The heat is building up at WMD HQ!

Although the weather has cooled down a bit WMD HQ continues to develop its strategy to deal with cold winters. After the new boiler yesterday the open fire place in the lounge came in for attention today. A lot of destruction but by the end of the day things have progressed for the final stage tomorrow - hopefully!

Marty and Monty 'helping'!

Marty thinking that it is a very big mouse hole!

Milly wondering what's in the box? We will find out tomorrow Milly!

Meanwhile I have had a chance to fit the glass into the Italeri DAF 95 Canvas Truck so there has been some progress with that too! The heat is on to try to finish this project by the end of the week!

New boiler at WMD HQ.

A model making free day as WMD HQ had a new heating boiler fitted or as our American friends call them a furnace. The old one has been leaking water for several years and probably should have been replaced before now. However at least I have been proactive and had it replaced before it breaks down in the middle of a freezing Winter when heating engineers give installation times in terms of months rather than days! Hope Mrs. Woody is impressed by my pro-activeness in this matter. The only down side was that the new boiler needed testing which meant turning the heating on to full blast on a very hot day. However I can cope far better with that then freezing in Winter.

as you can see by the unpainted brickwork in the garage the new boiler is more compact then the old one and there is a fancy magnetic filter installed to catch any metal fragments that have been formed by the metal radiators that may be floating about in the system before they do any harm to the boiler. It took the heating engineer about 6 hours to do the whole job including replacing the thermoset in the house and putting in a new valve for the motorised valve. I am impressed! 

There is some other work being done at WMD HQ tomorrow and Wednesday but more of that later! In the meantime I can tick off 'New boiler' from Mrs. Woody's list of jobs - if only there were all that easy!

When coal really was king!

One of those days which flew by! I had plans to do many things but only achieved some! My plan just to hoover the car out following several months of hard use take rubbish to the tip and auction probably scuppered my other plans as once I had cleaned the carpets the seats needed doing then the door trims and before I knew it I was on a full-scale valet including putting that tyre dressing on to make the tyres look shiny! Anyway my four hours of work concluded just in time for the rain which started and will now no doubt make the paintwork look streaky!

I did have time to take five in the Man Cave where I sprayed the mirrors and windscreen wipers for the Italeri DAF 95 Canvas Truck black. 

Not being in a mood to do much else on this model today I ran some trains including digging my Bachmann Class 20 in Railfreight livery out. Not run for some time it was good to see and hear it on the track. They were known as 'Choppers' by those who used to follow them. They certainly had a distinctive engine sound in real life and this model goes some way to replicating that. They were used a lot on coal trains were they were lashed up in pairs to haul the hopper wagons that were used on the 'Merry Go Round' workings at the coal powered power stations. It all sounds so old and almost unbelievable now but it was only 40 years ago that coal dominated electric power production when coal really was king!

As well as the loco I have some of the coal wagons in the form of these Bachmann HAA hoppers in Railfreight livery. I should have about 10 of them but just took these two out at the moment.

As you can see one of them is pristine and the other weathered which is how these wagons used to look as they were never cleaned.

I think I have three or four of the weathered wagons which I bought second hand from TMC ( The Model Center) who ironically originally did the weathering on them. They certainly look good and fit for King Coal but I will need to weather the others to match - when I get the time!

Cake time!

 Mrs. Woody and me went back to Easton Walled Gardens today. Our last trip a few weeks ago was great but made even better by the home made Victoria Sponge and Lemon Drizzle cakes that we bought. So todays visit was into the ticket office and straight to the cake counter to make sure we got what we wanted again! Having secured said cakes we left them in a bag with the staff and went off for a wander round. It is amazing how much things in nature can change in just a few weeks. The sweet peas had really blossomed and although not my favorite flowering plant I was suitably impressed.

I was also impressed by this smallest shed that I have ever seen!

You could probably store a watering can and a trowel in there or preferably some cakes. Never the less despite its small size it was a quality shed!

Having safely returned Mrs. Woody and cakes to WMD HQ I did some further work on the Italeri DAF 95 Canvas Truck namely the windscreen wipers and mirrors.

Firstly the widescreen wipers had to be reversed to fit the now right hand drive cab. That consisted cutting them in half and regluing at the right angle. The photos below probably illustrate what I did better then I can describe it!

The unaltered wipers on their kit sprue.

The top wiper is the first altered one.

Mirror wise I am using some reflective sheet that needs to be cut to shape. I covered the appropriate area of the sheet with masking tape so that I could apply the sheet to the plastic part prior to painting. Once painted I just need to remove the masking tape so hopefully no problems! Famous last words!

After all that I think I will have some cake now!

Box 1T???

No, Woody has not decided to take to the World of fisticuffs! Instead this relates to the number plate of the Italeri DAF 95 Canvas Truck which is nearly finished. Having already adorned the cargo body with decals for a corrugated box company I thought I might as well make the number plate relevant! In the UK the choice of number plates for vehicles is limited to a defined format and layout set out by the DVLA. You do see some vehicles where the number plates are 'doctored' to make the letters and numbers read something that the owner wants rather then can legitimately get. I prefer the traditionally undoctored types though such as COM1C that Jimmy Tarbuck had or MAG1C that Paul Daniels had or Robbie Williams with his S8RRY plate on his Ferrari. 

There are a lot of transport companies who also don't doctor the registration to get something related to their business or truck and you do see a lot of recovery vehicles with the word 'TOW' in the registration plate. The second hand car dealer Cazoo has a lot of its trucks with plates that look from a quick glance like Cazoo. So for my truck I thought that BOX1T would be a good plate. I did check to see which vehicle in real life it was registered to but apparently it has never been issued in the UK.

Luckily I had a sheet of number plates and letters from KFS so I could make up this registration plate.

A bit fiddly to do as the individual letters and digits wanted to slide off in all directions just like the WMD HQ fleet of cats at vet time! However eventually the two plates were done. I still need to fit the front one to the front valance but the rear one is in plkace.

Whilst in the decal mood I also did the various decals for the front grill and the interior dashboard.

The cab takes on a whole new look as the steering wheel and front marker lights have also been fitted.

Hopefully once finished this will not be a truck to box up and put away!

Seeing Red!

Not that I got mad and saw red but out today I saw this sight which I thought was beautiful! Not seen that many poppies in one field in this Country before.

My journey had been to drop some things off at an auction house including this 1970s HiFi unit made by Waltham. 

Unusually for the UK not only did it have a radio, turntable and cassette player but also an 8 track player. Much as I can recall playing my meager record collection on it as a child having got permission from my Dad and it has some sentimental value I don't have the space or indeed the need for it. Hopefully someone will want it and enjoy it.

Returning to WMD HQand having done some cleaning (hope Mrs. Woody reads that!) it was back to the Italeri DAF 95 Canvas Truck. Work today consisted of finishing the air intake system with the filter and pipework. Also the strengthening cross brace to the chassis and the cover to the rear of the engine were fitted.

I have also fitted the front wings to the cab floor pan. Annoyingly, and it is my own fault, I had forgotten to fit the front of cab grab handles before painting. There have now been fitted as in the photo below. They are the grey bits just below the windscreen aperture and need painting black. Which reminds me I still need to fit the cab glass as well as the mirrors. 

It is nearly there and I cannot see much red of the chassis so I must be happy!

Historic case?

 If I were by the sea, enjoying a cooling ice cream whilst watching the passing World I could really appreciate the current heatwave. As it is, delving in a sun drench shed which was doing an impression of an industrial oven, hauling out stuff to be disposed of I did not appreciate the heatwave! However that long over due job is done! 

A lot of stuff is from my parents and much as I could keep it there is just not the space. Some is junk and goes for recycling but there are some gems like this suitcase which will go to auction.

About 70 years old it dates back to my Dad's days in the RAF when such cases were adorned with stickers from places visited. There is some history there and if the case could talk.....

fter a rest and cool down I needed a less then taxing job so I decided to polish the paintwork on the cab of the Italeri DAF 95 Canvas Truck. I used the set of compounds from Tamiya which consist of a course, fine and finish used in that order with a fine sponge. Very much like the cutting compounds used for restoring car paintwork these do the same thing but in a much milder way suitable for models.

After that I started to paint the black parts of the cab which in this case are the door handles and window surrounds. To get a neat line i tend to use a fresh scalpel blade and run it around the outside edge of the item to be painted. The slight cut in the paintwork gives a sort of miniature ditch into which stray paint flows rather then spreading beyond where it is wanted.

My choice of paint for this type of fine work is the air brush version of Vallejo's paints. It flows well and covers - much better than the normal paint designed to be brushed!

Just the other side to do now then that is another job in the case!

Seeking coolness!

Tuesday and its a day at Rocks By Rail where mower, hedge trimmer and me pit our stamina against the sun and heat. The sun and heat eventually won against me, the mower and hedge trimmer could have gone on, but not until I had at least carried out a fair amount of vegetational butchery!

The strange thing is that you would think in such heat and sunshine a building made out of corrugated iron would be like a large scale oven. However the restoration shed is like stepping into a air conditioned room - lovely and cool! So I had a quiet half hour in there enjoying the coolness and doing a short video on what is in there to post on my YouTube channel.

Whilst in there I was reminded that Elizabeth the 0-4-0 steam loco is still awaiting reuniting with her cab and water saddle tank so I ventured outside to seek them out. I think it will be next year before she is finished but she will be a cool loco when finished!

Was it twelve months ago or eleven?

I never kept a diary as a youngster so it was a strange step for me when a few years ago I started this blog primarily as a way to record what I have been up to rather then rely upon my memory as well as to prove to Mrs. Woody that I had been getting on with at least some of her list of jobs for me! I have informed a bewildered Mrs. Woody on many occasions that my memory is fine and I never get things wrong and even the one time l though I was actually wrong I wasn't! Interestingly though, the blog has proved that my memory can actually get things wrong and the reality is that like most people my memory is not as accurate as I thought and this blog is a way of going back and actually seeing the facts in cyber print. Take today for example. Out on my bike ride this morning, early to avoid the heat, I took this photo to show that the sheep knew it was going to be hot.

In my mind I took more or less the same picture twelve months ago when it was a hot weather period and I was convinced it was more or less to the day that I took this one last year.

Actually going back through the blog the photo was taken and the blog posted on the 11 July 2022 as evidenced by clicking here. Well there you go! My memory was semi right but a month almost to the day out! The worth of the blog is proved! To my mind anyway so I was not wrong in starting the blog. There is a lot of convoluted logic there which will keep Mrs. W amused if nothing else!

Back then I was also building the MiniArt T34 Egyptian tank which seems a lot longer ago then a year. However lets get back to the present and progress on the Italeri DAF 95 Canvas Truck. Today I decaled the cargo body. Sometime ago Kit Form Services had a clear out and there were bargains to be had and of course I ended up with things that I knew would come in handy one day. These included these part decal sheets.

The sheets are for a fictional UK company (I must try the phone number just to see!) and were originally designed to fit a tractor and trailer set up. I had it my mind though for some time that the trailer ones would, with a bit of compression, fit the cargo body. A quick test with the various parts cut out confirmed that my hopes.

With that confirmed and having already sprayed the matt paint of the canvas with gloss varnish to aid the application process, the decals were dipped into a water filled ice cream container that I had had to empty - well it was a hot day!

Applying them to the cargo body was not the easiest thing to do as I had to do a lot of measuring to make sure they at least looked straight and centered. After a few hours this is what it all looked like and I am pleased with the result.

The rear of the cargo body required some custom cutting of the decals but I think it works.

I thought that the blue cab decals that came with the set did not really work on the green cab and with such prominent advertising on the cargo body why would the cab also be liveried up? I did however apply the ISO 9002 decals as a token gesture to some cab adornment. Not sure if it works so it may come off once I have thought about it a bit more.

All the decals were treated to a coating of Micro Sol to aid their adhesion and setting.

Hopefully if I can remember I need to also treat the decals to a coat of semi matt varnish. If I forget I can always look back on this blog in a few months time!

Your hot!

Out early on my bike ride to a) avoid the later heat of the day and b) as I was working at the Rocks By Rail Museum for most of the day, I dropped into a local shop to pick up a newspaper. I was greeted by one of the staff saying to me 'Your hot!'  Such phraseology related to me is something you do not hear! I have a face for radio. However for a brief moment I felt flattered. Then the next four words, which came a second or two after, brought everything back to ground level for me when the words 'from your bike ride' were uttered! Oh well - Woody is not a pin up!

Back to the reality of the Museum, if you have ever been on a sunny day you may well appreciate the suntrap the line is. Today was no exception with temperatures outside around 30C to 32C (almost 90F) on the concrete areas. Despite the heat enticing many to visit the cooler coast there were still a fair number of visitors. Steam always attracts the visitors and that is what was running today which I guess, unlike me, really makes steam hot in so many ways!

It may be a fairly open cab but it was hot in there. You can see the discarded drinks cans to the right of the firebox where the crew attempted to keep hydrated. 

However by this afternoon Stephen and Thomas had to seek shade and cool off!

That gave the rest of us a chance to do the same without looking as though we were slacking!

Trevor, John and Geoff take a brake by the brake van!

Trevor probably thinking a cooling pint in the pub beer garden would be nice!

However in the cool of the Sundew Cafe although there were plenty of snacks and cakes, ice creams were a good seller with stocks reduced to just two. I will need to replenish that next week.

This sort of weather brings out the topless cars but George not having such a vehicle has the next best thing with his cab-less Fergie tractor - brilliant!

Looks like I could be hot in temperature terms tomorrow from the weather forecast!