The LNER Encyclopedia

Rufford Red Lion Square station takes shape, slowly and only on paper at the moment, but slow progress is better than none. I had in mind to design a late Victorian or early Edwardian modest-sized terminus for a secondary mainline, in the prevalent Arts & Crafts/ Wrennaissance/ Vernacular Revival/ Edwardian Baroque style of the 1890s and 1900s. There are some great real-world examples to take cues from, the GC's own London Marylebone and Leicester Central come to mind, then there's Birmingham Moor Street (which is local to me) and Douglas on the Isle of Man.

The main influence has been Douglas but there are hints of Moor Street and Leicester Central in there too.

James Harrison wrote: ↑Sun Mar 10, 2019 8:25 pm ..Rufford Red Lion Square station takes shape, slowly and only on paper at the moment, ......

Very nice, very imaginative ...

Kimball

Thank you. When it eventually gets built I think it will be quite a nice 'little' building. It's going to be about 18" long...

1. The ballast hopper is finished.



2. Continuing my current rolling stock project (an engineering train), the next job to be tackled was the restoration of a twin bolster kit from Ratio.



3. I amended the elevation for Red Lion Square station, adding a parapet to the roof line to provide some space for the addition of the concourse roof and platform canopies.



4. The mirroring, road-facing elevation was then drawn up.



5. Landscaping works on Cremorne for Pittance have begun.

I was unhappy with the copings, so I'm re-working those. I've fabricated a corbel from a length of balsa and now I'm fitting painted paper slips over the corbel and existing coping to suggest big stone tops to the retaining walls.

Earlier today I dismantled my Kirk/ Coopercraft coupe composite I built years ago. Out came a small drillbit, a scalpel and a file. An hour or so later all of the door ventilators had mysteriously vanished, replaced with toplights. I think you might see where I'm going with that....

Did you guess?





I backdated the coupe composite to a Great Northern type! Rufford now has a through carriage to York and possibly Newcastle. It just needs a balancing working... I wonder if I could likewise adapt a Hornby short Gresley?....

The big news today is that the photo plank, Cremorne for Pittance, is basically finished.



I say basically because it is now just the smaller jobs that are left to do. There are a number of them but the major heavy lifting is over and done with.

Recent progress. I built a mess van for my engineers train from a Ratio 4-wheel passenger brake, a Hornby chassis and some scraps of plastic and paper.



Mess van- glazing fitted and a roof built.



The roof was then painted and now- basking in the sunshine on Cremorne for Pittance.

Detailing works on Cremorne for Pittance.



Station lamps under construction.



Running-in boards under construction.



Signal erected.



Barrow crossing re-fitted but the wheels still catch on it, so... it might get replaced.

Yesterday three somewhat woebegone carriage bodies arrived via an auction site. To get to the bottom of some serious hogging in the bodywork, investigative dismemberment took place. It was clear the bodies were somewhat lacking in the bracing and reinforcement department, so reconstruction work began.

Today's work has been to continue investigations on the carriages from yesterday. One of them is a full brake, then I've tentatively identified another as a 60' corridor brake 3rd and the last (the one currently being rebuilt) as a 1911 56' luggage composite. Once completed, I'll put them up as a rake with my open third and restaurant composite as my principal Rufford- Marylebone direct service.



Immediately after gently dismantling the luggage composite the sides started to curl up...





Some plastic L-strip was deployed but as you can see although this worked on the compartment side the corridor side required further work. A second level of L-strip, just below the windows, improved matters somewhat.



The body was then re-assembled and the roof loosely sat in place. Success!- it's lost that hogging in the middle.



Wheels and bogies were missing, so I bought some LMS bogies and these were screwed in.

Work is now progressing on the interior and then the roof needs fixing in place, then there's some filling to be done and I need to work out why the body still rises in the middle of the underframe- whether it's the underframe which is sagging or the body still slightly hogging, and how best to fix it.

First fruits of the weekend...

Both the luggage composite and the full brake are finished now.







You might also notice that work has started on the brake third. The bowing on this one is, I think, so slight that to break the model up and try to take it out would not result in a measureable improvement, so this one will just get new running gear, an interior and a repaint.

The allure of some Replicar kits also proved irresistible.



This is the 1913 Morris Bullnose Oxford. It came moulded in a bright blue colour throughout so I gave it a bit of a repaint in acrylics and, as the designer intended, push-fit it together. For a 1960s (?) kit it's remarkably well-thought-out, I think. It measures up as a wheelbase of 32mm by 16mm track and an overall height of 20mm. I thought this was perhaps too small- these kits are, after all, to 'fit-in-the-darn-box' scale- but recourse to Wikipedia this morning suggests that if anything the kit is slightly larger than 4mm scale.

Last week I finished the photo plank, now christened 'Cremorne & Pittance'.









A few smaller jobs to sort out on it-the barrow crossing needs replacing as it wasn't designed for use with code 75 bullhead, and the edges need painting, but broadly we're there. I'll have to find another big project to keep me occupied for another 8 months now.

It's been quite some time since I last did anything locomotive-based, and I have a huge backlog of repairs and projects to sort out. So, first up, a pair of GCR class 9H (LNER J10) locos saw some attention. 792 was heavily weathered, 818 was repainted and weathered.





Per information in John Quick's GCR liveries book, quite a few of my goods locos will be in post-1916 plain black and weathered to varying degrees.

The next loco I'm planning to look at is going to be one of my quartet of GCR class 9J (LNER J11), followed by my class 8A (LNER Q4) and a ROD.

Progress; I've been busy....

- 9H #818 lost it's numberplates and gained number transfers....

- A second rake of GCR coal wagons got built....



- Two BEC 9Js were repainted....



1009 lined out and lightly weathered



218 unlined and heavily weathered.

- An 8A is now in the paintshop....

That was a quick turnaround. I've gone for a lined out finish with just some light weathering. For some reason as the weathering wash was wiped off it took some areas of the lining with it, but actually... that doesn't matter. It suggests a tired finish. I quite like this one.

James Harrison wrote: ↑Sun Jul 21, 2019 9:55 am ...an 8A #1077. I quite like this one.

Hi James, that is a really nicely done model.
Did you have a kit basis, or scratch?
Do you have any curve restrictions for your finished models?
I ask because a 4 axle like the 8A will test this criteria, as will the ROD.

Kimball

The 8A is a kit build, but the provenance of the kit is an unknown for me (I bought her pre-built). Only the 2nd and 4th axle have flanges so I'm not anticipating the ruling radii to be too onerous, however the ROD in the roundtoit pile is another story entirely.

All I can say is that I'm working toward curves as gentle as possible, ideally at least 36" radius.