More Skips

My fleet of skips (all 2 of them!) has been doubled. I have finished 2 further Hudson skips from Binnie Engineering kits. As my first 2 kits I also fitted the new ones with the strengthening steel band on top of the tipping body. I modelled the bands well damaged on the two new skips and left a torn and curled up piece sticking up. I assume the piece sticking up will be torn off  after having seen service for a time.

Four Hudson skips in Nystrup Gravel ownership. From left no. 2 and 4 are new (easily distinguishable by the wrong placement of lubricating plug on the axle boxes).

As with the last batch of skips they were easily built and small details added. Continuing last summer's out door modelling trend, the major part of building took place in the garden. Painting and weathering was executed in the same way as with the first two skips I built last year.

Saturday evening in June 2019. Modelling and sipping whisky in the garden.

Both new skips ready for primer, paint and weathering. I have acquired standard Peco 32 mm gauge flex track panels.

I will be trying a new method for adding worn metal effects. A can of powdered graphite.

In stead of applying worn metal effects in the skip bucket with a soft pencil, I have picked up the left overs from a can of graphite from the vintage railway I volunteer on. The powder will hopefully allow me to reproduce the worn insides of the skips better than with a pencil. Stay tuned for the results.

New Car for Director Holm

Following the work on the veterinary's Renault, I took to fixing the overly large license plates on Nystrup Gravel's director Holm's fancy Auto Union 1000 S. Exept for the work involved in changing the license plates I only added a folded newspaper on the passenger seat and adding a little weathering to tires and underside.

The Nystrup Gravel director's 1000 S parked at the road side. Director Holm is most likely on his way home from a visit to the gravel pits and out in the field gathering flowers for his wife.

The 1/18 Revell model is held together with six small screws. I carefully removed the screws, keeping them safely in a small box. The model separates into three major subassemblies: chassis, interior and upper body. To remove the large license plates I had to detatch front and rear bumpers from the upper body. The bumpers were not difficult to remove, but I took care not to break them in the process. Once separated I cut and sanded the plastic bumper castings, removing the license plates completely.

The 1000 S disassembled. Both bumpers have their license plate castings removed and sanded smooth.

I kept upper body and interior together as I only needed to place a newspaper on the passenger seat. That wasn't hard to do through the open door. The bumpers were primed black and when dry given an air brushing with Vallejo Air 'Chrome'. Plastic card license plates were cut and sanded, primed and gloss varnished before decals were fitted.

Ready for the final layer of gloss varnish. 

As the Auto Union 1000 S is a 1958 model I searched for a period newspaper to put on the passenger seat. Although I model Nystrup Gravel in a summer setting, I couldn't resist printing the frontpage of 'Berlingske Tidende' 28. March 1958 with news of a dramatic tram accident in Copenhagen. 'Berlingske Tidende' was, and is today, the major national conservative newspaper in Denmark. A fitting read for a business man like director Holm. I 'beefed' up the printed front page with several pages of blank paper to make the paper appear thick. Necessary in a scale like 1/19.

A tram derailed and crashed down from a viaduct right next to a train, narrowly missing hitting the Hamburg-Copenhagen express. Fortunately resulting in only light injuries to the tram passengers.

Sleek lines in the evening sun.

Veterinary's Station Wagon

Things are progressing on the 16 mm scale Nystrup Gravel. Now one of my car models is finished. Considering the small amount of work, the car project has taken ages to finish. I had set out to finish the Renault Juvaquatre model 1951 station wagon as a veterinary's car and tone down the model's shiny appearance a bit.

The finished Renault having just pulled into the side of the road between Nystrup and Skovby.

The model was taken apart by removing three screws. Carefully removing the upper bodywork I gained access to the interior and the underside of the mudguards. The engine bay was airbrushed with a few light passes with dark grey to tone the colourful engine down somewhat. I finished the engine area with applying a wash with heavily diluted oil paints. The underside of the bonnet received a very light spray of dark grey and matt varnish.


I air brushed matt varnish on the lower parts of the car and the underside of the mudguards. That took away the worst shine of the chromed parts. Next followed very careful dust effects with light earth colours.

The Renault taken apart. Rear bumper and license plate separated to ease painting and adding decal. Blanket from copper foil and two boxes to be added in the cargo area.

Blanket and boxes painted and fitted in the rear of the car. The boxes are leftovers from a 1:35 scale military kit.

The front license plate was too narrow and a piece of plasticcard was copied after the rear license plate. Both parts were painted black and prepared with gloss varnish. The decals were supplied by my usual supplier 'Skilteskoven'. Only this time I have changed the design of the decals. To ease application of the decals they now only include letter and numbers. The license plate itself will rely on a coat of black or yellow paint to achieve the correct background colour for white or black letter and number. The plates were glued to the car with AC glue. A light wash with black oil paint on windscreen wipers and rear morrior my first car for Nystrup Gravel in 16 mm scale was finished. More will follow!

The Renault is a large, sturdy vehicle with ample room for some stowage in the rear compartment.

The opening doors leave a rather well detailed interior to be seen.

The finished stowage for the veterinary. I failed to find details on the design of the small extra license plate carried by veterinary's vehicles. If info shows up, I will add the plate later.

Serious Blog Interruption

More than a month has passed without posting. Work and my daughter moving to her own apartement has kept me busy. Consequently modelling has suffered. I now have only one teenager left in the house and a spare bed room. I wonder what to do with that...

On a few occasions I have been out of the office to visit work sites on the railway. One of the visits took me to an impressive yellow machine 'Katharina die Grosse', a ballast and subballast cleaning and replacement machine. Coupled with wagons it stretched for more than 800 m in length - something quite different from tiny narrow gauge railways. Here are a few photos:

'Katharina die Grosse' is a Spitzke operated Plasser & Theurer RPM-RS-900. The machine was in Denmark to support a track work contract carried out by the company I work for.

A train of MFS-100 wagons being loaded with gravel to supply 'Katharina' with gravel for the subgrade.

A nice day at the office, at least when the weather turns out splendid.

At different sites on the line other tasks were carried out by machines of a more modest size. Here a standard two-way Liebherr excavator digs out bad soil before a new subgrade from gravel is built into the dam.

RC in a Lister

Even if the I P Engineering Lister isn't a fine scale model and the bonnet is a bit too large, I have been struggling to find room for battery and RC equipment. As the RC receiver finally arrived after a long wait, it was a bit too large for the location I had planned for it.

Hollow figure fitted on seat box giving me a chance to hide the RC receiver.

I had originally planned for the receiver to be fitted in the seat box, but the length of a RCT-Rx65c was too large to fit in the box. Remembering that large scale Modelu figures are printed hollow, I figured that the receiver could be fitted half way into the figure.

Having made the figure's bottom fit comparatively tightly to the seat box's removable lid, I glued the figure solidly to the lid with AC glue. With the glue dry, I took off the lid incl. figure and carved a rectangular opening through seat and the figure's bottom. Almost the entire receiver fits inside the figure.

Some parts for the loco are now finished and I have even primed the bonnet. The figure is patiently waiting for the AC-glue to harden.

Off with the lid on the box and an opening was quickly carved with my Dremel.

The figure almost swallows up an entire receiver. The wires will be held in the seat box and connected to battery and motor through a hole in the floor.

I'm currently picking up courage to solder up a test of the RC equipment and find out if I can assemble the circuitry and make it work before I pack it all away underneath the loco. As it is my first RC 16 mm scale loco I have no previous experience to rely on.

Auto Union Sports Car

Looking out for cheap cars in 1:18 on ebay has resulted in the arrival of an Auto Union 1000 S - a sports car with a 55 hp two stroke engine and a top speed of 130 km/h. The model came out in 1958 and its relative modest price and size seemed to be a good fit for a small business man's sports car in rural Nystrup. It could be Nystrup Gravel director Holm's replacement for his pre-war Opel Kapitain. His daughter having moved to Copenhagen to go to university, he could now manage with a sligthly smaller car.

My model is a Revell 1:18 die cast model with two opening front doors, opening bonnet and detailed engine. Once again a boxless bargain at 20 € . This car has obviously been in a collection in a smoker's home. After some careful removing of dust it has consequently spent 14 days in one of my sheds and is now practically free from the odeur of old tobacco. I have used the same trick with second hand books.

When I get around to it, the car will have Danish license plates, minor weathering and perhaps the rear license plate will have to be replaced? It looks enormous.

Figure For Lister

Progress on my Lister continues. I have fitted switch and charging socket under the bonnet and wires have been soldered on ready for conneting to RC reciever unit and battery. An open topped loco, the Lister has to have a driver installed and I have been wondering what figure to choose. I wasn't particularly satisfied with my first 16 mm scale figure from Modelu, but I finally decided to order another Modelu figure anyway.

Printed in black plastic the figure is being tested in place on my Lister. It is hard to see much detail on the figure due to the black plastic, but the level of detail is identical to my first Modelu figure.

Some of the wires under the bonnet can just be seen from this angle. Oil and petrol tanks are glued to a plastic bracket over the electric installation. The hood can be lifted off to gain access to the electric equipment.

The figure is Modelu's figure no. 1408 'Seated Workman'. I liked the sort of indifferent gazing of the figure. Just how I imagine one would feel running a slow moving Lister back and forth on a short industrial line all day long week after week. I'm now in the proces of adjusting the figure's rear end to fit the seat box - itself to be built now in plastic card to replace the foam board prototype.

I have also built a new brake column as the kit's original looked quite undersized and flimsy when compared with drawings. The new one was made from a piece of plastic turned with a file in a drill. A base plate from plastic was fitted with four bolt heads and glued to the bottom of the column. The top was fitted with two rings made from solder wire and the original hand wheel fitted.

The kit's original brake column next to the home  made version.

More news about seat box and plastic surgery to the figure in a coming post. Hopefully I will also be able to report that the RC equipment have arrived. A considerable amount of time has passed since I ordered the items and although a patient soul I am increasingly growing tired of waiting.