Canute Road Quay is on the road again and appearing at two exhibitions the next two consecutive Saturdays.
B4s ‘Caen’ and ‘Trouville’ shunt on Canute Road Quay
The first this Saturday 25th March is slightly unusual as it the Guidelines Publications Spring Show. This is the first of a series of seasonal shows that bring together traders from all the modelling and collecting genres covered by its magazine titles. This will include toy soldiers and historical figures, model railways, military and aircraft modelling, fantasy and sci-fi figures and models, as well as car, truck and farm models, to name a few.
Other familiar Guidelines Railway titles that often contain excellent Southern content includes British Railways Illustrated and also Railway Bylines.
The springtime show will take place at the established venue for Guideline’s shows, Haverstock School, 24 Haverstock Hill, Chalk Farm, North London NW3 2BQ.
The venue has great public transport links and also free parking.
The show is open from 10.30am to 5pm with a £6 entry fee, although earlier bird access from 9.30am for £10.
Alongside Canute Road Quay will be 16 other layouts covering a wide range of genres in scales from N to 0 and including 009, 0-16.5 and 0N30. The show is open between 10.30am and 4pm entrance fee is £5.
Both venues have free parking If you are coming along to either show, please drop by and say hello.
p.s. the title is a nod to a favourite Aylesbury based band of mine…
In my Talking Stock#15 post here I discuss the background to the three Maunsell 350HHp diesel ‘trip’ locomotives. In 1937 Maunsell ordered three six coupled 350hp diesel electric locos, built by the SR at Ashford with English Electric power units, to compare against the Z class 0-8-0 tanks. They were numbered 1,2 an d 3. These along with later revised versions ordered by Bulleid, were the ancestors of the British Railways large class of 350hp shunters that became the 08/09 class.
Finished as SR No.2 the Maunsell 350hp makes an appearance on Canute Road Quay
Many years ago I built an example of the SR 350hp shunter utilising a Golden Arrow Productions resin body mounted on a Lima chassis. The Lima chassis was the best chassis option at the time. Golden Arrow Productions have since revised the resin body to fit the far superior Bachmann Class 08 chassis, so I thought I would build another before stripping down and updating my original version.
Although 3D Printing is becoming more and more popular, I believe there is still a place for such resin kits, that are simple to handle and clean up and give a smoother finish straight from the mould.
The modified Bachmann 08 chassis
The kit nicely captures the SR shunters including their distinctive feature of the Ashford body, when compared with the later Class 08/09, the overhang at the rear of the cab with two angled lower windows, as well as the more normal two vertical windows, giving clear visibility of the buffers and coupling area.
Following the kit instructions, the Bachmann 08 chassis requires a little modification to take account for drop in the running plate at the cab end. I also increased the width of the running plate edge with the addition of some plastic section.
The body with its handrails and bonnet catches etc. added
The resin parts were carefully (the resin material is much softer than other plastic / £SD print materials) cleaned up to remove any flash and the windows opened up. The main body parts comprising of the body, bonnet top, radiator and radiator cowl were assembled simply using superglue. I then pre drilled the locations for the four cab door and multiple bonnet door hand rails and handles, these were then added using 0.45mm NS wire and for the bonnet door catches I used some etched brass T handles from a coach detailing fret in the spares box.
Lamp irons at each end were added using as usual Bambi staples cut and bent to shape.
A 3/4 front end view the front air tank can be seen either aside of the coupling mount
Although a bonnet ladder is included within the kit, I felt this was a like coarse so I used a finer signal ladder etching.
The kit includes white metal front bottom steps which I added to the chassis and folded up some spare brass etch fret to make the middle and top steps. The two handrails for each of the front steps were again made from the NS wire.
The Bachmann 08 has two small air tanks mounted at the front of the chassis either side of the NEM coupling pocket, the SR shunters had in reality a single air tank mounted across the front. Rather than keep the 08 arrangement, to better represent the SR shunter arrangement, I cut a suitably sized white metal coach vacuum tank, again from the spares box, to fit around the coupling pocket.
The 3.4 rear view showing the characteristic rear overhang with lower windows
If you are not using the coupling pocket then the tank can be fitted as one piece across the front.
The chassis was brush painted, whilst the body was given a dusting of the reliable rattle can Halford Plastic Primer before a top coat of their matt black. The usual HMRS transfers finish the model, she just awaits some weathering (and replacing one of the bonnet door catches that I now notice is missing). After painting I added the window glazing by cutting 20 thou clear plasticard to shape and glued in place using Deluxe Materials Glue and Glaze.
Overall this is a quick and simple project using the Golden Arrow Productions resin kit to build one of these distinctive SR three shunters, and will although a bit far from Norwood their usual stomping ground make an occasional appearance on Canute Road Quay.
Merry Christmas to you all, fill up your life with love, compassion, tolerance, peace, happiness and perhaps hopefully some time for modelling.
It looks a lot like snow at Canute Road Quay…The SR 1924 Christmas advert
The wonderful Southern Railway Christmas press advert from December 1924 seen left (click for a larger version) was recently unearthed by friend and Railway Historian Dr, David Turner, and is a fascinating glimpse back to a different, possibly non striking, time.
I love the promise of “Jolly Parties at the seaside”, I know “summer comes soonest in the south” but that must have been optimistic in December? A neat use of the holly leaves to show the list of Southern Railway served seaside destinations…
As the festive season and New Year break is upon us, I just wanted to say many thanks to all of you whom have taken the time to read my ramblings over the past 12 months. I hope you have found such ramblings interesting and informative. I have always enjoyed corresponding with many of you that have made contact me via email or the comments field on my various posts. I look forward to corresponding with you again in the New Year and maybe in person at an exhibition…
A further flurry of activity will be taking place at the start of the new year with Hornby (January 10th we beleive) announcing its 2022 range followed a few weeks later, at the beginning of February, by Bachmann making the next of their now quarterly range announcements. I will as always bring you all the Southern Railway / Southern Region related news on here as soon as their announcements are made.
Seasons greetings, whatever your faith or beliefs, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year (or Nadelik Lowen ha Blydhen Nowydh Da! from the boss’ side of the Tamar) to you all!
For some of the even earlier wagon designs, such as the delightfully small ‘Chaldron’ wagons now available from Accurascale their size meant that there wooden ‘buffers’ were both lower and closer together than the ‘normal’ adopted buffer position. This meant that for shunting to easily and safely be undertaken the locomotives being used required additional buffering arrangements to be added.
This usually took the form of vertically mounted wooden blocks that were simply / crudely bolted onto the locomotive buffer beam.
B2 Peckett 0-6-0t ‘Leader’ fitted with the 247 Developments dumb buffers
My friends at 247 Developments have created 3D printed vertical dumb buffers available in sets of four either painted (£2.50) or unpainted (£1.00).
These can be simply glued to the buffer beam (I advise just removing any raised rivet from the buffer beam at the mounting position first) providing a dumb buffer solution in a matter of minutes at a pocket money price.
Even without the Chaldron wagons the additional dumb buffers add some further character and individualism to the industrial locomotive fleet.
247 Developments are of course also a great port of call for etched number and nameplates, SR Head signal discs and a wide range of locomotive, coach and wagon detailing parts.
Hornby 75T Crane legs
Continuing the 3D printed theme also new to the 247 Developments range are both short (£1.50) and long (£2.50) legs for the venerable Hornby Cowans Sheldon 75T Breakdown crane (similar to the one based for a while at Eastleigh).
An industrial “Leader” waits whilst the Quay is shunted ahead of it (the driver is either oiling up on the opposite side of the engine or more likely sneaked into the The Waterloo Tavern…
This is always an excellent show organised by the very friendly Stafford Railway Circle, and is the first in their now to become regular weekend date slot in September. This year the show is going to be bigger than ever before and located in the main Bingley Hall at the Stafford County showground which provides more space and much better facilities.
Saturday: 10.00 – 17.00
Sunday: 10.00 – 16.30
Admission Prices: Adult: £12, accompanied children under 16 free.
At Stafford County Showground in Bingley Hall, ST18 0BD.
The County Showground is situated 3 miles to the east of the town on the A518 in the direction of Uttoxeter. A free bus service will run from Stafford railway station to the venue on both days. Details (subject to confirmation) can be found here.
Hopefully some of you will be able to visit the show and if you do please come and say hello.
Note: Canute Road Quay will be back in colour for the exhibition.
One area of Canute Road Quay that I needed to correct, as it had been both constructively and bluntly pointed out to me on a couple of occasions, is that a few of the road vehicles were slightly out of my usual self-imposed modelling period of 1946 to 1946.
The two new period vehicles on Canute Road Quay
Obviously, I want all aspects of the layout to be correct and consistent, it is all too easy to contrate on rolling stock and miss other, more obvious to others, areas of accuracy. I have therefore been looking to source some replacement suitable vehicles. For someone like me, without an in-depth knowledge of all things internal combustion, I found this to be a much harder and time-consuming job than it could be, as very few of the manufactures of ready to run vehicles actually provide simple information such as the relevant dates of manufacture as part of their listings, resulting in having to google each and any model that I thought might be of roughly the correct period.
The nicely moulded resin and white metal parts are assembled
However, at a recent model railway exhibition I happened to be across the aisle from Road Transport Images run by the very friendly Graeme and Lorraine McQuaker, they produce a range of modular resin kits for British commercial and military vehicles in 4mm scale ranging from a 1930s Fordson AA up to a 2014 Iveco Stralis. All were displayed very helpfully, with yes, the date of manufacture for the prototype (as does their website), just what I had been looking for, making choosing the correct vehicle for my time period accurate and simple!
The range currently includes over 200 cab, vans and pickups, and 16 chassis and a wide range of bodies, trailers and unsheeted loads all cast in resin, with detailing parts in white metal or etched and 35 different wheel profiles.
For Canute Road Quay I purchased a Bedford Spurlings KV 2 ton integral van (built between 1946 and 1952) and an Austin K2-4 with a dropside body (built between 1946-48).
A dusting of Halfords’ Plastic primer
The resin parts, that comprise of cab/body/dropside, chassis parts, cab interior, fuel tank etc. are very crisply moulded, well detailed with very little flash to require cleaning off. These particular kits also included white metal head and side lights either etched or white metal steering wheel, the relevant white metal wheels come with brass rod for axles and are designed such that the wheels rotate. I angled the front wheels slightly on the angles to enable a ‘steered’ position to be allowed rather than the usual ‘straight on’ seen on most RTR vehicles.
Having fixed the cab interiors to the chassis parts I used the trusty Halfords’ Plastic Primer followed by a top coat of other aerosol colours that I happen to have had to hand; you should be able to recognise at least one of the colours…
The Austin K2-4 with a dropside body passes Canute Road Quay
As the windows were relatively small, I used Delux Materials ‘Glue and Glaze’ pulled across the aperture for the glazing, although the front windscreens were possibly on the verge of being large and cutting individual clear plastic glazing would have been an alternative method (if you use this method run a black maker around the edges before gluing in place with a little Glue and Glaze, as this then represents the rubber windscreen seal).
The inside of the headlamps (white metals castings) were painted with a little silver paint and when dry the lens was created with a small drop of Glue and Glaze.
The Bedford Spurlings KV 2 ton integral van
All that is required now are some registration number plate transfers to be added, I have obtained a set of suitable transfers from Scale Model Scenery.
Overall, these Road Transport Images resin kits are excellent, simple and enjoyable to build, and I consider them good value for money. I will certainly be adding more of their kits to the fleet of vehicles available for use on Canute Road Quay to provide variety whilst being consistent with my time period.
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The model railway world and mainly Southern Railway meanderings of Graham 'Muz' Muspratt