We're Back!!!

Gone But Not Forgotten

Happy 2018!! Wow. Can't believe its been 3 years since I posted anything on here. The project hasn't stopped - in fact if anything its got bigger (or at least the amount of stock to work on has!!) But a couple of house moves have happened in the meantime, which resulted in all of my models being put safely into storage for about a year and a half, whilst we sorted out temporary accommodation whilst building our new house. I still carried on buying the odd piece here and there (much to my other half's amazement and dismay) and soon filled what little space we had with more goodies - oops! Fast forward to now and things are slowly starting to get sorted. All my stock is now back at our new house and I'm incredibly lucky to have a purpose built modelling room/man cave so as to be able to indulge in some more modelling, restart some of the old projects and contemplate some new ones. Hopefully I'll make a better job of updating this site and show what I'm up to - for anybody out there that is interested. The plan is at some point to start building the layouts in the roof space as we have a huge area available - that however, is a little way off at the moment whilst we concentrate on the other house bits - oh yes and the small matter that we are getting married in April too!! Still theres plenty of stuff to be doing in the meantime.

I have another new interest/distraction too - still connected with railway modelling though you'll be glad to hear. A trip earlier this year was organised for me by my other half, to celebrate a certain milestone birthday! Can't believe I'm that old already - where did the time go? We spent it travelling around Germany on the many types of rail trips that could be had. Even managed to get a VIP trip around Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg. What can I say - the German DB railway bug bit - and it bit hard. So for the last few months I have been attempting to collect/assemble a selection of German DBAG (modern day German stock) HO rolling stock with the view to building a sister layout to Cradley Bridge. The aptly named Kradlebrucke Hbf will have its own bespoke blog site and hopefully you'll be able to see that whilst a lot of the techniques will be the same - the models certainly are not. Just need to sell another kidney to fund some of the intended purchases as the German stuff isn't cheap and also seems to be quite difficult to get hold of. Have found a few useful suppliers though and part of the fun for me is in the hunt for that elusive bit of rolling stock that you just must have. So check out whats happening on https://kradlebruckemodelrailway.blogspot.com   

So folks - its been a long time coming but hopefully now I can look forward to many hours tatting (sorry modelling) and be able to share whats going in Cradley Bridge/Kradlebrucke world and who knows, someone out there might find some of it interesting. Thats all for now folks.

On The Workbench Today...

Nuke em'

One thing I wanted to run on Cradley Bridge was an example of the nuclear flask train. One runs past where I live every now and then - but always at weird times of the day and I've yet to get a decent look at it. Luckily Bachmann have produced a model of the FNA nuclear flask wagon and its a pretty good one too. They've issued a number of variants with different styles and running numbers - I had collected 3 in total which I reckon will give a pretty good representation of a typical Nuclear Flask train - couple that with 2 Bachmann Class 37's in DRS livery and the job will be sorted!

Here are the 3 wagons in my collection - 2 have the large oval headed buffers and one has the large round head buffers. Bodywise they are all the same, but the decals/numbers are different on each, which is a real bonus and saves a lot of time renumbering. The first thing I did was to take off the bogies so as to paint them and their wheels.

Whilst these were drying I painted up the wheel sets and added my now standard detailing lift of adding brake disc etches to the outside of each wheel.

I'm using my favourite brand of Colin Craig etches but have gone for a slightly different size than usual as these wheelsets are slightly smaller than normal Bachmann ones (I had the same problem with the Bachmann BDA's and BBA's) and this size of etch fits them perfectly and makes a hell of a difference.

Once these were all done and had sat drying for a while they were then reunited with the bogie frames and were then checked for running quality (sometimes the wheel sets/axles need a bit of fettling to achieve free funning - especially as I check and regauge all my wheels with a BTB gauge). Next up the wagons had their air brake pipes attached (usefully supplied and pre drilled by Bachmann) and I fixed coupling hooks for the scale link couplings that will be used - apart from the wagon that will be last in the rake. This uses the supplied Bachmann imitation screwlink. I did swap the attached tail lamp for one of my more realistic Sprinside jewelled modern tail lamp.

I then started to carefully weather each wagon to represent the careworn appearance that they seem to take on - basing each on on slightly different photographs that I'd found on t'internet. Various light and dark washes were painted on and wiped off to give the tatty but still legible effect you see here. I've since added grease to the buffer surfaces, fitted correct scale couplings and weathered the interior decks of the wagons a bit more. Really pleased with how these have turned out and can't wait to get them behind a couple of sound chipped DRS 37s.

Just after finishing this project I was sorting thru my project draw and found a couple of S Kits resin kits for some earlier FNA's. So I decided to start to build these too and intend to run these in an earlier guise with RNA barrier wagons and Class 31 haulage. They go together very easy - the only thing thats going to be a pain is putting the many transfers on them from the Fox Transfers decal set.

For now this is as far as I've got with them. Once painted they will receive a coat of gloss varnish before being decaled up. I will post an update as to how I get on with them soon.