The Covid days!

Well Mrs. Woody and me cannot see anyone until we test negative for Covid but living in the countryside I could go for a short bike ride today without fear of infecting anyone. Only 12 miles but it was a great day and too good to miss! For me, Covid in this instance is like having a cold. I don't feel fantastic but I don't feel so bad that I am bed ridden or sat watching inane day time TV with every other advert telling me I need a funeral plan or life insurance! Mrs. W on the other hand has a worse case than me so I have been acting in my nursing role today which is a change from the usual course of events. At least I cannot be accused of having Man Flu!

T34/122 wise things are getting close to the painting stage with just about everything finished apart from the tracks and I have even started those! 

When moving the turret faced rearwards with the gun supported on a carrier as seen in the middle photo above. Not sure if this will be the final configuration for the model but it certainly makes a change from turrets facing forwards. Hopefully I will continue to have minimal Covid effects and be able to continue with the tracks and or get some paint on the hull and turret tomorrow in between nursing duties during these Covid days!

Two red lines!

After two and a half years of avoiding Covid and being triple jabbed both Mrs. Woody and me tested positive for it this evening. I was feeling well this morning having done a 22 mile bike ride but by this evening headache and aching joints for both of us made as reach for the testing kit and confirmation came a few minutes later with two red lines showing themselves on the test pallet. Why any self respecting virus would want to infect me is beyond my understanding but I guess it must be getting desperate for victims!

Had this have happened back in March 2020 I think we would have both panicked but hopefully it will be like a bad cold and we will get over it in a few days. However we are staying away from anyone else to avoid the risk of passing it on.

Despite feeling somewhat rough this evening I had already finished painting the wheels for the T34/122 and I fitted the tyres to the wheels. I have temporarily attached the main wheels to the hull as I still need to construct the tracks but the whole model begins to look a great deal more interesting.

The tyres were sprayed in Vallejo Grey whilst the wheels are in Vallejo Sand. Rubber never stays black for long as it weathers and ages and the grey is a good representation for this.

You can see the odd shape of the turret from this aerial view. I still think it looks like a bunker! 

A few more details have been added to the front including the drivers hatch, spare track links and the splash board which goes over the top of the links. The idea, I believe, is to stop water going up into the drivers hatch and the machine gun port if the tank goes through a large puddle or wades a river. Whether it worked is a question I have never seen an answer to but I guess it must have as just about every T34 I have seen has it fitted.

You can see the grey rubber gun cover supplied in the kit in some more detail here. It appears to look OK although I believe some modellers do not like this feature of the kit. However it works for me!

Not sure if anything will get done tomorrow but I will see how I feel after hopefully a good nights sleep and a few flu tablets to see if I can minimise the impact of this Covid virus. 

  

The concrete bunker takes shape!

Well, as I said in the last post this T34/122 looks like someone dropped a concrete bunker onto a T34 hull and called it a turret. The turret has come on assembly wise and is basically finished but it still looks like a bunker! 

The last piece of etched brass you can see in the photos is a step that fastens to the side of the turret but I will leave this off until I am ready for painting - it is just too vulnerable to me knocking it off! The grey part around the gun represents the cover sealing gun and turret. It is made from a sort of stiff rubber which is unusual but it works!

I have also painted the rubber tyres and primed both sides of the wheels and got one side into top coat. 

The fact that the tyres are separate makes this painting job so much easier. I could never get such a clean edge painting freehand as in the photo below. I was never any good at colouring books - always went outside the lines!

I took a little time out to have a play with my birthday present which was the Freightliner Class 57 and 5 limestone hopper wagons for it to haul. The loco is second hand but is like new and runs sweetly. It has a great sound to it with a full engine start up sequence including warning buzzer at the very start. I could understand though if you were at an exhibition for two days the whole DCC sound thing could become very irritating! I must admit there are times when I just run a loco silently and listen to the clickety clack of wheels going over my rather poorly laid track!

The wagons are great too but far too clean for working rolling stock. However I will just pretend they are fresh from the production line on their way to their first load which will cover them in dust. As is often said, my trainset and I will do as I please! Well of course unless Mrs. W says something!

Hidden away!

Things have moved on! The 122mm gun is all assembled apart from the very end of the barrel, and mounted to the turret base. It us a superbly detailed gun which looks great when viewed closely.

 The one thing is.....

...as soon as you put the turret superstructure on the detail disappears! It is not as though the turret has opening hatches. You can leave the hatches open but apart from the detail of the gun there is no other interior so the model would look somewhat strange if you did. 

Why did I assemble all that detail when it will be hidden away? Good question that even I asked myself. However there is an answer. Without building some of the detail the mount to the turret base would not work. Unfortunately a great number of the parts are interconnected so it is not as though you can leave off certain parts because others will not fit without them in place. It was however an interesting build for me and I do at least know the detail is there even if it never sees the light of day once finished.

As this build progresses, I have to admit, that whilst aesthetically the tank looks somewhat strange as though someone dropped a concrete bunker onto a tank chassis it does have a purposeful, industrial look to it. It will be interesting posing it next to the Egyptian T34/85 I recently built. In the meantime these two last pictures show why this tank probably would never win a design award!

RIP Queen Elizabeth, God Save The KIng!

A strange time for the UK. Most of the population, including me, have only known The Queen as the Monarch and now she has gone. What ever your thoughts on the Royal Family are, The Queen has always been that stable factor in many of our lives. Always a calming voice in times of troubles, always carrying out her duties with dignity but with an ability, from what people say, to put individuals at ease. As part of a military family I saw The Queen several times but both my parents did meet her briefly but long enough to be in their memories for all time. 

I did go out on my daily bike ride this morning and saw the Union Jack at half mast in all the villages I past through just like the one in my village pictured above. Even in this age of the internet and 24 hour news channels people were buying newspapers in numbers probably not seen for years. Possibly not so much for the news but for the information of The Queen's past life and her achievements and experiences. I always say that you find out so much more about someone when they die which is a shame as on many occasions I wish I had known that someone had certain interests or experiences as I would have loved to have talked with them about them. I suppose the moral is talk with people more! 

No talk of model making today. I did not do any work on my Last Great Project - I just felt operating electric saws and similar was not the thing to do especially as the village church bells rang for an hour today and I was not going to ruin that for my neighbours.

Things will change as we move on. Everything from coins, bank notes, stamps, passports through to the names on buildings will change to reflect the new King. In the meantime we all need to get used to singing God Save The King and hope that King Charles III will, whilst putting his own mark on the Monarchy, reign in a manner similar to his Mother.

God Save The King.

The wood butchery continues as does the tank build!

I said yesterday that I was taking advantage of the warm weather to start the rebuild of My Last Great Project. What I had not taken account of was the rain! Much as we need rain here in the UK it did stop me from progressing with todays pretend carpentry session. I do have a nice dry garage which I could work in - if it was not full of junk! However progress and I now have a  almost finished matching frame to yesterdays efforts. I must be getting better at this wood butchery as the half joints in this one were so tight I had to use a hammer to tap them together! 

Hopefully tomorrow will see warm and dry weather!

Progress on the T34/122 has now seen the external fuel tanks added. The etched cradles for the rear ones are not the greatest thing I have ever done so I will need to find some way of disguising my ineptitude with etched brass parts! However they are on and things can move on with hopefully not as much drama! Let us never talk of the etched brass parts again. However I bet we will!

Starting this years lesson in wood butchery!

I blame it on Mr. Beecham - he of modelling and cycling prowess. There I was starting another session of garage clearing. I was going to sort my timber stock out and had taken some out. Mr. B arrives and says it looks like I am starting another project. Well I wasn't but after he left my mind started working which as Mrs. Woody says is always a dangerous event! I have been thinking for a long time about My Last Great Project 00 gauge layout. I constructed the baseboards last year and got a rough track layout down during last summer. 

The track layout works for me in general but the configuration of the baseboards does not. Without going into to many details it needs reconfiguration to open up the Man Cave a bit more. 

I have had in the back of my mind a plan to resolve that which will involve a fair amount of upheaval. Given that we still have some reasonable weather it suddenly made sense that whilst I had the timber out I might as well bite the bullet and start the project in the relative warm weather and it would save me having to put it back it the garage! Therefore I spent this afternoon sawing bits of wood and screwing them together to form a base which now needs legs adding. In fact my wood butchery skills even included two half joints which actually were fairly accurate - amazing! 

It doesn't look much at the moment but in my mind I can visualise the finished project. I just need to get that vision into reality!

Hopefully Mrs. W does not mistake my wood butchery skills with those of a carpenter and draw up a list of carpentry type jobs!

007!

Not James Bond but a Bachman class 57 locomotive in Freightliner livery numbered 57007! It was my birthday present and it is beautiful - if you can see beauty in a diesel locomotive! I also got 5 limestone wagons for it to haul also in Freightliner livery. A really nice addition to the fleet. Thanks Mrs. Woody!

The T34/122 is still moving on although the etched parts are slowing progress!

After a busy day at the Rocks by Rail Museum, where it appears that a lot of visitors have waited for the schools to go back before going on holiday, I think I will have a quiet night on the sofa!

My arch Nemesis - Etched brass parts!

It had to come! My affection for the guys at Ryefield Models almost disappeared when I found that I needed to construct the cradles for the external fuel tanks on the rear panel of the T34/122 in etched brass! I am half way there having constructed the cradle itself and just need to mount the plastic tanks on them and then use etched straps to fasten the tanks to the cradle. I fear a contribution to the swear jar coming up but I live in hope that things will go well. My affection for the Ryefield guys was partly restored when I did the rear engine panel. There is a choice of parts for a start. If you don't want to use the etch mesh then there is a part that has it moulded as part of the panel. I did opt for the etched part to mount in the panel and after a slight bend to conform to the bend in the panel itself it just fitted. No fuss, no issues, no problems! Nice! 

I have also glued the upper hull to the lower hull as although the instructions leave this to the end of the build I could foresee potential problems. The two panels did not fit exactly without putting pressure in certain places. As you can see from the photo I have used elastic bands to pull the two parts together whilst the glue dries. Try doing that with a fully detailed upper hull and it is likely that you will be doing some repair work afterwards. I cannot see any reason not to put the two parts together at this stage but I have been caught out before!

Whilst it may not look as though much has progressed from yesterday there are a couple of hours worth of work (don't tell Mrs. Woody) since the last photo - most of it being consumed in dealing with my arch Nemesis etched brass parts! However not much of that left now - Brilliant! 

That special day - 18 'til I die!

Another year gone by! However as the great Bryan Adams sung - 18 'til I die! 

It was a great day. Started with a 25 mile bike ride then Mrs. Woody gave me a card (including one from the cats!) and a few presents which included some model railway stock which I will talk about another time but this box of goodies did look ever so inviting....

There are three layers of various chocolate bars - I can already feel the weight gain!

Off to the Rocks by Rail Museum after that where I visited as a guest and did a Driver for a Fiver getting to be at the controls of Betty whilst Mrs. W watched me! We did not crash!

There aws lots going on with some of the volunteers cleaning the fire box of one of the steam locos or trying out for an audition as a chimney sweep!

Not sure if Mrs. W would allow me back in the house if I came home looking like that! They were enjoying it though!

It was then off to the Ropsley Heath Light Railway which doesn't open to the public very often so being my Birthday I thought it must be specially for me! They had a great deal there with Alpacas...

Classic cars....

Classic fire engines

would you want to ride this with the petrol tank right in front of you?

There was a garden railway...

Then there was the main attraction - the 10 1/2 inch gauge line which runs a half mile lap. There is a diesel and a steam engine and we managed to ride on both! 

Back at WMD HQ Mrs. W cooked me a great birthday meal and I then even had time for an hour on the Ryefield T34/122 where the external fuel tanks are coming along!

A really great day - Thanks Mrs. W!