What did you do to your trains today?

Thank you for noticing the summer and winter theme. I thought it was a good way to recycle some items from the Christmas train display.

I harvested a snow plow off Snow plow Henry. The Henry i had was missing the tender so it is worthless from the collectors' perspective. Anyways i installed the snow plow on Percy.





I know the plow obscured a portion of percy's face. However the plow will have a clearance issue with the stop tracks.

The only modifications i did to Percy was to saw off Percy's front buffers to accommodate the plow. It is something i don't recommend children to do. Afterward, i used crazy glue to glue the plow to percy. You have one shot at gluing the plow to percy so be careful.

No clearance issue around thr curve

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Nice work Leyland. Wonder how the plow would look on a regular, not Revolution, Percy or does a regular Percy have a release with a plow?

I don't recall Plarail or Tomy ever released a Percy with a snow plow.  I initially wanted to install the plow trackmaster 1.  It is virtually impossible to install the plow without drastic modification.

I was lucky to get a used trackmaster 2 Percy through a lot I acquired.

Not my photo but it appears a person cut or should i say saw off a lorry's face and slap it on one of the brake van.  I still haven't figure out where the face on the blue van came from

The face on the blue van looks like it came from the 1st Generation R/C Thomas, sawn to be square instead of round.

wouldn't it be easier if the guy harvests the face off Toad (the one with the molded face) instead?

It wouldn't be worth it since he's already a brake van, his face is too wide and that version is too valuable. They could've just (carefully) removed the sticker face from a truck or even a moulded one from a square faced character.

Last Monday, I've finally done a mod I got inspired to replicate six years back, which had totally escaped my mind until now for various reasons. I have a feeling I did once attempt it but gave up for fear of using a poor method, causing issues while running or getting other results I would regret it for.

Introducing my first TOMY/TM mod since 2015: Toby with real cowcatchers and sideplates.



All five pieces were made out of cardboard and painted before being applied, notably the cowcatchers being corrugated fiberboard. Because I knew the fake middle wheels were at the lowest possible point without scraping, I wanted to make sure the new sideplates would end at the same point (like on the Flip Face variant). I have yet to run him with them, but I'm sure he wouldn't get stuck or derail. The cowcatchers were then cut accordingly, with some extra length to reduce the gaps in the corners. Here's an underside view to show where the pieces end:



I got the idea for this from GBHtrain's version, which was the first time I recall seeing this mod. I liked it so much that I knew I wanted to try it with mine.

Admittedly, he did a more faithful job with the cab steps and cowcatchers, but I based the steps more on those on the original chassis than the right thickness. I might make them thicker and fill the spaces in the cowcatchers to add the missing bars (I tried to improve them by adding thin lines in each bar since the photos were taken). Even though both use cardboard, the sideplates on mine turned out thicker and don't quite sit flush with the main body. If it would cause problems, I could just take them off and redo the whole thing with electrical tape. I hope I won't have to do this given how good the current version looks. If I had Mavis or Flora or made customs of them, I would've used him as a reference.

In addition, I also primed the long Clarabel and powered Annie shells to be repainted as Express Coaches.

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He does look so much better with the lower 'skirts and cowcatcher. I like how you removed the paper on one side of the corrigated cardboard to replicate the bars of a cowcatcher. Good, imaginative work Da-lag.