petesworkshop

As I mentioned in an earlier Post, the tender top flare was half etched into the tender side, in a feeble attempt to create an impression of the way the flare attaches to the tender top. As I’m trying to make a scale model of a Wee Ben rather than a sort of "look alike", I cut the flare off, then added a strip of metal to the top of the sides and to the top of the tender back. Then, after bending the flare to shape, I soldered it back onto the strip I’d added to the tender top; you can see this arrangement here. The strip I added needs filing to conform to the slope of the flare inside the tender; I’ll have to fill up any gaps with Milliput later. The front plate of the tender needed a good deal of modifying too, and it looks a bit of a dogs dinner at the moment ,though I’ve no doubt that Milliput will sort this out eventually too. I spent a long time poring over old photos of Wee Bens and weighing up the Tatlow drawing of the engine and I think I’ve eventually sorted out just what’s happening at the front of the tender; I hope you agree.  

This is Lochgorm’s Highland Railway Fish Truck kit with some additional details added by myself. It’s part sprayed and part hand painted with a good deal of dry-brush work and a final light weathering added with the airbrush. The wagon body was sprayed with Phoenix’s HR Dark Green P727; transfers are waterslide from the HRSoc. I had great difficulty in hiding the edge of the transfer backing varnish, which still shows a bit of an edge at certain angles. I’m not at all sure that the wording "Fish Traffic" is in the right place, I’d no information at all to go on, so as it didn’t seem to fit anywhere else I put it where you see it. The wagon interior is painted as bare wood and so is the floor which I represented by covering the brass floor provided with the kit with plastic planking then scribing it to give it a wooden texture that would dry-brush nicely. I could do with some fish barrels to give some interest to the interior of the vehicle now. I’ve heard that these were covered with turf, but covered in what way I wonder, was it all over the lot of them or was it only a circle of turf on top of each barrel? I just don’t know at the moment, and I need to know before I can model the barrels at all.