PaternosterRow

The usual brilliance we have all come to expect. The ‘Salami Method’ is now a modelling phrase I will forever remember! I also can’t help thinking that one day, long after most of us on here have shuffled off this mortal coil, some future modeller will get their hands on this beautiful creation and, during restoration, will discover the figure within. But have you left a note in there to explain, I wonder?

Welcome aboard and an excellent piece of modelling.

Excellent master class as per usual. Like the paint and pigment method out of all your experimentation too. Assuming that the SEF sheet is the lower one in that picture I prefer it to the top one even though you say the Slater’s brick is better defined - it just looks like the mortar is more realistically sized to me.

Beautiful, just beautiful. That has turned out just right, Pete. The mirror trick is brilliant and I noticed that you have it exactly square on so the illusion works perfectly. Architecturally sound and neat workmanship as per usual from you. Proper Museum/display quality.

Wow! Brilliant work.

Simply fabulous.

Brilliant! Peace at this Christmas time to you and your family too. You know, it’s a funny old thing communicating with others on the Internet because I never got the impression of you as being that old - certainly not old enough to have Grandchildren anyway! Always thought you were much younger somehow - maybe that’s simply because of the playful nature of Farthing. Having said that though, it’s a fair bet that most of us modelers are probably all a bit young at heart anyway - nature of the hobby and all that. Who knows, eh? Condolences on the loss of your Dad, that’s a hard knock - it surprisingly took a lot out of me when I lost mine and it was the hobby that helped me through the grieving. Have a great time and God Bless you all.

Cheers, Alex. Those canals were something else, weren’t they? Happy Christmas to you and your family too my friend. There was a lovely tribute to Bob Barlow at the back of MRJ #300 this Christmas. Happy modeling in the New Year!

Cheers, Mikkel Happy Christmas to you and yours too. Happy modeling.

A very Happy Christmas to all at RMWeb and here’s to a brilliant New Year of modeling. My fun figure 8 under and over Snowy Mountain Christmas train.

I have decided to put another removable, half-relief shed where the backscene photo of the Cooling Towers are - they can still be viewed by simply removing the new structure if desired. The new shed is being constructed at the moment. I have also still got a pile of work to do on the steel wagon fleet - all will need Spratt & Winkle couplings like the rest of my wagons. The Yorkshire, sloped-sided shunter, common at Bilston was from Judith Edge. I'm not particularly good at kit building and tried to short cut the process by using the motor and wheel set out of an old On30 Bachmann Porter. It was a disaster and I just couldn't get it to run right - the motor was eventually removed and the Shunter is merely a cosmetic scene filler. Maybe one day I'll save enough up and have one commissioned! Another picture of Shelton Bar in Stoke on Trent - a marvellous shot from a 1970 amateur film. Proving how close you could get to Steelworks back in the pre H&S days. The start of construction. I make my own point switching devices - they work too! The switch block shown here was temporary in order to test the isolated sections. I have since replaced the nail contacts of each DIY polarity switch with Brass screws and a piece of conductive spring wire from some very old Lima points. The freelance Hunslet 0-4-0 - copied from the background picture. This is permanently attached to a Dapol 16t mineral with added wheel pickups. Not a crawl type shunter but works really well on the layout for a bit of general hauling. A superb Bachmann Class 08 does all the heavy work on the layout. The end shed during making - just a 3mm MDF shell covered over with foil corrugated sheets. I'm not sure if Wills would approve but I used their basic corrugated sheet as a template to create my own foil ones. Interestingly the foil came from the underside of a Thatched Roof at a holiday cottage complex! The owner decided to have the roof replaced with a tile one and I was right in their gathering up bits and pieces of the foil as it was being torn down. It's about the same thickness of baking tin foil you find under your Steak and Kidney Pie and holds the grooves well. The foil was laboriously flattened out with a jam jar in order to remove any creases and folds, given a light sanding and then cut into 32mm wide strips. These, in turn, were simply placed on top of the Wills sheet and a small screwdriver was used to scribe out each run of panels. I think it has worked out rather well for a freebie! A superb shot of a Yorkshire shunter approaching the scrap steel bays at Bilston. I might take a leaf out of Mikkel's book with his 'one bit at a time' method he uses for his Farthing layouts and have a go a modelling this bite of the Bilston cherry next! Notice how dirty and black the track bed is - I tried to emulate this on the layout.

Thanks Andy, will do - got a few more bits and pieces to do before completion. Just got to finish S&W couplings to all wagons and do some more pics etc. Cheers, Mike.

Cheers Pete. How are you doing - hope all is well your end? The water is just a painted strip of MDF, because it’s a smooth and flat material to use, with a couple of coats of gloss varnish on top. I didn’t want the ripple effect at first, it was just a clumsy accident, but now I quite like it. Those corrugated paneled factories where everywhere when we were kids - especially along the canals where we’d spend long summer days on cycling adventures. Those were the days of simple pleasures! I seem to remember the noise mostly - press hammers, lathes, drilling machines and metal stamping. The architecture was also other worldly - like the building above Farmer’s Bridge locks in Newhall Street in Birmingham City Centre. It was supported by huge concrete stilts over the canal locks and next door was the massive GPO Tower looming over it all. I’d say those canals must be eerily silent nowadays. I think they must have had a surplus of light blue paint because it seemed to appear everywhere and all at once during the late sixties, early seventies. They even painted the railings in our local Park the same color - another exciting location for us kids as part of the WCML skirted one side of it. It’s no wonder we all model - I suppose we are all just trying to recapture a bit of the magic of those childhood days.

It was certainly a fantastic place to work - both Roger Deans (Chief loco fitter) and Andrew Simpson (sales manager) have nothing but fond memories of the place. I remember it as a kid on my long trips along the canals and hope I’ve done it justice in part. Thanks for the comment and information.

Now that’s a compliment! Thank you, Mikkel. My trouble is that I have tended to buy trains that simply take my fancy and now have a rather eclectic, albeit small, collection across many eras and motive types etc. I’m then kind of stuck and so have to model layouts for them all! I have also been keen to construct a fairly good shunting scene for an age. Keeps it interesting but I do envy those who concentrate and stick to a particular time and place. Take Farthing for example - how unendingly interesting and consuming that project has been for you? And now you have the Station building, no small bite, itself to go at. Your love for fine detail is totally commendable and I suspect that you will be modeling that odd spike atop the GWR spear railing that you found on your recent trip? In fact I’ll wager that it almost certainly appear on one of those magnetic fence strips of yours soon! I will I’ll be posting some construction of Bilston pictures soon and will definitely share my DIY corrugated panel method. Many thanks again, Mike

You ought to be a writer, Mikkel, that’s your true vocation. Fantastic photos and reminiscences along the way - a truly captivating tale. That picture of Kings Cross through the trees is just so superb. I can’t help thinking that one day in a hundred years time someone will be modeling today’s railway, probably in some sort of virtual reality form, and will be having to carry out the type of detailed research you undertake too! Mind you, what a legacy you will leave behind for them to study? Fantastic that your Mom is still with you - look after her.

I can’t believe how accurate the build is - everything lines up perfectly both horizontally and vertically. That’s so hard to do in 4mm and yet you also found the time to worry about the bullnose effect around the windows! Personally, I can’t see any problems with that - the scribing of the foam works perfectly and those stone headers, lintels and intricate details are just unbelievable. The finials are also a touch of brilliance. More precise, excellent craftsmanship from a person who carefully plans and then patiently follows that plan - museum display quality as usual. Knowing you, those interior details are going to be unbelievable too. As your ‘small bites’ get bigger at Farthing you are going to have to learn how to do photographic stacking to accommodate them. I have never been able to master the technique unfortunately and stick to the old F8 and you’re there rule!

Some months ago I came across a fantastic website - www.britishsteelbilston.com - about the Bilston Steel works in Wolverhampton, West Midlands. This has been put together by Mr Andrew Simpson who worked there and is well worth a visit - there are some fantastic photos including a section on the Work's locomotives. In fact, I contacted Andrew and he put me in touch with a Mr Roger Deans, a chief fitter at Bilston, who has provided me with information and a lot of stories about his time there. I was so taken with Bilston itself, and is a place I clearly remember from my childhood cycling adventures down the canals, that I decided to recreate a small shunting layout based on a typical British steelworks. Bilston in its early 70s heyday - a clear shot of how close you could get to a Blast Furnace from the canals in those pre H&S days! The furnace was called Elisabeth (with an s not a z) in honour of the owner's daughter and not the Queen as often suggested. She was first lit in 1954 and closed down in 1977. Her weekly output was about 5000 tons. Canal boats would often float past even on the most busiest of days at the Steelworks. My take on part of a steelworks. Note the mirror underneath the building at the end of the canal. Like all micro layout creators I am obsessed with successful scenic breaks! Apart from the obvious join line across the canal I think the trick works rather well. The Engineering Shop at Bilston. Notice the uneven buckling of the corrugated panels - that is how they actually look in real life on all industrial buildings. I'd like to claim that I have successfully emulated this in my own model but can't as it was entirely accidental. I guess when you use the correct thickness of foil you get the same effect! The colour match is also a lucky guess and came from a discarded paint can found at my local tip. The above picture is actually from Shelton Bar Steelworks in Stoke on Trent. I was so taken with the scene that I wanted to recreate it on the layout. May take on the Shelton Bar building over the canal. I love these wagons from Golden Valley Hobbies. They are being hauled by a freelance version of a Hunslet 0-4-0. Based on the cheap Hornby mechanism I have used bits and pieces from an old Dapol Shunter kit and a second hand Bagnell. The Dapol 16T mineral is permanently attached and its wheels have been given extra pickups that feed the Hornby motor via small connect wires - whilst not a brilliant crawl type runner it works really well on the layout. Plan view of the layout - it has a fiddle yard to the right and is connected via a link to my Floodgate Street layout to the Left. I've done this for space considerations and also to allow FGS to share the new fiddle yard. More pics to follow about construction etc.

Yep, go to my website - www.paternosterrow.blogspot.com for more. Thanks for the comment.

Cheers Mikkel. I spent an enjoyable hour looking at that blog - some brilliant adaptations of these cheap sets. Who says this hobby has to be an expensive pastime? Thanks for the link and all the best to you and your family.

I think I made some sort of an error with the first link! It's my age I'm afraid - I'll never get the hang of this internet lark!

Click the link to see my latest Christmas Train diorama for 2022. This is version three over the last three years - the others have been given to friends. Someone bought me one of these cheap Christmas battery operated trains as a bit of joke a few years back and I decided to put it to good use - surprising how much fun you can have with something so cheap and tacky! The 'Cold Mountain' scene is just cardboard and paper mache with a bit of polyfiller rubbed over it to give some relief. Spray snow was applied once the coat of grey paint had dried. Enjoy and a very Happy Christmas to you all. Have a great new year of modelling. https://studio.youtube.com/video/1StJLwc2RUQ/edit

Brilliant issue. York Station and Roundhouse are to be highly commended and the model wholly captures the atmosphere of the prototype. It’s so hard to get that curved roof right and when done properly it is a thing of real beauty to look at. Whoever the modeler was that said that a curve is infinitely better than a straight line was absolutely spot on. I am looking forward to the promised updates for this layout.

Brilliant as per usual. This is a great way to learn about history - these strikes forged the beginning of the Labour Party in Britain and eventually led to democracy for all. Marxism in action - the workers using the employer’s own technology against them! You could even say that they were the original Gilet Jaunes as so to speak. Some of those scenes created are to die for. Love the research, attention to detail and the way you are prepared to go to the lengths of modeling unique figures, wagons, coaches in order to tell your stories. The passenger carrying Siphon in particular - a wagon that does indeed confirm that reality is stranger than fiction. Mike.

Gosh, hi Hawk. Yes of course you did and what a splendid job you did as editor - sorry I never made the connection before. This diorama of yours is superb and the attention to detail is absolutely amazing. I’m not a patient modeler like you or Mikkel and this shows - for example, the painstaking research before you painted the walls and floor has given your scene such a sense of realism that a casual observer would be convinced that they are looking at a real location. This museum quality work, my friend. Sorry for not getting back sooner, but I just recently recovered from a long stint of illness. What are you doing now if you have moved on from MJ Bladet and how does the magazine fares now that you’ve left? Regards Mike.