As Seen In.... Garden Rail

Some of you may remember that back in February 2021 I finished building a 16mm Simplex loco that I painted orange. At the time I didn't give a particularly detailed description of the build. That all changed with the publication of June's issue of Garden Rail (it's actually been avilable since the 10th of May I believe) as that contains four pages of my waffle describing the build process, focusing on all the extra details I designed and added to the basic kit.

By The Devil, It's Big!

If you remember back a few months the initial motivation behind the 16mm scale Hudson Hunslet model came from a request to simply "scale up" the 4mm scale version I'd previously built. Well now I've finished it we can have a look at the two models side by side...

As you can see the 16mm scale version is an absolute monster in comparison! Either that or the 4mm version really is ridiculsouly small. To be fair I think both things are actually true.

If you've not been following along over on YouTube then there is a 25 part playlist documenting the iterative process to go from the 4mm version to the 16mm one which you might find interesting if you want all the gory details. If you just want the highlights then enjoy...

And if you want to build your own 16mm scale model then I'm making the 3D printed parts and the metal cowl available as a scratch aid kit. Full details are in the video and there is a link to a contact form in the video description where you can register your interest in one.

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.