Fill it up please!

The 00 gauge motorists on the 009 narrow gauge layout now have somewhere to fill up their vehicle fuel tanks with the arrival of the fuel pumps at the Dapol Service Station. The camera can be cruel in close up and whilst the oil dispenser could do with another coat of yellow and the whole lot with a dash of some weathering/dirt it looks OK from normal viewing distance which is good enough for me. If you are not carful you end up spending hours on something no one will notice anyway so better spending that time on something a little more noticeable - well that's The World According to Woody!

Putting effort into something that will be noticed is what I did do with the cab panels for the Scania 143H. They have all been top coated now using, unusually for me, a can of Halfords Nissan Artic White which I inherited from my Dad's collection of things that might come in useful one day. Well this paint did and it seems to have done a good job and there was no need to clean my airbrush either!

Just need to let the paint fully harden over the next few days and then it will be time to decal them with the various ones contained in the kit. Italeri decals are a love hate relationship for me. They are wonderfully thin so sit on the surface well but they do have a tendency to break and in some cases, if several years old, disintegrate! Stay tuned to see just how full the swear jar becomes especially as it keeps say 'Fill it up please'!

A bit of everything.

Today saw a bit of everything with some progress on both the Scania 141H and the narrow gauge layout.

The Scania body shell is now in the WMD paint shop where parts are now primed or primed and top coated. Hopefully this will be completed over the next few days. Whilst most components were painted whilst fastened to a scrap wooden board using masking tape, the back and sides of the cab which had been already been glued together was taped to a large paintbrush so that all of it could be painted in one go. The paintbrush was then poked into the packaging of a 4 pack of Fanta (other similar beverages are available) to support it and let the cab dry in mid air.

On the 009 narrow gauge layout some work with mounting board has set the road out and the area of the pavement and adjoining plots for the properties. 

I also dug out the petrol pumps which came with the Dapol Service Station kit and started painting these up ready for the forecourt. 

Luckily the 00 gauge motorists will never see the £1.60 a litre that we pay currently and indeed would not even know what a litre was as they still live in a land of gallons where that sort of money would fill your tank!

Take Five - Part 2

Back in September I introduced the MiniArt Russian Tank Crew. At that stage I had assembled them and had primed them. Over the last couple of evenings I have painted them. At this stage I should say that there are certain things in life that people just have a natural ability at or learn through practice. Painting figures is something that certain modelers excel on. Unfortunately I am not one of those. I have read books, watched videos and practiced on figures but I still struggle and my efforts don't stand close scrutiny so excuse the somewhat poor picture. Hopefully if you look from a distance (several yards probably) and squint they may look just about passable! Anyway, still some more to do to them but they should hopefully be finished and off my workbench in the next few days. I am hoping that they may be good enough to pose with the T34 Tank diorama (picture below) that I built earlier this year but I will wait and see how they finally look once finished.

I also did a bit on the Dapol Service Station so the windows and doors (the workshop door even opens and closes) are now in and some weathering of the roof has taken place but still more to do. It is surprising just how involved these kits can get.

Pacing myself.

One of my less than imaginative titles to introduce this Hornby model of the Class 142 Pacer. The class of Diesel Multiple Unit (DMU) was in the headlines last year as the last ones were finally withdrawn from service. Originally built back in the 1980's in a collaboration between British Railways and Leyland. The design basically put a modified Leyland National bus body on a rail powered chassis. Its low price and running cost probably meant that several passenger lines were saved from closure. Some loved it and some hated it. I must admit having a soft spot for them so it was nice to unbox this some 15 years or so having bought it on eBay. It is a terrible runner and Hornby's model was always noted for that trait as it is powered by two Scalextric motors which are not up too the job. Still once it gets going it seems to at least get round my track.

Apart from unboxing the pacer I have also paced myself to do a bit more building work - this time on the Dapol Service Station which is now in basic paint awaiting the detail parts to be fitted.

Finally on the pacing front following my bike ride with Mr Motorlegs Beecham last Friday I was recovered sufficiently on Saturday to tackle the strong winds and bring my total mileage for this year up to 5001 miles. Had to pace myself a lot over the year so far to get that much in!

Back on the Chain Gang!

Well on Thursday it felt a bit like being part of one of those old films set in an American prison where the inmates were breaking rocks as part of their punishment. Whilst it may have been hard work digging out ballast from between sleepers at the Rocks by Rail Museum, it was far from punishment. I enjoy a bit of digging and it was a nice sunny day surrounded by railway infrastructure and rolling stock and some good guys with some great chat as well as Riley the dog, who prefers to dig up grass rather than ballast - pity!

What could be better? I even got home in time to put Mrs W's dinner on the table as she arrived home - result! 

Over the weekend I have managed to make some progress with the various buildings for the narrow gauge layout. The Dapol General store has been primed ready for its final paint scheme. There were some gaps in the joints at the corners of the walls that required filling. To cut down on the mess and subsequent cleaning and sanding I ran a strip of masking tape either side of the gaps. 

Vallejo acrylic putty was then brushed into the gaps and left to dry.

The masking tape was then removed leaving a nice clean joint that needed little more then me running a finger nail down it to remove a few rough bits. Working smarter not harder as I get older!

If you look at some model buildings on railway layouts you will notice that you can look straight through a window to the other side of the building and through the opposite window. Whilst open plan living may be a concept some like it is not something that you see in many buildings and at some point there are internal walls even if only to separate the sanitary facilities from the rest of the house. I have added several partitions into the shell of the building as well as a first floor floor - if that makes sense! Not only do these block the view through the building but they also add a bit of additional strength. I am not going to add internal detail but I think these partitions will do a good job in adding that extra realism to the model.

All the parts have now been primed in a light grey awaiting their final paint scheme.

I have also glued the walls of the Service Station together and cleaned up some of the other parts which now await their turn to be primed which hopefully may get done tomorrow if Mrs W doesn't introduce here own version of a Chain Gang to get me to finish that list of jobs!

Fueling around - What a Weekend!

For those in the UK this weekend for many was taken up by the new past time of 'Find the Fuel' and that is fuel not fool. If you were actually looking for the fool you would have come to the right place reading this blog authored by a fool! However, back to the story. Mrs Woody's car was almost on empty and needing two thirds of a tank of diesel a week for work she needed fuel. No problem. At least one filling station near us would have some I proclaimed just like a fool. In a 15 mile radius we ended up trying 13 locations. At one we came within getting three cars away from the remaining pump before it ran dry. The last place we tried actually had some fuel - at £1.59 a liter! In normal circumstances I would have driven away to find somewhere a little more economical but needs must. At least Mrs Woody was happy even if my wallet was not! 

Strangely enough my plan developed several years ago for my 009 narrow gauge layout has always had a service station as one of the buildings to be included. The service station will be definitely 1960s when petrol was plentiful, costing 3 and 6 a gallon (not like the £1.59 a liter I paid on Sunday), when you got quadruple green shield stamps, tokens towards the real genuine plastic beaker set and all served to you by an attendant who filled the car up and checked the tyres! Those of younger years will be scratching their heads but that was how it worked back then! 

Anyway as I could sit more comfortably Sunday evening as my back pocket no longer contained a fat wallet but a much slimmed down version after paying for fuel, I took the opportunity to start on getting the various buildings together and placing them on the layout to get a feel for how they looked and where the other scenic items such as the road would fit. 

The first two buildings are the Dapol General Store and Service Station kits. 

The kits were originally produced in the late 50's early 60's by Kitmaster before becoming part of the Airfix range. Dapol then took on the moulds and have produced the entire original range as well as adding a few new ones. The kits are fairly basic but as my layout is set in that 50's/60's period the character of the buildings is just right. For moulds that are well over 50 years old now the parts are still coming out well with just a few areas where there is some flash that needs to be trimmed away.

The kits have been semi assembles with a mixture of glue and masking tape - I just need the basic building shell so that I can see the effect that each building will have. Full construction will come later. One thing I will highlight is that when gluing it is important to get parts square. When gluing the walls of the General Store together I looked for my set square but in my chaotic area of a workbench I could not find it. The next best thing was to use part of the roof moulding as that would be a right angel - sometimes you have to think outside of the box or in this case, as the kit came in a bag, outside of that!

Having got the basic structures together they are at the moment placed like this.

More buildings to come but I am getting a better sense of whether what I have planned for many years will actually work in reality or have I just been a fool!