Decal stripping
Snagging & shopping lists
Generator room details
Stephen brought along a 'Days Gone' model he had purchased from a local shop for £3.50. The Morris Z-van had no scale on the box, as usual, but this one looked O scale, and a bit of Googling confirmed it. It was cream & black with Gordons Gin branding and looked quite smart. Rather than a full 'Nitromors' paint strip, a more delicate decal removal was attempted. Geoff had read that Dettol was a good, mild stripper, so Stephen had a go. It was a very slow process using a cotton-bud and gentle rubbing, but it did work. However, mindless tasks usually allowed Stephen to talk non-stop, and this work fell into that category ....z....z....z......
Laurence had a wander up-and-down the layout, taking stock of recent progress and was therefore encouraged to prepare a snagging list of all the things that needed doing. As extra materials were often required, a shopping list was started as well. With ExpoNG at Swanley coming up, both could be very useful.
Geoff worked on the generator room. Firstly, a pair of doors were fitted. These had been made-up from images found online and printed out. The control panel he'd drawn had also been printed out and dropped roughly into place for review and to assess the battery layout. The gantry floor (over the panel) was painted.
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| Artists impression! |
The main building has long been the elephant-in-the-room. Stephen had produced the polyboard mock-up and experimented with self-printed brick paper. However, the other buildings and bridge had subsequently been clad in embossed plastic, so a textured finish was essential. Stone was felt to be more appropriate, but the plastic sheet used for the bridge stonework was far too crude. Even if a suitable sheet could be found, the current design would require a lot of making-good. Stephen offered to attempt a full plaster finish scratched with bespoke stonework, but it was decided that research into plastic stone sheeting would be undertaken, especially with Swanley a week away.
Stephen also brought along his BO-BO diesel (Bachmann GE44) to show how the bonnet grille problem had been resolved. Based on 15" gauge 'Carnegie', the fine grilles had been difficult to emulate and 'no grilles' was becoming the only solution. However, prompted by Geoff, Stephen tried several different methods and finally settled on panels of .75mm plastic rod. Rod was cut over-size, glued together and then cut to width when fully set. The top rod was shaped at the ends and the back of each completed panel sanded to half-way through the rod thickness. They are still slightly overstated, but the effect is pretty good.
It now needs a paint job, and a name.
