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...