Leaderboard

Constructed from an IKB etched brass kit with sprung suspension.

Another coach from my branchline rake. Once again built using a Slaters Plasticard kit.

Constructed from a Slaters Kit.

Constructed from a Slaters 7mm kit

Time has come to start finalising plans for the "Great Railway Project." After numerous drafts and ambitious schemes, that never had any chance of ever being completed, I'm going to settle on something that endeavours to fill the following wish list. Layout Requirements list Great Western Railway circa 1907 7mm to the foot O gauge finescale Hand built track/pointwork to a minimum radius of 6 foot Branch line terminus Station platform facing viewing side Small goods yard with goods shed and cattle dock Engine shed Private siding leading to an off stage industry of some kind, Creamery, Brickworks,Brewery etc Not more than 18 feet long, including fiddle yard Sufficient width of base boards to allow decent scenic development. Sectional baseboards, enabling layout to be transported to exhibitions Elliptical layout design, with curved back scene avoiding any 90 degree angles I need a small fiddle yard area on the right side of the plan, to act as an off stage feed for the private siding. This only needs to be long enough for a small industrial loco, plus a couple of wagons. I like the idea of trains disappearing and reappearing from under the road bridge during shunting manoeuvres in the goods yard. I like the idea of the back scene extending around the ends to form a proscenium arch view blocker. I'd like some water in the foreground, lots of reeds, bull rushes and maybe a 7mm to the foot Weeping Willow! This is the result of a number of doodles, that I quite like! Key to plan C D - Cattle Dock G S - Goods Shed S B - Station Building E S - Engine Shed I need to spend time finalising the fiddle yard area, I'm not sure whether to use a traverser, cassettes or some kind of pivoting system. Once a larger scale drawing has been made, I'm hoping it will be easier to sort this out more clearly in my mind. I'd appreciate your thoughts and input guys! On looking at the plan again, I guess I should consider puting some kind of trap to protect the main line from the loop. Changing the front left most point into a double slip would work, but would the GWR have used this formation in this situation.

Something a little different that my usual G.W.R. offerings! "Lady Jayne" will be employed on my proposed layout to propel wagons along a private line, leading from a yet decided industry and onto an exchange siding. The loco was built using the Slaters kit as a base, with a lot of additional detail. Before anyone spends time looking through their Manning Wardle archives, the loco Lady Jayne never really existed and is a feeble attempt on my part to keep Mrs Wenlock sweet!

This is one of a rake of coaches that I have built to represent a branch line train as running circa 1905. It was constructed from a Slaters Plastikard kit and is to 7mm scale. I added additional detail, including suitable period figures, mirrors and advertisements to the interior compartments. The model was sprayed using my Iwata airbrush with enamel paint and then lined using a Bob Moore pen. Best described as a labour of love, the lining took me ages, but despite a few choice words during it's application, I'm happy with the end result

Here's another of my Edwardian G.W.R. Loco's. Built using a Roxey Mouldings etched brass kit, running on Slaters wheels with sprung compensation.

I have been wanting to build a small layout for some time but was not sure what to do. I model B.R. in the early 80s until the end of Speedlink in '91. Trying to design a small layout running both passenger and freight during this time would be hard to achieve. Steam modelers do not have this problem. The move away from 10-foot wheelbase to longer vehicles exacerbated the problem I had. My interest is in freight trains, as I find these far more interesting than passenger trains. As an example, a VDA van can carry Cook-in sauces, Spillers pet food, rolls of news print, Cider, fertiliser, steel products, car components, bagged china clay, bagged cement, etc or used as a barrier vehicle. Looking back at old photos of an 08 dragging a single Cargowaggon through Didcot station provided just the inspiration I needed. Checking the track plan from the British Rail Track Diagrams, Western Region (Quail Map Company) book and checking the site of Dicot Distribution Centre on Google Earth spurred me on. I like Hereford yard but that would have to wait for another day. Looking through The Freight Only Yearbook, No 2, Michael Rhodes & Paul Shannon, page 63 gave me just what I was looking for. The same picture appears in the book - Modelling The British Rail Era, Flemming, Flint, Gibbons and Taylor on page 44. Warrington Dallem Lane sidings was built on the site of a former steelworks. Following this would limit the traffic I could run. I decided to make it a Distribution Depot. The diagram below is the plan I have settled on: I have added a transit shed as I would like to be able to unload flat/open wagons away from public view when exhibiting the layout. All too often these types of wagon are run on and off a layout loaded??? The final width of the layout hasn't been determined yet but will be between 1'6" and 2 foot. Total length will be about 8 foot. Heavy use will be made of a sector plate in the fiddle yard and I will be using DG couplings throughout.

The gales and hailstones continue so luckily no gardening. There has been plenty of time to progress the platform paving. My previous layouts were made from chipboard and I used the off cuts to form the platform bases which were then surfaced with 3mm plywood. The current layout is built with 1/2 inch MDF and again the off cuts have been utilised for the platform bases. This time I chose to use 5mm balsa wood for the surfacing. This gives me a top of rail to platform surface height of 12mm for my code 100 Peco Streamline track. The balsa surface is held in place with counter sunk steel pins, whilst the platform sides are covered with brick or stone paper. As a teenager I can remember being very impressed by a railway modeller who had scribed individual paving stones. The whole platform was given a uniform colour wash and then individual paving stones were picked out with different tones. Life is very short and I do not have time to emulate this level of modelling. However I have proposed to make a start. Having identified some suitable sizes of paving (in a previous entry on this Blog) I decided to mark out some trial 'panels'. The balsa surface was first scribed using a sharp and relatively hard pencil. The surface was then given a coat of household emulsion paint (Magnolia). This is water based and has a tendancy to swell out any imperfections in the surface. In order to remove the wood grain effect the whole of the platform top was then rubbed over with fine sand paper. The scribed lines were cleaned back out using a pencil. Finally where the pencil lines were obviously cutting across the grain of the balsa wood I lightly scored the lines with a very sharp knife. So far so good. Maybe 'Magnolia' is too light. I would say better to be too light than too dark. It can always be 'weathered' at a later date. I also need to source some white tape for the edging. Lots more to report on.

Hello Rovex Looking good. After your comments I had to have a peep at your layout. I have to say that ballasting the track was a lot more tedious than scribing (and there was a lot more of it)!. I love the gas holders - are they scratch built? Regards Ray

Hi Rovex, Didn't someone once say: "I love the look of newly laid track on bare baseboards in the morning" - well they darn well should have! That complex of trackwork is already looking good, it'll be a joy to see it taken to completion. I'm just glad I chose the easier early layout option, and I will of course continue to follow with the greatest interest. Regards, Gerry.

Thanks - I'll be ordering sets of lamps from Laurie. Yes, all the Metro (and 633) locos running on the circle had open cabs, so mine will be too. This is the 633 and this is one of the Metros I'll be building for the layout. I need a Large Metro alongside, but there's no decent kit, so I may have to bash another Roxey one to get what I want.

I've started painting my A1 Models freelance diesel. First of all I treated the bare brass with Carrs Metal Black, which didn't take very well, then gave it a coat of Phoenix Precision aerosol etch primer (I prefer not to put etch primer through my airbrush). After that had dried thoroughly I undercoated the model with Revel acrylic white; Note that the base for the orange beacon has been glued to the roof, after the etch primer and before the white undercoat. Etch primer can affect some plastics. The 'handle' is a wooden clothes peg, used back to front so that the handle part grips the inside of the bonnet and the gripping part is the handle. I had a bit of a disaster - I managed to bend the side window pillars inwards picking the model up. Hopefully it won't look too bad once glazed.. Next job is to paint the loco yellow. I'm trying to finish off my A1 Models/RT Models Ruston 48DS; The main body colour is Revel Aqua Color Bronze Green and the frames are Phoenix Precision Dirty Black, which I'll also use for the roof. The roof will be sprayed but the frames are just brushed, to save me a lot of extra masking. My A1 Models Hunslet is a bit of a disappointment; I sprayed the bufferbeams first then masked them off, along with the radiator grill (which I didn't want clogging with excess paint), before applying the main body colour. I used Citadel 'Enchanted Blue', after the first coat was dry I mixed a little white into the blue and went over the loco again, hoping to achieve a faded finish. I'm not convinced that this has worked well, and after the paint dried I noticed that there are 'shadows' above the left side bonnet top handrails which can be seen in the first photo. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this one now, the options are to finish it off and see what it looks like (some heavy weathering might help), give it another light coat, or completely strip the paint off and start again. My yellow 48DS has been weathered, I faded the paint with light coats of white then light grey applied with the airbrush, and used some Games Workshop inks to pick out the bonnet side detail and add some fuel spills around the filler cap; Still needs glazing though. Paul.

Now this is very nice... the livery is superb. Bet Buckjumper does not keep his as clean as yours!

With 'Engine Wood' planned to be attending 'Hornby Magazine Live' at Hartlepool in early July, I thought I'd open some of the boxes of new R-T-R stuff and introduce a bit more variety in terms of stock used. Over the last couple of weeks, I've been working on a pair of Hawksworth coaches, three full brakes (one each of Hawksworth, Gresley & Mark 1 BG), a Hornby GW horsebox, a Hornby 'Van C' and finally a single 16t mineral wagon (needed one more to make up a second rake of 16 tonners). I also weathered a Bachmann bogie bolster, which had had it's couplings done years ago, but had never been weathered (you can tell it's an old one, as it has plastic-tyred wheels, which will probably get changed some time). All have been fitted with screw or three-link couplings and vac/steam heat pipes, and all have been weathered. The weathering has been a mix of air brushing, dry-brushing and powders, but the essence of this job is that they had to be done relatively quickly, as there are other jobs I want to do before the show. Most of the vehicles are now almost completed, and I thought I'd try a bit of photography this afternoon, but the light wasn't that good, so I only took a few photos: