Been a busy period with one thing and another, so not much to report modelling wise. However, a weeks holiday in Prestatyn gave a boost to getting back on it, not ;east because we had a couple of nice walks along the course of two famous North Wales branch lines. If you have a week or two up that way, the walk up the course of the Dyserth branch from Prestatyn is lovely, a steady climb up into the hills on a well laid tarmac patch (watch out for high speed cyclists coming down the gradient!) w
Well we finally got sorted out with our bedroom move at home, and shifting stuff about, and much clutter has been disposed of in the process. The added benefit was acquiring an old chest of drawers and a bookshelf to go in the "railway room" alongside my layout Tillingham - after getting rid of the big bulky and seldom used Futon that occupied loads of space. Hooray! At last some storage for items of rolling stock, locos, bits and bobs instead of having to fish them out of plastic boxes stacked
It's been good to run a few trains in odd moments (the layout is right next to my PC ) but further progress has been halted by major room-swapping at home, and trying to clear room for more storage units etc, and a hospital visit. If all goes well, I should be able to crack on a bit with the myriad jobs that count towards a "complete" layout. Once I stop playing with my lovely new P Class tankie - what a nice job Hattons commissioned there, it looks great and runs very nicely, even over my "
While the "Beast from the East" did it's best to blow our windows in, I was at least able to crack on with getting enough done on the bench to take the scenic half of the Tillingham layout back up to the railway room and nook it up to the non-scenic fiddle yard section. So I now have a semi-complete working layout in a 1200mm square, and can run a few trains, after quite a while with two halves of one! There's lots to do, mostly, but not all, detail stuff, and in due course a "town" secti
Well quite a productive weekend so far, foul and frigid weather out encouraging me to get on with things! The corner farmyard is coming on - few more details in the Tillingham topic on the layout pages - with the buildings basically done, just needing gutters and downpipes for the barn still, then I really must do the fences around it, and those alongside the line. I've kind of been putting that off as I'm sure it will be fiddly in extremis... Got a good deal on a terrace of low-relief h
For the first bit of actual modelling since having a few days off with the 'flu (had to go for a three day lie-down in the end, much of it spent watching a box set of "Breaking Bad"; (I probably know as much about being a drug producer now as I do about model railway building, but there's much less violence involved with this!) I though I'd work on the barn I started for the corner site farm on Tillingham. I'm glad I left the appropriate outline in the filler used to simulate a muddy farmyard be
Nothing reported here over a few months doesn't mean nothing has been done, honest! Besides a month-long trip to visit family in New Zealand and Australia (from which it took a while to recover!) before Christmas, I've got a fair bit done on Tillingham, and it now resembles a model railway - in my opinion at least - rather than a random collection of stuff on a board. Talking of opinions, I had hoped that transferring the latest progress to a thread in Layout Topics might elicit a bit more comme
It's been several months since my last bit of bloggery, so here goes. Tillingham is now coming along nicely, and starting to look more like a layout rather than some track on a baseboard. The enhanced progress follows a few weeks where I'd had to dismantle the two baseboards and their trestles to make way for extra accommodation with both our girls on a visit, and took the opportunity to bring the scenic half of the layout down to our home workshop (former kitchen) where a 4x2 sits nicely on a w
Having not, for one reason and another, had much building time lately, it was good to get on a bit in the last couple of weeks. The basic "terraforming" is done, and needs painting with a base coat soon. I also did some more ballast laying, and trying out a bit of brown ground cover in the goods yard, which seems OK, though I may need to work on getting the PVA glue to the right consistency. A visit to a local model railway show provided an unfinished station building, which though to my eyes it
Not too much modelling activity of late, although further playing around with my modest airbrush kit had the effect of making me want to do more of it! Missed a nice secondhand Iwata outfit on EBay by about three seconds (t'other fella got a bargain I reckon!) but this moment of madness further enhanced the desire to spend money, however the element of common sense remaining meant having to settle for the rather more modest and comparatively cheap as chips "A186" compressor with air tank and two
Now that was easy. Having figured out how running on my layout might actually work, I'd though for a while that an extra siding in the behind-the-scenic-bit fiddle yard might be good. Started 4 pm yesterday, pulled up the old siding (on the left), installed a Peco turnout recently purchased secondhand along with some other odd bits of track, and stuck the new shorter one - just long enough for a single coach autotrain (appropriate rolling stock yet to come) alongside my "Thumper" DMU, job done
I'm gradually gathering up a decent selection of brushes, paints and weathering powders, and had already had a go at weathering a couple of very old metal bodied mineral wagons, but having got that particular "bug", succumbed to buying a very cheap and reasonably cheerful airbrush kit to try my hand. It's really intended, I imagine, for doing nail art, or at least anything that doesn't mind the asthmatic little compressor not getting above 15psi and only delivering that in short bursts, but the
Part three of today's frantic bloggery should get me pretty much up to date with my little rookie railway modelling project. The track laying and first bit of ballasting on the scenic side of the layout went reasonably well, with just a little wailing and gnashing of teeth at having to take some up again here and there. Track is Peco 100 Setrack; the simple reason is, the finer scale track doesn't have turnouts that aren't too big for the room I have. Some flexi-track, second radius curves and
Clearing a bit of space in the attic room that my good lady kindly permits me to use as an office/den/model railway and aeroplane room/music studio, still left only enough room for a layout no more than 4ft / 1200mm square. It has to be more or less central in the room, as the sloping roof would make running it round a wall difficult, even if there was enough clear space; there are a number of storage boxes also crammed in for general "stuff". I should point out, as we both have constructive h
Hi - my railway interests have always included the byways rather than the highways; branch lines rather than main line expresses, odd industrial outposts of the old days, present day Heritage lines, that sort of thing. Hence, when I decided, as a long time model aircraft builder and flyer and with more time on my hands post-(semi) retirement, that I needed an additional hobby as weather patterns seemed to have gone a bit too much towards wet and windy down our way, model railways seemed a good w
