Saturday 20 November 2021

Butterley Pulp Wagons

There are a couple of ideas running at the moment for the next layout. I'm pretty sure what will get done next so more on that when I finally make a decision. For now, it is back to the plan to produce a layout based on the Bowaters Paper Mill system.

In real life, they had hundreds of what were known as pulp wagons. These were large flat wagons with vertical ends. Two forms existed, the earlier wooden version and the later steel variant. If you want to see examples then some are preserved on the Sittingbourne and Kemsley Light Railway. There is a good Flickr group here to see their photos.

There are two kits on the market for the steel wagon ut availability is mixed and I do want quite a few. It made sense to try my hand at printing them. I've struggled with flat surfaces not being flat with the printer and it took me many attempts to make this work but eventually, I found an orientation that worked. The base and the ends are printed separately. In the picture below you can see the parts glued together and sprayed in primer. The stays between the vertical panels are 0.3mm dia brass wire.

This is definitely good enough for now so bogies need to be designed and then the whole design will probably need tweaking to make it robust and repeatable.



Friday 12 November 2021

In the news

Quite a while ago I was asked to write an article for Railway Modeller. I'll cut a long story short and say that there was recently a request to get it finished as there was only one week till the deadline. Needless to say, it got sorted and I am pleased to see that my layout, Melin Dolrhyd, is in this month's Railway Modeller, available at all shops that sell it and, let's face it, only real shops sell railway items!

Chris Ford has done a great job with the text and Andrew Burnham produced some excellent photos so thanks to them and the rest of the team at Peco. There are some other excellent articles in the issue but forgive me for being biased and just giving a taster of mine...





Saturday 6 November 2021

Another Long Absence

I was rightly chastised recently that I had not posted anything on this blog for far too long so time to catch up. The primary reason for the absence has been that I decided I wasn't busy enough and needed a fresh challenge so I have taken on being editor of 009 News, the magazine of the 009 Society.

Chris Ford had done a great job and done it for over 4 years which is a marathon stint. The one thing you realise about the role is that it is relentless. The magazine has to go out every month so as soon as you've finished one, it's time to start the next, so all credit to Chris for the 50+ issues that he produced. 

Being edtor has eaten into my modelling time. It took a few issues to master the desk top publishing program and to develop a process for the articles but now it is reasonably organised and I don't have to take so long each month.

Here's the covers from the 7 issues I have done so far. If anything takes your fancy to read then the 009 Society has all the back issues available on the website so join the Society and read as much as you want about narrow gauge modelling.





New Year Update

It's been a busy few weeks on the railway front. First it was the SWOONs open day on the Saturday where I had my sales stand for STModel...