I’m taking my Wee Ben up to a running day next Saturday in Carlisle on the CD0GG’s layout, so I’ve got just over a week to do as much detailing as I can before her public debut; I’m sure she’ll enjoy it. I’ve done a lot of work "in the flat" recently, making sub-assemblies and modifying LGM’s HR castings so they are more nearly Wee Ben components; these are mostly ready now to add to the engine. A case in point are the lubricators on the smokebox front; I had to cut off the cast pipes under them and substitute brass rods bent at a much more acute angle, then finish them off with a little washer where the pipe disappears into the front of the smokebox; it’s time consuming, but it’s a lot easier to modify LGM’s castings in this way than to start right from scratch. I did however make the "piano front" below the lubricators from scratch, I think this is the valve cover, it’s hinged at the bottom and has a couple of catches at the top which were pressed in to open it; I made these from brass pins and the hinges from fine n/s rod. This went well but the smokebox door was another matter; the brass ring that surrounds the door was supplied on the etched sheets, and I was grateful for this and used it, but I just couldn’t modify the LGM smokebox door casting to fit nicely inside the ring, it was too big, and the door has to be exactly the right size because of the surround; so I was left with no choice other than to make a new door myself. I think a lathe would have helped at this stage but I don’t have one. So I cut, as accurately as possible by hand, a circle of nickle silver sheet and hammered it into a shallow domed shape in a doming block. I filed this to the correct profile which was not too difficult. However, undoubtedly the hardest part was working on the door to make it truly circular and to fit it accurately inside its brass surround… it took ages, working by eye with a file, but I think I’ve just about got away with it. The brass door surround will look a treat later whan it’s buffed up along with the other brass components of the engine that the enginemen so lovingly polished up in HR days. The front coupling hook is soldered solid to the buffer beam as the conformation of the chassis behind leaves no room for a spring arrangement; I don’t think this presents any mechanical problems as it seems that the HR didn’t subject their engines to the indignity of running backwards with a train, the front coupling was rarely if ever used, so I’ll take a leaf out of their book.         

I’m still uneasy about modelling fish barrels and turf coverings despite all the information I had from HRSoc members on the chat site; so I decided the best way to liven up the interior of my fish truck was to add a folded wagon sheet which I thought would be appropriate in a wagon in transit. So, using Bellass and Geddes’ "Highland Railway Liveries" for reference, I drew the lettering for the wagon sheet by hand, rather oversize.  This was the time consuming part of the job; after which I simply scanned the artwork  into the computer, sized it, and printed as many as I needed on plain computer paper. I cut a sheet out and painted it with dilute wood glue as I folded it to shape. When it was dry I used Humbrol enamels to colour it, working from dark to light with a good deal of dry brush work. Ropes were added from miniature cordage from a model ship kit which was soaked in more dilute wood glue before being persuaded to lay flat on the floor planking in a realistic manner with more wood glue. The shovel and brush are from my own "Heroes of the Footplate" accessory range.       

Resplendant in Halfords’ "Acid 8" etch primer, this Highland Railway Pasenger Brake Van is from a Lochgorm "etches only" kit, or maybe it’s sold as an "aid to scratchbuilding"; whatever it’s called, the main thing is that it’s accurate and fits together nicely; the result is a basic model that needs detailing. I thickened the window openings and added an inner skin as well so that the glazing slides into the gap betwen the inner and outer skin; I think this treatment gives an old wooden vehicle a real solid feel. I fabricated patterns for the vacuum pipe, the horsehooks and the lamp-tops on the roof, from which I made silicone rubber moulds so I could cast as many as I needed, both for this model and with future projects in mind.   

I made this Caley Horsebox some time ago and I decide it was high time that I painted it; in fact it’s high time I addressed a backlog of unpainted models, shunted into "Forlorn Sidings", gathering dust. When I was in Halfords a few days ago I bought a tin of their "Acid 8" spray etch-primer which I’d heard about and wanted to try for myself. I cleaned the model thoroughly outside the workshop in the garden using cellulose thinners, then dried it and sprayed on a couple of coats of "Acid 8". There was no mention of a critical curing temperature on the side of the tin; neverthess I put the model in my lightbox (just a cardboard box with a light bulb inside), and let the etch primer cure at about 30 degrees C for the rest of the afternoon before I took it upstairs to the studio. After 24 hours the primer was hard and, I’m pleased to relate, resisted my thumbnail when I tried to scratch it off the underside of the model. I’ll certainly use "Acid 8" on future modelling projects, it was a good buy; well worth just over a tenner.    

The corners of the tank flares were made using a formula I found on Nick Baines’ website…  Using this I produced a shape which slotted, with a bit of fiddling, into the gap I’d left at the corners, much preferable I thought to the brass fingers with solder infill method There’s a good deal of tidying up to do still, and a lot of detail to add but I feel I’ve managed to "tame" the tender now; so, as the loco’s still fighting back I’m moving on to work on that now.  

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.

The brakeshaft and the brackets rivetted under the frames, which serve as its mountings, are clearly seen in this view of the tender underside; this assembly along with the brake cylinder is the key to making a good job of the various brake linkages under the tender. There’s a good deal that I don’t understand about the linkages between cylinder and brakeshaft and the brake rods themselves; I’m trying to clarify this at the moment.