A Christmas Present for myself

Stephen Gardiner 1:1 Scale Railroading, Locomotives, OO Gauge

Earlier this year I finally got to see and ride on a steam locomotive that I had a small part in helping get built, Great Western Railway/British Railways 6880 “Betton Grange“. I make no illusions that my annual contribution of £120 over the past 15 years materially moved the needle on getting Betton Grange built, but it was what I could afford and its meaningful to me to make contributions, even if small to support things I care about. Its similar to when I have gone to the UK for visits or Gala’s over the years. I try to put my money where my mouth (or camera is!) and buy a full event ticket, even if I’m not going to be there for the full thing or ride trains every day, and direct as much of my food/drink/souvenir spending to the railways own stores and catering as I can. So, that said after my trip to see her and get a footplate ride on her at the Bluebell Railway’s Giants of Steam in October, my desire to follow through on my long term wish to have a model in my display case returned. There was a limited number of models produced for the society that were given out to higher value donors many years ago, which obviously I was not. There was however a version of the Hornby Grange produced later that was the correct paint scheme and tender type that I could re-name/number. Many years ago I bought the name and number plate etchings in advance of this. After my ride this year, I fortuitously stumbled across Silver Tay Models who had an etching of the LCGB (Loco Club of Great Britain) headboard carried during my trip. Shortly after that, by happenstance when on the Rails of Sheffield site I noticed that they had the Hornby model I wanted at a price I was willing to pay, so an order was duly placed. Doubly lucky my wife was already booked for a December trip to Tyneside to visit my Aunt and do some holiday shopping, so I was able to have it shipped in the UK and not deal with international mail! She got home last week with many holiday treats in tow including my locomotive!

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Happily being put to work during my footplate ride at East Grinstead scraping coal forward for the last trip of the day back to Horsted Keynes on 6880 “Betton Grange”.

My vision now was to model the locomotive as per my trip, in terms of overall appearance, lamp positions and the LCGB headboard. I will in due course in the future get proper, or at least close to accurate crew figures. This includes myself. At some point I need to reach out to my friend and local business owner Bernard who runs MiniPrints to get him to scan me in my coveralls and such as I wore on the trip so he can print me in 1/76th scale to populate the footplate of my model. For now though, after getting it in my hands, it was on with the work. The factory nameplates pried off, the mounting pins all broke but that’s not the end of the world, I thought about applying the brass plates directly onto the existing for extra support, but the length of the name plate arc was different. The plates I have are also missing the orange lining. I’ve found and ordered decals to add those at a later date, along with a new shedcode plate for the smokebox at the front of the locomotive. I have lots of appropriate lamps, I like the ModelU3D ones as they have open bottoms that make positioning them on model lamp irons much easier. So I’ve painted a pair and got lenses made and positioned them on the front buffer. For the LCGB headboard, I tried something new for me, I made a bracket strip out of the etchings support and glued it to the back, this helps position it and keep it in place better than just removable figure glue like I’ve used on other models.

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Working through removing the existing name plates and plinths and adding name, number plates and headboard.

The locomotive is DCC ready, at some point I will get a decoder, speaker and appropriate sound files for it, as it will be nice to be able to run it back and forth from time to time, but for now, its going to be taking a place of pride amongst my models of Great Western Railway prototypes in the big display case. Even though it won’t be “done done” for a few weeks until I get lining and the shedplate, I had my photobooth out for some other things so it seemed a good enough time to take a couple of “beauty shots” below.

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OO Gauge 6880 “Betton Grange” almost as I want it for my display shelf. Shed Code Plate, plinth lining and crew to come in the future.

Tuesday Train 486

Stephen Gardiner Tuesday Train
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CN Train P276 rests at Aldershot yard on Sunday December 21, 2025 waiting to continue on to the VIA Rail Toronto Maintenance Centre. Talk about burying the lede? P276 is hauled by Union Pacific 8577 at the far end of the above photo, the cargo, is the first of three new Ontario Northland Siemens Charger-Venture sets for the return of the Northlander, the Toronto to Cochrane train cancelled in 2012 (See Tuesday Train 7!). The consist of Train P276 from front to rear (so furthest away to closest is SIIX939 (Venture Cab Car)-SIIX932 (Venture Coach)-SIIX931 (Venture Business Coach)-SIIX930 (Charger SC-42 Locomotive). “SIIX” is Siemens reporting mark, the manufacturer as they have not been delivered and accepted. Once accepted I presume they will take on the Ontario Northlands “ONT” mark. This is the same as the VIA Charger/Ventures as they were being delivered. Technically owned by Siemens until they are accepted by the railway.

The incredibly attractive paint scheme that harkens back to the TEE Trains used by ONR in the 1970’s and the dutch railway system scheme they came from. I think it will be an attractive one to hopefully shoot for many years to come…who knows they may even change the proposed schedule so it runs in daylight in some of the more scenic areas of near north-northern Ontario it will service. See the ONR Northlander website for more on the resurrection of the train.

A gallery of additional shots of the train parked at Aldershot are below.

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Renumbering a Mk1 Buffet Coach & Ongoing Airbrush Adventures

Stephen Gardiner OO Gauge, Skillbuilding, Workbench & Tools

For no reason in particular since our honeymoon in 2014 I have slowly been assembling a full train model of The Jacobite that operates from Fort William to Mallaig in Scotland, aside from modelling the train with the LNER K1 2-6-0 62005 instead of an LMS Black 5 for haulage as we had. First up was a full on coach kit build (see here). Other cars have been Hornby and Bachmann renumberings and adding of West Coast Railway Company logos. On my October trip this year, at Kernow Model Rail in Guildford I picked up a Bachmann BR Mk1 RMB (Rail Miniature Buffet) already in West Coast, just with the wrong number. This was a relatively quick fix to remove the factory printed number, and touch up the car after applying new numbers. It would also give me a chance to test a new airbrush recommended to me by Stephen Lee as a low cost way to see if my recent issues were equipment or me problems by having a new brush.

For renumbering, I find that isopropyl alcohol and gently rubbing will remove Bachmann factory printing…I did though over do it a bit as the alcohol was really effective on this car and started to take paint away from beneath it. Once the factory numbers were gone, I applied some gloss to try and get a good surface for the new numbers by micro brush, and then decalled it. With the car ready, it was paint booth time to spray clearcoat to try and match/blend the work area into the rest of the car.

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Removing factory printed numbers, glossing in the marks and applying new decals.

I have never had a lot of luck with clear coats. I don’t know what it is that causes me to not get what I expect. I don’t know if I don’t understand how they are supposed to work, or if its something in how I thin and spray, but I don’t get smooth coats. I almost never have short of using the now not available Tamiya Rattle cans. I have almost never gotten a smooth finish from the airbrush. So, with that in mind, out came the new brush after it arrived. After some light testing, I was satisfied that I think a lot of my issues are in fact something going in the seals on my Badger 360 Airbrush. The new brush seemed to behave as I would expect and was used to, so it was on to attempting to spray some clear coat. This would be fun as I was trying to match a semi-gloss finish on the car. I masked off an area bigger than where I’d impacted to spray gently. First up some gloss, then a light overspray of some matte and blending. I was eventually happy, though concerned as under the harsh lighting in my paint booth it didn’t look great, but as soon as it was viewed under normal room lighting or on the layout, it looked fine. I may find someday that I’m not happy, but thats the joy of doing it yourself, I can try different clears down the road to change the appearance, and frankly the car needs some light weathering which will also help blend things together.

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A new “Cheap” airbrush from Amazon and the finished coach under layout lighting to see how things look.

Sadly, with the car done, it was straight into a storage box! I don’t have a display case large enough for full trains, though I am with my new running track going to rotate around longer trains on display on top of my workbench. Right now I have a 1980’s Scotrail West Highlands train of a Class 37, a couple of coaches and a TTA Tank. I think next up will be the Jacobite sometime in the new year. I’ve long been looking at making room for a display case long enough to put full trains out. I do have a space big enough if I move the painting above my desk, I’ve talked with a friend about it who has made some cases before, I just haven’t been serious about it as a top priority. Maybe in 2026, who knows!

Liberty Christmas Ops Session in Review

Stephen Gardiner Layout, Operations

Last Sunday I had friends over for an end of year/Christmas operating session at Liberty Village. I in full honesty have not run a lot of trains on my own this year, so I was decidedly curious to see how it worked under the control of others and to see what happened. I did run some trains through the week in advance to make sure things were plausibly working before torturing others! My guests were mostly repeat visitors, but we had one total newbie who had never seen the layout or run anyone’s layout before, always a fun occurrence for someone to coming in cold and see what their reaction is.

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Scenes from an operating session. We ran three trains before and after meatball sandwiches.

I’m pleased to report that things mostly worked as they should. A few little things, one of the CN Steam locomotives couplers is sagging leading to some dropped cars when pulling, one turnout that I was sure I had fixed the shorting issues seemed to be shorting again, and one spot that I know is tight was still finding out a couple of cars tracking unhappily. So really nothing major that isn’t caught by more regular use and maintenance. I had a bad week following the session being sick for a couple of days and busy in my last full work week of 2025, so I haven’t had time to either write this or start to address any of the issues, but I have a nice 11 day break starting as soon as work ends on Christmas Eve till January 5th to relax, catch up on some TV (Andor Season 2 and Star Trek Strange New Worlds Season 3 along with an annual Lord of the Rings marathon and lots of EPL football!).

Twas the Night before Ops…

Stephen Gardiner Layout, Liberty Village, Operations

‘Twas the night before the ops session, when all through the house,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The switch lists were set out by the layout with care,
In hopes that train crews soon would be there.

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I haven’t run the layout nearly enough in 2025. But I have people coming over this afternoon to give it a good workout. I’ve spent the week cleaning and looking for any issues that I can make pop, but really my experience is you only find the problems by using it and having others who don’t know or think to “slow down as I know things derail there” or other such problems. I am looking forward to seeing some friends and having some holiday cheer this afternoon with a side of banging freight cars around Liberty Village!