Coaches in Basecoats

Progress on anything is relatively slow at the moment, so it's a case of finding the small jobs that can be done in an hour or two, rather than looking for all day ones. To that end, the recently cut and shut Vale of Rheidol coach set were given their first couple of coats of paint.

Using paints from the Revell 'aqua color' range, all the woodwork inside and out was given an undercoat of Earth Brown (87) with what would be metal parts undercoated in Leather Brown (84). From there the main base colours are added, using the artist's technique of starting with the lighter colours and working into the darker ones. First, frames for the drop windows on the doors were painted Africa Brown (17) followed by the rest of the body gaining an all over coat of Brown (381). The latter is a silk paint, but a colour wash later on dulls this to a more matt finish. Lastly, the frames, footboards, bogies and vac pipes are painted into Tank Grey (78).

As a comparison, here's one of the unweathered four compartments next to the older five compartment coach. Just how much difference a dark wash makes on the silk finish is quite apparent.

Coal Hole

Recently a trip to Chatsworth for the first time in roughly twenty years reacquainted myself with one of the more unusual 'railways' in the UK.

'The Coal Hole' was the starting point for a small narrow gauge track that would have been used to move said coal into the boiler room for the estate's Great Conservatory. A handy board does a much better job at describing the process than I can!

What was probably a coal office of some sort looks extremely modellable, even in this state with the very obvious window blockings.

The tunnel mouth is also interesting: Note how the rails would have run in a channel in the bottom of the hole. I can only assume that the wagon height would have been the same as floor level, allowing the coal to be simply pushed in rather than the slightly more labour intensive act of shovelling. This also means the wagons must have been in a fixed rake, there's no room for passing places either in the tunnel or at this end of the line.

Inside the tunnel it is, naturally, very dark. Interestingly though the tunnel has a never ending gentle curve to the left in the direction of the old boiler room. Whilst probably not much wider than the wagons that ran here, the tunnel is noticeably tall for the 1800s, certainly over 6ft as I could stand upright whilst walking through. Probably a good indication that a horse might have been the motive power rather than people.

Regrettably, the full route is not walkable, a new exit bringing visitors out at the bottom end of the estate's rockery, and given how well disguised all the workings of the boiler room were it's very hard to distinguish just where the line continued from the outside, let alone the location of somewhere to hide seven boilers! Taking a quick look on Google maps and assuming the line continued to curve all the way, I'm assuming the boiler room must have either been under one of the large banks that surround the present maze, or even underneath it itself. The surviving smoke exhaust pipes near the present maze seem to indicate it would be in that area.

Its an interesting prototype though, and with some modification could potentially make an interesting 'out and back' model.

More Coaches

I seem to be in the mood for making up more rolling stock recently, and the recent visit to Railex Taunton gave me the chance to pick up some more of the Dundas Vale of Rheidol coaches for kit-bashing.

One thing I really wanted to play around with this time round though was making a matching brake coach. Luckily the Dundas Models Rheidol brake van is in the same matchboard styling as the standard coaches so this was a simply case of cutting a compartment end off of one set of coach sides with a razor saw and grafting it on to the brake van sides with a good amount of solvent.

Something to note for anyone wanting to attempt this is that the footboards on the brake and coaches are of ever so slightly differing thicknesses. A couple of strips of 20x40thou plastic corrected this, along with some slight gaps left from the cutting process.

And on the reverse. The brake van uses a slightly different method of locating the floor compared to the coaches, so a new locating strip was quickly made from an off cut of 40thou square strip. A spare coach chassis (DM13) was then cut n' shut to the required length and the body assembled around it, also acquiring a couple of compartment bulkheads to divide passenger, luggage and guard spaces.

Using a similar technique two four compartment coaches were constructed like the larger five compartment one seen earlier, again with 20x40thou and 40thou square strip to fill in the gaps. The brake is ever so slightly shorter, but as a set they compliment each other very nicely.

An upshot to all this cutting and shutting is that I now have the spare chassis from the Brake Van kit and a good chunk of coach sides sitting in the 'spares' pile...

Leaving the chassis to one side for the moment, fiddling around with the coach pieces on my desk resulted in this arrangement. Turn the single door on the left hand end into a driving cab and there's an instantaneous freelance narrow gauge autocoach for a steamer/trailer for the railcar. 

A project for another day...

Taunton Railex 2024

By pure chance, a recent trip to Somerset for a wedding lined up nicely with Railex Taunton. I enjoy the one at Buxton, and needing to visit Taunton for other reasons it seemed rude not to go! As always, not a full blow by blow of every layout attending follows, and I'm always thankful for any errors or omissions! (Particularly when it comes to layout owners/builders)

Klien Schmalitz (HO) Tony Dean - A surprise appearance from this micro layout to cover a last minute cancellation.

Lydbrook Dean (00) - A BR freight only line set in the Forest of Dean. Fantastic weathering and scenics on this layout creating avery believable Autumn scene.

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Penmacho (009) Max Brayne - A nicely compact layout as part of the 009 Society SWOONS group.

Snoreweed (009/00) - This layout was getting a lot of attention from the public, especially with the interaction between the 00 and 009 stock.

Ropley (00) - Based on the station on the Mid Hants Railway (Watercress line) A fun little addition was seeing the railways N Class & converted J94 in James and Thomas liveries sans faces!

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Blackmoor (009) - Being so close to Lynton & Barnstaple territory it was probably inevitable that one layout would be based on the much admired narrow gauge railway. A very nice representation of the old station at Blackmoor.

East Lynn Quay (S) Trevor Nunn - Gaining inspiration from the warehouses at Kings Lynn and the harbour branch of the railway that served it resulted in this compact layout. Unseen is the J70 that was providing the motive power, and I do have a soft spot for those engines.

Moor Boxes (N) - I'll hold my hands up, I do find boxfile layouts a little hit or miss, but this display main had them as separate modules all linking up to make one long layout which worked really well. My personal favourite of the bunch though was this Sodor inspired layout.

regular readers will know that every time to attend an exhibition I always try to find at least one layout that I'd be happy to have at home, this time though there were two!

Ewe (00) Rob Gunstone - Clearly taking inspiration from the Wisbech & Upwell Tramway, this micro layout's footprint comes to an impressive 4ftx16inch. Very much built in the style of the late Iain Rice with a loop and two opposing sidings providing a surprising amount of operational potential.

One thing that does need mentioning is Rob's operating/presentation style. All the time I was watching there was a small crowd of spectators around the layout, yet he was engaging every single person in a group conversation whilst keeping near constant movement on the layout. That takes some skill.

Kyle of Lochalsh (2mm finescale) - I really like this. A lot. And again, a lot of it can be put down to presentation. It's a very simple layout, but if you include the fiddle yard facia board...

There's a really nice presentation on the layouts conception from sketch to model! The perspex on the sector plate is also a nice addition, and as noted at Statfold earlier in the year is something that seems to be becoming more common on exhibition layouts.

Most importantly, I had a lot of fun at this exhibition. So much so that I'm genuinely considering a late October holiday to Somerset next year to go again!