Rhiw exhibition Sunday

Set up and test. All fairly glitch-less. 

If you are coming to the show, it has just become apparent that there are road closures on the A27 at Lancing which may affect your route. Travel from the A23/Henfield from the east or the A24 and Washington from the West. Southern approaches may best be avoided.

 

Hornby Sentinel and shopping

Back from a few days in sunny Cornwall. Shopping is a rare and wonderful thing and since the demise of shows I'm buying very little. There are consumables to consider and I was down to my last three bottles of solvent and fifty one toilet rolls so something needed to be done. Under the cover of darkness and disguised as a sheep farmer I slipped over the border to Devon and Anything Narrow Gauge in Holsworthy. This is a misleading title as although there is a largish back-room operation of garden type steam, most of the shop is filled with 4mm stuff. The beauty was the old-world feel of it with rows of second hand boxes marked Airfix and Mainline etc. Try getting that in your mail order shops. 

The principal purchase of solvent was made along with a pack of couplings - because I'll always need them - then the Hornby Sentinels were pointed out. The price given matched what I had in my head that Hattons were giving so it seemed rude not to, and of course I could even run it up and down on some filthy track to test its roadworthyness. It's screaming for a new identity, some nameplates and detailing.

 

Sentinel

 I like Sentinels and I've been very tempted by the Hornby model even though I've no real use for it now that Rhiw has been broken up. Though just in case I do the opportunity was taken to survey the Nene Valley example as it pottering around on Thursday. There's also an 0-6-0 version there to take a look at if you fancy the Knightwing kit and the research for same.

Modern Sentinal

I have a bit of a soft spot for Sentinals of all shapes and sizes, so this shiny example got snapped in South Wales a few months ago. If lines of industrials standing in the rain are your thing then aim for Big Pit and wander a mile or so uphill and they are there for the snapping and climbing.

I note that there's a kit available these days from Knightwing... never seen one. Do they get snapped up, or is it one of those advertise but not in production tricks?

Sentinal works plates in 7mm scale

Just to draw this page back from 'scenic modeller's monthly' and show a few toy trains again, here's the Sentinal complete with Narrow Planet plates as shown in the post below.
Easy enough to put on: a coat of red paint, then sanded to bring out the raised detail and stuck on with the arse-end of the tube of Bost**k. The loco...? Well it's just a couple of boxes...
The reason that there a so few pictures of 'trains' here, is that in general I have to build the bloody things. Occasionally, as with the Rhiw stock, it comes in a box, but by and large these days the stuff I build for myself are kits, or in this case carved from a solid block of Elm with an old penknife.

Plates, bogies and a creep

I'm piled up with 'other stuff' at the moment, so any modelling has to be done on the fly.
A couple of days ago a large package arrived: I had cornered Mr Fulljames at ExpoNG to see if it were possible to etch me a couple of Sentinel works plates to go on the 7mm model that I built a while back. 'Anything is possible' he said and here they are. I assume these are now a stock item and can be produced for other scales as well. Contact Steve at the Narrow Planet factory via the link on your right.

Two 'on the fly' projects: The cattle creep for the 009 project below is a Wills kit as per the box. However there are no internal fittings which I though strange. This is a plus because you can stretch to whatever width you want, but not as you have to buy a bit of stone wall to do it - clever marketing. Luckily I could cobble from scraps. My free cottage kit from Mr. Wright is providing 80% of the materials for this layout.

The above are the bogies for the 009 Society 'toastrack' coach kit that I got at the Beds and Bucks show. I assume standard Parkside products. Clean up, snap the wheels in and grind the pin-points in a little, check gauge, done.

Railway type Sentinals

I was gently berated a couple of days ago by Miles Bevan for only showing a part photo of the 7mm Sentinal. Built on a cheap Hornby 0-4-0 mech from plastic sheet, a till roll and a Wrightlines chimney. For a 7mm loco (even for a narrow gauge one) it's small and the chassis has been cut-back to its limits. Other than that it's quite a simple build; as Miles put it, '...two boxes and a bit of trim.' I worked from a Tony Harwood drawing in Narrow Lines and from a mix of two prototypes: the first the 2' gauge Whinstone Quarries version,

and the 3' Clee Hill Quarry example, adding inspection flaps over the skirt cut-outs to hide the big wheels and over-length wheelbase.

The cab interior is semi-detailed but with the figure (who appears to be throwing up in the corner) blocking the door it seems hardly worth the effort.

Mounting the Tri-ang coupling

A couple of triangles of scrap and half a dozen slivers of micro-rod sloshed liberally with Simon Green, rust and Charondon Granite and at least it looks like a piece of ironmongery that belongs on an industrial locomotive.

Mounting the Tri-ang coupling 1

I often get a sly remark about sticking firmly to 4mm scale narrow gauge and not moving with, lets say, the rest of my social circle and working in one of the bigger scales. I'm quick to point out that there has been a 1:24 project which met it's end in an unfortunate manner, but can be viewed in the list at the top. I've also dabbled in 7mm ng and though a full layout has yet to emerge, there are a few unfinished items lying around. The above compact Sentinal being one.

Built from plastic on a cut-down Hornby chassis and otherwise finished, I'd not decided on which couplers to use, at the time swinging between T/Ls and Kadees. As most of the people I know stick to the T/Ls it seemed logical to follow, so the odd job was to fit.
The front end is a problem. there is zero clearance behind the bodywork with the bulkhead of the chassis sitting tight behind, so a lump of plastic and a self tapper do the mounting work. What I hope to do now is diddle with it visually and blend it in with the rest. The rear end should be less thrusting as there is space to set it slightly into the body. As it is this only sits about 5mm forward of where the coupler was originally.
Anyone know of a supply of Tri-ang pressed T/L couplers?