As mentioned in the previous blog entry, I've been restoring a small collection of secondhand scratchbuilt 4- and 6-wheelers. I should point out that I'm cutting some corners here: The premise for this project has been to see what I could do with the coaches with simple means and materials, and without breaking them down into their constituent parts and starting over.
First job was to remove the rooves and discard the glazing and droplights, which were beyond savi
This 4 minute video spans the period 1867-1947 on The Farthing Layouts. These 4mm layouts are normally set in 1907, but occasional forays into earlier and later time periods has allowed for a bit of pragmatic "out of period" modelling and operation.
Here's an introduction to the main approaches and principles behind the Farthing layouts.
1. One bite at a time. Each layout can be set up and operated in our living room in a short space of time. They show different parts of the same overall station, meaning that I can explore my interest in junction stations in a limited space, step by step. Some of the layouts use Peco track, others use C+L handbuilt track.
2 . Into the scen
What goes through a modeller’s mind? 'Very little', my wife would say, and she’s not far off! Am I the only one who enters a Zen-like state of mind when operating the layouts?
It begins like this. You decide to run some trains, forget all the worries. Get the gear out, set up on the dining table.
The engine purrs into life, pulls a train off the traverser. You get down to eye level, begin to dream. What if there was something else behind t
This little project was described some time ago in my workbench thread. A couple of recent discussions suggest that the modifications involved may be of interest to others. I don't seem to have posted the usual build summary in this blog, so here it is.
The Coopercraft GWR 4 Plank Open kit (4mm scale) has an error which means that if you build it as designed you end up with 4 planks on the outside and 3 on the inside, as seen here.
Once a week, a meeting takes place at Farthing Station where staff and regular passengers engage in learned discussion about some of the great questions of our time...
Link to Far Twittering & Oysterperch
Link to the Wallace and Gromit layout
The whitemetal wagon kits from David Geen have tempted me for many years, so I thought it was time I gave them a go.
I began with this round-ended 3-planker of 1881 vintage, for use in my “out of period” running sessions.
The good stuff! Nothing like a bit of research to start off a new kit. The round ends were not long-lived on the 3-plankers. From 1883 the GWR introduced square ends, and many of the existing round-ended wagons appear to
A parcel arrived today with a small selection of ready-to-plonk freight items.
There's still something magical about opening parcels. With a cheerful Hornby logo peering out at me, I even longed briefly for the Christmases of my childhood. Then I remembered the two months of hysteria we have ahead of us, and good old cynicism returned .
The depot is going to need a lot of goods. I already have some of the white-metal offerings from variou
Been experimenting with back-scene effects for The Depot. Basically it's a mirror, thereby doubling the size of the interior in visual terms. The idea is to take a photo similar to these once the building is finished, and blow it up in size for use as a moveable backscene when viewing the layout from the alternative side. In the photo above, the mirror begins between the twin pillars behind the wagon. Everything beyond that is a reflection. The lack of buffers at one of the wagon is not part of
The Farthing layouts have seen some major rebuilding in the past months.
In the early autumn, we sold the house and moved to a flat. Having made sure that the layouts survived the move without damage…
… I immediately cut them to pieces. It was clear from the outset that downsizing was needed, as the only place to store the layouts is in a small attic room reached by a narrow flight of stairs.
The Down Bay
Here's a little video showing scenes and train movements at Farthing station - including the arrival, shunting and departure of the Westbury stopping train. It's 2,5 minutes long. Be warned that it features music, although only a quiet piano.
Some time ago, Miss Prism suggested that I could add a mezzanine floor to one end of “The depot” for extra goods storage.
I liked the idea, and sought inspiration in some of the larger GWR depots, including (very loosely) the arrangements at Hockley. I tried to build the structure to look like an afterthought, added by the GWR when it ran out of storage space on the ground floor decks. The visible part of the mezzanine is imagined to connect to a more expansive off-scene sectio
Here's a brief illustrated write-up on my recent experiences with modified and detailed HO figures for Farthing.
My normal source of figures is to backdate OO whitemetal figures from Monty's and other ranges (see this separate blog entry). But this can be time consuming, and for pre-grouping modellers the options are limited. Like others before me I have therefore been attracted to the large German HO ranges, and especially Preiser who have a small series of figures from the Vi
Farthing, 1887. The Great Western is a sleeping giant. The system is plagued by gauge inconsistencies and circuitous routes, and the Churchward revolution is yet to come. In the bay platform at Farthing, a Buffalo tank sleepily knocks a few wagons about.
For the past ten years the world has suffered from a global economic depression, but Workman P. Quince has never read a newspaper and is more concerned with the stinging pain when he urinates. Perhaps he should fi
Time to get some track in place for The depot. For a pragmatic modeller like myself, it's easy to dismiss finescale track as something for the purists only. A little too easy, perhaps! With this in mind, I'm currently taking a closer look at some of the C+L track components. The idea is to see whether this sort of thing works for me, and how much it adds to the overall impression of the GWR in the 1900s. It's still OO, and so far only straight track, as that is all I need for the scenic part of
A follow-up here to the track experiments in the previous entry.
A batch of Peco Code 75 has arrived, enabling a comparison of the four types of track seen above. Everything is OO, ie 16.5 mm gauge. The Timber Tracks panel is the GWR 44' 6" version for P4/EM, and it's interesting to note theslight narrow gauge look this track has when viewed directly above. This isn't C+L's fault of course, but a result of the slightly incorrect gauge.
But we don't ofte
After a less than glorious summer (too much work, too much rain) it's time to get the autumn modelling season going. The past weekend saw a bit of progress on "The depot".
As some may recall, the depot can be viewed from both the inside and the outside. These are the three outside walls, now approaching completion.
Still need to add downpipes etc once the roof is fixed on.
I’ve used a photo of Windsor goods depot as inspiration
I've been looking at options for modelling the slate roof on the goods depot at Farthing. For what it's worth, here's a quick overview of the options considered. Above is one way of doing it: Lengths of thin card strips scribed vertically, and overlaid. I think this can give good results - in 4mm at least.
But thin card also has its drawbacks! I recently noticed that the roof on the parcels office at Farthing has buckled. Either the glue has simply let go,
A few more examples here of prototype-inspired short trains for Farthing. These are all a bit unorthodox, as opposed to the more standard formations shown in an earlier entry.
PBV - Composite - All Third.
Above: The above formation, for instance, illustrates that not all short trains were pulled by tank locos! This train was inspired by a photo on the Warwickshire Railways website, which shows a 2-4-0 3226 class pulling a 4-wheel PBV to dia V5 (or V11?), a 6
I've been exploring some of the smaller and lesser known 4mm whitemetal figure ranges recently. Here's a handful of photos showing a selection of some of them. These are cruel close-ups, but if we're concerned about the details of our stock, shouldn't we be equally concerned about whether the figures look right?
Above: This group of horse shunters are from the Geoff Stevens range, which features sets of railway staff that can be used together in little cameos. As evident
Been doing some further experiments with the Timbertrack panels from C+L. This is mundane stuff for experienced track builders (especially as there is no pointwork involved), but for me it's all new and part of an exercise to see if this whole track-building lark is something I want to get seriously into. 'The depot' is a good test-bed for this, because most of the track won't really be seen anyway J Above: The C+L GWR panels are essentially intended for EM/P4. In the comments to an earlier post
It was the winter of 1997 and I was in London for the Watford show. Or to be honest: My life was a bit of a mess, and I was trying to escape from some difficult decisions that had to be made.
I had arrived a day early and was staying in a cheap and gloomy hotel not far from Paddington. The idea was to spend the day touring the model shops around London, but things were not going well: The weather was cold and windy, the shops were uninspiring and I couldn’t escape my o
All those close-ups of Code 100 track in my past couple of entries made me want to push ahead with the C+L track for "The depot". So here's a little interlude to the "All in a day's work" story, showing what I've been up to with the track inside the depot.
Timbertracks panels stuck down, sleepers shortened to appropriate length, and webbing removed (see the earlier dicussion in this entry). Next time I'll just lay some individual timbers!
