Most of my work for BRM is at the workbench, but sometimes I get out into the big, bad world. A couple of days ago, we needed a photo of a station at night for a feature so I set off to Hatton with a camera and tripod to grab some photos.
While I was shooting the infrastructure, I had to keep stopping as trains were getting in the way. Despite it being after 9pm (guess who should have done this before the clocks went forward) at least 8 trains passed by in the 40 minutes I was ther
In the August issue of BRM, Howard builds some etched signals in 7mm scale. Inspired by this, I've tried the economically priced operating colour light signals for 4mm scale models from Train-Tech.
The company produce a range of designs, each supplied in kit form and simple enough for anyone to build who has stuck an Airfix Spitfire together.
The two aspect signal I built costs less than £10 and takes about half an hour to assemble and paint. It's designed for DC control but DCC versions
Some time ago I built a model of Penmaenmawr station building. I thought that it was time to man the paintbrushes and decorate it as per the prototype, ready to be fixed to the layout.
In the January 2015 issue of BRM, I'll be showing how it was transformed from an unpainted and plastic-looking building to a weatherbeaten building that has endured years of the North Wales coast weather.
If you'd like to find out how it's done and the full summary of what products I'm using, get
Well, RMweb Live was a good chance to work on the Road-Railer project and make some progress. It is now in the state as seen below:
The show was one of the best I've experienced for engaging with the public on a more one-to-one basis, and the project certainly created some intrigue amongst many who passed.
An explanation of the work carried out so far, along with details on the prototype machines and Phil Parker's Road-Rail trailers can be read in the November 2014 issue of BRM, o
Here is a BRM project that is a little more challenging than usual, primarily because it fits into the ‘it was never designed to do that’ category. So just what is this practical BRM project?
To model a Road-railer, part of the Story Rail fleet.
Using an NZG Liebherr A900C diecast model to the scale of 1/50, the aim is to illuminate and motorise this little model for O gauge…and why not?
So, if you would like to follow progress on this project, keep coming back to this BRM blog
Take a look at the Warley 2014 thread and you'll see that if there is one thing that unites railway modellers, it's a need to “see something moving”.
Never mind how much effort goes in to a layouts scenery, if there isn't a train operating then visitors won't hang around. Some will only pause to make their exasperation clear to everyone within a 40 foot radius before moving on.
This means that I approached the show with some trepidation. Although Owen's Bridge wasn't billed a layout in t
In August, as part of putting the RMWeb issue of BRM together, guest editors Stubby47 and St. Simon joined the team for the monthly planning meeting. We asked them both to write up the day to give everyone a behind the scenes view of how BRM is planned and put together. The electronic version is released today so we'll start with Stubby47's view of events:
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First off, I must say a big thanks to Ben, Andy, Howard & Phil for their hospitality and making the day so enjoyable.
In August, as part of putting the RMWeb issue of BRM together, guest editors Stubby47 and St. Simon joined the team for the monthly planning meeting. We asked them both to write up the day to give everyone a behind the scenes view of how BRM is planned and put together. Last week we enjoyed Stubby47's view of events, now as the magazine arrives in the shops, it's over to St. Simon:
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I was invited to visit the BRM offices in Bourne, Lincolnshire, to view the process th
So, you need to motorise a turntable effectively. Well what we witnessed at our premises today as Alastair Milne from ADM Turntables paid us a special visit certainly made an impression. With his three 'table setup, we filmed a display of DCC locomotives easily negociating from one track to another without a single break in their sound.
The system is equally compatible with DC setups. If you'd like to see them in action or are wondering how they work, then stay tuned for a forthcoming d
There are times when I wish magazine pages were smaller. For a future edition, I needed some figures and when looking at those available, one thought was running through my mind:
“What will these look like really, really close up.”
Look at your layout normally and you view it as though you are seeing the scene from a nearby field. Even in 7mm, the view is similar to that you might get from 50 feet away. The same scene, on the page will be viewed as close as you see your dentist – near en
I was just editing a feature for the April issue of BRM that mentions 'Rule 1' - namely "It's my railway, so I can run what I like." It made me wonder, if that's Rule 1, what should the other rules be for railway modellers? They don't have to be controversial, but what are your own golden rules? Share your thoughts with us and if we can, we'll condense the responses into a 'Ten Commandments of Railway Modelling' (or more if required!) as a bit of fun.
As an example of something similar in the c
I must confess that today was the first time I've been to the Ribble Steam railway and it'll be 10 years old next year. I wanted to go and get some reference details from the substantial collection of industrial locos they have both steam and diesel.
Fortuitously there was a midweek operational day featuring the Waggon und Maschinenbau railbus which gave the chance to bring you a run along the length of the railway. It's slightly unusual to see a preserved railway within an urban e
In his thread "Layout Damaged at Open Day!", Darren described the damage sustained by "Torrington" at a recent event. Part of this involved a car going missing from the scene. While I'm sure all RMWebber's will sympathise (many already have on the thread), there's not much we can do to help remotely.
Except to replace the missing car.
The car in question is a Morris Minor - normally nicknamed a "Moggie". I dropped in to my local model shop and rooted through the selection of Oxford
Sorry; did I say tidy up in the previous blog entry? A slip of the tongue.
Hopefully ready for action on BCB at DEMU Showcase this weekend - http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/78016-demu-showcase-2014-burton-upon-trent-31-may-1-june-2014/ - even if you're not a D&E modeller it's a show well worth a visit for the quality of the layouts.
Morning All,
I popped into Rails of Sheffield briefly on Saturday and found that they had pre-production samples of the LMS black/silver 10000 and 10001 on display. Apart from one or two minor decoration alterations that need to be made, they look very good indeed. The finish of the black body and silver bogies is superb, as are the chromed metal details, as can be seen in the photos. No further indications on delivery dates, but expect them to be 3-4 months away once the corrections have been
Whilst on a whistlestop tour of Kent last week Phil and I dropped into RAF Manston Musem which is chocked full with interesting memorabilia and artefacts.
There's a cracking railway-related model in there, even if it looks somewhat tired, depicting one of the main stores building pre-WW2 with a rail siding. Pop 20p in and you can watch a Bachmann C-Class tootle back and forth shunting for a few minutes.
The buildings are quite delightful.
Outside I turned into a rivet-
Last week, the editorial team sat in a small meeting room for a day and threw around some ideas. Out of this will appear, as if by magic, a rough plan for the next six months or so of BRM content.
As the practical one on the team, this sort of forward planning is excellent news. I now have a big list of projects to work on. Some are quickies that will only take a few hours. Others are far more involved jobs including a new layout.
Knowing what I'm doing and when it needs to be completed
Chatting to visitors to exhibitions, lack of space for model making seems to be a common problem. Some people assume that to produce anything you'll need a fully equipped workshop full of lathes and pillar drills. Nothing could be further from the truth. My workbench is a pretty small space in the corner of a room and I still churn things out.
My work area is a wooden cutting board around which are the tools and materials I'll be using. I won't pretend to be organised, if you saw me operatin
Writing this on my way back from an excellent weekend at the Perth MRC 2014 show. Once again it was well worth the trip north to see numerous quality layouts (more on that in a minute) and meet up with some familiar faces from the Scottish model railway scene.
If you've never been to this show, I can thoroughly recommend it. Thanks to the efforts of Stan Moug and the Perth MRC exhibition team, the exhibition has grown in stature over the last few years and is now widely regarded as one of the
Writing this on my way back from an excellent weekend at the Perth MRC 2014 show. Once again it was well worth the trip north to see numerous quality layouts (more on that in a minute) and meet up with some familiar faces from the Scottish model railway scene.
If you've never been to this show, I can thoroughly recommend it. Thanks to the efforts of Stan Moug and the Perth MRC exhibition team, the exhibition has grown in stature over the last few years and is now widely regarded as one of the
August's issue of BRM includes a free set of building details from Modelrailwaysecenery.com on the DVD or as part of the download. This isn't a complete kit, but windows, doors, air con units and notices that can be used to aid scratchbuilding or modifying a card building. The details are printed on a colour printer, ideally on to matt photographic paper. You can print as many copies as you need too so hang on to the DVD for the future. For my model, I needed some brickpaper so bought a sheet fr
It's nearly Warley weekend and I'm busy packing Owen's Bridge up for the BRM stand.
With the fragile wooden bridge out front, I don't want to chuck the layout in the back of the car without some protection so it's now got a wooden cover. Just in case I can't remember what's in there, I've stenciled the layout name on the top in a suitable military style.
To make the stencil, I printed out the name in an appropriate font on a sheet of paper and cut out the letters with a sharp k
As you might have seen if you've been watching the BRM Facebook page today, it's been a busy day at the fair. However, the model railway presence at the show seems to have declined noticeably since last year. Where Hall 4A used to be full of model railway-related stands, even spilling over into adjacent halls and walkways, there are now large gaps in the hall and more non-railway stands creeping in. Stand sizes are significantly reduced in some cases, although the big German manufacturers such a
Apologies for the lack of updates from the Toyfair before the weekend. Unfortunately, the regular mini-blog I'd hoped to send was compromised by appalling wi-fi service in the convention centre and at my hotel, which limited what could be done (at least without spending the whole of each day trying to upload photos!). This is a holding message, just to explain why things didn't go to plan and to say that I'll be uploading lots of material over the next couple of days, which you'll hopefully find
As promised, here's a final round-up of new items announced at the Nuremberg Toyfair that might be of interest to British modellers. It's by no means an exhaustive list of everything announced, but I hope it gives a flavour of the scale and variety of new items coming from the European trade. If there are any items that appeal to you, the following UK suppliers/importers can help:
Contact Gaugemaster for: Noch, Roco, Fleischmann, Maerklin/Trix/Minitrix/LGB, Kato, Herpa, Piko, Wiking and many
