Manning Wardle K Class

I purchased this lovely little tank engine on Sunday. I was at the KLOGGIES Summer bash, and there was about six traders present. One of them had this engine on sale for £150, a good price I thought, nearly £75 saving on a new one from Minerva, and after giving it a test run I paid up.

It was in an unlined maroon livery and effectively in new condition. I have a small collection of Industrial tank engines that used to run on an old layout called Norfolk Coke and Tar Ltd. I gave it to my Son when I finished with it, he re-invented it as Grubb Lane, and it is still on the Exhibition circuit.

All of my Industrial locos are Black and weathered, here it is after three days work, on and off due to being about 35C for last two days. I have left the wheels spokes maroon, just to be a bit different! It is still to have a light weathering,

Pug and Tanker wagon

These are items I have sadly had quite a long time. My friend gave them to me months ago and they just came to the top of my list.

The Pug was purchased as a kit built ready to run item, I had to partially repaint and give it a general tidy up. Looks much better now!

This is an old pre-made Bachmann Brass tank wagon, painted quite well and then given the most awful weathering job! I stripped as much of the old paint as I could, but could not budge most of it, looked like it was put on with a tar brush! All I can say was, I did my best doing what is now a quite heavy application!

45060 Sherwood Forester in O Gauge.

Dare I say it, yet another purchase from the Heljan/Accurascale Sale by Graham in Australia. This is again one of Grahams favourite locos and one he saw regularly when he was based in the UK in the 1970’s and early 80’s.

It again has been given a medium weathering. The nameplates are Fox and the transfers Railtec.

Class 27 in O Gauge

This is a freight Class 27 purchased in the Heljan/Accurascale Sale by Graham in Australia and delivered to me. It arrived with an early seventies head-code, numbers and letters. I have done a temporary fix with some old marker dots, but some better ones are on order.

As this was a freight loco, it has been given a medium plus weathering.

37152 I/C in O Gauge

Yet another Class 37 from Heljan/Accurascale Sale. Again purchased by my Son for his Ashwell Moor layout. While weathering this Loco I needed to remember it was used on some Passenger Services as well as a few freight workings. I therefore did a wipe of the sides after the weathering was complete, this restored a cleanish finish and quite a pleasing difference.

Class 31/5 in O Gauge

Here we have a Dutch Class 31 with isolated ETH. It is another Heljan/Accurascale buy from their current sale. This was purchased by my Son for his Ashwell Moor layout.

All my usual methods used, no re-numbering etc required – straight out of the box! This is a medium weathering.

Class 56 in R/F Red Stripe

This is a recent O Gauge bargain from Heljan/Accurascale sale. It was purchased by my Son and I was given it to weather. Class 56’s in this livery were quite rare, I believe there was only 5 or 6! Liveries moved on very quickly in the Mid 1980’s.

This is a medium offering, but reflecting its use on Coal Merry-go-round (MGR) trains. The ‘wash and wipe’ was a big part in weathering this loco, especially in the grills.

37406 The Saltire Society

This is for my Friend Graham in Australia. It was one of his favourite Locos, so much so, he has an original nameplate from this Loco.

This is a medium weathering using my normal methods. This was a new Loco purchased in Australia, the nose aerials were not required as the Loco is modelled before their use.

Nameplates were from Protoneo and the transfers are by Railtec.

Skinhead -as far as I can go!

Well, enjoyable but very frustrating project – but lack of spare parts and even the correct paint has made it stall. It will now be put to one side and hope Ebay or a future swap-meet will come to my rescue.

Anyway, this is as far as I got, pictures below, enough said!

A Word of Warning !

I store layouts in a shed in my back garden – when I had a look on Monday the curtain over the large window had fallen down and direct sunshine was on some of the layouts! I put the curtain up again, but have no idea how long it had been down – the direct Sunlight heat must have been tremendous as when I checked the layouts two of them had a degree of track buckling and will need quite a lot of re-engineering.

Due to this happening, I am withdrawing all my layouts from Exhibitions for the rest of the year. This includes at least one that I was letting someone else take out – sorry but that’s life!

Now a little bit of good news – the two Exhibitions I had booked for Blythburgh and the O Gauge Meet up at Bury St Eds will be done by my Son with his layouts. Grubb Lane at Blythburgh and Ashwell Moor at O Gauge BSE. Thanks JB.

This was very upsetting especially after my ‘mould’ attack a couple of years ago. The shed is over 25 years old and needs an update and new roof or complete replacement.