Port Eden- a rundown seaside miniature line

[Ben B]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I saw this topic back before the summer hols, and thought it sounded a good idea (I've been wanting to do a Cakebox challenge for ages but somehow never got around to it), and when the holiday theme was announced, I came up with some concepts, but didn't immediately act as it felt like a really far away deadline...

...then came the start of September.  What the hell, still a month to go, that would give plenty of time.  But life happened and kept happening, so even though I'd come up with a concept back in July, I didn't start physically building until the 26th September.  Nothing like working to a self-imposed and ridiculously tight deadline...

 

 

The Concept

 

I wanted to do something with a seaside theme for the 'holiday' aspect of the build, partly for nostalgia reasons, partly for time and budget constraints... covering everything in sand would be cheaper than buying a load of static grass fibres.  I've spent a lot of this summer taking my foster kids to miniature lines around Northern England/Wales (I've been documenting miniature lines for another project), and so I reckoned a seaside miniature railway would be a good theme for this build; something on the lines of Cleethorpes or Fairbourne, though I was tempted towards representing part of a smaller operation.

 

A previous project I'd done was set in Cumbria (I spent three very formative years at Uni in the county, and visited a lot of run-down seaside towns with my now-wife who was documenting the coastal communities for a photography project).  We visited the town of Silloth a lot, a traditional seaside resort which seems to have been trapped in a timewarp when the mainline railway was closed and lifted; it's all quaint 1950's cafes, bowling green, lido's, and long windswept promenades.  It felt all very traditional, a beach ball, bucket and spade sort of place rather than seafront bars and gaudy arcades.  We found the remains of a miniature railway at one point, and that led to the inclusion of a miniature line in that earlier, 1/32nd-scale project in a fake town based on Silloth, called Port Eden (due to the proximity of the real Eden River emptying into the Solway near that point).

 

For this cakebox I figured I'd return to the Port Eden theme, and have another crack at the miniature railway; re-using the earlier figures and details decided the scale, 1/32nd-ish (using Britains figures and so on).

 

 

I decided that a slightly run-down atmosphere would be a little more interesting, basing it off slightly blurry memories of the dying days of miniature railways I visited as a child in the 1990's; a derelict railway at Buckfastleigh, and the last days of the Dudley Zoo line come to mind.  The railways I've been to this summer have tended to be very well kept and nicely presented, so I thought I'd set mine in a faded seaside resort in the early years of the 1990's, with things looking a bit battered or neglected by way of a contrast.  My memories of childhood holidays in places like Devon or Wales tend to be slightly-faded seaside resorts, with things a bit tatty, so that was something I wanted to look at replicating.

 

 

This was also to take into account something else, which was that I wanted this to be a zero-budget project, upcycling some very old, and in some cases quite battered, bits and pieces- reusing the suitable bits of battery-powered toy trains, and ancient Britains Farm figures (some of which had been repainted a couple of times already) would save time.  OK it wouldn't be 'proper' railway modelling, but I figured I could disguise the toy track by burying it in the drifting sand (inspiration from the near-buried mainline at Barmouth coming to mind), and in any case, this wasn't going to be a project ending up in the MRJ or anything.

 

I drew a plan out to scale; I wanted a bridge to provide a change in height, and planned on using a Wills kit which I had in bits in the scrapbox.  Some changes as I progressed were to drop the idea of beach-huts and things which I'd doodled back in the early stages of planning; 8 inches square in 1/32nd doesn't give a great deal of space...

 

 

I raided the scraps-bins for odds and ends of MDF and stripwood for the basic build, and roughly glued it together as it would be hidden behind a fascia of 3mm MDF.

 

 

The focal point was going to be the bridge, and all I had was the venerable Wills kit, which had dictated the rest of the dimensions.  I didn't have time to do varnish for the water, but because I wanted a still body of water I was able to cheat a bit; I painted the base later with dark greys and browns, then glued down a sheet of 1mm acetate from a dismantled old picture frame.

 

 

The edges of the waterway were made-up using the stone walls from the kit, and landforms were a bit of packing foam, hacked around to shape.  The end of the station platform was a broken scrap of Dapol platform kit, and the fence was stripwood and lollipop sticks.  More were used to create a mini retaining wall on the right-hand trackbed, with a higher concrete retaining wall holding back the dunes made from a bit of broken Peco N gauge platform.  To hide the waterway reaching the edge of the board at the bottom I used a bit more stripwood to represent a plank thrown across as a makeshift bridge, and a bit of pipe at the top corner to look like a culvert.

 

 

The waterway was masked off, and after filler had been spread onto the foam, a quick coat of paint was applied to the whole lot as a base layer.  The platform fence was a toy item which was cut-up and reposed.

 

 

The bridge needed some heavy modification to raise the height of the railings; the replacements were from a toy soldier set bought as parts-donors for another project built years ago.  I trimmed the moulded barbed-wire off with a scalpel and shortened the length.

 

 

The trains were going to be a trickier prospect; I had a few battery-operated, roughly TT scale toys which had been very basically modified for the earlier miniature railway project, so these were dug out to be further modified and receive a bit of detail from odds and ends.

 

 

Figures were also going to be a bit tricky; whilst there are some very good 1/32nd figures about, they can be a bit expensive and in any case I didn't have time to buy any, so I again turned to the old Britains farm figures in the scraps box...  they needed a bit of modification, and they tend to be heavy on the farmyard, wellie-wearing look so needed a bit of creative chopping and filling to represent people at the seaside...

 

THE MODEL

 

 

Ground covering was play sand, with some flock and odds and ends of other scatter material found in the scraps box.  For the longer grass the best I could manage in the limited time frame was cutting  apart an old paintbrush. 

 

 

Gluing things down went a little disastrously; I ended up using copydex which was a little too flexible, so ended up soaking the rest in watered-down PVA.  Some light weathering was applied, stippling on paint here and there too, and drybrushing the ironwork of the bridge to make it look a bit rusty, a neglected item exposed to the sea air.

 

 

The figures, and some of the detailing, were left loose so they could be repositioned.  Most were repainted, to get rid of the slightly-ghastly shade of plastic they'd originally been cast in.  The inflatable ring the girl is floating in below the bridge was a plastic tyre for an Airfix Stirling Bomber with a few odds and ends of sprue stuck on, and she was reposed a bit to look like she was floating in it (and photographed in such a way as to hide the fact she was still wearing boots; I couldn't carve them off neatly and resculpt the feet, and I wanted the figure to be posable in the carriages too).  Other seaside bits and pieces are leftovers from a bead-making kit which my youngest foster-daughter donated to the project, a couple of the round beads being repainted to look like beach balls, the rings left unpainted for a deliberate glossy plastic finish. The diesel driver is actually a Britains US Cavalryman with the weapons cut away and the arm reposed; at least the loco body hides the fact his horse-riding pose is giving him a serious case of manspreading when sat down in the loco...

 

 

For the trains themselves, I liked the fact the toys gave them the look of rather basic miniature locomotives and stock; I wanted the steam loco to deliberately look like a steam-outline diesel, so was happy to leave the very basic toy underframe.  A repaint into sky-blue followed, because I reckoned any seaside railway with a tank loco would want to have their machine look a bit Thomas-like.  It was also heavily weathered with stippled-on rust patches here and there, to give the effect that this was a loco in what was probably the tail-end of the last season of operation, and the skeletal staff running the line just couldn't be bothered with the maintenance and cleaning anymore.  The only really major modifications I carried out were to open-out the cabsides, fit a figure where the motor would have been, and attach a cowcatcher to the front (again, a few railways I remember visiting back in the 1990's were going for the Wild West look).  The passenger stock were two toy boxcars, the roofs removed and scrap seats built up inside.  And for the sheer hell of it, I white-walled the tyres on all the stock, to give the idea that when the line was successful, a more complex livery had perhaps been used.

 

 

Of the two locomotives, I'm probably happier with the diesel.  The bulbous, simple body and American-outline seemed to fit the idea of it being a fibreglass moulding, mass-produced by some manufacturer for pleasure lines.  When it came to painting it, I thought I'd do it in Railfreight Red-Stripe; both because I like the livery anyway, and also because I wanted the idea that at some point in the recent past of the line, an optimistic manager had decided to have the loco liveried to match what was happening out on the main line.  The loco is less heavily weathered than the steam-outline example as it's meant to be a more recent repaint, but not enough to save the line.

The platform-mounted colour light signal is another bit from the spares box, I think it was originally an accessory from an XTS battery-powered N gauge set, and it's glued onto a baseplate from the Airfix/Dapol girder bridge.  I follow the philosophy that it isn't a proper model build if it hasn't got a bit from that kit somewhere on it...

 

 

Photographing the model proved a bit of a sod; days of heavy rain finally lifted on the Saturday, but I was still detailing and painting it whilst the beautiful blue skies were around.  When it was finally completed on Saturday evening, I hoped to get some outside shots done on Sunday.  Then followed one of the darkest, most miserable days I could possibly imagine where the rain just didn't stop.  Finally, I cheated a bit; the blue sky and mountains are actually a large landscape photograph my wife took near Beddgelert, and which we have hanging on the wall.  I set the model up in front of it, and lit the whole thing with a daylight LED worklamp and a reflector.  Not the greatest job, but then I was up against the deadline... I hope to get some blue sky shots outside at some point.

 

 

So finally, am I happy with it?  Well I wish I'd had more time to do the figures, and bits of the model are rather rushed; the glue was actually still drying when I photographed it on the Sunday.  But given it was built over three days, used only scraps and old models, and effectively cost me nothing, I'm pleased with how it turned out generally.  I'd hoped to be able to print some signs or posters to better establish the scene, and the era, but again, was up against the deadline.  I know using the toy items isn't 'proper' railway modelling, but it's given me a taste for modelling a miniature line, and I'm tempted to do something a bit bigger using 'proper' TT running gear and track.  In terms of a compact, contained project I've really enjoyed doing a Cakebox model, which I suppose is what the concept is all about, and it's been a nice distraction from other jobs.

 

Edited September 30, 2019 by Ben B
(moved a picture which had appeared in wrong place)

[Edwardian]

That is quite brilliant. Well done!

[Sweet pea]

That’s a stunning little cakebox layout, nicely modelled.

[Keith Addenbrooke]

Excellent - fantastic use of the space, really comes off well.

[BritishGypsum4]

You might say that using toy items isn't proper modelling but then what you have done follows your brief to the letter. You have set out to model a beach railway and it looks great. The fact that you used toys doesn't matter, but it is the end result that matters. I think you have pulled it off considering you didn't give yourself a lot of time.

[47137]

Regarding the use of 'toys': if I remembered every bit of prejudice and unsubstantiated opinion I have endured in the last forty years and applied them to cake box competition entries, I am sure I would not have been able to allow myself to vote for any of them or indeed enter the competition.

 

One of the beauties of the cake box rounds is the provision of simple rules, formulated to keep the entries down to size and with some kind of relevance to railways and model railways.

 

Your diorama is a good model, full of life. The parts you have used look pretty much ideal to the task in hand and there is no way the model suffers from using toys. I like the model, but I actually liked all of the entries. They have different merits, but the merits are the things evident from the inputs from the builder, working unconstrained by restrictive rules.

 

- Richard.

[Ben B]

I just want to say thanks for the positive replies to the model, especially as it's my first project here on RMWeb- I did enjoy building it, and it's prompted me to have another go in the next, Industry topic.  So thanks again for the positivity and the feedback, much appreciated.