Christmas Again...

Once again, it's the last post of the year from me before taking a festive break. No big plans this year modelling wise, despite constantly refering a few projects to 'the stash'. 

Truthfully, the last couple of months has been no picnic for my mental health work wise, so this year it's a case of resting as much as possible. If I could get the roof pieces cut down for the VoR kitbash coaches and the recent 009 Society wagons painted, that'd be good in my books.

Looking back though, I'm surprised at just how many buildings/how much rolling stock I managed to build over the last twelve months. It does actually feel like I have accomplished quite a bit! Personal highlight has to be the Sentinel locomotive. Still over the moon with how that turned out, even being messaged a request from a reader to make one similar!

Now if only I could get the motivation to get CorriLlyn finished, everything would be almost perfect.

There will be a slight change in posting though come the new year, as I'm taking the decision to move to a fortnightly posting rate. As much as I'm quite pround to say that I did manage to post once a week for a whole year, there were times when it did seem like a struggle, both words and time wise. Hopefully putting the breaks on slightly allows me a bit more modelling time and also allows me to enjoy writing about it more than I have as of late.

Have a good festive period everyone, however you celebrate. And see you all in 2025!

Advent Madness

This year I had a nice surprise at the start of December: A gift of a Noch figures advent calendar.

Image from Amazon.

I'd been umming and arring about having one of these for the last few years as a bit of fun, but was always a bit put off by the fact the figures are of course HO scale. However, some of them could find uses in odd corners or at the very extreme, find use as passengers in coaches.

One thing that's interesting to note about these calendars are that the box states there are no Christmas figures included. This might put off some, but I can see the logic behind it. It's far easier to cater for almost every modeller out there this way rather than just those who want a winter/Christmas themed layout.

So what does eight days worth of Advent look like so far? Well...

In order of appearance we have a Vicar, a Doe (A deer, a female deer), a Stag, a sitting person who looks a tad miffed, a lady with her hands up in either a holding/throwing/intensely arguing pose, a swimming lady, a boy swimmer who suspiciously looks like he's running along the poolside, and lastly.... a bench.

I jest, but I am really enjoying this so far. So much so that even at this early stage I think I might have another next year. One thing that did strike me was that I was only expecting 'people' figures, so you can image my surprise on days two and three when the deer appeared. Even the bench got a laugh from me yesterday.

Yes, I can certainly agree with the no festive figures idea. But now comes the challenge...

...

Just HOW could I work those swimmers into a layout?

Repaint

Continuing the painting theme from last week, the 009 wagons from last year got a repaint at the same time. As much as I had fun putting them in 'faux Heywood' livery, there was just something about them colour-wise that I didn't like, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Taking a punt, one of them was repainted into an all over tank grey in an attempt to mimic the GWR way of painting wagons.

I liked it. I liked it a lot.

Think it might be a classic case or less is more. Old and new for comparison:

Very slowly, I seem to have a catalogue of painting rules for this fictional narrow gauge light railway I plan to build. So far it appears to be:

Locomotives - Green, red buffer beams, domes in gold/brass.
Coaching/Passenger stock/Brake Vans - Brown.
Wagons - Tank Grey.
Buildings - Cream with Brown framing.

Very handy timing wise, as the further 009 Society wagon kits I picked up at Rainford back in Septmeber have slowly began to be assembled.

It's almost like a plan is coming together...

Coaches in Basecoats

Progress on anything is relatively slow at the moment, so it's a case of finding the small jobs that can be done in an hour or two, rather than looking for all day ones. To that end, the recently cut and shut Vale of Rheidol coach set were given their first couple of coats of paint.

Using paints from the Revell 'aqua color' range, all the woodwork inside and out was given an undercoat of Earth Brown (87) with what would be metal parts undercoated in Leather Brown (84). From there the main base colours are added, using the artist's technique of starting with the lighter colours and working into the darker ones. First, frames for the drop windows on the doors were painted Africa Brown (17) followed by the rest of the body gaining an all over coat of Brown (381). The latter is a silk paint, but a colour wash later on dulls this to a more matt finish. Lastly, the frames, footboards, bogies and vac pipes are painted into Tank Grey (78).

As a comparison, here's one of the unweathered four compartments next to the older five compartment coach. Just how much difference a dark wash makes on the silk finish is quite apparent.

Coal Hole

Recently a trip to Chatsworth for the first time in roughly twenty years reacquainted myself with one of the more unusual 'railways' in the UK.

'The Coal Hole' was the starting point for a small narrow gauge track that would have been used to move said coal into the boiler room for the estate's Great Conservatory. A handy board does a much better job at describing the process than I can!

What was probably a coal office of some sort looks extremely modellable, even in this state with the very obvious window blockings.

The tunnel mouth is also interesting: Note how the rails would have run in a channel in the bottom of the hole. I can only assume that the wagon height would have been the same as floor level, allowing the coal to be simply pushed in rather than the slightly more labour intensive act of shovelling. This also means the wagons must have been in a fixed rake, there's no room for passing places either in the tunnel or at this end of the line.

Inside the tunnel it is, naturally, very dark. Interestingly though the tunnel has a never ending gentle curve to the left in the direction of the old boiler room. Whilst probably not much wider than the wagons that ran here, the tunnel is noticeably tall for the 1800s, certainly over 6ft as I could stand upright whilst walking through. Probably a good indication that a horse might have been the motive power rather than people.

Regrettably, the full route is not walkable, a new exit bringing visitors out at the bottom end of the estate's rockery, and given how well disguised all the workings of the boiler room were it's very hard to distinguish just where the line continued from the outside, let alone the location of somewhere to hide seven boilers! Taking a quick look on Google maps and assuming the line continued to curve all the way, I'm assuming the boiler room must have either been under one of the large banks that surround the present maze, or even underneath it itself. The surviving smoke exhaust pipes near the present maze seem to indicate it would be in that area.

Its an interesting prototype though, and with some modification could potentially make an interesting 'out and back' model.

More Coaches

I seem to be in the mood for making up more rolling stock recently, and the recent visit to Railex Taunton gave me the chance to pick up some more of the Dundas Vale of Rheidol coaches for kit-bashing.

One thing I really wanted to play around with this time round though was making a matching brake coach. Luckily the Dundas Models Rheidol brake van is in the same matchboard styling as the standard coaches so this was a simply case of cutting a compartment end off of one set of coach sides with a razor saw and grafting it on to the brake van sides with a good amount of solvent.

Something to note for anyone wanting to attempt this is that the footboards on the brake and coaches are of ever so slightly differing thicknesses. A couple of strips of 20x40thou plastic corrected this, along with some slight gaps left from the cutting process.

And on the reverse. The brake van uses a slightly different method of locating the floor compared to the coaches, so a new locating strip was quickly made from an off cut of 40thou square strip. A spare coach chassis (DM13) was then cut n' shut to the required length and the body assembled around it, also acquiring a couple of compartment bulkheads to divide passenger, luggage and guard spaces.

Using a similar technique two four compartment coaches were constructed like the larger five compartment one seen earlier, again with 20x40thou and 40thou square strip to fill in the gaps. The brake is ever so slightly shorter, but as a set they compliment each other very nicely.

An upshot to all this cutting and shutting is that I now have the spare chassis from the Brake Van kit and a good chunk of coach sides sitting in the 'spares' pile...

Leaving the chassis to one side for the moment, fiddling around with the coach pieces on my desk resulted in this arrangement. Turn the single door on the left hand end into a driving cab and there's an instantaneous freelance narrow gauge autocoach for a steamer/trailer for the railcar. 

A project for another day...

Taunton Railex 2024

By pure chance, a recent trip to Somerset for a wedding lined up nicely with Railex Taunton. I enjoy the one at Buxton, and needing to visit Taunton for other reasons it seemed rude not to go! As always, not a full blow by blow of every layout attending follows, and I'm always thankful for any errors or omissions! (Particularly when it comes to layout owners/builders)

Klien Schmalitz (HO) Tony Dean - A surprise appearance from this micro layout to cover a last minute cancellation.

Lydbrook Dean (00) - A BR freight only line set in the Forest of Dean. Fantastic weathering and scenics on this layout creating avery believable Autumn scene.

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Penmacho (009) Max Brayne - A nicely compact layout as part of the 009 Society SWOONS group.

Snoreweed (009/00) - This layout was getting a lot of attention from the public, especially with the interaction between the 00 and 009 stock.

Ropley (00) - Based on the station on the Mid Hants Railway (Watercress line) A fun little addition was seeing the railways N Class & converted J94 in James and Thomas liveries sans faces!

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Blackmoor (009) - Being so close to Lynton & Barnstaple territory it was probably inevitable that one layout would be based on the much admired narrow gauge railway. A very nice representation of the old station at Blackmoor.

East Lynn Quay (S) Trevor Nunn - Gaining inspiration from the warehouses at Kings Lynn and the harbour branch of the railway that served it resulted in this compact layout. Unseen is the J70 that was providing the motive power, and I do have a soft spot for those engines.

Moor Boxes (N) - I'll hold my hands up, I do find boxfile layouts a little hit or miss, but this display main had them as separate modules all linking up to make one long layout which worked really well. My personal favourite of the bunch though was this Sodor inspired layout.

regular readers will know that every time to attend an exhibition I always try to find at least one layout that I'd be happy to have at home, this time though there were two!

Ewe (00) Rob Gunstone - Clearly taking inspiration from the Wisbech & Upwell Tramway, this micro layout's footprint comes to an impressive 4ftx16inch. Very much built in the style of the late Iain Rice with a loop and two opposing sidings providing a surprising amount of operational potential.

One thing that does need mentioning is Rob's operating/presentation style. All the time I was watching there was a small crowd of spectators around the layout, yet he was engaging every single person in a group conversation whilst keeping near constant movement on the layout. That takes some skill.

Kyle of Lochalsh (2mm finescale) - I really like this. A lot. And again, a lot of it can be put down to presentation. It's a very simple layout, but if you include the fiddle yard facia board...

There's a really nice presentation on the layouts conception from sketch to model! The perspex on the sector plate is also a nice addition, and as noted at Statfold earlier in the year is something that seems to be becoming more common on exhibition layouts.

Most importantly, I had a lot of fun at this exhibition. So much so that I'm genuinely considering a late October holiday to Somerset next year to go again!

LLanfair Style Goods Store

And finally, the last of the 'May shutdown week' projects gets its own dedicated post. A Welshpool & Llanfair style style goods store. Much like the cut n' shut coach a couple of weeks back there's not much to say about the construction of this one. Chris Ford guide, scratchbuilt, Will's Sheet and Evergreen Plastics lengths.

There is one slight deviation from the original though in that the brick legs are Evergreen strip clad in Expo Tools garden brick plasticard, for no other reason than at the time I didn't particularly care for scribing in endless bricks. It probably wouldn't have been that bad of a job, but always looking for a tiny difference when making these, this was the one.

Still needs some slight weathering to be done on the bricks, but most of that will probably be obscured when it eventually finds a home on a future layout. 

Shed Sketching

Autumn is one of my favourite times of year. Lovely colours on the trees, some surprisingly good weather predictions and most importantly the need to use up some annual leave before the end of October! With that in mind, a trip over to Staffordshire saw me parking up in Ellastone and walking down the riverbank to Dove Leys, latter home of Sir Arthur Heywood (Not my first time at this address!)

This time though, I was on the hunt for something, and thanks to the low sun level bouncing off the structure and the autumnal lack of leaves I found it quicker than expected: What is reportedly the original stock shed for the 9" gauge Dove Bank Railway.

Before I go any further, a very quick but highly important disclaimer! Although there is a public footpath running across what was the old cricket pitch, along the terrace and round the building of Dove Leys, the engine shed appears to be on private property. The two photos here were captured by simply poking the camera into a small copse at the side of the path and zooming in!

Thankfully, a fantastic set of detailed photographs appear in James Waterfield's 'Duffield Bank Railway' book (Including an interior shot!) and at least two more closer photos can be found online at Station Road Steam.

Anyone familiar with Duffield Bank photos will see the similarities between this structure and the latter Tennis Ground Station and signal boxes. It's a building that I do like though and as a model would make something very different. So once back home, the newly acquired graph paper came out to have a quick doodle. As a side note, you'd be surprised just how hard it was to track down graph paper with accurate 1mm squares!

This rough sketch of the shed side isn't accurate by any means, but using the photographs in the Waterfield book along with a plan of the Duffield signal box in the same publication it's possible to 'count planks' to get a rough idea as to its dimensions. Certainly if not accurate it's possible to get the character of the real thing. The vaguely worked out length of 16'34" does seem to look right when compared to the side on photo.

And just for a bit of fun, very quickly comparing it with the 'faux Heywood' liveried GEM Varikit. Length wise it's not a bad size!

Height wise of course would require a bit of rescaling in order to fit larger 2ft-2ft6inch based stock. It could be a fun idea though.

One to add to the 'potential Christmas shutdown week projects' list!

Cut & Shut Coach

Keeping with the same theme as last week, another one of the shutdown week projects from May finally crossed the finish line.

A Dundas Models Vale of Rheidol coach kit, cut n' shut from seven to five compartments. Not too much to say here as it was pretty much done by the book, though the roof was slightly altered in what is becoming my own 'house style'. Thankfully I remembered to take pictures this time during construction.

Simply a piece of 20thou plasticard, measured up against the body but given an extra 1mm overhand all around and persuaded into a slight bend. Strips of masking tape are then run widthways across the roof, and the ends tucked under. With a steady hand (And a later paint job) the joins aren't too noticeable. You can of course get larger tapes that would cover length and width in one go, I've yet to try this. The whole lot is then given a good application of solvent to help bond the tape to the roof piece and when hardened, fastened to the coach itself.

From there, strips of 10x20thou plastic strip are used to emulate rain strips. The best way I find is to start with the two end pieces and let them harden. Then measure 2mm up in the middle of the roof sides and taking a slightly overlong piece of the 10x20 fix it in place dead centre with a spot of solvent. When set the strip is just flexible enough that you can bend the ends of this long strip down towards the corners where they will (Hopefully!) be held in place by the carriage end strips. Solvent the now curved strips in place and trim off the excess. 

One of those processes that is easier in practice that how it appears written down!

Egger Coach

It was only when I wrote about the slightly modified Egger coach a few weeks back that I realised I hadn't actually talked about it after mentioning picking it up at the 009 Society 50th event back in 2023. Honestly though, there isn't really much to it.

Breaking the coach down into it's three main components (Body, roof and balcony railings) the original relief coach markings were slowly scraped off with a sharp knife and replacement planking scribed in its place. Some 20x10thou plastic strip was then used to create some additional beading around the lower portion of the coach, taking a slight hint of inspiration from the Wisbech & Upwell tramcars 7 & 8.

And after using some more 201x10 on the rood to create rain strips, the coach was reassembled and given a paint job similar to the Toad brake van. Size wise they compliment each other really nicely, even if they do unintentionally look a bit 'faux-Titfield'!

It does possibly need the off passenger to complete though. Looking through a copt of Paul Ingam's book on the Sand Hutton Light Railway shows a picture of a train conductor stood on the end of their balcony coach, looking somewhat like a casual labourer with a money pouch and ticket machine lung over their arm. That might be something fun and different to try and replicate...

On the Road Again...

Slowly chipping away at the scenics for Corri-llyn once more, attention was turned to the road. There was some slight trepidation as prior to this I'd never attempted inset rails with filler, but the physical construction turned out just fine, even the inside check rails proved no problem for an engine like Skarloey on the tight 6" curve.

Colour wise though things got a little tricker. I'd initially wanted to try an emulate an early 20th century style road (Very dusty, bits of loose stone here and there) but quickly realised I should have made this decision BEFORE adding filler so it could be achieved with ground cover materials. So I now had to try and create an older looking road with a surface that looked like somewhat smooth asphalt. 

First Attempt - In attempt to recreate the somewhat yellowish 'off white' that dusty country roads take on I'd given the road an all over coat of earth brown, followed by light dry-brushings of cream and ochre, before further dry-brushings of grey tones to try and give the impression of tire tracks. Suffice to say the result was not convincing of pleasing, but I had a rough idea as to how to fix it which is honestly far more important and satisfying.

So after letting the first coats dry, it was time to try again.

Second attempt - Much better, and much simpler. This time round the whole road area was given a coat of Revell Tank Grey, before getting a dry-brushing of Dust Grey on top, but pulling the brush in the directions that road traffic would travel. You might just be able to make out the brush being pulled across the crossing, the light markings of a tight three point turn and an even fainter turning circle in front of the goods store and office. As is always the way, the brush marks look much softer to the eye than on camera.

The Thornycroft was a great help in trying to work out where/how a vehicle would manoeuvre in this space. It probably is a little on the large side for this layout though when compared to scenery already in place. Perhaps a slightly later time period and a small Austin van would look better?

Playing Trains

Once again I was Merseyside bound last weekend, though this time in the name of 009 rather than visiting any real locomotives. 

A visit to my Dad's house allowed us to both spend a good chunk of the day 'playing trains' with his 009 layout. Essentially a large S bend in 8x2ft, it's a nice little setup.

This is very much an at home 'fun to run' layout, and with the potential for three train operation it certainly is. It also provided a nice opportunity to bring some stock with me and photograph it in a different environment.

The 'faux-Heywood' Varikit certainly looked quite at home with the toad brake and a slightly modified Egger Bahn balcony coach. After some fine tuning with the gearing it ran the best it ever has, improving it's performance with each run. The Sentinel and Railcar also put in appearances throughout the day.

The visit also coincided with the monthly meeting of the Merseyside & SW Lancs NG Group meeting of the 009 Society in nearby Rainford. Being a smaller, more informal meeting the layouts attending didn't particularly have name boards attached, but there was still a nice line up for what was a small one roomed church hall. Apologies, but I was having such a nice time I forgot to photograph any of the attending layouts!

Rather dangerously, the 009 Sales Stand was also in attendance. As is always the way, too many temptations, and I ended up leaving with one more future project I hadn't planned on buying!

After that brief excursion it was back for another round on the layout.

Overall, a very enjoyable and relaxing day out. Certainly got plans to go back to the Merseyside meet again.

I do like this crossing scene though!