In the lead up to Christmas I wanted a break from the next phase of making the control panel for my Barrow Hill Yard layout - wiring just ain't fun enough! So, whilst perusing the internet during this let up period I came across David Shepherd's magnificent painting called 'On Shed' - this features a dirty 9F awaiting its next duty. This really got the juices flowing so I put together a quickie layout for a Shadow Box scheme (I've had a Bachmann 9F for Christmas which I'm eagerly waiting for the
Over the last few nights I've been knocking up the following Class 13 Slave unit out of an old Lima Class 09 shunter. Bought a copy of a special edition of Modelling British Railways about all the TOPS Diesels - really brilliant and haven't been able to put it down. When I saw the section about making a Class 13 out of a couple of Hornby Class 08s I started watering at the mouth! 'I have to have one, I have to have one' became my mantra around the house for a few days. Always on a budget,
More pictures. Note Steve Jones's fabulous shot of the station in 1978 with a Class 312 bound for Walsall. I am currently working on a Southern Pride Class 304 - this seems to be the only available WCML EMU kit available at the moment. Work is slow and I am awaiting parts that did not arrive with the kit - such is life, eh?
Fabulous shot taken by Steve Jones in 1978.
Class 86 'Planet' in early Executive livery pulls an eight coach train - made up of 7 Lima MK3s and 1 Bachmann MK1 full
It's an age since I posted anything, but that don't mean that I haven't done anything. So here goes with the latest model. It's a four by three foot micro that has been connected up to three continuous loops so that I ran run trains to my heart's content - a real train set at long last. There's also a small shunting yard at the front for various departmental wagons and freight - depending what mood I'm in. The shunting yard is all operated by Spratt & Winkle - I just use a hand held magnet u
The Bachmann 9F arrived yesterday - Yipee!!! It's such a detailed model that I was quite frankly nervous whilst handling it. The detailed pipework is amazing and I'd have expected to have paid much more for something as finely produced. I couldn't wait to get it into the Shadow Box for a few pictures though.
So nearly there - a comparison shot with David Shepherd's magnificent painting - I need to get another LED spotlight on the front yet.
This shot shows how the mirror d
Spent a great day out yesterday at the Chester MRC's event in Blennerville, County Kerry. The group have generously donated their model of the Tralee and Dingle Light Railway to the centre. This will hopefully provide a great boost to the fledgling Irish Railway Society that have recently started up.
Some pictures of what is an already well known and highly crafted layout.
John Campbell and Neil Ramsay were also in attendance with their fabulous collections of 16mm live steam and
Some update pics for the new Southern layout as promised. I've set this around the early 70's period - still want to use the Hornby 2 HAL and realise this was retired in 1971. I'm also a bit confused about using the Blue/Grey 411 CEP for this period as I've always laboured under the assumption that no DMU or EMU received this livery until the mid 80's and ran in complete Blue up until this time. However, I've seen a couple of pics (one on Mike Morant's site) dated around 1969 and 1971 that cl
I haven't been resting on my laurels since my last layout and have been ferreting away as usual. So, and having grown up in Perry Barr, I thought it was high time to have a go at a model of the station there. I've had to rely on a couple of pics by Steve Jones along with my memory of the place. I didn't fancy using any of the available catenary so had a go at making my own out of wire. The are not perfect but look credible especially with Colin Graig's superb pewter insulators.
A c
The latest effort is a plan to recreate a part of the great Carlisle Citadel Station for my collection of steam locos. I want a half station scene with a mirror doubling up the length on the internal section. It'll be another one of my wire roof schemes. The tracks beyond a middle platform with act as a run through so that the station can be linked up to a future run around planned for my loft space. Station buildings on the middle platform will hide the hole in the mirror. However, I figured th
Gosh, it’s been well over a year since my last post. But it has been a crappy time and life has thrown my wife and I some right old spanners to contend with.
The worst of it was when my dear old Mom passed away in mid November after an 18 month long battle with Bladder Cancer. Thankfully she was in a care home for the last 6 months so she was extremely well looked after and had little pain to put up with in the end. Marvellous places.
Whilst all this went on modelling took a back se
Just a quick update on progress so far. Upon showing the first pictures to my wife she said that the layout looked too rural for it to be Perry Barr. Whilst the there is a Park to the north of the station there were obvious signs of it being in a suburban, Green Belt area - it was right next to a Shopping Centre (Lynton Square in the 70/80's) and the original site of the Dog Track Stadium - but these could hardly be seen from the station as the ground sloped off rapidly behind the station. Ho
I was reading 1984 a few weeks ago when I came across a blog entry by Scots Region called Victory Road - http://www.rmweb.co...._fromsearch__1. A fictitious layout of a station from the novel. This really got the modeling juices flowing and I began the usual postulating when we get an idea into our heads. I had a half completed station throat model that I'd never been happy with and started to put two and two together. I PM'd Scots Region who kindly allowed me to proceed with his original
Believe it or not, but this plastic Lobster has a direct connection with the real place. Along with the station there was four shops sharing the blue brick building on the overbridge. There was a clothes shop to the left, the station (a simple entrance with small ticket office), a shoe shop (if I remember right), a newsagent and a chip shop. The 'chippie' was called the 'Shell Bar' and had a small eating area that was festooned with fishing nets and lobster baskets etc. Plastic fish and Lobsters
Another update. The platform buildings and footbridge is now complete. All that is needed now is to create the links with my loft runaround scheme. The followings pics are all early BR.
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I very much doubt that 46151 ever hauled the Thames Clyde Express, however, other members of the class did work it North of Leeds.
These models are more than a bit naff, but for the price they are great for static displays. I had to strip down the Mallard one and reglue the wheels straight and rejoin the wobbly bottom half of the tender. I also did a little bit of weathering on the Mallard. You know I often wonder why Airfix/Dapol never made these part of their plastic kit range.
I've only bought the Flying Scotsman and Mallard issues and now wish I'd have purchased at least six of the Mallard one
I've finally buckled down and decided to build a layout based on Barrow Hill's Service Yard. At first I'd made great plans to somehow incorporate this with my layout of the Roundhouse, but reason has prevailed and I've decided to just model the yard which will butt up against a low relief version of the Roundhouse.
The coaling stage and ash plant, heavily modified versions of the Super Quick models, are just for scale. I made these at the same time as my 'D' Shop model during the brie
At last the Southern Pride Class 304 has been finished. The layout would have been incomplete without it, but building it has tried my patience and I'd think twice before having a go as such a large kit again. The instructions were clear and the kit itself is very well made, but you really need prior experience and I rather think I jumped into the deep end with this.
The lead driving vehicle was the last car built and it has turned out much neater than the driving brake car (see below)
A little project to celebrate the 50th Anniversary. I always loved the red flash double arrow logo and wish BR had adopted it for the whole of the corporate era.
There's certainly a lot of life left in these old Lima models. I spent a lot of time trying to match the colour BR had first used - turquoise blue - and eventually found this colour. It's not a perfect match and seeing how I'm limited to using spray cans (I haven't yet plucked up the courage to go buy an air brush) it was
I happened to mention to SWMBO that I might build a Tinsley Micro plank so that I could take pics of my Lima shunter to Class 13 conversion in an appropriate setting. This sparked off the inevitable debate about the amount of time I spend modelling. However, seeing how SWMBO spends her time in the evenings watching all of the soaps (television I point blank refuse to watch) I countered that the micro could be done in an equivalent amount of time over a week or so. We finally agreed a ten hour
In response to fellow RMweb members who were interested in how I made the overall wire roof the following is an article that was scheduled to appear in a future edition of FRMR. The baseboard for the model had been completed by the end of December and the roof structure by the end of January. It was around this time I emailed some pictures to the late Bob Barlow, who in response asked me to write a short article about its construction. By the time this was sent the poor man was probably starting
Whilst finishing off Barrow Hill I inevitably started thinking about what next - I guess we're all guilty of that during builds? Then, whilst browsing on RMweb one day, I came across Geoff Forster's blog of his layout 'Penhydd' - this, in my humble opinion, has to be one of the most perfect models I've ever seen. It has everything - a station, three goods sidings, roads, lots of perfect greenery and potential for lots of expansion. It offers loads of operational fun and makes for a great phot
Anyone familiar with my models will know I’m a bit of a ‘Shed’ nut and this is another one. In response to an article in Railway News last summer I’d set my heart on a depiction of a locomotive works once my Barrow Hill layout was finished. The fact that I also grew up in Birmingham has something to do with a fascination for factories. It seems the industrial areas of my home town have left an indelible mark that just can’t be ignored even though I now live in rural Ireland.
Horwich
The arch infills and girder bridge are now completed.
There are no station names in 1984, only Newspeak abbreviations. The station is known only as INTSEC 3/19 (Intersection of Main Line 3 and tube station 19) - you can make your own mind up as to which North London Station it represents!
Winston stands alone on the platform and watches a B set pull in amid the smoke and steam - I must get around to giving him a pair of eyes!
I figured that seeing how Orwell wrote this i
The 3mm leds arrived today from Express Models. Really are superb quality lights - relatively cheap and very easy to use. Their service really is an express one and these have again, like all my other orders, arrived very timely indeed. I've stuck a couple in the ends of short pieces of plastic straw and used them as directional lighting (tiny spots) to highlight the front of the 9F. A couple have also been stuck down a couple of the smoke hoods to simulate the sunlight coming down them as i
I was going to have a go at making the yard at Barrow Hill to compliment a previous model of the Roundhouse made about a year and a half ago. However, after much thought, I decided that the original model just wouldn't do - so here are some pics of my second attempt.
The turntable is from Walther's Cornerstone which matches the one at Barrow Hill although it's longer. Some say the model isn't up to scratch, but it was easy to put together. I did have some problems with the motor, b
