Well I guess it has been a week when bits of success have been mingled with the bittersweet taste of challenges sent to try me on Elmham Market. Much of my spare time during the first part of the week was spent sorting things out for the February meeting of the NW Surrey group of the EMGS. We had an enjoyable Thursday evening trying to work through an operating sequence based on the 1950’s Lavenham working timetable, with additional trains to provide a branch service to Stratford St James. We didn’t complete it but it was enjoyable trying. It also picked up some faults that I hadn’t spotted before so I will sort them out in the coming days.
I then turned my attention to the J15 again and have added brakes and balance weights to the wheels and painted the chassis. I built it over thirty years ago as 65469, which was a pet engine at Norwich shed and had been given a stovepipe chimney. More recently I picked up a Hornby 65469 on offer and obviously don’t want two models of the same loco. Some research indicated 65457 had been based at Cambridge shed for most of the 1950’s so I decided to convert it to that loco. That meant I needed an LNER J15 chimney and a tender cab.
Rummaging around in my boxes of things that were too good to throw away was surprisingly beneficial as I found an Alan Gibson lost wax chimney casting for a J15 and a set of etchings for the tender cabs commonly used on the GER tenders. I managed to remove the old chimney with judicious use of a scalpel and a sharp screwdriver the cleaned up the casting and glued the new one in. The etching for the tender cab went together well but I needed to add some rear window protectors, which I fettled out of 0.33mm wire. Prime and paint and current state of play is shown in the photo below.
I have ordered a set of smokebox plates from Narrow Planet and will finish renumbering, add glazing to the tender cab windows, then weather down and hopefully it will enter service.
That was the good part! The more challenging bit was the ongoing saga of the goods yard. I have been researching colours suitable for a goods yard in East Anglia in the 1950’s and mixed up some Vallejo acrylics and thinned then started up my trusty Iwata. Hmm. Loose scatter did exactly that (OK, basic schoolboy error!) and I have spent a lot of this evening vacuuming, clearing out clogged points etc and generally getting pretty irate with myself… still some sorting to do but I have at least recovered the bare bits and dropped in dilute PVA with washing up liquid so hopefully am close to being back to square one…. Again, the photo shows current state of play with colours distorted by wet PVA… The whole exercise has definitely increased my respect for those who can create realistic scenery on their models, many fold! I will attack it again during the week when it has dried out…
Cheers
Nigel
