Watching planes and a new project starts!

After an early morning of cleaning the house (hope you read this Mrs. Woody) it was off for the last bike ride of August. I had a plan of where I was going but just like most of my plans it changed! I ended up, having climbed a couple of 11% hills (and my legs are still feeling that) at the side of a Royal Air Force base where they do flying training. Today they were flying and a gap in the hedge alongside the base gave me a great view of the planes waiting clearance to takeoff once others had landed and then gracefully taking off. I know nothing of the aircraft that were being used other than they were trainers (Mr. Beecham with his encyclopedic of aircraft will no doubt be able to educate me on this matter) and have a distinct fear of flying but somehow found it fascinating watching what was going on. So much so that 45 minutes went by before I moved on.

Taking advantage of gravity taking me down the previously crawled up hills and a with a following wind WMD HQ was reached far quicker on the return journey then on the outbound one. Mileage wise the 27 miles took my total for this month to 690 with a total for this year of 4220. I have racked a lot of miles, for me anyway, in the last two months with 680 in July so the target of 5200 for the year is looking feasible.

Back at WMD HQ the Italeri Scania cab has been put to one side as I leave it for a few days before looking at the paint issue with a fresher and clearer mind. So what do I do whilst that project is on hold? Well in true Woody style I start another kit! No not an aircraft following my earlier observations, although in true Woody style there are some aircraft kits in my yet to be built collection of kits.

I thought I would complete my trilogy of T34 tanks. I built the Russian WW2 one last year where it represents the tank in its early incarnation, then the Egyptian 1950's one this year which shows the tank as a 'second hand' tank in new ownership. This last model shows the tank in effect repurposed with the chassis being used to mount a new turret with a 122mm artillery gun in it. 

The kit is certainly not as complex as the MiniArt Egyptian version or indeed the Italeri kit of the Russian version where the interior was included. Whether that equates to an easier build is yet to be determined! The kit is well packed and all the sprues are in plastic bags so parts loss is unlikely.

Todays assembly saw so rapid progress for the short time available with the running gear almost in place. Certainly the complexities of the MiniArt kit are not missed by me so far and the one piece hull certainly means it less likely that I will get a twisted hull!  More progress soon unless I am cleaning or watching aircraft with the former more likely than the latter if Mrs. W has any involvement in this matter!

That sinking feeling!

Not that I have been on any water borne mode of transport that has failed and sunk but a quick update on the Scania. I rubbed down the various imperfections that I talked about a couple of days ago and resprayed the areas. It did not go well and I had that sinking feeling when things keep going wrong! 

Obviously things are not going to plan so I am going to do the wise thing and put it to one side and leave it for a few days and review whether I strip it and start again or try something else! Stay tuned!

A fantastic day at the Rocks by Rail Museum!

When you work in something like a museum you always hope that you will get guests visiting and that they will have a great time. Bank holidays are always a time when you expect more people to visit but sometimes due to the weather, other events or just the cost of living going up you don't end up with as many visitors as you hoped for. Fortunately, for what ever reasons, the Museum had its best day since it re-opened after the Pandemic! Fantastic!

I was greeted to this sight this morning as I arrived.

All ready to give steam powered break van rides down the line and this is what it is like inside the brake van.

Today you could see right into the locomotive to see the crew driving it and get a look at the controls.

Half a mile down the line you get to the end of the ride before returning to the station.

There was also shunting going on with the diesel locos using a selection of wagons including the classic 16 ton mineral wagon and the standard hopper wagons..

The drag line digger was working at the top part of the museum but unfortunately I did not get the chance to go and see it - one of the problems of being a volunteer - you never get to see all of what your guests do!

We also had a couple of classic road vehicles on display.

This is a rare petrol powered Massey Ferguson tractor immaculately restore by one of our young volunteers and driven by hm to the Museum this morning.

There was also this beutiful Austin 7 from the era when motoring was an adventure!

So just how successful a day was it? Well for a small volunteer run museum the cafe sold out of just about everything having cooked over 80 bacon cobs and poured hundreds of drinks and cut in-numerable pieces of cake - oh and don't forget the ice-creams as well!

In this day and age to get a family of 2 adults and 3 children admission into an operating day with free brake van rides and lots of things to see including working steam engines for £25 has to be great value. Add to that you can probably feed the family in the cafe for another £25 and it makes it a great value family day out. Talking to people to find out their views on the Museum  is part of what I do and it is fantastic to hear people saying they have had a great time and will come back again. Hopefully 2023 will be an even better season than 2022 is turning out to be.

Looking a bit better!

Following yesterdays problems spraying the cab of the Italeri Scania I had the opportunity for a fresh start today. A rub down of the body using some fine wet and dry paper levelled off the problem areas. An un-opened tin of paint was thinned at a ratio of 60% paint to 40% thinners and mixed thoroughly. Had I got 'the knack' back to spray enamel paints? Well not quite! However results are far better than yesterday.

It needs another coat of paint and there are a few blemishes to take care of but there is one area that needs a bit more in the way of rubbing down.

Not sure what went wrong on the upper part of the left side of the cab but it looks like a run and possible reaction in the underlying paint. Whatever it is it needs to harden off before I can do anything and that will take a few days. The front panel of the cab is not glued at the bottom at the moment to allow for it to slide over the interior once the painting is complete. Italeri's construction method requires you build the exterior of the cab around the interior which does not make painting the exterior very easy or practical unless you love spending hours masking up things like windows.

I have been playing with operating my 00 gauge railway recently and today had a bit of a Class 37 evening. These two early liveried E W & S 37's gave a nice background noise from their DCC sound chips  - class 37's have a great engine noise much like a large tractor which I guess is why the spotters nicknamed them tractors! 37427 is a Vi Trains model fitted with a Hornby TTS chip whilst 37114 is a Bachmann redinition with a DCC sound chip factory fitted.

Meanwhile The two Hornby Central Trains 2 car Class 156's running as a consist meet the Lima class 37 in Railfreight livery hauling a mixed freight train. None of these models have sound chips but the Lima model with its old and noisy pancake motor almost sounds like a real class 37!

An early start tomorrow with the last bank holiday opening of the Rocks by Rail Museum where we have a fully quarry day of working locomotives and excavators and me welcoming guests and taking money! Makes a change for me to take some money - its usually Mrs. Woodt who relieves me of money!

The Knack!

For those of a certain age 1979 saw the release of one of  those timeless songs that still gets played repeatedly today. It was by a band called The Knack and the song was My Sharona. See a great live version by clicking here. At the time, The Knack was hailed as the new Beatles. Unfortunately they did not live up to that and as far as I am aware after a few more singles that never got that far in the charts the band faded away.

So what has all this to do with model making. Nothing directly but I am going to talk about 'the knack'. A term that is used in the UK to indicate that you have the ability to do something. Mrs. Woody for example has 'the knack' to find those things you never knew you could live without before finding them on an internet shopping channel. If you make models over many years you do develop 'the knack' with certain methods of doing things or in using certain types of materials. In my case I have developed a certain 'knack' in using an airbrush. Generally the paint goes on without too many disasters. I used to use enamel paints which are an oil based paint. They have good coverage and dry to a high gloss but they take hours to dry, stink of white spirit and it takes an age to clean the airbrush afterwards. However for most of my modelling life enamel paints have been the only accessible paints. Acrylic paints are water based, have little odour, dry quickly and you can clean the airbrush with water. They don't dry to such a gloss as enamels though but all in all I guess are better for the environment and my health!. With the advantages and the increased availability and increased range of products I moved across to acrylics about 15 years ago. It took me some time to learn how to use this new to me paint as they are different to enamels but eventually I got 'the knack'. 

Move onto the Italeri Scania with Cool Fruits trailer that I started to build back in 1999 I did spray the cab back then in Humbrol metallic blue enamel paint. The actual airbrushing was good and the colour looked great but probably because of where I sprayed it the paint was full of dust particles and you could see that in the finished paint. I therefore decided to respray the cab in the same colour and digging through the WMD HQ paint store found several part used as well as new tins of the required original enamel metallic blue paint. I decided to make use of the part used paint which as I will explain was a mistake that I should have avoided. 

The cab was flatted off with some fine wet and dry paper to get rid of the embedded dust.

The parts were then set out for spraying. The problem is that for the last 12 years I have been used to spraying acrylics. Enamels act differently and to be blunt I have lost 'the knack' of spraying these types of paint. The result is not brilliant but probably savable!

What has gone wrong? Well probably using old paint is not the best thing to have done. Old paint in an un-opened tin is one thing and will probably still be good to use but paint that was probably first opened 23 years ago is not going to be in the best condition! Secondly I think looking at the paint on the model that in one of the tins I mixed some silver paint in to give some 'sparkle'! Well I am not sparkling over the finish! Thirdly I probably over thinned the paint when I mixed it for spraying and so it is over transparent and has run in places. So having lost 'the knack' of using enamel paints I will have an opportunity to further re-educate myself as I am going to have to let this paint dry and then try again! So there you have it - not everything goes smoothly (literally with this paint) at WMD HQ!

On another front I can report that the decal paper ordered yesterday has been delivered. As I stated yesterday I have never used this before so I will need to develop 'the knack' of using it!

Feeling blue!

Without the assistance of Mrs. Woody's keen eye for interior decoration I have decorated the interior of the Scania cab using my somewhat less than flamboyant palette of colours so that it no longer looks like a rendition of fog and is more like a dull day but with the glimmer of sunshine - just right for feeling blue!

It may not stand out but it does look better than before. The seats and door cards have been highlighted with a light blue and the bed picked out in a range of harmonious blues! The 1/24th scale driver obviously has some sense of co-ordination with their bedding and are also proud to drive a Scania having a poster up on the backwall of the sleeper compartment. I added this by scaling down a spare decal from another kit and then printing it onto paper. A coat of matt varnish was applied and once dried the image was glued to a scrap of plastic card. Once all was trimmed to size it was glued into the blanked off rear window space. I still need to add the dashboard decals, steering wheel and various control levers but that is about it to this part of the cab.

The upper part of the cab has an unusual arrangement in that the second bunk is above the drivers and passenger seats. It folded up when not in use but did give the option for a solo driver to use the normal lower bunk as a sofa with the increased headroom above and then the upper bunk as the bed. I don't believe that this is still an option on modern Scanias so I am guessing it was not too popular. On this part of the cab I just need to add the fold up access ladder and then that will be finished.

Having looked at the trailer just about every day it does look white! A lot of white indeed! It needs something to add interest. Whilst I have the kit decals, given their age and previous experience with Italeri decals that are many years old, they are very likely to disintegrate if I try to apply them. I have therefore used my limited and I mean limited IT skills to generate a potential design to to be applied to the trailer sides. 

If you are thinking that sticking a cut out piece of paper to the side of the trailer would look somewhat rubbish you would be right. However at WMD HQ I have a cunning plan. Well a plan anyway! Decal paper. This is a sheet of clear decal sheet onto which you can print whatever you want and then use it just like kit supplied decal. I do have some in stock as well. However can I find it? Somewhere it lies awaiting to be discovered but I just cannot find it. I have therefore done the sensible thing, well sensible for me anyway, of actually ordering some which hopefully will be delivered tomorrow by Amazon. 

To be honest I have never tried this method before so it will be a leaning curve and like most of my learning curves it might involve coming off the road! I could well be feeling blue if it all goes wrong. With that thought in mind I better check that the swear jar has some room in it for further contributions!

One shade or 50 shades of grey!

 Things are moving on with the Scania interior. The dashboard and steering column have been assembled. The seats have been sanded to remove the join line between the two parts of each seat and the bases assembled.

With all this complete I have given everything apart from the seat bases and steering wheels a coat of light grey paint to harmonise the previously somewhat poorly applied grey paint by me 23 years ago. All this one shade of greyness will be brightened up as I try to add some colour to the interior or it may well end up in 50 shades of grey! Interesting concept!

Interestingly, well to me anyway, is that Italeri in their older kits moulded the bunk with a pillow and sheet/sleeping bag which is something they no longer do on their modern kits. I quite like this little bit of realism though - makes the kit feel a bit more real life to me. I just need to remember that even though grey was an 'in' colour in the 90's I don't think grey bedding was! 

More interior makeovers!

The chassis of the Italeri Scania is now finished. Wow! That was quick for me! Well let us not consider that most of it was built 23 years ago otherwise it will be my longest ever build - apart from some of Mrs. Woody's jobs that still linger on her list decades after first entering it!

With the chassis now done and my increased skill level on interior decoration following painting two bedrooms and giving them a makeover recently I will turn my attention to the interior of the cab. For some reason 23 years ago I appear to have blasted everything with a light grey fog like paint. Probably the right generic type of colour for the interior of trucks in the 1990s as I remember but somewhat bland. Therefore I will be putting my aesthetic decoration and makeover skills to use, to try at least to make it look a little more welcoming rather than looking at fog! The good thing about this is that I only have myself to please so no having to take account of Mrs. W's view on colour schemes so in all likelihood it is going to look to the 1/24th scale driver of the Scania  'interesting' in that makeover cab!

Singapore

 A day at the Rocks by Rail Museum today and preparations being made for the commemoration of VJ day where the loco Singapore will take center stage as a registered war memorial.

As my Uncle was caught up in the capture of Singapore by Japan and spent several years in Changi POW camp these events are always poignant to me. This year there will also be commemoration of all the other conflicts that the UK has been involved in since WW2 including the Falklands and Afghanistan. 

Certainly at this time of issues in the World it would be good if we perhaps reflected on the costs of war to us all and seek ways to live more peacefully. A Woody thought that is unlikely to come about but we can hope!

Stay calm!

We all have a moment when we think what have we done and a sort of panic sets in. I must admit that was my reaction yesterday evening when I started painting the walls in the bedroom with what Mrs. Woody and myself had chosen from the vast range of possible colours that can be mixed at our local DIY emporium. What was supposed to be Soothing Sage looked more like swamp mud as I painted around the edges. I had visions of having to go back and choose a different colour and in effect scraping £40 worth of paint - oh the pain in my wallet! However, I stayed calm and waited for it to dry as that surly would brng out the real Soothing Sage. It dried and still looked like swamp mud. So I left it for this morning hoping that things would change in the natural light of day. It didn't. The photo below perhaps doesn't show just how brown this paint was looking but believe me it was.

However I continued to stay calm and decided to paint the whole wall just in case my colour awareness was being hindered by the peppermint coloured original paint. Luckily it came out well. With the peppermint covered and the walls fully covered in Soothing Sage I was, well, soothed. Probably not as soothed as these two having a kip in the cat conservatory but I certainly was calm.

With a full days work the walls are all painted. The ceiling was painted yesterday so all that remains is to paint the window sill, radiator and door and refit some skirting boards that needs shortening to fit where the wardrobe is fitted.

Mrs. W has suggested that the side of the wardrobe could be used as a chalk board for the list of her jobs for me to do. I remain silent on the matter!

All in all I am pleased that what looked early on to be turning into a mud swamp has indeed turned into a soothing place. One thing though I am not calm or  soothed about is the fact that there is an awful lot of empty space in that wardrobe at the moment. Even as I write this, I can see Mrs. W pursuing the internet and its retail outlets!!!! Stay calm Woody!