Modelling Mike

For a long time during 2020 and early 2021, attention focussed on the goods shed area. The shed itself was finished and painted, with scratch built canopies added to the Wills Kit to make it look more "Corfe"ish. Once it was glued in place, the track was ballasted with Woodland Scenics fine granules and the land form around it was built up - a more complicated exercise than you'd imagine, given the undulations of the landscape. I used offcuts of polystyrene as a base, then gave the track a good covering of DAS clay to represent the build up of ash and other detritus over the years. As for the goods yard area between the shed and the platform, I decided to try sculptamold, after finding Luke Gowan's videos on YouTube. This is a mix of plaster and papier mache which is easy to work and manipulate and I loved using it. It dries quickly but you can continue to wet and smooth it with your finger or a drink stirrer for as long as you need to, and achieve a good dirt road finish. I finished my road by sprinkling some fine ballast granules over the top, and will paint it later. To one side of the goods shed is the old cattle dock, represented with a sheet of plasticard scribed to represent a brick base and painted a suitably dark grey colour. This will eventually be fenced off and become a picnic area.

Blimey, doesn't time fly! As seems to be a theme with this thread, I have neglected it for well over two years now. I've been lurking on the forums here and there, and work has slowly progressed on the layout, but for one reason or another, I have somehow managed to fail to post. When RMWeb went pop over the winter and the majority of the photos went missing, that didn't help motivate me to post, but I have just spent a (surprisingly enjoyable) few hours over the last couple of days restoring all the lost photos on this thread. It gave me a great opportunity to review how far I had come over the last five years and I'll endeavour to post a few updates covering the last two years of work. Let's start with some locos. A few years ago, I posted my philosophy when it came to the loco roster on St Aldhelm and Talbothays, and it has to be said that that philosophy has changed slightly. In the past, I wanted a pool of locos which would represent a thriving preservation set up, without being a slavish copy of any one railway. Being honest, this was mainly because I did not trust myself to re-number any ready-to-run purchases. But as my modelling skills have increased and confidence has grown, so the loco roster has developed. I now have a growing number of "Swanage" locos, partly through the acquisition of appropriate ready-to-run examples from the main manufacturers, but also thanks to me finally taking the plunge and doing some re-naming and re-numbering. I have already introduced 33111 - or "hotdog" to those in the know. I have also recently acquired a second Swanage Class 33 - D6515 "Lt Jenny Lewis RN", as well as BR Standard 4MT 80104 - a second hand bargain - and a model of T9 30120, albeit in bright green LSWR livery, and also 34070 Manston. With five "proper" Swanage locos now available, I was keen to add two locos which I remembered from my childhood - M7 30053 and Battle of Britain class 34072 "257 Squadron". The M7 was an easy enough renumbering job once I had bought the transfers and plucked up the courage to attack the old numbers with thinners. I managed to take off the old numbers with minimal damage to the lining and soon had the first ever loco I rode behind as a kid on the Swanage Railway. A coat of gloss varnish on the boiler and tank sides gave it a suitably preserved sheen, and later weathering of the frames and running gear (not seen in the able image) and a hard-working crew on the footplate made for a very characterful model. Spurred on by that success, I decided to have a go at a more difficult conversion. With no Battle of Britain locos in the Hornby range at the time, and no suitable secondhand donors found, I opted to buy Hornby's Bideford, a West Country class loco, not realising that the name plates were fixed in place with small lugs, not glued. Unfortunately, BoB name plates sit much higher on the streamline casing, so I faced a problem... With the new name plate (Fox Transfers) in the correct location, the two lugs can still be seen. It's a problem I'll have to live with for now. Not ideal, but hopefully one day I'll find a solution. With the cab-side numbers given the same treatment as the M7, 34072 arrived on Talbothays just ahead of the real thing's return to Swanage. Close ups can be cruel, but I'm happy with the outcome. 34072 has been given the same gloss treatment, but has yet to be weathered. The under frame will have a good amount of grease and grime added to show it is a well cared for but working machine. So now that's seven "Swanage" locos on the roster. An eighth will follow with conversion of my other Standard 4 tank to 80078 - not strictly still a Swanage resident, but another loco from my childhood, and a recent visitor. I'd love to get hold of a re-built Bullied light pacific as well, and recreate Eddystone and perhaps one day an RTR manufacturer will look at releasing an Adams T3 or a U Class...and if I can get the N class converted to DCC, I could convert that to 31874 before it finishes its overhaul...

Hi Wayne, It sounds like you have your work cut out for you! How you're managing all this as a one-man band, I don't know. Hats off to you. Fingers crossed everything goes to plan and I look forward to the double slip when it's ready!

This is very exciting news! I have been quietly watching progress on this for some time and I have just placed an order for two B7 turnouts, which will hopefully kickstart the building of the next phase of my layout. I had been waiting for the Peco bullhead range to expand, but it looks like you're beating them to the market, and the kits look superb. Any ideas on the timescale for A5 and B6 turnouts becoming available? I'll need several of each for St Aldhelm. And if you're considering a double slip...that will be another order from me! I wish you every success with this venture, Wayne. I have no doubt these kits will be very popular.

Hello everyone, I hope you’re all staying safe and keeping well. It has been a while since I updated the thread. I imagine a number of you have found yourselves with more time on your hands what with the current situation. Despite the lockdown, I find myself busier than ever. Working on the real railway, I’m considered a key worker and with a large number of my colleagues shielding from the corona virus, I’m heading out into the big bad world more often than I’d really like to. We’re also, coincidentally, in the midst of re-decorating a large part of the house - a project we started long before the world went wrong - and that is proving to be a huge and time consuming project. But that’s not to say there hasn’t been progress on the layout. Mostly, I have continued to concentrate on scenic aspects, in particular, the roads and road under bridge which has been bugging me for some time. The roads have been fashioned from 5mm ply, glued and screwed to the baseboard using wooden risers (offcuts from the spare wood I had left over from making the baseboard legs) to try and get a gentle gradient. When it was all fixed in place and I was happy, the road surface was added using DAS clay, spread thinly over an even thinner layer of PVA. Once the roads were finally in place, I could turn my attention to the bridge. Having tried and failed to use the wing walls from the Wills kit, I decided they didn’t quite work and opted to swap them out for new stone sheets. These were cut to size, then painted the base stone colour to match the station building and platforms, before being glued into place using contact adhesive. The walls effectively hang from the track bed. In fact, the roads and bridge appear to hang in thin air at the moment, because there is no ground built up. I have made a start on landscaping using polystyrene, but this has ground to a halt, as I realised I needed to finish off the platforms first, before creating the ground around them. So, finally, Talbothays has a full set of platforms for trains to call at. The tops have been made from plain plasticard and will eventually be covered with painted fine sandpaper to represent tarmac. The up platform has had Scale Model Scenery coping stones added. These are their “Network Rail” kit, but are a very close match for those used at Corfe Castle. The stones come printed on A4 paper, so they have been mounted on thin card to make them the same thickness as the sandpaper, which is next to be added. The down platform will be similarly treated, but with the coping stones adapted to represent the narrower stones seen at Corfe. Also, the footbridge has been finished. Before adding its final coats of paint, I decided to have a go at making some lamps for the landing areas. Using photos of the Corfe footbridge as a guide, I made two lamp posts from brass tube and rod, adding shades from the Will’s Southern concrete lamppost kit and fixed them to the bridge using brackets made from thin plasticard. All surprisingly straightforward and really worth the effort as I’m really pleased with how they came out. How I managed to make two identical posts I’ll never know! Work and the ongoing house renovations are keeping me busy, but I’m trying to grab as many hours in the railway room as I can. My next projects will be finishing off the platform surfaces and building up the rest of the scenery, and I am also now turning my attention to the loco fleet with some exciting developments there. More about that very soon...

I’m aiming for the ash/old ballast/anything lying around look for the goods yard area. Most of it will be covered in a layer of grot and grime as well, so clay looked like a good way to go. The track work on Prior’s Dean looks superb, thanks for the picture. More food for thought! The crossing is coming along nicely too - those RTP walls are a great product and should blend in nicely.

Definitely worth the speaker upgrade - it sounds incredibly impressive. Couplings are a tricky conundrum to figure out. I thought long and hard about it myself, and eventually settled on Kadees because I wanted hands free uncoupling, but didn’t trust my skills putting together anything finer. They are quite pricy, but I have saved money by using Bachmann “pipe” couplings within fixed rakes of carriages. That probably won’t help with your set up though. Dinghams do look like an interesting option, as David suggests, and I might experiment with them one day too.

Hi Adam, this looks like a great start to a very interesting project. I like your compromise composition with the buildings and the crane, and I’m particularly interested to see how your clay “ballast” comes out, as I’m thinking of using a similar technique in the goods yard area on Talbothays. Looking forward to seeing this develop. Mike

Thanks Adam, that’s very kind. I’m pleased to hear the proportions look right - it took a lot of trial and error to get the right height! I’m particularly pleased with how the platform edges came out - just hoping the surfaces don’t let them down when it comes to finishing them!

There have been a few developments over at Talbothays since the new boards were built. After all that wood work, I wanted a fun little project to say I’d actually done some model making this year! When I started to consider how to tackle the footbridge at Talbothays, it occurred to me that the Hornby R076 Footbridge Kit bore a striking similarity to the bridge installed at Corfe Castle. Now if you know a little about the Swanage Railway you’ll know that Corfe Castle never had a footbridge and the one that graces the platforms today started life at Merton Park in South London. When it became surplus to requirements in the London ‘burbs, it was saved for preservation and now allows passengers easy access to the down platform instead of having to use the gated barrow crossing between trains. It also affords that classic shot beloved of all amateur photographers of the station with the castle looming in the background. To avoid the hassle of having to scratch-build a replica bridge or put a kit-built one there that has no resemblance to Corfe’s, I could have opted for the easy option and just let my 1:76 passengers cross at a barrow crossing too. But when I had a good look at the Hornby bridge, I saw the potential in what is essentially a toy. It wouldn’t be an exact replica of the Corfe bridge, but then the layout isn’t an exact replica of Corfe Castle, so it seemed like a decent compromise and an interesting challenge. At around £15, the bridge kit is a bargain, and I figured if it all went wrong, I wouldn’t be down too much. Having clipped the kit together as intended by Hornby, I realised I would not only have to lower it considerably, but also shorten its width to fit. Some over-scale detail would also have to go. So, out came the hacksaw, modelling knife, files and glue... At first, everything seemed to go well, removing the unrealistic smoke hoods and cutting the middle span, legs, stairs and side panels to size. That is until it came to gluing the green handrail spans back together. Plastic Magic, my go-to plastic glue, wouldn’t even come close to cementing the two halves together. Superglue yielded the same results, as did Humbrol’s own poly cement. Even Butanone was useless. Goodness knows what plastic Hornby uses, but it seems to be immune to all known glues! In the end, I resorted to using contact adhesive. Not ideal, and it needed a lot of care and cleaning up afterwards. Even that proved not to be a “forever” bond, which saved my bacon on one occasion when I realised I had mis-calculated the height and had to pull everything apart again and chop more material away to remedy the mistake. After gluing everything together again, I then used Deluxe Materials plastic putty to fill in the many unsightly holes where the pieces are designed to clip together. Once dry, the putty was sanded back, and eventually, after a few evenings’ work, I had myself a bridge that looked much more in keeping with the scene. As things stand, the footbridge has received an all-over coat of Tamiya primer, and all it is missing is a coat of Southern Green and some weathering. With it primed and posed on the layout, I have to say I’m fairly pleased with it. An exact replica of the bridge at Corfe? Not even close. But close enough for me, considering what it started life as. I’m tempted to add some cross braces on the legs out of brass rod, and I might have a go at replicating the swan neck lamps that adorn the landings on the real thing, but otherwise I think it’s about done bar the painting and will fit in well in the goods yard area. Attention has now moved on to building up the platforms, and I have made a start on making the roads and building up the scenery on the dropped board. More updates on how that’s going in due course.

Hi Will, great to see some more shots of the layout as it develops. I’m really enjoying following your build. Really happy I was able to help you out (and John!) with the 37 chip. What a beast that loco is now! It really does sound superb. Looking forward to seeing more developments soon...

Hi Martin, Thanks for the reminder - I was going to do exactly what you suggested, as it worked brilliantly last time. And thanks for the link - it saves me trying to find it all on the forum again after so long! I’m looking forward to getting stuck in again.

Happy new year everybody! I hope you all had an enjoyable festive season. Well, I didn’t quite make my pre-Christmas deadline for the new baseboards, but I was only a few days out, and between work, Christmas shopping, visiting family and friends, I’ve managed to build the remaining baseboards and re-assemble Talbothays. The boards are almost identical to the existing ones, in a typical plywood top and timber frame style, held together with DCC Concepts alignment dowels and either spring clips or bolts depending on the type of connection. I had mis-calculated the amount of timber I would use, and had to buy more from the local DIY store, only to find out the dimensions were slightly different, but that didn’t cause too many headaches and everything fits together well. After putting the boards back together, I printed out the track plan I had prepared in XtrackCAD and laid it out to see how it would all fit. I’m fairly happy with it, considering how complicated the station throat is, incorporating a curve and a baseboard joint. I’m happy that I have avoided pointwork over the board joint and that I have a fairly good flow to the track - it’s not perfect, but it will suffice. The next step is to re-draw the plan in Templot to create some pointwork templates to build from. Hopefully at that stage I can get an even better flow to the plan. It will be some time before track is laid on this part of the layout though. As I explained in the last post, I had to build these boards to clear space under the layout for storage. Now that job is done, I’ll be returning attention to Talbothays and developing the station scene more. The first job is to build the platform tops, then build the station footbridge...a little kit-bashing project I’m really looking forward to. I’ve not got much time to spend in the railway room over the next few weeks, but I do have my birthday next week which I traditionally book off work to play with my train set (what else is there to do in January?!) and a week off at the end of the month, so stay tuned for scenic updates!

Work has slowed down again on Talbothays recently. In fact, over the last couple of days I feel like I have been going backwards...but all in a good cause. The big step forwards over the last couple of months has been the development of the station building. Having started out with some plain plasticard, Will’s Dressed Stone sheets, some needle files and a lot of patience, I have put together a reasonable start to a station building which, if you squint and do some mental gymnastics, just about looks like Corfe Castle station. It is (obviously) far from complete, but this is by far my most ambitious scratch build to date (in fact, my first scratch built building...talk about jumping in at the deep end!) and I’m quite pleased with it so far. It is currently five separate components which I will glue together once I have finished the finer details around the doors and windows. I had planned to do that this week, but ended up being waylaid, and it looks like it might be a while until the building is finished. Another little project of mine - non-railway related - has also been progressing to the extent where I’m going to need to utilise the space beneath some of the baseboards for storage in the new year. Space that is currently occupied by a pile of timber which is destined to become the baseboards for St Aldhelm station. So, slightly earlier in the build than I was anticipating, I find myself planning to go back to baseboard construction - my least favourite part of the hobby... So, this week, I had a good tidy up in the railway room, took a couple of pictures, then boxed up all the stock before dismantling Talbothays temporarily. I’ll be building the boards in situ, and with the railway room only being 3m x 3m, there was no way I could leave the boards up! Before the demolition began though, I had a play around with the ply for the new boards, laying them out where they will eventually sit. I had been worried that I had been over-ambitious with my plans, but with the boards in place, my fears have been allayed and I’m really pleased with how it all felt. It was with some trepidation that I prised the Talbothays boards apart, but I had designed them to be fairly easily moved, and apart from where some glue from the ballasting had seeped through, they parted company quite easily with (thankfully!) no damage and now they’re sat on top of the fiddle yard boards (with soft polystyrene protecting the tracks below). Apart from some extra lengths of timber, I should have all the components required for the new boards. All I need now is a few rest days to crack on with it! A holiday beckons next week, then its back to the coal face at work. But I’m hoping that a couple of weekends’ solid efforts will see everything finished by Christmas. After all, that space under the baseboards is needed in the new year. Nothing like a deadline, eh?!

I have been neglecting this thread recently, and for that I can only apologise, because quite a bit of work has been done. Over the summer months, two big jobs have taken up all my modelling time. The point rodding took an age, being one of the fiddliest and most repetitively boring jobs I’ve had to do on the layout. It is now finished, and painted, although I may be adding more weathering to it in future, depending on how I feel it looks with the overall picture. Overall, though, I’m so glad I put the effort in with it, as I think it looks great. Once the rodding was in place, I finally glued the platform faces in place. Again, these are painted, but will need weathering in. With the platforms in, I could then start every modeller’s least favourite job...ballasting. I had plenty of fine and medium grade buff Woodland Scenics ballast left over from previous projects and I was intending to use one or the other for Talbothays, as the colour matches what is found at Swanage and Corfe pretty accurately. But to my eye, the medium looked too course, and I wasn’t convinced the fine would look right. So, before I began, I made up three test pieces with different grades of ballast. One medium, one fine, and another 50/50 mix. I then posted the three on Instagram for my small band of friends, family and followers there to tell me what they thought. Thankfully, the general consensus went with my gut feeling and I ended up going for the 50/50 mix. And I’m glad I did, because I’m really pleased with the results. It was another painstaking job, to lay the ballast neatly through the Talbothays track work. Considering I only have two short single line runs, plus a short section of double track through the platforms, it took several evenings of careful manoeuvring with a stiff brush to get it to look just right. As of this evening, the ballast is laid, but not glued in place. I’m hoping that over the next few evenings I’ll be able to attack it with the PVA/water mix and then I can look forward to tackling some other jobs. The next big job hanging over me is the station building. Without at least the main frame of the building finished, I’m not going to be able to build the platforms, so that will need to be done soon. But I do have some smaller projects lined up which I think will be more enjoyable and produce quicker results. The first one is the station footbridge, which I will talk more about when I get closer to starting. It’s a kit-bashing opportunity that I’m really looking forward to getting my teeth into. The second is giving one of my recent loco acquisitions a new identity, something I have never done before and which both terrifies and excites me in equal measure. Again, more on that closer to the time. For now, here are some shots of the station area as it looks today, with the Swanage Railway’s Class 33 33111 posed in the platforms with a rake of MkIs looking the part. Happy modelling!