Brettell Road, 1960s black country (ish)

[Jim smith-wright]

What we have here is a typical midland type yard lamp from RMLectronics. They kindly supplied me an incomplete model as I wanted to change the flat ladder supplied (an understandable commercial compromise) with one of Colin's 3d versions. I felt the light was a bit white so I painted the LED with some revel translucent yellow. The effect of this can be seen below.



Although Brettell Road is basically a personal plaything there has been interest in it going out to an exhibition or two at some point. With this in mind I have included a couple of viewer friendly hidden details in the warehouse for those who like a good look at little details.



First up a lorry unloading scene using a modified base toys lorry and a couple of Airfix platform figures painted to look like factory workers.



Secondly a hand crane included to give a suggestion of how goods get from one floor to the other. This is very loosely based on one at the SS Great Britain museum in Bristol (well worth a visit if you are in the area. There are a few remains of the railway there too along with some old wagons that are also worth a look.)

 

[Jim smith-wright]

If you can call diesels modelled as they appeared 30 years ago modern, a few have escaped from New Street and ventured to Brettell Road. They have since been rounded up and shepherded back to their own world!

 

[Jim smith-wright]

I fancied a diesel shunter for Brettell Road. I was quite taken with the idea of bringing my decades dead mainline class 03 back from the grave with a High Level Chassis but as I though about it I drifted away from the idea. A quick win would be just to get a Black 08 and swap the wheels but where is the fun in that?



So what I have ended up with is basically the class 08's older brother, the class 11. Work so far started with a Bachmann 08. I fitted the smaller 3ft 11 wheels and Brassmasters coupling rods. Some general underframe detailing has been started along with the spring overlays from Mr Horn. Rather than file off all the bodyside doors I thought it easier to just replace the bodysides so that I had a nice flat base to work on.



The cab roof of a class 11 is a lot more like a continuous curve than the 08 and it just so happens that when lima did their model they completely cocked it up! So much so that it appears they might have been working from class 11 drawings as it seems to match pretty well. So it's a no brainer to swap the cabs over. I have also reduced the depth of the bufferbeam and will need to relocate the buffers.

 

[Jim smith-wright]

I was recently asked for a track plan of Brettell road but I thought a satellite style image was better so here it is.



While the left hand end is coming along pretty well the right hand side is looking a bit neglected so more building work is required, starting with...



...a bit of cheating. This is actually to go behind the large warehouse on the left and is a blatant short cut. The reason for its existence is an excuse for the chimney, perhaps when the warehouse was a factory in its previous life it had a small steam engine or something? In truth you will only see the chimney so I could have missed out the building completely or just used a box but I had an old Hornby water tower so why not just use that instead? I knocked up a new roof, gave it a light dusting of red primer and blanked of the windows with a bit of scrap ply I just need to paint the door and weather it.



No such short cuts on the more visible bits though. This little building is based on a picture I found on the brumpic site. Construction is 2mm card clad with plasticard while the arches are left overs from New Street. The steps are plastruct and microstrip.



The real life Brettell lane and surrounding area has an awful lot of pubs so I decided to have one on the layout. Construction is the same as above and the windows are modified Brassmasters ones. The roof slates are from Mr Horns laser cutter.



This is the rear view in roughly the position it will occupy on the layout. I knocked up a little store hut too.



I find things like guttering to be strangely therapeutic. The actual gutters are half round brass from Eileens while the rainwater downpipes are 1mm brass with a single strand of electrical wire double wrapped to form brackets. Experiments have shown mounting the gutter brackets on top of the wall is the most robust way to secure them with the roof adding extra reinforcement later.

 

[The Penguin Of Doom]

Hi Jim.

I like the idea of the class 11, how's it coming along?

Cheers.

Sean.

 

[Geoff]

Love the way in which the pub is coming together Jim, the rainwater goods, bay windows and door furniture are spot on. The old water tower looks just right as well, with its boarded up windows and other modifications.

 

[Jim smith-wright]

My class 11 is ready for a visit to the paint shop



I prefer to give models a coat of undercoat when the basic work is done before adding details as this allows me to see any areas that need attention first. The rivets are archers and the ladders are Colin Craig's.



One thing you can't do is just refit the brake gear as it will now sit too low and too far from the wheels. My solution was to trim the mounting blocks down and add new pegs from microstrip set to bring everything back in line.



With plans afoot for my what if the Flatirons weren't scrapped idea I have decided a short passenger train might be in order to go with it. As such I picked up an old Bachmann Mk1 suburban for a fiver on eBay and set to work. Starting with the bogies.



These are the older style Bachmann bogies and P4 wheels would have simply dropped in but the out of line brake shoes kept catching my eye so I mounted them on my own etched subframes (available from Brassmasters). The top image shows how much of the original sideframe is reused.



The principle work done to the mk1. Starting from the top the roof ribs have been reduced in size, Replica Railways windows have been added, bufferbeam details and steps along with underframe details from Masokits and Replica.

 

[john lewsey]

This is such a good thread so interesting

 

[Jim smith-wright]

Not a lot to say really, the class 11 is done and ready for service. Here's a few pictures.



OK so the irony isn't lost on this one but its a good comparison between the class 11 and class 08 shunters. Of course class 08's never carried LMS livery in their early days while the class 11s did. It will be interesting to see if anyone ever notices that 12049 is a bit more than a repainted 08!


Whilst I had my airbrush out the Mk1 got all mucky too!


I haven't done any photo-shopped pictures for a while but here's a spot of shunting.

 

[Jim smith-wright]

A while ago I posted an image of the Hornby water tower building that I had converted to a disused pump house. Well waste not want not I decided to use the water tank bit for a small industrial tank.


Here's progress so far. The Hornby tank, like the building it came with is a tad basic so I reduced its length a bit and added more framing from microstrip. The base it sits on was made from evergreen section using a simple jig and was sprayed with plasticote suede to give a concrete texture.


The handrails are some very nice turnings from STANCHIONS - modellingtimbers.co.uk who specialise in stuff for ships. they are actually 1:72 scale.

The pub and little industrial building have also been finished and planted. Below are a few images.

 

[Jim smith-wright]

I picked up a few Parkside container wagon kits at Scaleforum and over the last week or 2 I have been putting them together. Along the way a Bachmann example was added too as it was cheap and had the smaller container that I was after.


Above are the Conflats themselves, the 2 on the left being the Parkside ones and the 3rd the Bachmann one. The first one is built as intended with the usual additions of buffers and brake pipes from Lanarkshire models, safety loops from Bill Bedford and tie bar from Eileens emporium. (I'll come back to the chains in a moment). The second one uses the Red Panda underframes as a lot of those pictured on Paul Bartletts site seemed to match this configuration. For the Bachmann one it looked a bit of a faff to sort out the underframe as the brakes were set for 00. Strangely Bachmann had the wrong brake levers on either side meaning that the brakes wouldn't actually work anyway as lowering the lever would pull the shoes even further away from the wheels! A Parkside chassis is the easy option and I had a spare from the second wagon.

Above is a view of the different underframes. You could go much further than this if you wanted too but this is a representation of what I feel you can see in all the gloom. If you did want to go further then the obvious start point would be one of Justin Newett's excellent etched chassis but even if you didn't he puts his instruction on his site anyway and there's some good references and info on how it should all look. The wagon at the front is the BR clasp underframe.

I mentioned earlier that I would come back to the chains and to my eye Parkside have been too delicate in the details on this kit. There's a tendency to think that finer is better but I don't think it works here. The chain I used is 23 links per inch from Langley models Which as supplied has quite round links with a twist to them. You can see the original shape on the container on the right. To get them to the more lozenge shape it's simply a case of putting one end of a length of chain in a vice and pulling the other to stretch it. Nothing cleverer than that! The lifting shackles on the roof were also too fine and were replaced with spared from Justin's Bogie Bolster E underframe detailing kit. In case you are wondering the wagon on the right was destined for the smaller container which is why the raised links are towards the middle.

The finished wagons - Both large containers were sprayed with Halfords Rover damask red. The apparent difference being due to the weathering. I might be stating the obvious here but it pays to weather the wagons and containers separately meaning the weathering process is earlier in the build than normal.

The shackles are from Roxey models and use the same Langley chain links. While a little fiddly it does mean that they can be assembled without resorting to the soldering iron! I didn't use the supplied eyelets for the containers as I felt they didn't really look much like the prototype pictures I was using so I just used a bit of fine wire instead. Once the chains are in place it worth treating them to a thin coat of ZAP thin CA (the pink bottle) to set everything solid.

I've been doing other wagons too. Above a Dia 1/002 Lowfit from the Red Panda kit.

D2109 LMS 16t mineral wagon from the Cambrian kit
A couple of Banana vans - Wrenn bodies on Red Panda underframes with additional details.

And finally a couple of brake vans - on the left the Airfix kit with Bill Bedford springing and extra details. On the right Hornby RTR.

 

[john lewsey]

This is great stuff Jim

 

[Jordan]

Wrenn?? Blimey there's a name I've not heard in years!! - & would never have thought suitable for modern standards of modelling!! (new underframes duly noted)

 

[AJC]

Wrenn?? Blimey there's a name I've not heard in years!! - & would never have thought suitable for modern standards of modelling!! (new underframes duly noted)

The body is a pretty fair rendition as it goes, even down to the roof ribs. Compare Jim's models with Paul Bartett's image of the real thing: BR Banana vans and barriers RBV ZDV ZRV | B881724_80896__m_

Dad did something similar probably before I was born... Meantime, my next project will use something from Hornby Dublo. Not a lot of admittedly, but enough. There's some good bits to be had.

Adam

 

[InvernessTMD]

Jim will you stop posting photos of the real things trying to pass them off as models

 

[Yorkshire Dave]

Wrenn?? Blimey there's a name I've not heard in years!! - & would never have thought suitable for modern standards of modelling!! (new underframes duly noted)

Their later (ex-Hornby Dublo) injection moulded wagons and vans were very good - apart from the chassis. As Jim has demonstrated they look as good (if not better in some cases) as the later generation products. This is something I noticed about the Roco wagons and van bodies produced in the late 1960s - they are just as detailed as those produced today.

 

[Jim smith-wright]

Regular readers will most likely be aware of my tendency for fiddly little details. Whilst this isn't really little (about 50mm overall) it definitely ticks the fiddly box!

 

[7428 84J]

I like the LMS Mineral Jim!
Am I right the kit requires some modifications to be built accurately?

 

[allegheny1600]

Hello Jim,
Just got to congratulate you on this, it's wonderfully inspiring!
Cheers,
John.

 

[Jim smith-wright]

I like the LMS Mineral Jim!
Am I right the kit requires some modifications to be built accurately?

Looking at pictures I couldn't see anything obviously off except the fit of the corners were quite iffy. In the end I filed back to the main pillars and added new corners from microstrip.

Cheers

Jim