Elmham Market in EM

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James Spooner

James Spooner

Western Thunderer
Today’s post brought a small package from FK3d, a set of curtains for the restaurant car as well as seats and tables for the third class dining car. The latter I will put to one side until the body is ready but the former will enable me to finish the interior of the restaurant car. I have also bought some Slaters figures and have been painting them over the last day or so. This afternoon I extracted the curtains from their 3d base (not without the occasional mishap) and painted them a rather pleasing pale blue (azure according to Vallejo). I have glued in one side and added some passengers. Attached is a photo of progress to date…

Nigel

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paulhb

paulhb

Western Thunderer
James Spooner said:
Today’s post brought a small package from FK3d, a set of curtains for the restaurant car as well as seats and tables for the third class dining car. The latter I will put to one side until the body is ready but the former will enable me to finish the interior of the restaurant car. I have also bought some Slaters figures and have been painting them over the last day or so. This afternoon I extracted the curtains from their 3d base (not without the occasional mishap) and painted them a rather pleasing pale blue (azure according to Vallejo). I have glued in one side and added some passengers. Attached is a photo of progress to date…

Nigel

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Well done, really like how the curtains all hang slightly differently.

Regards Paul
 
James Spooner

James Spooner

Western Thunderer
I think the restaurant car is now a wrap. I ran out of excuses not to finish it with the delivery of the curtains and the purchase of the Slaters people. The rain today has also helped keep me indoors so I blitzed it. Here it is sandwiched between a couple of Gresley corridors running through Elmham Market.

Nigel

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James Spooner

James Spooner

Western Thunderer
With the first class restaurant car finished and unable to progress yet on the third class restaurant until the sides arrive, I have turned back to the Wickham DMU. The primer had set hard and Precision Paints had sent through a tinlet of post 1954 DMU green so I have this morning used my trusty Iwata and given both cars an initial coat of green.

Nigel

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James Spooner

James Spooner

Western Thunderer
Reading on another thread a post by @simond about completing a project and taking a bit of a break before hitting something else; I feel in a similar position. I have finished the restaurant car, the Wickham DMU is at a point where I waft some paint over it then have to leave it to harden for a couple of days and I know I ought to tackle the remaining ground signals, but my ground signal mojo has taken a bit of a break. A quantity of best bitter has been consumed both with friends and whilst watching the rugby whilst I reorientation myself.

I haven’t been entirely idle; three locos have belatedly had their smoke box number and shed plates added and dirtied, the Accurascale buckjumper has had its CVs for rates of acceleration and deceleration amended so it is more controllable, my Riceworks buckjumper has had a lot of time spent on it as it really wasn’t behaving at all.

It was the third etched brass loco I ever made, over thirty years ago and it hadn’t made the transition to Elmham Market or DCC at all well. A couple of days spent getting to the root cause of the issue(s) has transformed it into a ‘really useful engine’. For some reason lost in the history of time I had put a plasticard washer between one set of wheels and the frames. I found that said wheels were fouling points as they were wide to gauge, so managed to get them back to gauge but the plasticard washer then kicked in and I spent time wondering what the problem was until I discovered the long forgotten washer and removed it. The wheels at the other end of the chassis were slightly narrow to gauge so that has been attended to as well. Nothing really very photogenic at all but here is a pic of the two buckjumpers resting in the goods yard at Elmham Market (and rule #1 has to apply as I can’t think of any sensible reason why two J69s would be in the yard at the same time!).

Nigel

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James Spooner

James Spooner

Western Thunderer
I have dug out all of the components for the remaining ground signals (@Herb Garden has texted me to say the controllers for the servo motors will be ready within a week) and I need to summon the mojo to finish them and build the Dingo mounts so they will all be ready for installation.

In the meantime the Wickham DMU has had several coats of green (with lots of sanding and flatting down in between) as well as a coat of grey roof colour. Bachmann sent me all of the special screws and bolts I needed to fix the motor and mount to the DMBS underframe as well as the bogies. All of the wheels have now been regauged to EM (judicious use of pliers, hammer, back to back gauge, vice and a special tool I improvised to help pin point axles retain their point) so I’m making progress on the underpinnings as well.

Nigel

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James Spooner

James Spooner

Western Thunderer
I have been working on the mounts; I’ve cut the three baseplates out and drilled most of the holes for the cranks but I have been troubled by the seeming darkness of the Wickham DMU bodies, which seem at odds with the, admittedly black and white, photos of the units in the period I am trying to model this one. I therefore decided to see how one side looked ‘decorated’.

I started by trying to replicate the shiny steel (I think, or it might have been aluminium) window frames that these units carried at this time. Paul Godwin (the GERS modelling co-ordinator who has already created a Wickham set) used a silver permanent marker pen, which he ran around the inside of the window etches so I attempted the same process. I then touched up my inevitable blemishes with more green.

I then dug out some old Fox DMU transfers and applied them to one side and then added some more colour to the ends (bufferbeam red, lights white with black frames etc). It certainly brought the green to life a lot more but the jury is out on the window frames. When asked, the memsahib commented that they didn’t look sufficiently even. My local EM area group is coming round tomorrow evening and I’m sure I will get an honest response from them. If we conclude the windows do need touching up I’m not quite sure how I will go about it, which is my challenge I guess. Anyway, here are a couple of photos of the ‘dressed’ side, although I haven’t added the crest, numbers, lettering etc yet.

Nigel

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James Spooner

James Spooner

Western Thunderer
Very little modelling done today as I have been preparing Elmham Market for the area group visit. It performed reasonably well although late in the evening a solder joint went so I will need to do a bit more maintenance.

I do manage to get the lettering and numbering finished on the first side of the Wickham DMBS. The feeling of the group seemed to be that the window treatment is OK so I will run with it.

Nigel

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Ian@StEnochs

Ian@StEnochs

Western Thunderer
James Spooner said:
Very little modelling done today as I have been preparing Elmham Market for the area group visit. It performed reasonably well although late in the evening a solder joint went so I will need to do a bit more maintenance.

I do manage to get the lettering and numbering finished on the first side of the Wickham DMBS. The feeling of the group seemed to be that the window treatment is OK so I will run with it.

Nigel

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Yes it looks nicely understated. As I recall the surround was an anodised aluminium which was a quite dull matt finish which your model replicates well.
 
James Spooner

James Spooner

Western Thunderer
I’m in a bit of a fallow modelling period at the moment with family and Ffestiniog matters taking priority. However, in a quiet moment I have managed to add the decals to the other side of the DMBS, which means I can probably give it a coat of varnish tomorrow.

In other news, @Herb Garden has kindly sent me down six completed controllers for the ground signals/mounts so I will set one up on a scrap piece of ply with the ground signal on top and the mount, servo and controller underneath and get my mind around how it all works so I can install them in place.

Nigel

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