steve howe

This the 2024 Line-Up: The Great Cornish Model Show A celebration of modelmaking talent in Cornwall! Featuring: 15 working model train layouts; model aircraft – radio controlled and miniature – model boats and ships; radio controlled trucks and cars; military modelling; miniature figure painting; paper modelling; plastic kit modelling; Wargamers; miniature roomsets and dolls houses; modelling demonstrations; Full Trade support. April 13 & 14 2024 Sat 10.00 – 5.00 Sun 10.00 – 4.00 http://www.hfmrc.uk/events Pool Academy Church Road Pool TR15 3PZ Adults £7.00: U-16s £3.00; Family £15.00 Free parking, easy access, Hot food and refreshments all day Model Railway Layouts Shillingbury. O gauge Woodbridge. O gauge Bridport Town O-16.5 narrow gauge Clinkerford P4 Sandsifters P4 Westford OO fine scale Old Elms Road. OO fine scale Fairbine Road. OO fine scale Midhurst Crecent OO fine scale Lockdown Wharf OO scale Penderoke. OO fine scale Wheal Penbasset 00 gauge Karlsdorf HOe gauge New Vadden Parkway N gauge Porthgarrow N gauge Moor Boxes N gauge Lego Layout – Thomas and Friends Castell 009 Other Modelling Subjects / displays Camborne Pondhoppers Model Boat Club Mick French Model Lifeboats Cornwall Flyers Leo’s paper models Mordheim models Marazion Modellers International Plastic Modellers Association Plymouth Truckers Radio Controlled Trucks Cornwall Scale Modellers Karen Carne’s scale miniatures and Dolls Houses Kevin Banevicus model figures Lego Technic trucks and diggers Helston Railway Society Chris Knuckley plastic modelling Demonstrators Geoff Stevens – locomotive builder Mordheimers – fantasy figures Nick Smith– scenic modelling Traders Chris’s Crafts - tools and materials Andy Lynch - pre-loved models Harvey’s – ready to run Fred Elton books Westcountry Bases

The Great Cornish Model Show A celebration of modelmaking talent in Cornwall! Featuring: 15 working model train layouts; model aircraft – radio controlled and miniature – model boats and ships; radio controlled trucks and cars; military modelling; miniature figure painting; paper modelling; plastic kit modelling; Wargamers; miniature roomsets and dolls houses; modelling demonstrations; Full Trade support. April 13 & 14 2024 Sat 10.00 – 5.00 Sun 10.00 – 4.00 Pool Academy Church Road Pool TR15 3PZ Adults £7.00: U-16s £3.00; Family £15.00 Free parking, easy access, Hot food and refreshments all day Model Railway Layouts Shillingbury. O gauge Woodbridge. O gauge Bridport Town O-16.5 narrow gauge Clinkerford P4 Sandsifters P4 Westford OO fine scale Old Elms Road. OO fine scale Fairbine Road. OO fine scale Midhurst Crecent OO fine scale Lockdown Wharf OO scale Penderoke. OO fine scale Wheal Penbasset 00 gauge Karlsdorf HOe gauge New Vadden Parkway N gauge Porthgarrow N gauge Moor Boxes N gauge Lego Layout – Thomas and Friends Castell 009 Other Modelling Subjects / displays Camborne Pondhoppers Model Boat Club Mick French Model Lifeboats Cornwall Flyers Leo’s paper models Mordheim models Marazion Modellers International Plastic Modellers Association Plymouth Truckers Radio Controlled Trucks Cornwall Scale Modellers Karen Carne’s scale miniatures and Dolls Houses Kevin Banevicus model figures Lego Technic trucks and diggers Helston Railway Society Chris Knuckley plastic modelling Demonstrators Geoff Stevens – locomotive builder Cornwall Wargamers – fantasy figures Nick Smith Westcountry Bases – scenic modelling Traders, Chris’s Crafts - tools and materials Andy Lynch - pre-loved models Harvey’s – ready to run Fred Elton books

Sandsifters should at Railwells this August

Under a week to go until the Great Cornish Model Show! April 15 & 16 2023. This year we are expanding our show from just model railways to include modelmaking from other subjects including model boats, ships, aircraft both radio controlled and static, radio controlled trucks, military modelling and model architecture. Around 14 working model railway layouts plus displays and demonstrations of model boats, aircraft, vehicles and model trucks, military modelling, 1/12 scale dolls house models and examples of model architecture by the late Allan Downes. There will be three halls of exhibits this year and outdoor demonstrations (weather permitting!) plus Trade support for all those essential ‘bits and bobs’! Presented by Helston & Falmouth Model Railway Club April 15 & 16th Sat. 10.00 – 5.00 Sun. 10.00 – 4.00 Adults £6.00 u-16's £3.00 family (2xA, 2Xu-16's) £14.00 Pool Academy Church Road Pool Redruth Cornwall TR15 3PZ Full Trade support including House of Hobbies, Chris’s Crafts & DCC Concepts Hot food and refreshments all day. Easy access and parking. Exhibitors attending: Model Railway Layouts Loch Manaig N scale Wadebridge 2mm gauge finescale Newham 009 Portmadoc Harbour OO9 Alte Ulmenberg HO Carlyon Bay OO A Day in Wales OO Hayle Club’s Modular layout OO Midhurst Road Junction OO Elms Bridge OO Harris Sidings OO Trenance OO Lower Road Goods P4 Monksbury O gauge Children’s Corner and raffle Other Modellers Plymouth Truckers Cornwall Scale Modellers (International Plastic Modellers Society) Cornwall Flyers Camborne Model Boats (Camborne Pondhoppers) Colin Saxton Vintage Models Geoff Stephens model locomotive builder RNLI model Lifeboat Display Allan Downs Buildings 1/12 scale miniatures with Karen Carne Helston Railway Society Traders House of Hobbies including DCC Concepts Plymouth RC Truckers and Scale Models Andy Lynch preloved models Chris’s Crafts – something of everything including tools and materials Fred Elton Books Hot food and drinks by Victorian Mobile Catering

I have a couple of these to build, very useful article thank you. One query: with the 'all brown' livery, were the droplights and window bolections painted reddish/mahogany colour as per the two-tone livery? Steve

Make a date in your diaries!

The comments on how the undercoat affects the top colour interests me; I have always primed my metal locos with rattle can grey primer followed by the chosen topcoat, in my case GWR green, either pre or post 1928. Recently I modified a pair of ex-Mainline 57xx pannier bodies to early1920's condition which required stripping off the paint to reveal matt black plastic. Acting on advice from colleagues on the Scalefour forum, I didn't use primer, and applied two coats of Precision GWR pre-1928 green direct to the plastic. This green (which is noticably darker than the later shade) looks decidedly deep compared to locos primed with grey when viewed in natural light. I'm wondering, (because GWR pre 1928 looks to contain quite a lot of red in its makeup and is quite a 'brownish' shade of green), if it would be better using red oxide primer for this deeper green colour?

Thanks, good to know the range is in safe hands! hopefully re-issued soon.🤞

Mikkel, great build! and thanks for the detailed step by step images. I'm interested to know who will be re-introducing the Slaters kits? will it be Slaters themselves or Coopercraft who, I believe, took over marketing their 4mm range. Steve

Hi Marc, I used code 55 FB steel rail (from the Scalefour Society stores) for this project which is quite delicate but looks the part, especially if you space the sleepers slightly wider than standard, as was often light railway practice to save money! Mine were largely PCB since they were intended to be buried, but I did use a few ply and rivet ones here and there turned upside down and the tinned rail soldered to the rivet foot. I used a vee jig made from thick card for the vees but you need to allow a little rebate to accommodate the rail foot. The hardest job was filing the switch rails because I had been led to believe the stock rails were not notched to take the foot of the switch rail, which was shaped so as to ride onto the foot of the stock rail without a rebate. I have since found out this is not always true and the foot of the stockrail was often notched to get the switch rails to home snugly. If I were doing it again I'd do it this way because shaping the foot of the switchrails was a pain! Will you be doing it in P4? Steve

When this site first went down and then came back up again, I spent a considerable amount of time re-loading all the images to my current layout thread https://www.rmweb.co.uk/topic/137565-sandsifters/ thinking all was well. I have just looked again and am "disappointed" to find that virtually all the images all but a few on the last page have once again disappeared. This is so frustrating as non-modelling friends frequently like to check in on what I've been doing, and the thread is the only record I have of the project from start to finish. My other long-standing construction thread https://www.rmweb.co.uk/topic/95206-lower-rose-goods/#comment-1755373 has also suffered the same fate. I don't suppose it matters to Warner's or RMWeb management that hours of people's work has been lost here, but it leaves me saddened that several years' worth of carefully documented work can no longer be accessed.

Well the layout made it to our Club Spring Show, unfortunately I didn't being laid low with Covid. Looking rather lost among the clutter of the school Drama displays. It stands on four screw-in chrome legs which in turn stand on a table to bring it up to around 4' 6" viewing height. A couple of chrome poles and a horizontal bar carry a couple of miniature theatre lamps and that's it! Still some buildings to make for the upper level and two locos to finish painting and weathering.

The Spring Show opens tomorrow at Pool Academy, Church Road, Pool TR15 3PZ 14 layouts, Demonstrations and Trade support including Kernow Model Rail Centre, Squires Tools, Scale Model Scenery and MERG. Exhibitors attending: Layouts Monksbury O gauge Gweek North Quay O-16.5 narrow gauge Old Elms Road OO fine scale Hounslow Sidings OO fine scale Hendra OO fine scale Midhurst Road Junction OO fine scale Bishop Street Yard OO Sandsifters P4 Padstow 2mm fine scale New Vaddon Parkway N gauge Lynberris N gauge Little Earnest N gauge Riverfield N gauge Traders Kernow Model Rail Squires Tools Andy Lynch Scale Model Scenery Fred Elton Books Alex Holden Laser cut buildings Others MERG Helston Railway Society Geoff Stevens modelling demonstrations Hot food and drinks by Victorian Mobile Catering Plenty of free parking and easy level access to the halls.

Finally, vegetation in the form of gorse and bramble has appeared... Rather devoid of trains and customers! but then it is a light railway... The yard is equally deserted. The charm of the narrow gauge creeps in! Definitely won't be done for the show in two weeks time, but the top yard shows a statement of intent.

Agreed Neil, its why I wanted to complete the thread now that the layout's on the home straight (at least scenically) whether the wretched thing actually works is another matter!😁

I cannot believe that after having spent hours re-loading the images to this thread, RMWeb has managed to lose over half of them again🤬 All over to Western Thunder then!

Cornwall's premier Model Railway Show is back! Helston & Falmouth MRC's Spring Exhibition is planned for April 23 & 24. Note New Venue! Helston & Falmouth Model Railway Club April 23rd & 24th Sat. 10.00 – 5.00 Sun. 10.00 – 4.00 Adults £5.00 u-16's £3.00 family (2xA, 2Xu-16's) £12.00 NOTE NEW VENUE! Pool Academy Church Road Pool Redruth Cornwall TR15 3PZ Around 14 working layouts. Full Trade support including Kernow Model Rail Centre, Squires Tools, & MERG. Hot food and refreshments all day. Exhibitors attending: Layouts Monksbury O gauge Gweek North Quay O-16.5 narrow gauge Old Elms Road OO fine scale Hounslow Sidings OO fine scale Hendra OO fine scale Midhurst Road Junction OO fine scale Bishop Street Yard OO Sandsifters P4 Padstow 2mm fine scale New Vaddon Parkway N gauge Lynberris N gauge Little Earnest N gauge Riverfield N gauge Traders Kernow Model Rail Squires Tools Andy Lynch Attwood Aggregates Scale Model Scenery Fred Elton Books Others MERG Helston Railway Society Geoff Stevens modelling demonstrations Hot food and drinks by Victorian Mobile Catering

Having rebuilt this thread after RMWeb's catastrophe, I can update progress with Sandsifters. Remember the round-topped shed from earlier? The 'asbestos' roof was made with Slaters 7mm corrugated sheet. A suitable piece of pipe made the former. Followed by a nice hot bath... Voila! Painted with matt enamels and sprinkled with talc to get a slight texture to the sheet. General view of the yard with all the structures in place. Note the 'neccessary offices' tucked in between the buildings! The building peeping over the horizon has nothing to do with this layout and belongs to Roseladden Wharf, still lurking in the shadows! The other structures getting bedded in place. Just waiting for the Day Trippers!

Why does a pop-up describing itself as 'This Day in History' along with adverts keep appearing every time I move to a new page? It is extremely annoying and distracting as it needs closing each time. Is there a way to close it permanently? Steve

So the line needed some coaching stock and I figured that the Company would have looked for a bargain (this being Cornwall etc.) and acquired a couple of horse trams from a system that was being electrified. Of course not being designed for locomotive haulage, they were faced with the problem of how to attach them to their locomotives. On the Wantage Tramway a steel bar was used, but I needed to find a way of uncoupling the stock automatically. Because of height differences and lack of buffing gear the Alex Jackson couplings on the locos were unsuitable so I devised something which looked like it might have been cobbled together by the Fitter in the workshop after the requisite quantity of head scratching, fag packet design, tea drinking and general criticism of the Management's choice of rolling stock. The vehicles are the Hurst-Nelson cars used on the Wantage Tramway from the Worsley Works etched kits. "Kits" might be an over-optimistic term as these are basically scratchbuilder's aids and in the absence of any instructions, much is left to interpretation by the builder! The cars will be permanently coupled to each other by a bar, but some form of buffing/coupling device was needed at each end. After a few experiments I devised a cranked bar pivotted on the outer bulkhead with a dropper on the inner end activated by the magnets under the ballast. The beams in place sans buffing plate. Hopefully the photo is self-explanatory, ignore the messy soldering! I used an etched wagon coupling hook plate soldered to a piece of 1.5mm lead sheet to make the buffing plate with a loop of 0.35 phosphor bronze wire forming the coupling. A stirrup of brass wire holds the thing more or less centrally. The weight of the buffing plate counteracts the dropper (sawn off head of a panel pin) and the arm drops to the correct height in use. The coupling loop rides up over the loco drawhook without fouling the AJ coupling already installed. And activated by the magnet, up it pops! How reliable it will be in service remains to be seen, but it seemed like a good idea at the time! The coaches are currently going through the paintshops.

I can't believe its been over a year since I updated this project. Progress has been erratic but a few things have got done and with our Club Spring show rapidly approaching I've had to rachet progress. The station buildings have been more or less completed, I wanted the tea shack to have a slightly different roof to the conventional slates and a general over-abundance of corrugated iron, so I adopted tiles laid on the diagonal which was common on wooden buildings in the early 20th century. A sheet of cartridge paper was marked up in 4mm squares and cut into strips, the lower half was cut with a new scalpel to create a 'sawtooth' effect. These were stuck to a card under roof taking care to end each row with a half tile. The roof was painted with blends of watercolour and weathered with ground pastels, the ridge tiles were still to be added. The roof developed a natural sag which added to the effect of a slightly ageing structure. The coaches will be discussed in due course!

Are there any plans to re-introduce the TVR Hudswell-Clark 0-4-0? I built one from the K's kit years ago which is now on its third (and last!) scratchbuilt chassis with a High Level 108-1 gear set, it toddles along beautifully and I'd love another one! Steve

Helston & Falmouth MRC's Spring Exhibition is planned for April 23 & 24. Note New Venue! Helston & Falmouth Model Railway Club April 23rd & 24th Sat. 10.00 – 5.00 Sun. 10.00 – 4.00 Adults £5.00 u-16's £3.00 family (2xA, 2Xu-16's) £12.00 NOTE NEW VENUE! Pool Academy Church Road Pool Redruth Cornwall TR15 3PZ Around 14 working layouts. Full Trade support including Kernow Model Rail Centre, Squires Tools, & MERG. Hot food and refreshments all day. Exhibitors attending: Traders Kernow Model Rail Squires Tools Andy Lynch Attwood Aggregates Scale Model Scenery Fred Elton Books Layouts Monksbury O gauge Gweek North Quay O-16.5 narrow gauge Old Elms Road OO fine scale Hounslow Sidings OO fine scale Hendra OO fine scale Midhurst Road Junction OO fine scale Bishop Street Yard OO Sandsifters P4 Padstow 2mm fine scale New Vaddon Parkway N gauge Lynberris N gauge Little Earnest N gauge Riverfield N gauge Others MERG Helston Railway Society Geoff Stevens modelling demonstrations Hot food and drinks by Victorian Mobile Catering

Have a look for secondhand H & M point motors, the two coils linked together plus the pole do the job.