Ivor's Buffer Beams: So Many Options

Having, put a base coat of green on Ivor I started looking thinking about painting the buffer beams. A quick glance at my standard reference work for this project, my childhood story book, and it quickly became clear that I had some decisions to make. The problem is that Ivor's buffer beams aren't coloured consistently throughout the book. From a thorough flick through it looks as if there are two options for the front and two for the rear.

If we look across those three photos then you can see that.... for the rear buffer beam it's either red (as you might expect) or painted green the same as the body. For the front, you can see that while the front and sides are always red, the top surface is sometimes left green. Looking more closely I think the more common options, across the whole book, are for the front to be all red but the rear left green so that's what I've gone with.

Of course it's also the easiest option as it meant I didn't have to try and get a perfectly horizontal masking line on the rear of the loco as there is no line in the etch between the back of the coal bunker and the buffer beam.

Designing Wagons and Vans

A bit more of a catch up on the "I've finsihed..." videos this time looking at rolling stock rather than locomotives with a flat wagon and a gunpowder van both of which I designed:

Model #8

I've ended up quite a few weeks behind with corss posting the YouTube videos to the blog -- still no idea how many of the people who read this blog have subscribed to the channel so apologies if you've all seen this already, but with model number 8 we get to the most recent locomotive model I've built...

Back to the Top Left Hand Corner

With a little bit of sunshine appearing this afternoon I grabbed a few moments with the airbrush and.....

Yes, Ivor is now green. It seems like an age since I last did anything with this model so it's nice to see the base coat on, especially as I'm happy with the colour now I can see it on the model. Phew!

I think the next step will be to mask up and paint the buffer beams and then maybe some of the detail paint work (like the rims around the windows). I'm in two minds about the exact ordering, as at some point I'm going to need to add some gloss varnish to some sections so that I can do the transfers and the lining, but I think that will be probably the last step before the final varnish coat and a light weathering..... unless anyone has a better suggestion for the order to do things?

Lots More Metal Forming

I don't know how many people read this blog without also subscribing to my YouTube channel, but if you've not seen them yet here are the most recent videos in the saga of metal forming.

Model #7

For some reason I forogt to post on Monday when I uploaded a new video looking at another model I've built. Anyway, here we are with another 16mm scale model which includes lots of additional detailing parts that I designed and 3D printed.