Aces High

Hi Karl, thank you for your feedback. That video is not of mine or my wife's work though, its a featured link to Andys Hobby Workshop on my ihub. I can only dream of completing work to that standard.

Wow, it's been over a year since I updated this thread. I was half tempted to delete this whole thread and start again as my photography and website have improved massively over the past 12 months. However, I've decided against it. The reason for my absence is because I've been doing a lot of work on my website Aces High Hobbies, my accompanying Facebook page, You Tube channel and now also building scale models. I haven't written this build onto the website as of yet, however, I have started a series of videos called Winterfall Shorts designed to bring people up to speed with where the layout is currently. There are currently only two with the third going up within a week or two. Baseboards and Electrics and Landscape Bearing in mind I'm still pretty used to this You Tube malarkey so go gentle please Some of you may already be aware of the charity Models for Heroes . Malcolm Childs, the owner, asked me to write a short piece on why I got back into model railways and scale modelling for Model Rail magazine, which I duly did and the article is to be published in March's edition. Malcolm and I have also been mulling over the possibility of building an small exhibition layout with the help of veterans and currently serving members of the Armed Forces with the intention of using it to help raise awareness of Mental Health issues. This plan is purely in the mulling it over stages and may not even come to fruition. If it does though it will take a lot of co-ordination, however, if there are any veterans or currently serving members of either HM Forces or the Emergency services who this idea appeals to can I ask you to inbox the Aces High Hobbies Facebook page so we can gauge the level of interest.

I've not started on the anderson yet, primarily because I don't think there's going to be room. I've moved the farm house down to a lower level and am having a small grounded coach where the farm house was going to be as either a chicken coop or stores. I have a few small shelf inserts from an old DVD stand which I'm going to use for small dioramas when I've finished my current one and was considering doing a garden scene with an anderson, or an open ended one showing the insides.

Couldn't resist a quick update to yesterdays post as I've got my camera working again and Winterfall farmhouse is almost complete. I can't overstate how chuffed I am with it as it's my first attempt at a Wills kit and at more detailed painting. Here's a shot of it on the cutting mat and a few of it temporarily in situ before I get cracking with the scenic work. I'm a bit late with the seasonal touches but I'm still going to completed them all, put them inside the house and then wait until next December for the big switch on.

Seasons Greetings, all be they rather late, as envisaged the silly season has kept my very busy with little opportunity to update this website or to do much modelling of my own, the week before seeing most of us laid up, myself with a rather nasty reaction to my Hepatitis B booster then the youngest reacting rather badly to his flu vaccine and ending up in hospital. Still, all rather short lived and back to normal now. I hope all of you managed to have a peacefull and relaxing a Christmas as possible, or as much as your mini tornados allowed. I was spoilt with a small selection of model kits for cameo scenes on Winterfall some more paints and the book Building Dioramas by Chris Mrosko which I've found very difficult to put down. The day after Boxing Day saw us take our annual pilgramige to Christmas Leave on the Watercress line for a thoroughly enjoyable day out. Regarding modelling, as mentioned the silly season has taken up a lot of time, however, with another two weeks off work and the kids back at school for one of them I'm hoping to get some more done. When I've had chance I've been working on Winterfall farmhouse. I've decided on a sandstone colour for the bricks, I know it's probably not prototipical for the southern region butit looks nice to me and ultimately, it's my little world. I'm basing alot of it on the house my grandparents lived in when I was younge and spent most of my summers at. To add a seasonal twist to it I decided a couple of blog entries back that I was going to put a Christmas tree in the lower front room permanantly that can be lit up during future Christmases but won't be easily seen the rest of the year. I've managed to get a test run of how that works completed and I think it looks quite good. I just need to tone the tree down now with some added greenery. I just need to add the underboard wiring for the tree and the upstaires lights, finish the roof of and weather the whole building and we're done. I'll then be moving onto the field and frozen duck pond, not forgetting my other diorama Sabotage. ​ On the IT front, I've always had at the back of my mind the desire to be able to one day open a coffee shop and have in the same building a craft/hobby.model building room where customers can purchase their craft, model building wares and then sit down with a cup of coffee and construct. As I don't think I'll ever be able to afford that and support a family I've started the virtual Hobby Coffee Shop on Facebook as another off shoot to Aces High. Please pop by and have a "brew", until next time, thank you once again for reading and Happy New Year to you all

With the first Sunday in Advent being last week it's been a festive weekend here with not much time for modelling. The Long Haired General has also retaken ownership of the Dining Room and Winterfall has been relegated to an alcove until after the festivities. That being said I still have plenty to be going on with. A small tray of unfinished models for both Winterfall and Sabotage. As well as my minor tray of unfinished items I also have the challenge I set myself, of making a working Christmas tree for Winterfall farm house out of a fiber optic tree which I bought for the bargain price of £1.50 from Wilkinsons, a match stick and some moss. First thing I have to do of course is complete the farm house, the shell itself is complete as is the interior decorating. I have now added curtains, blackout blinds and painted the roof. I hope to have the whole house finished this week (the drain pipes, guttering and doors are in the the photo above). Of course the farm house needs somewhere to be and I didn't want to just complete this mini challenge and just dump it in an unprepared small holding so I've also been working on the scenic area around it. Firstly I placed the walls and gate in the place where I wanted them, once they were bedded in I placed off cuts of grass mat along the bottom of the wall to give it that unkempt Winter feel. I've also decided on where I want the duck pond to be and carved it's shape out of the baseboard smoothing the edges of with air dry clay. So, quite a lot to be going on with as well as the usual jobs. I was also fortunate to be sent a free sample of river stone from the good people at Goodwood Scenics after blogging about my use of their ballast on Sabotage I've also been doing quite a bit of work on the Aces High page. Each weekend I've decided on hosting a themed event. The last two weekends have been about first the Warley Model Railway Exhibition then this weekend there was a micro layout special. My plans for the next two weekends are Garden railways next weekend and then, to coincide with the release of Rouge One, a Star Wars story, I'm going to have a sci-fi special the weekend after. It's been great fun scouring the net for these weekend specials and I've enjoyed seeing the fantastic work that's out there. I'm still also still hosting free advertising every Sunday from 1800 GMT for small craft, model and hobbies business, pages and groups on the Aces High Facebook page. The rules are simple, like our page, post a link to your own page, group or website in the comments section of the status posted at 1800 and then peruse, like and share other groups that take your fancy. It's still early days for this and it's not the most successful of my ideas but all are most welcome, please share and come along and support our talented community. The next couple of weeks are going to be busy around here, as I'm sure they will be for everybody. but I hope to get another blog in before Christmas, if I don't then I hope you all have a very happy holiday season.

Gutted I couldn't make it to Warley this year, my main reason for trying to get there was to see this layout in the flesh. I've found your FB page though and have shared it to mine at Aces High to try and increase your following.

My wee IT project is slowly gaining momentum, all be it at the same pace as my modelling I'm going to try something out to help other people in the same position as myself. Every Sunday evening from 1800hrs Hassle free marketing for your model or craft related pages and groups. Like and share our page then post a link to your page, like other people's pages and help our community grow. If you're also trying to get a small page or group going please pop along and feel free to post a link and advertise it at https://www.facebook.com/AcesHigh76/ No commitment, no catch.

Things have been a tad busy with home life since my last entry but I've been managing to keep the Facebook page updated daily. If anyone hasn't seen it yet please do pop by at Aces High Crafts and Hobbies or join our closed group and be able to share your own work easily at Planes, Trains and Tanks all will be most welcome. On the modelling front I've made some progress with Sabotage (I'll get round to updating the page at some point) and used that to plan the country side section of Winterfall better. Regarding the Sabotage diorama, I made the final call on where everything will sit prior to adding scenery which I'm happy with and have now started on the scenic build. To ballast the track I have used a sample of ballast I purchased from Goodwood Scenics mixed with some ground up coal dust. I then secured it in place by first misting over it with a spray of water and then added a 70/30 mix of PVA and water applied through a 10ml syringe. The techniques I've been using are all from the videos I've source on line and as usual I've saved them all to here so that they can hopefully be of some use to you all as well. As a first time effort I'm reasonably happy with how it's all going. I've also had a bit of a seasonable idea for the farm house on Winterfall (the walls and gate are all in their final position, they just need tidying up and fixing down). I've decided I'm going to add a seasonal twist to the farm house and try something completely off of my own back using no tuition. The upper floor will be lit up with the occupier in the process of putting up their blackout curtains after being told to "put that light out!" by the local air raid warden shouting over the wall. In the lower right hand room (as you are looking at it) will be a lit up Christmas tree. To build this I've found a small fiber optic tree from Wilkinsons at a reasonable price of £1.50 which I now plan to dismantle, then using some locally sourced moss (washed and dried out) and a match stick I intend to try and make a tree that will sit in the corner of that room and twinkle away. Not sure how this will work out so watch this space. The one thing I'm really struggling with at the moment is getting craft posts up on Facebook and getting the time to build a craft area for the webpage that can equal the modeling traffic, especially in the run up to Christmas. I am open to any and all suggestions and volunteers. To give a little something back to the Community, every Sunday evening I'll be hosting hassle free marketing on our Facebook page. All owners of their own pages are welcome to come along and post links to their pages and then browse other peoples. Starting off this Sunday at 1800 GMT. That's about all for now, thank you once again for following, until next time.

It's been a week of ups and downs, no need to bore you all with the details, however, a forced time out from work on Thursday and Friday gave me the chance to enjoy some peace and quiet and get on with the trees I'd been stalling on for ages. Having finally purchased the required scenics I needed I decided to stick on some background music and crack on. I'm using one of the videos here for guidance. I started off by building a base using dried tree roots for the trunks and plumbers hemp for branches. It looks a tad messy at first but it does improve. I also had a go at making a small apple tree from wire using another one of the How Too videos. After the branches had dried I then used tacky spray adhesive to spray the branches, making sure I got none on the trunks and then sprinkled the scenic scatter over the top of the tree. I ensured that I had news paper underneath when doing this and only used one colour at a time so that I could capture and reuse any excess. I then repeated the process giving each tree approximately three coverings ensuring I also turned the trees upside down in order to get full coverage. Having posted the outcome on a couple of Facebook pages it would seem that they've turned out quite well, I'm happy with them to say the least and it's given me a bit of a modelling confidence boost. It would also appear that our Aces High Facebook page is gaining in popularity, so thank you to anyone that's added their support. I've started a spin off group, Planes, Trains and Tanks to give some separation for those who are only interested in models and not other crafts or seasonable posts. I must admit, I'm loving my new hobby.

Good morning all, some of you may or may not be aware of my two on going projects on here. Winterfall, a small shunting layout Set in Southern England at the tail end of WWII and Sabotage a similar themed diorama set just after D-Day. I won't bore you wall with the details but I returned to my childhood enjoyment of model trains and model making during a particularly difficult time. It's given me something that's a distraction to all of that and is now something I genuinely look forward to getting spare time to do, spending most of my day armchair modelling about what I want to build next. As I'm pretty new to this I've had to source the web and use sites of information such as RM web which have all been a great help, adding to my enjoyment. I decided to have a go at documenting my own progress and start up my own website Aces High. Being new to this I'd really appreciate some feedback as I'd really like it to be somewhere that's easy to follow. My wife and I also started off a joint Facebook page as she has an interest in crafts and we've found pleasure in having a common interest. However, wanting a bit of separation, and somewhere that everyone could easily share their hard work, I've started a spin off group Plane, Trains and Tanks, admittedly, whilst Aces High is doing quite well, PTT isn't. I would welcome any feedback on all of them, and you're all most welcome to join and share your collective knowledge, hopefully helping to get them off the ground.

To add a little more, chains were still in use occasionally by the military in the 90's though, although I'm not sure how much in the UK as my experiences then were Germany based. "Fond" memories of chock and chaining our 43's at Hohne.

Octobers here and for those of us who love that time of year it's fingers crossed for warm socks, misty mornings, crunchy leaves and warm soup with crusty bread. We've already gone as far as sourcing some Halloween decorations and started to make our front room cozy. Why? because we can! This week has been pretty standard apart from after four years we finally had the confirmed diagnosis for our middle son that he is Autistic, it's not going to change much, we knew that already we've just had to spend four years fighting to get a professional to say "yes, he is". Those that know him will already know what a fantastic young man he is, very few people can actually make me cry with laughter, this boy succeeds where those fail. It's his birthday soon, which he's making sure he lets everybody know about. Modeling wise, I'm doing very well at spending at the moment but not getting a whole lot done, yesterday though I managed to get a bit more on Winterfall done. I did locate a new model shop close to us which won't replace my regular one but this is an absolute gold mine of paint and weathering. £30 lighter I left http://www.snmstuff.co.uk/ in Camberly with this little haul. Enough to get me started on a few mini projects for Winterfall and Sabotage. I've started to colour the land before grassing on Winterall but before I go any further I want to get the back board painted and get the pillbox painted and bedded into the land. I've found this little video to help me with the detailing of the concrete. I know it's for O gauge but I can easily scale it down. I also really want to get started on the track leading under the bridge. I have a thing for views down narrow streets or country lanes so really want to capture this view nicely. So plenty to be getting on with. I'm very good at coming up with ideas but I soon find out I've had too many and have to reign myself in. So for now, on Winterfall, they're the only two areas I'm going to be concentrating on, that and maybe a frozen duck pond.

Not a whole lot of progress on Winterfall recently, or my diorama project. I'm still waiting for my culvert that I ordered from Gaugemaster to turn up (it was out of stock when I ordered it so not their fault in the delay) before making a start properly on Sabotage. Today I have sanded down the landscape and put a coat of grey primer over the track, once this has dried I'm going to put down a brown base layer over the rest of the land and then concentrate on getting the road under the bridge and distant road finished as they're the most fiddly bits to access. I did get a nice birthday present from my wife in the form of a new air brush which I'm looking forward to putting to use. I've never used one before so will be digging out some old wagons to practice on first. I'm hoping now Autumn is here to get more time over a weekend to get things done on both my projects. I've have managed to update my blog on our website if anyone is interested in that sort of thing. The link is in my signature.

This is so impressive, I'm really looking forward to seeing it at Warley.