Little things

 I doubt that I am alone in suddenly having a workbench full of 'I'll do that in a minute' things. The odd repairs and bits of painting that won't actually take long, but interrupt the flow of the more important task at hand.

With the brake van winging its way toward landfill and the condemned 16 tonners into the Rhiw 2 stock box, things turned back to Drovers Brook. One of the workbench things that were hanging around were these two sets of stop blocks - one old school Peco for the Code 75 track at the platform release end and the newer Bullhead item which is for the coal siding. They are noticeably different, but are not interchangeable across the rail types. Painted with first 62 orange as a base and then Typus Corrosion and a wash of black. I note with some amusement that this had essentially taken three coats of paint to get them to the colour that that started out at. Hmmmm.... though there is a much more matt texture. Only one lamp needed and this and the wood blocks were touched in with brown, white and SR brown for the lens; not red. These and tie-bars repaired on Rhiw's runner wagon has dented the pile somewhat.

Narrow Planet Nameplates

The nameplates arrived for the Rocoloco yesterday. Seriously tiny - not much more than five mil long. Stunning. For more details of how to get something similar, slide over to Steve Fulljames's link to your right and follow through to his Narrow Planet icon.

And now totally off subject: In case you missed it I moved house back in August and mostly due to internal work upstairs and the rotten weather we only got out in the garden to do a little GBH to all the overgrown stuff on Sunday, though most of this was sitting in the sun with a glass of wine. We'd worked out that there was a hell of a jungle at the end of the plot and if we could clear it then we would gain about six feet more garden, so we set to work. Half buried was one of those dustbins with the chimney, still full of semi burnt garden rubbish. Mrs F upended it. then called me over. 'Wow! Check this out.'

At the bottom was about half a bin liner full of drawings... special drawings...  This threw up a lot of questions. How long had they been there? At least eight months and they'd suffered a bit with the wet.. Who put them there? The little old lady who we bought the house from, or her husband who has been dead nearly two years? Or someone who helped clean the house out? Who ever it was wanted them burnt. Then there is the question of who produced them. The quality is good, but the subject matter is graphic and misogynistic in the extreme (the one below is one of the tamer selections). One would assume the late husband was the artist. Then you have to consider that he was a retired postman and she a retired art teacher. Him, her, both? Along with the finished sketches there are magazine pages mainly from the 1980s showing catwalk models. The limbs have been re-drawn in different poses in biro as if practising - these are not quick pervy drawings this is studiously practised stuff with a pretty good grasp of anatomical drawing techniques. But linking it with the octogenarian lady that we met is a bit weird.

Buffer stops

This caught my eye a while back. It's Barton on Humber, t'other side of the river from 'ull in 1980. That doesn't matter. What is interesting is the buffer stop; or more to the point the post/lamp/ladder combo. I had to do something similar. So here's my quick take on it for the end of the running line on Rhiw: a PECO bufferstop sans lamp, a match with the exciting end cut off and a section of Ratio ladder nicked from a signal kit. All with a bit of paint slapped on.

Rhiw buffers

It's become apparent over the years that I refuse to use any bit of commercial scenic kit as intended. In the top drawer I discovered a PECO buffer stop in a packet - unopened - a virgin buffer.  From Cove Models no less. Haven't they dissapeared now? What I wanted was something in the style of the set at the end of the headshunt at Newhaven which are still there, albeit marooned and covered in muck. The board of these is pretty lightweight. It looks no more than a large floorboard. This replicated here by tossing the PECO iron part into the scrapbox and replacing with a length of coffee stiry-thing with the ends rounded off to match the prototype. A bit of white and pale grey from Humbrol and some Charondon Granite from G*** W******p does the job. One has to wonder the point of these. Even at walking pace a Cl 08 would plough straight through. Let alone the Cl 56s that laterly worked the Newhaven ballast trains.

For the buffers at the end of the rails in the distance I have in mind the set from Barton-on-Humber with the lamp on a stick and a ladder. I'm sure I have another PECO set somewhere.

I note that RM are leading a Newhaven Harbour layout for next month. Hope I won't be dissapointed.