JamesP

Dammit, there is a nice one here but it’s 250mm. Thanks though I’ll keep looking

Could some tell me the overall length of the Evening star not including the coupling. I’m at SMW looking for a display box but forgot to take measurements! TIA

It's a solid choice by Airfix. Like the Spitfire I'm sure we'll see some variants down the line.

Myself and @cmatthewbacon will be at the Classic British Kits SIG display in Hall2.

My complete guess is a German fighter, maybe a Gustav

It might not be the site itself but the adverts. Do you have an Ad-Blocker running in your browser - if not add one.

Ok, quite a bit of work has been done, but it's all here and there. Let's try to summarise without too much rambling. This build has quickly got expensive. The footplate was badly twisted, and my rushed attempt to straighten it in hot water resulted in additional deformation. I presume there was some tension in the thick plastic that got released when it softened. I had a very similar issue with the BR Mogul. Below is how it was before I messed it up! This part was beyond saving and I had to buy a surrogate kit (£12 delivered). On the Mogul, I'd used twisted fine wire to make the handrail knobs, but thought I'd take it up a notch and splashed out on some brass ones from Light Railway Stores - as I needed a mix of lengths, I got 16 each of short, medium and long. Some fine brass rod for handrails, so 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5 from Amazon; I already had some jewellery wire, but, this is quite soft and I didn't want to deform the rails during handling. Of course, I needed new decals and those neat little nameplates, so a handsome fee went to Fox Transfers as well. As to actual modelling as well as the handrails on the boiler, I removed them from the cab and tender too, replacing them with brass rod. The tender was put together after the wheels got a coat of Hu Satin Black. The lower chassis of the tender and the loco also got a coat of satin black after some sync holes were filed. The satin was also used on the inside of the cab and anywhere else that needed to be not gloss black or green. I made a start on the supported handrails with the smoke deflector plates. The knobs need a 0.9mm hole and take 0.4mm rod - you could use 0.5 if you reamed them out! Somewhere I'd read to thread the knobs first - this means they are already correctly aligned. I cut an oversized length of rod and made a small bend at one end to stop the knobs sliding off. With three threaded on, I bent the other end as well. The handrails need a 90deg bend in them, so I push-fitted the top two and marked where the bend started, removed the part and used two small pliers to make the bend. All three knobs were fitted, and the bend was finessed. BTW the black foam I'm working on has a hole in the middle, which allows the part to lie flat without damaging its support. Each of my running gear pins had a sink hole in the end, so they all needed cleaning up and filling. I used a pin vice to hold each one. There are three size C, D and E with a couple of spares. Note, both the Airfix and Dapol instructions mislabel one of the pins - more of which later. Finally, the running gear and wheel centres have been based coated gloss black ready for metallics.

Rareplane 1/72 AW Meteor NF14

Real-life events and RM taking an age to deliver decals from Hannants have delayed work until this week. With the decals finally in place, I just had to rustle up a number of details. Whip aerial from fine wire, dorsal thin blade aerial and the IFF (?) dipoles are bits of leftover PE. Pitot from brass rod. Gun barrels, brass tube and exhausts from drinking straws. Despite having drilled the pilot holes for the aerials before adding the canopy, I still seem to be cursed by dust sprites. I got the underwing tank pylons to conform to the wings, but forgot the dihedral, and they cant outwards. Otherwise, I'm pretty happy with it. The overall shape looks good and the vacform was pretty simple to construct - posing it in flight helps. I knocked up a quick stand on the filament printer, with what is supposed to be the Rareplane logo which I picked out in silver to make it more legible. More in the gallery:

Wrong gallery!

I think all superglues will eventually block the tip. Did you try unblocking it with a bent paper clip or similar? I wish you could get hold of replacement bottles as the tips become unusable long before the glue runs out.

I think the black makes more sense at least in service.

This is some excellent paintwork. Did you find reference for the top of the foot plate either side of the boiler being black? Every photo I’ve seen shows it from below so I’ve been left wondering.

A beautiful job mate

Even more than the Evening Star you need to make sure you get the correctly numbered parts of the running gear on each side. They’ll fit together but the wheels won’t turn if you get it wrong. I know from experience. It’s very satisfying when you get it right though.