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AUGUST 2022 UPDATE
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JONNY DUFFETT
On the right is another post war airfield vehicle, an Austin K6 conversion of the Airfix chassis
with the addition of a standard RAF container body and aerial array for an ARAA (Aerodrome Radio
Approach Aid - the poor man's GCA). Painted yellow for increased visibility and positioned close
to the start of a runway. It enabled aircraft to be talked down during low cloud. The
container body is another resin casting with extra bits made from wire and the parabolic
dish is from the bottom of a beer can.
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STEVE CARTER
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KIER HARDY
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GREG BROOKES
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HYWEL THOMAS
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PAUL JAMES
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Utilising the Airfix AEC Matador kit, this conversion represents one of the London Transport
recovery vehicles which lasted in service into the 1970s. An Oxford Diecast jib from the
AEC Matador recovery truck has been fitted, and at this stage there's still some glazing
and finishing off work required.
This is another Airfix Matador conversion with a box body trailer. The box container was cast
in resin from a plastic card master. The model represents a post-war airfield GCA (Ground
Controlled Approach), set up to help aircraft land in poor weather conditions.
This is a Ford AA van converted from Plastic Soldier Company GAZ truck kit. The Ford AA trucks were
built in the late 1920s and early 1930s in the USA and licence built in the UK and elsewhere, and were
the basis of the Soviet GAZ AA variants. Incidently the vehicle used as Corporal Jones's van in
the 1971 Dads Army film (but not the TV series) was a Ford AA. My conversion is a homage to that.
Corporal Jones's van is seen in the company of an unaltered kit and a Ford G8T, many of
which were provided to the British Armed Forces under Lend Lease. Old pre-war and WD surplus
vehicles kept going post WW2 with many giving service into the 1970s and beyond. Pictured
bottom left after glazing and wing mirrors fitted.
A shortage of decent timber has meant a temporary lull in baseboard matters so a raid on
the stashed kit supply yielded a victim in the form of a Mercian Models DL4 kit. This
depicts the ten Hudswell Clarke 0-6-0 diesel mechanical shunters D2500-2509 which were
supplied to BR for use in Birkenhead Docks (this being no stranger to the site as Pete
Johnson has previously outlined building such locos for Canada Street). Unfortunately
the kit can best be described as an aid to scratch building so to get to this point has
required a lot more effort than was first thought and has necessitated replacing /
upgrading a lot of the etched components (presently the structures have not yet been
soldered into position to allow for easier working of surrounding components).
The front end houses an upgraded jackshaft gearing box and new buffers fabricated from an
old set modified with oval buffers and wooden packing blocks as used on the prototypes to
extend their reach . Also just in shot is an infill piece on the radiator grill (this being
the only original etch part used on the engine room bonnet assembly), added to rectify an error.
As supplied, both front and rear etches for the cab were very 'flat' with no discernable
details so an effort has been made to include such things as bolt detail and frames for the
front and rear windows. Both buffer beam etches were similarly enhanced to represent them
more accurately with the front one being thickened to 1mm and the rear set to approx 0.6mm.
A similar exercise has been carried out on the cab sides with new doors and window frames
fitted along with adding a missing hole for the horizontal hand rail. This side does not
yet have the sliding frame section of the window shown as it is intended to depict this in
an open condition so will need to be added after glazing the cab.
Seen here are a quantity of mainly scratch built items awaiting fitting:
A) Service fuel tank breather - not provided.
B) Modified Alan Gibson 4M766 LMS Patriot chimney in place of provided white metal casting.
C) Air tanks to replace incorrect sized white metal versions.
D) Small access running plate port (fitted later to left hand only) - not provided.
E) Radiator filler cap- not provided.
F) Running plate tool boxes (lower sections).
G) Running plate tool boxes (upper sections) to replace incorrect versions.
H) Engine room bonnet access doors as originals on one piece side / roof etched component wrongly sized,
J) Cranked footsteps (as fitted to locos later in life) - not provided.
K) Main fuel tank access cover - not provided.
L) Warning horn to replace provided white metal version.
A chunk of real estate became available after relocating the wheel cleaning and servicing area
to the other side of the room. With the space available for stabling short trains and DMUs,
the geometry was drawn up using flexi-track as a template to give
the best flow and increase the length of the sidings. The middle image shows the first stage
of the pointwork completed, where it was important to resume main line running using road 1
(a passenger train can be seen leaving from road 3). With all the pointwork finished and tested, a
3ft baseboard was built to carry the tracks to the buffer stops.
The 3ft baseboard was constructed with a side protection wall, so this has been continued
along the edge and fitted flush to the side, reinforced with triangular gussets set into a
bed of epoxy resin, making it strong enough to lean on and prevent stock falling to the floor.
The Brush 4 with passenger train in road 1 of the main storage yard is just passing through, as
this is now the default through-road giving access to the additional sidings.
This Routemaster is the latest vehicle to enter the fleet, an EFE diecast model with the bonnet
and front end ground out with a new bulkhead fabricated from plastic sheet. A 4-cylinder AEC
engine was made up from styrene sections and brass wire, and a new bonnet fabricated from
.005" brass sheet folded along the edges.
With the engine fitted, brass channel sections and another piece of folded brass sheet form the
chassis runners and the offset curved beam. Strips of paper skewered onto some brass wire and
impregnated with superglue has the makings of the fan, and mirror supports have been superglued
into V grooves made by a triangular file, as drilling this material is difficult at the best of times.
Fleet number 1527 (527 CLT) awaiting engine repairs is seen here shunted out into the yard. I had
some left-over 253 destinations which are more appropriate than the 88 to Shepherds Bush, but will
change them in due course to something representing a bus out of service. In the grand scheme of
things, this detail work only just scratches the surface of what can be done to improve the model,
particularly after photographing and noticing the vague window vents compared to the XA alongside.
Inspired by Jonny's Matador recovery vehicle, I'm in the process of converting one for the bus
garage at Hornsey Broadway. The curved diecast cab roof has been ground away and a new roof made
from styrene to include the spoiler - in hindsight it may have been easier to use the Airfix
plastic kit for the cab! The body is fabricated from styrene sheet and the vehicle is shown here
after painting, but there's still a lot of detail to add (mirrors, glazing, indicators, plates,
lower cab front, fairlead).
The troublesome trucks - having attempted to fit Gibson accurate scale 14mm EM gauge wheels
to these Accurascale HAA hoppers, the diecast chassis had to be modified to prevent the wheels
from shorting out causing erratic running.
The solution was to remove some of the material from the top inside of the axleguard and
a bit from the brakes with a mini drill burr tool.
Brush 4 - 1813 is now running smoothly again after the shorting problems were solved.
Just as a comparison, here's one of my Hornby HAA wagons in use as a barrier wagon, which
not only stands up well to the newcomers but is a lot easier to fit EM gauge wheelsets into.
New into the Shenston Road fleet is Accurascale Deltic D9012 Crepello, seen here going on shed
after working a service from Edinburgh. The driver reported plenty of power but was unable to
reach normal line speeds, no doubt due to the undersized wheels fitted at Doncaster Works!
The same loco heading back north passing through Hornsey Broadway during a recent running session.
This month sees the ongoing mammoth twin bolster project continue. With the bodies complete
attention turned to the bolster assemblies. I needed to produce three different types: one
was a slightly narrow version to take account of the under width Triang single bodies; one
was the full width BR version and the last was the second-hand ex-LMS bolsters. Here we see
the drilling of the test prototype assembly to take the central pivot.
The basic parts were cut from Plastruct beams, two per wagon. The narrow versions are on the
right. These were sandwiched between a strip of 40-thou plastic to form the basic shape.
After assembling all 28 we can see the results part way through the process. The bearing
plates have been added to the underside, along with the triangular bracing pieces with more
to follow. The LMS bolsters had an extra timber piece on the top of the bolsters and these
have been added where appropriate. The locating holes for the stanchions have also been drilled.
As the assemblies were completed they were added, loose, to the wagons stored on the layout.
The fiddly ends of the bolsters can be seen here – the real things were made of two wood baulks
separated by a steel web joining the two side beams together. Although the Triang bodies are
under width by 2mm this isn’t obvious from the normal viewing angle – scratch-building new
bodies might have been easier in retrospect, if lacking in nostalgia!
After all the assemblies were finished they were mounted on a strip of wood using the pivot
wires and primed en masse. This is one of the BR versions. The shackles and stanchions were
from Wizard Models. Each bolster set was matched to an individual wagon, so from now on each
stage was carried out in pairs to make sure the fleet didn’t get mixed up by accident.
Here’s the full fleet, with their primed bolster assemblies, filling the yard as they await
the next stage. The former LMS bolsters feature the four distinctive bolt heads that held
the additional timber top plank and can be seen on some sets.
To prime the wagons they were prepared in my usual way, with wheels removed and bearings
covered with a small square of masking tape, as was the centre couplers to avoid bunging up
the pivots. The final wagon numbers, which were written underneath each chassis, were also
masked off to keep the sets together. Once again, the yard was the only place to safely store
so many wagons, so any shunting was on hold for the duration.
With the wagons primed the end seemed to be in sight at long last. The next stage was to mask
off the bodies and spray all the underframes with Citadel Chaos Black from a rattle can. All
three types can be seen in the view – Conflat A; Lowfit and Single Bolster.
The next step was to fit a representation of the vacuum pipes at the centre coupling end. The
easiest way seemed to be to use a single piece of wire (the flexible coated type used in flower
displays), fitted to one wagon of the pair. Each piece was carefully bent to shape and then
mounted in a small plastic block that was glued under the buffer beam on one half of each set.
At long last the construction was completed. Next stage was painting and here we can see the
initial, rather garish, stage of painting the floor planks in a variety of acrylic wood shades.
These planks were replaced many times over the years and rarely showed a consistent colour
across a whole floor.
Once the basic painting was complete, several enamel washes were applied, in this case from the
AK Interactive range, the main colour being ‘Wash for German Vehicles in Dark Yellow’...not an
obvious choice! Each chassis had also had a number of brown and sandy washes applied by this
time to tone down the black spray finish.
And this is where we have got to this month – a full fleet of weathered floors, now awaiting
the painting of the centre assemblies and bolsters. With a bit of luck they might even be
finished by the September update. Then just the thorny issue of where to store them all in
my already bursting wagon drawers.
Finishing off this month's update with a summer scene at Wood End Sidings. Further progress has
been made finishing off the ballasting and adding some more greenery and fencing. 24047 ticks
over in the sidings with the new ID Backscenes from Art Printers.com (2mm scale, as the 4mm scale
looked out of proportion).
