I took down to London town to visit the 3D Printshow in the old Billingsgate fish market the other day and was joined a little later by Phil and we took the chance to see some fascinating developments which may, or may not, filter through to the domain of consumers in the future. It was a great blend of being able to walk away from the show with some products and to see some stuff which definitely isn't in the pocket money bracket as yet.
It was my first chance to have a play with the 3
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.
As announced here Bachmann Europe have announced they are to produce the L&NWR 0-6-2T Webb coal tank available in approximately 18 months. For the last few years Bachmann have held events for the members of the Bachmann Collectors Club and this year chose the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway on the 30th August. If there isn't enough speculation and wishlisting on RMweb virtually everyone had missed the clues to this one; Bachmann followed their announcements for the 2014/2015 catalogue with
In the September issue of BRM, I've been painting some little people. While the step-by-step guide covers the painting part, I've set them in a little scene with the two hikers asking directions from the passing cyclist. Here's how I built the model - it's in 7mm scale but everything would work in 4mm:
The base for the scene is an offcut of plywood 16cm by 14cm. My plan involved a gateway on to the country road so household DIY filler was used to build up the grass verges and cam
You wait ages for a visit to Locomotion in Shildon, and then two opportunities come along within a few weeks. After the fun and games of the Rapido APT-E launch last month, it was the turn of Bachmann to reveal its widely expected model of the Ivatt 'Large Atlantic' 4-4-2, based on the NRM's No. 251.
It was a slightly more low key affair, but Bachmann did at least have several samples of the Atlantic on display. Closer inspection revealed that this will be a fine model, based on a huge amount o
Thanks to Chrisf for prompting me to write this post based on my beer festival project in the current BRM. Obviously the model came about after lots of careful research carried out at my own expense.
As Chris says, “I had been wondering how Phil Parker would set about modelling a beer festival. Most of those that I visit are held in old town halls, corn exchanges and marquees but his village hall looks positively idyllic!”, lots of beer festivals are held in slightly grim conferenc
Bachmann Europe announced their 2014 product range from their headquarters in Barwell, Leicestershire yesterday. Members of the press, traders and model shop owners were invited to partake in what was to be a well organised event with plenty of atmosphere. Not only was it a chance for Bachmann to unveil their model plans, but it was a great opportunity for all those who visited to catch up and talk about all aspects of the hobby.
Luckily, with the unstable weather that we've been witnessing
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
When I started writing for modelling magazines many years ago, authors were able to remain safely hidden behind our word processors. The more gregarious might be found at exhibitions, happy to engage in banter over the barrier, but generally, readers were spared the sight of our ugly mugs.
All this has changed.
First, in common with much of the popular press, our faces started to appear in the magazine. We're not in an ivory tower, we're real people and real railway modellers too. At exh
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
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
When scouting around for a colour light signal for my layout, I came to the conclusion that the only way to achieve this was going to be via a scratch-build, such is the lack of kits and RTR versions in O gauge. That was, until I saw a couple of posts on a topic here and realised that Pete Harvey was producing etches - but no mention of them on his website. I'd heard that C&L models were planning to stock them, but given their recent flood damage and other commitments, this was looking unlik
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 Saturday, I made the (fairly long) train journey from home village in Lincolnshire to Faversham. The trip was made more interesting due to the engineering works just outside the Cross, which meant my incoming HST was the first into the station that morning, which meant scenes like this:
Despite an empty station with no trains on the main line or suburban sides (even the 'rescue' Class 67 was missing), the concourse was still quite busy:
Anyway, onward to St Pancras to
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
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.
Another chance to grab an hour at the bench after visitors have left sees the decoder (Hornby 4-pin) hard-wired and hidden behind the dashboard.
This means the decoder housing can be stripped away from the floor leaving room for a flat false floor and just enough space for something extra in the cab which should arrive in a few days.
It's amazing how much space you can find in here when you look for it!
LYP - Part 1 - http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/1535/entry-1
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
A chance to get a bit of personal modelling done as it seems as we've been doing Sentinels to death of late (although this one's slightly different so I'm videoing it as I go along as a test of video more than anything else) but someone may find it of use later on.
The intention is to get to something close to the pictured Sentinel in Sheffield's back streets at Grimesthorpe so it's a case of subtraction and addition to get the right result.
An hour later the destruction's complete
The printed edition of BRM has now been going since 1993. Over the years it has evolved and continues to do so, in-keeping with the times and the readership's demands, needs and wants. What it can't offer you though is movement. Plain text and static images often leave the layout to be 'imagined' as a whole by the reader and in today's world where an increasing number of layouts are being operated by DCC with sound and lights, it just seems a shame to neglect these aspects.
This is where video
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
Whilst on a visit to the Ricoh Arena ahead of RMweb Live in September it was all too tempting to stage a shot which combines a couple of elements of the weekend with Phil Parker's pizza layout grafted onto the roulette wheel in Britiain's largest casino which is on the same site.
For those who know Phil he's quite a funghi.
Working on a model for a future article, I scratchbuilt a door from white Plasticard. It's a simple job – just cut a rectangle out and scribe the surface with an Olfa plasticard cutter.
Next, the door was painted a sunny green to match the windows and left overnight.
In the morning, weathering work commenced with a wash of enamel track colour Humbrol. I'd hoped the paint would sit in the gaps between the planks emphasising them as well as toning down the green.
I'd obviously not left
