Longman & Co. - Agricultural Supplies and Machinery

[Cotswold Metals]

I've got back into modelling after a long hiatus - this as yet unfinished plank is designed as a very gentle re-introduction to some basic modelling methods, and a chance to try out the (excellent) new Peco bullhead OO gauge track -also to display some lovely Oxford Diecast models.

 

All the photos, except the last closeup of the track, have of course been fiddled about with in software - whilst I come from a farming family and run our farm now, I've always been interested in the more obviously artistic aspects of the modelling hobby such as photography and scenery-making - from a very young age I tried to make models that could fool the eye into thinking they were real. Aside from the farming which takes up a lot of my time, I'm also a professional music producer with a studio at the farm itself, which sadly leaves very little time for railways in my life - however, it's been lovely to get back into it and enjoy escaping into another era.

The buildings featured in these photos are very likely to change as some are proprietary models, others acquired through the internet - I'm hoping to replace them with scratchbuilt examples when I get some time. I mostly started this thread to actually get some photos up on the net to motivate myself to carry on!

 

A bit about the diorama itself: the model represents a private siding adjacent to a goods yard in rural Wiltshire sometime in the late 1920s - my other models / layouts are forming a fictitious Wiltshire Vale centred around an imagined section of the Midland and South West Junction Railway, in an area near the real village of Upavon. I'll start threads on those layouts when some tangible progress is made...probably not very soon!

The layout is on a sheet of 3mm ply, spray painted an earth brown - ballast was a mixture of N and OO gauge Peco, with some real coal and ash added, and stuck with the usual PVA / water / washing up liquid mix applied via a plant mister. I used Woodland Scenics scatters for the road base and grass, with static grass and bigger tufts then applied. I'm aiming for a late October / early November feel to this scene. Static grass is entirely new to me (I'm not sure it even existed when I last did railway modelling), so this was very much an experiment.

 

More photos to come when I've had a chance to make some progress - I'm quite a busy chap, so not sure when that will be! Any questions / comments / constructive criticism very welcome.

Oh, and "Longman" is taken in honour of an old labourer by that name who worked on one of our family farms in the 1940s/50s.

 

 

[luke the train spotter]

Well it looks fantastic! You've captured a really nice atmosphere there and the scene is nicely arranged. May I suggest one thing for more realistic photos. If you are just using the rolling stock for photographic purposes, you might want to pop out the nem couplings.

[Jerry1975]

I like this a lot, looking forward to seeing it develop.

 

Jerry.

[Edwardian]

Beautifully modelled and very well observed

[andyram]

This looks very nice indeed. I am impressed by the ballasting effect, it gives a real impression of an overgrown siding.