as everyone else.

This makes the "What I have in BRM" post a little trickier as I can't really remember what I wrote for this particular issue so I'm relying on the post Ben has put up on RMWeb.

The good news is that I can very much remember the main project I built:

7mm 02

Probably the heaviest single loco in my collection - a 7mm scale 02 Diesel.

Built from a Tower Models starter kit, this is a cracking loco. Basically half-a-dozen whacking great castings sitting on top of a chunky chassis made mostly from giant U-section brass. Place this on the track and you might bend your baseboards!

One little problem we encountered was that the Humbrol Acrylic green paint job looks great in real life. On the page however, the very matt finish looked lifeless. Even a shot of sating varnish didn't help so I had at the last minute to gloss varnish the model. Not high-gloss but more sheen than I normally apply to a model. This brought the green alive and all is well.

Those wasp stripes don't look bad either, and this is the end I hand painted. The other end - well you'll have to read the article for that.

Assuming all has gone to plan, my other contribution this month is a selection of layout photos from my Australia trip. With so many good pictures from the British Railway Modellers of Australia convention, it was difficult to know what should make it to the page. I'll post some of the others to the BRM blog in due course. It's great to showcase the antipodean modelling. This is a hobby popular around the world!



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