Newton Broadway

And a small amount of further progress: gutters added to disguise the joins on the brick arches, extra strips of distressed bitumen added to the road surface, and a brick wall added at one end. The road surface is too glossy at the moment but a spray of matt varnish or similar will fix that.

 

When I arbitrarily chose a running number for the private owner pannier tank, I selected 8, forgetting that I had the London Transport (ex-Metropolitan) Bo Bo #8, Sherlock Holmes. To prevent clashes with both locos being selected at the same time, I renumbered the pannier to #9, an unused number in my lists. That follows on from the Huntley & Palmers Peckett ('numbered' D, which I translated to 4 for DCC purposes), and precedes the Sentinel diesel shunter which is #10 now.

For the pannier, I used Southern Railway transfers (they must have been bought by the private owner company as surplus materials after nationalisation occurred!): Bulleid style for the cab side numbers and rear, and Maunsell style for the smokebox plate.





I have just received a second Peckett, in Peckett's own pale green. This one will be allocated number 5, and having checked my spreadsheet first, that does not clash with any other items in my stock lists.

 

Continuing with the private owner industrial theme, I have now fitted a TCS M1 decoder into Dodo, and given her a test run hauling the new Hornby Golden Arrow Pullman Guard cars.

I strung a short video together showing Dodo on her own, then in tandem with the Huntley & Palmers version.

The jerkiness in the video is due to the combination of the limited frame rate using a mobile phone to take the footage, and the compression from using YouTube. The locos themselves run very smoothly and sweetly. Note that Dodo had not even been run-in at the time of the video.

 

A small improvement to the terraced houses on Hill Street in the village: I painted most of the doors different colours, rather than all of them being in the default blue Hornby chose. I also painted the back doors, but not necessarily in the same colours as the front doors. I should repanel a couple of doors to make them a little different too.

I may yet paint one of the house fronts in a different colour (all are the same brick colour at present), and all require floors and walls or curtains to stop the see-through effect from front to back.

The middle house needs to be raised by one more thickness of cardboard!



​

 

The landscape gardener is still digging them up!

 

I have been constructing four non-working Ratio ground signals for the crossovers. They aren't entirely accurate for London Transport, but they will do for now. There is a little more tidying up of paint to do on the signal faces.

Also, in a quite unrelated operation, I used some T-Cut on cotton buds to remove the printed Dodo nameplates on the pale green Peckett, in preparation for the eventual arrival of etched plates from Narrow Planet models. All of the Pecketts will be getting changes of identity using fictional names and numbers, but accurate Peckett works plates - just not necessarily correct for the names and numbers!

​

 

Back to my industrial loco kick, the Hornby Sentinel diesel has had a rough repaint in a darker blue, with a second coat still to go on, and red buffer beams and coupling rods and cranks replacing pale blue and yellow stripes. Once I am happy with the blue, some black and white (LNER) lining will be added to blend in with the steam locos. I removed the printed logos and intend putting etched plates with a number 10 from Narrow Planet, again to blend in with the steamers. The bright yellow buffer faces were also painted black.

I am in two minds about the step recess areas; should they remain blue or should I paint them black?

The loco initially ran perfectly well when I got it, on DC and on DCC but it very soon developed dead spots in its motor. Very annoying, particularly as I have pretty well invalidated the warranty by rewiring it to fit the TCS M1 decoder. Anyway, I ordered a replacement motor from Peter's Spares, together with a heap of detailing parts for other projects. That arrived today, so I quickly tested the new motor then soldered the wires to it and fitted it all back together. The new motor runs very sweetly, so lets hope it keeps doing that.

​

 

I decided to decorate a Bulleid locomotive to join the Golden Arrow Pullmans I bought from Rails of Sheffield. A bit of digging revealed that BoB 34083, 605 Squadron had at some time in its earlier career had the mountings for the large arrows along the sides. The photo I have shows it in malachite green with yellow stripes, but in BR days, whereas mine is in BR green but with early crest and tender in original high-sided condition. It may well be that 34083 lost the mounts later on, but that was close enough for me.

The decorations came from Precision Labels, but I chose to mount the front headboard on a piece of 20 thou plastic card, and also mounted the flags on a bit of brass wire soldered to a strip of scrap brass wrapped around a screwdriver to create a pocket to slip over the lamp iron on the loco. At the time of this photo (actually a merge of two photos to get better depth), I had not painted the brass wire or pocket, and the vee angle of the two wire flag poles was too acute an angle. This will all be fixed soon.

 

Toby - a Sad Farewell

My constant supervisor and occasional helper, Toby, had to be put to sleep last night (Good Friday). He always had to poke his nose into what I was doing on the layout or when modelling. He suffered several episodes in recent times, each getting worse. He was not in pain at all other times and was still a happy boy, but when he had another severe episode last night, we took him to the vets' and had to take the hard decision.

He started off as a semi-feral kitten, and after a difficult period settled down to be a very faithful and loving companion. He was only a little over 8 years old at the end, but he did have a good life.

We buried him this morning under one of his favourite resting spots in the back garden.











He will be missed.

 

Thanks, Pete and Ron.

Agnes and I are still very subdued. Toby was our child, since we had never been able to have children of our own. The house seems very empty without him.

 

Thank you, Gary and Keith, for those kind words and thoughts.

We do get too attached to our pets, but when they are gone, the house, and our hearts, feel so empty.

We will probably get another cat, but not in the near future. Even Toby was given to us too soon after we had lost Lucy (she was 17, so a good age). We were still grieving for her.

 

I have just taken a little video footage of the three industrial locomotives from Hornby at work through Newton Broadway, during a quiet moment at home. I really must improve the lighting before I try another such film, but this doesn't look too bad.

The Sentinel diesel hauling some milk tanks rocks and rolls a bit but I think the effect is actually quite good, if unintended. Following it is the Huntley & Palmers Peckett with a few open wagons, while on the other side a de-named Dodo passes with a few vans.