Etched brass parts! My nemesis! However, I have started so I will continue!

So I thought that this would be a nice easy build? I really should have looked in the box of the IBG Scammell Tank Transporter 1.76 scale kit a bit better and I would have seen these!

Etched brass parts! My nemesis! However, I have started so I will continue!

The thing about moving between scales is that you have to readjust yourself to a complete change in the parts you are dealing with. Moving from a 1/24th scale kit to one in 1/76 means you are dealing with parts that are two thirds the size for relative  components.

The sprue above is only about 6 inches square but has over 30 components. Just cutting them off the sprue without damage is a challenge let alone cleaning them up afterwards. 

However the detail is brilliant as you can see from theses parts where the individual teeth of the cog wheel are all moulded. You can only really see them under magnification though!#

Anyway, after a few hours I got this far with the it which is not very far but I have to get used to dealing with small parts again!

Still waiting for that warm and dry day!

Still waiting for a warmish and dryish day to coincide with when I am able to get on with painting the Italeri Merecedes MP4 truck cab. As I am using a rattle can to do the painting it is something that needs to be done outside. Doing it inside coats everything in a dust the colour of the paint and really is not good for long term or even short term health!

So I am still looking for something else to build in the meantime whilst I await the coincidence of a good day and my availability when I am not doing jobs on Mrs. Woody's list of tasks for me! I did post the other day about the Gecko Models tank kit which just did not appeal to me to build at the moment. Another kit under that in the WMD Store is this IBG kit in 1/76 scale of a Scamell tank transporter and tank. 

I have never built an IBG kit before but opening the box revealed some nicely bagged up parts which looked interesting.

The instructions come in the form of a booklet which looks to be a quality document.

Certainly upon opening the instructions look very well illustrated.

I was persuaded that I will enjoy building this and as a small kit what can go wrong?

Things don't need to be old to be historic!

I took Mrs. Woody out on a trip to Uppingham in Rutland for no reason other than we had never been! It is Rutland's second largest town and as a market town there is a lot of history and old buildings. The market square has this in the middle...

...whilst a road off the square has these old buldings.

Very old and historic but things don't need to be old to be part of history. 

Only six years old but with a very significant history behind it I found this still on a pavement!

Now that is a bit of modern history.  Hard to believe the World was dealing with the start of Covid just six years ago! We tend to forget about it! I just wonder how long this sign and the significance of it will last?

On a totally unrelated matter, it was a wet day at Uppingham. In fact it has been a wet day in the UK for much of 2026 and this photo sums up how wet!

Where those lakes are should be green meadows! That's historic wet!

It loos so different but is captivating at the same time!

As I get drawn down this rabbit hole of 7mm narrow gauge or On30 as it is USA based, I am slowly digging out my collection of rolling stock. Todays find is the T Boiler 2 Truck Shay made by Bachmann.

A rather strange looking loco and with its T shaped boiler and rod and driveshaft propulsion to what look like bogies that should be under a diesel loco!

And that is its charm! It loos so different but is captivating at the same time as we look at something we are not used to but are drawn in by the vision of something that in our minds probably should only exist as a cartoon.

I actually purchased this second hand over 20 years ago from the model shop that was opposite Pickering railway station in Yorkshire. Given that the loco is probably from the first batch that Bachmann made in 2002 and that the box made no reference to DCC, and the instructions did not either  I was presuming that it would be necessary to hard wire a DCC chip in and that is if I could even find the wires for the pickups and motor! However, curiosity got the better of me and I took the coal load out of its bunker and to my amazement there was a circuit board with an 8 pin decoder socket!

A suitable decoder was booked out of the WMD Stores and fitted.

Refitting the coal load the Shay ran superbly on part of My Last Great Project Layout. It just needs aa layout of its own and IU am now a month and a half into the promise of building said layout by the end of 2026!

Bachmann 0n30 Rail Truck.

About 10 years ago I paid £55 for this. And what is this you may ask?

Well it is another of my collection of On30 rolling stock. Made by Bachmann, it is a Rail Truck. 

This type of rollingstock was typical of the backwoods of places like North and South America as well as Australia, New Zealand and parts of Asia. Basically, put together from what ever parts were available, a road going truck was mounted on a railway using a wagon chassis or bogies and with some mechanical magic the power from the trucks engine would power the rail wheels.

The original truck body could be used or, more commonly, the owners would construct their own design which could be a flat bed, box van or passenger carrying! My example has a steak body which could be used for many things including carrying livestock.

Well it looks very cute which won Mrs. Woody over but what did £55 get me in terms of specification?

For the money I got a rather unique looking model with lights and a DCC chip fitted which made the price exceptionally good value!

There is an instruction to the Instruction Booklet that instructs reading all the way through before starting the build.

Waiting for some warmish and dryish, note the accommodating 'ish' as anything near to warm and dry will do, weather to finish painting the cab panels with a rattle can, I did finish the cab interior with the two windscreen pillars and grab handles. 

With that done and the promise of more cold and wet weather I looked about for something else to build. I turned to this Gecko Models 1/35th scale kit of a A10 Cruiser Tank. 

Opening the box was an interesting exercise in understanding how the kit had been packed, but once in there is a very nice A4 sized poster of the box art to the kit and a very comprehensive booklet of instructions. Now there is an instruction to the Instruction Booklet that instructs reading all the way through before starting the build. 

I can see why that is the instruction as there are a lot of parts to this kit including my arch nemesis, photo etched parts!

By the time I had got half way through reading the instruction booklet I had decided that it is a wonderfully detailed kit but at the moment my mind set is not in the right place to build it at the moment. Sometimes you just know that building a certain kit at that time will be a struggle rather than a pleasure and it is best to but the lid back on the box and set it aside for when the right time comes! 

In fact it has a leak of some sorts that manifested itself by explosively depositing paint all over my hand!

With some warmer and drier weather I had another go at painting the cab components of the Italeri Mercedes-Benz Actros MP4 with a rattle can. My last session had resulted in the paint bloomimg as it absorbed moisture from the wet atmosphere. This time I was more successful. Still needs another coat but it is certainly better.

Unfortunately, the rattle can is not better! In fact it has a leak of some sorts that manifested itself by explosively depositing paint all over my hand! It also made using the can somewhat difficult. No idea why this has happened but I do have a spare in stock! Good old WMD Stores!

One consequence of the rattle can explosion was that I ended up with a run and some spots of paint on a cab side panel. I will need to wait until the paint hardens off and I can smooth the blemishes and repaint. Hopefully there will be another dry and warm day soon!

A variety of finds in the Bone Yard!

And todays Rocks By Rail Museum Treasure Junk Hunt items include these fish plates with nuts and bolts used to join sections of rail together...

These concrete sleepers that the joined rail can be laid upon.....

In fact there must be 50 or so of these sleepers just laying around.

Finally the find of the day, this delightful laundry basket that could grace any home - well maybe not but there has to be something in it once i fully uncover it!

Having brought Sammy Strimmer out from his three weeks off, we made some progress beating back this vegetational wall...

 

...to this. Lots more to go but it is slowly getting there!

That water pipe that found and blogged about a few weeks ago has already found a purpose. It is being used as cable ducting for the colour light signal that will be erected later this year. Eric and Derek are installing said cable.

Good to know that the uncovered treasures junk that I have found are being used even if not for their original purpose!

It is now time to consider where I go with this potential project!

Well, I dug out some set track and put together a first radius curve circle of track which is 15 inch radius and connected up a controller. I then set the Bachmann 0n30 2-6-6-2 locomotive on the track, turned up the power and off it went without a hitch. According to the internet it should not be able to do that!

I also dug out some third radius curves which are about 21 inches in radius and laid half a circle around the first radius circle just to see the visual difference. What is the point of all this then Woody you may ask? Well, it proves that a layout could be built on a baseboard as little as three foot, or a metre for metric readers, square. make it four foot square and the track visually looks better. It is now time to consider where I go with this potential project!

Digging around in the Man Cave I unearthed this beauty!

 Digging around in the Man Cave I unearthed this beauty!

It is another 0n30 loco which is a scale I have talked about a few days ago in a post. This is a mallet which has an articulated  2-6-6-2 wheel arrangement. It is also DCC sound chipped although I had to re-solder some wires to get it to work.

Although a large model of a large prototype it is said on the internet that it will go around 18 inch curved track.

It ran well on straight track! It would certainly look a lot better with some more appropriate scenery on the layout I said I would build this year. Less then 11 months now!