Hornby have in the past couple of years really looked and made a reasonable attempt at bring the high standards from it’s Loco and Coach models into the world of Wagons – Unfortunately they have also brought the same silly mistakes across too.
Take the model of the CLAM for instance ( released at the same time as the RUDD and TOPE as they all came from the same 21T hopper prototype ). It looks great and matches the other wagons excellently, but it’s silly niggle is that Hornby have made it’s body over 2mm too wide, which is such a shame.
At the time of release, I decided to partake of a bulk buy deal from a well known NW Box shifter, before I realised that there was an issue over the width.
The main reason for the purchase was to try to get a rake of well detailed models with out having to spend ages painting a yellow stripe around all the bodyside uprights on the excellent Parkside kits.
I took to a “sackcloth and ashes despondancy” once I realised I had a dozen ‘pups’ sitting on my project shelf, and returned to adding coat after coat of yellow to my Parkside kits.
A discussion at one of the model railway shows about ways of ‘Frankestiening’ a decent model from the Hornby and Parkside parts resulted in another single wagon purchase and it’s dismemberment at the show and the combined groups ‘grey matter’ was applied and an idea formed to cut off the Hornby side and mount it on a Parkside kit to try to mitigate the width and painting issues.
This again stalled when the Blue biased Engineers Grey colour that Hornby have used was found to be way off from any other manufacturers colour and model paint supplier and proved impossible to match.
Then the annoucement that the Humbrol Authentic Railway Colour paint range would be rejuvinanted and include matches with the colours that Hornby had recently be appling to it’s latest models.
“Yes! Forward movement at last” I thought, so out came the saw and the sides chopped off.
I then decided to have a look at using just the Horby parts to get a correct model.
The chassis tub was sanded down equally on both sides and the side re-attached, the end detailing frame that had been removed to enable the side to be cut off had the outher end posts removed and the outer horizontal frames shortened on each side and then re-attached.
Original Hornby model on the left, Parkside kit on the right with the 'thinned' Hornby model upside down on the top showing the overwidth of the original base model.
Out came the Humbrol Authentic Railway Colour Engineers Grey, shaken, stirred and shaken yet again, the pot opened and the brush dipped to touch up the cut marks.
“Hmm this looks a little light”, I thought “but hey, acrylics do dry a little darker”
Unfortunately – Not this time!
Original Hornby Model on the right and 'thinned' Hornby model on the left with the 'alledged' Colour matching paint from Humbrol applied.
So All I have to show is a thinner Hornby model, but still a long journey on the painting front as I have re-paint the whole damn model again ………..
More soon ………………….
Broomleigh 