Has Spring Sprung?

A great day! Clocked just over 1,000 miles cycling this year after my ride today and had a fantastic time at the Rocks by Rail Museum. Today I was clearing lineside vegetation which I enjoy as there is a quick visual impact. It also needed a bonfire which I was put in charge of - maybe this is preparation for me to be allowed loose on a steam train? Probably not! This is all part of the preparations for the start of this years season and the Museum opens this Easter so not long now. Given the weather it really does feel as though spring is here so here is hoping for a great summer although if Mrs. W finds out about my start on horticultural matters there will no doubt be a list of gardening activities to be undertaken back at WMD HQ coming my way!

Back at WMD HQ the other side of the Scania 143H has now received its complment of decals and I am hoping that it all dries OK. Just have to wait and see.

Decal delight!

A wonderful 23 mile bike ride helped me forget about the current World situation but did make me appreciate even more the local environment and doing things others no longer have a chance of doing for the foreseeable future. An hour in the Man Cave AKA whisked me away into the delightful world of applying decals to the Italeri Scania 143 model. I have applied the decals to one side today. A complicated job with 12 separate decals, many of which had to line up with others to look right. There was also a need to trim some and try to get them to conform to the various contours of the cab shell. That latter issue is taken care of a decal softening solution which in this case is Micro Sol. This is supposed to soften the decal material so that gravity lets it drop into the dips of the model. When you first apply it the decals wrinkle up as in the photo below and it looks like a disaster which is typical of my work anyway! However leave it a few hours and hopefully all dries to a wrinkle free and contour hugging finish. That is the theory anyway! I will take a look later complete with a ' just in case' contribution for the swear jar! Hope I will be delighted though!

Spoiler alert!

This is not a spoiler alert for Mrs Woody that her car has been washed, waxed and the tyres polished up as she knows it has as she instructed it to be done! In my model World however the spoiler alert is all about the side spoilers on the cab of the Scania 143H. Yesterday I glued some angle plastic strip to the two spoilers and today I mounted them to the cab. Not a massive job but I needed to be alert to get them in the right position and securely glued. I am letting the glue harden over night as I want to make sure they are really secure before adding decals. 

I also had a bit of watching the trains go round my 009 narrow gauge layout where my little model World is at peace with itself and fuel prices are somewhat more affordable - the delights of the escapism of making models!

From a different angle.

Slowly the cab of the Italeri Scania 143H model truck kit is coming together. Most of the construction of the cab has involved ensuring good parts fit and fettling where there is a need for adjustment. Doing that gives a good strong join between parts. One area however that has concerned me is the mounting of the two aerodynamic side spoilers at the end of each side of the cab. The instructions just show a mounting bracket attaching to the cab top spoiler and the rest of the spoiler somehow magically attached to the cab side with thin air. I real life there would be brackets but non are included in the kit. I had to get creative and think of a different angle to solve this problem. Angle! Yes the very thing! I have therefore used some plastic angle from my stock of useful junk parts to create some brackets. I needed to create a few cut outs to avoid parts of the spoilers but the angle has been glued to both spoilers and I am leaving them over night to dry off before doing anything else. How successful this will be I don't know but sometimes you just need to take that different angle on a problem.

I have also painted the rubber surround to the windscreen on the front panel. I used some masking tape as most of the sections were straight and free handed the curved parts. Not my favorite job though but had to be done.

From a different angle, windscreen surround painted and plastic angle glued to the side spoilers.

Fettling the cab!

Sounds odd to be fettling but before I go any further with the decals on the Italeri Scania 143H I need to start putting the cab together. The fit of the parts overall is reasonable but to get a model that looks reasonable there is sometimes a need to trial fit parts and adjust and alter as necessary. In other words time for some fettling. Sounds relatively easy but if you are dealing with painted parts it can get a bit tricky. I already managed to get some finger marks in the paint due to some glue on my fingers but luckily having the sense ( most unusual for me as Mrs. W would confirm) to let the glue dry, I was able to use some model polish to remove them. In visual form not a lot of progress but sometimes the time taken to do the fettling pays dividends later.

Growing and cutting grass.

Today saw the WMD lawn mower withdrawn from its winter quarters. A check of the oil, some fresh petrol and the engine primed saw it start on the third attempt! Not bad and with the cutting blade set high the lawn looks a lot better. Mrs. W will be pleased - hopefully!

That was the cutting grass part and once completed meant I had the opportunity for an hour on the 009 narrow gauge layout where todays task was to grow some grass. I had previously 'graveled' the service station forecourt and last night I had given it a wash of some dilute greyish paint to tone it down a bit. Today I glued the chapel in place and used some card that I had given a wash of the same paint that I used on the gravel to manufacture some concrete slabs. Slab sized pieces were cut and then laid around the chapel to give an effect that they had been in place for a long time and had moved and vegetation was finding its way into the gaps.

With those in place it was time to get the grass growing with some static grass. Around the chapel I used some Peco 2mm Spring grass to give a representation of grass that got mown on occasions. At the back of the service station I used the same mix as around the river bank to give the impression of unkempt grass left to its own devices. I need to clean off the stray fibers from the chapel once the glue has fully dried and then add some further vegetation but the basics are there and I think looking good! I particularly like the grass in the joints between the slabs.

Using a sub-base means I can work on these at the comfort of my work bench which does make life easier.

Back on the layout and it is beginning to come to life.

Getting a face!

A couple of hours to put on a few decals on a model may seem a bit over the top. However the decals on the front cab panel of the Scania 143H have been difficult. Partly this is because they don't fit particularly well and I have had in some cases to trim and cut parts out and secondly they need to line up properly or they will look terrible. I cant claim that they are perfect but its the best I can do under the circumstances so here is where I have got up to getting the Scania its face.

 

The reason for washing!

Nothing to do with my personal bathing habits but todays work at the Rocks by Rail Museum was more ballast washing. I actually enjoy doing this. Big machines, lots of water and noise, what more could you want! People do ask why you wash ballast? Well ballast has two functions. Firstly it forms the foundation to hold the sleepers and track and secondly to allow drainage as especially with wooden sleepers water can both damage the track as well as undermine the structural integrity of the railway as a whole. Large stones that form the ballast have spaces between them through which the water can drain into the ground below. Fill those spaces up with muck and that drainage slows or stops and the ballast becomes a large sponge or swamp. The ballast washing gets rid of that muck and restores the ballast and its drainage abilities once back in place.

Just how much muck gets into the ballast is best illustrated by this photo.

These two barrows of muck came out of about half a ton of ballast washed through the oversized washing machine that the Museum has. Its a mix of sand, grit and pebbles and you can see how it just flows into an almost concrete like material that will flow into and fill any available void. Over the past five months we have probably washed well over 100 tons of ballast. We do put the muck to one side or use it to build up the adjacent road and you can see from the photo below just how much muck has been accumulated. That road is about 9 inches higher than when we started!

The area around the washing plant is a store for all sorts of railway related stuff and being out of the public gaze it does have that abandoned look to it but that is all part of the character of the place.

Back at WMD HQ the Scania 141LB has progressed with the prop-shaft, exhaust, wheel hubs and air intake having been added.

On the Scania 143 the front valance has been completed and a start made on the cab decals which are a pain to fit!

Second Look!

Out on my bike ride this morning I happened to go round a roundabout and spotted the price totem at a local petrol station near a major trunk road. I thought I was mistaken in what I saw so went round the roundabout a second time no doubt to the amusement or otherwise of other road users. However despite the prospect of getting dizzy as I went round and round I was actually right in what I saw the first time! 

Somewhat unbelievable and frightening! Luckily neither me or my bike required the services provided by this service station! 

Having returned home without getting any more dizzy and having done some mundane jobs I did have a chance for a bit of time with the Scania 143H truck model. Mud guards are now on the chassis together with the rear lights and battery box cover. Now beginning to get to the stage where you would have a second look at it!

 

Moving on!

The Scania 143H caught up on some of what I failed to do to it yesterday so it is moving on. 

The exhaust and air intake are connected to the engine. The exhaust is never going to satisfy me but that is one of those things I will have to live with and probably will never be seen again once the kit is finished! The wheels are on as well and the fuel tank has also be glued in place - good job it is not real and needing filling with diesel with current prices! The mud guards are next and I have painted the rear light lenses and put them in the light case that then need to be fastened to the rear mudguards. I still have concerns about the fit of the cab on the chassis as I had to raise the engine slightly in the chassis to get it to fit and this may cause problems but I will have to wait to see if that is an issue! In the meantime the chassis looks like this.