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I've been thinking that railway modelling needs a better public image. People seem to think the hobby is a bit weird and nerdy, when really we’re a bunch of smooth adrenaline junkies. Here are some examples from my own awesome life. Firstly, we railway modellers have really cool gear. These DIY tamping and scribing tools were made from coffee stirrers and my wife’s discarded sock knitting needles. Max bling! The top three are for smoothing DAS between sleepers and under rails. I use Latex gloves to help seal glue containers. After years of doing this, I’m now wondering if they are in fact permeable. But never mind, it adds a bit of style. I keep the bottles on the back stairs where our neighbours can admire them. Recycled kitchen sponge, used as a stop block. Works quite well I find. If you’re lucky, there are old bits of food left in there. "So what do you in your spare time?”. Oh, I like to put on latex gloves and scrub things with a toothbrush. The stuff I use for paint stripping is some serious sh*t. Not sure what the proper English term is, it's called "brown soap" in Danish. Used for cleaning floors. Wild, man. At weekends, I really let my hair down. In one recent highlight, I spent an hour painting sewing thread. Then there’s our risk-taking mindset. For example, I recently sorted the kitchen cupboards. This revealed more spices than we’ll never need, so I decided to experiment: Would spices work as weathering powders? For improved adhesion, I mixed in some baby powder. Feeling reckless, I also tried ground ginger. The verdict? Well it works OK in a pinch, but proper weathering powders are better. The layout smells great though. Makes for a good pick-up line. Speaking of pick-up lines, I like to experiment with dung. These are lumps of weathering powder on PVA. I think it could work for horse droppings, though more testing is needed. It also seems to work when brushed into setts. Horse dung would be trampled and distributed pretty much like that, I reckon. Ordinary people don’t reflect on such things. I guess they just lack vision. So there’s railway modelling for you: Living on the edge, every day. Anyway, I‘m off to grab a Red Bull before I tackle those couplings. Hang loose, dudes.

Anyone who has read any of my infrequent recent blogs or worse spoken to me, will know that nothing at all has happened on the modelling front for several months due the long over due and rather complicated decorating projects that have been going on. Unfortunately I have not completely finished as our house id a definite Forth Bridge sort of project but I am at the stage where I can take a well earned pause. While I was decorating the lounge the contents were decanted into the newly decorated study and as it is actually quite cosy in there very little has been put back as yet. The more devious of you (and owners of large layouts), will have already realised that the prospect of a large and near empty room was just too much....... The agreement was that it would be for one weekend only but it is actually still there as last weekend disappeared in a flurry of unexpected work disasters. At first I thought I would just put out the basics but soon got carried away. As nothing at all has been run since the last outing to Telford O Gauge fourteen months ago now I was expecting some problems - and I got them! I am normally very careful about keeping everything together layout wise but some shifting about in the house and several sedimentary layers of junk made finding and getting to all the bits quite interesting although my biggest problem was finding all the stock which I had put away somewhere safe......... I was only able to fit four out of the six boards in the room in the end - I can get it all up when necessary at the back of the house but this makes me VERY unpopular! Several sticky point motors later and lighting that wouldn't I got down to some gentle shunting. It was then that the biggest problem arose when when pair of LED'S on the point control panel that didn't work escalated to non of them working. I have not as yet been brave enough to fix this. Unfortunately several bits of detailing have fallen off over the years, some of which I have recued but some are gone forever and general air of tattiness seems to have developed. As there is no way I am risking the living room carpet in the presence of glue I shall have to tackle these bits later probably on a board by board basis. A few years ago I did get some figures ready painted when PLM were selling off some of their old displays but haven't done much with them so far. I therefore had a bit of fun deciding where they might best be used when I finally get motivated to get the glue out.

A touch-up job this time. A friend had fitted sound, crew, coal and working lamp to this Jinty and removed paint from the coupling rods and brake gear in doing so. A half-cupful of Railmatch sleeper grime, weathered black and matt black soon sorted out that little problem.

Taking onboard the comments on the mound I added the best part of another couple of inches to the top. I also altered the shape to I hope better match the rather pointed shape of the original. I've added an initial layer of static grass and made a couple of trial little bits of wall from Sculptamold (I just wanted to see if I could make a wall with it, I need to get the shapes better) I've got the goods shed bedded in a bit better (obviously still needs windows, capping stones etc. etc.) and also added the 3d printed yard crane in place. I don't think it looks too bad. There are still lots of flecks of polystyrene which seem to defy the hoover repeatedly! Looking in the other direction the cattle dock/grain loader is beginning to look more complete. The back siding got some static grass as it appeared to be pretty weedy by the mid 1950's. The join between the back of the layout and the wall will mostly be a line of bushes. Now another question. This colour image of the goods shed seems to give the appearance that part of the brick wall was much paler than rest of the building, almost as if it had been whitewashed. There is no remains of the colour now on the building except perhaps just to the left of the top of the doorway. Any ideas what/why? I almost wondered if it was for sighting purposes but it never acted as the background for a signal.

A quick run down on materials used for the engine shed. Outside bricks: Scalescenes Red Brick TX01 with the colour dulled down using The Gimp Inside white washed bricks: Scalescenes Painted Brick TX05 Guttering: Ratio Guttering & Drainpipes Doors: Ratio Doors with the arched tops removed with a razor saw Roof: York Modelmaking Slates N-Tiles01 Windows: Scene-Setters Glazing Bars 3x4mm - I got these at a show. They are not currently listed on the website as they are rebuilding the site. I made the frames look more worn and yellow using a pastel. I smothered them in the pastel colour and then brushed it off. It sticks to the bars just enough but comes off the clear areas easily.

After a long hiatus for the summer progress has continued a little. The engine shed has been largely finished for some time but I put the internal white washed bricks in this week to finish the job. The engine shed will be adjacent to the coaling stage, to which I am adding coal now! It is not modelled on a prototype. It is however in the GWR style with similarities to Tetbury without the water tower, or a shorter version of Wallingford. A view looking inside a little. The camera never lies; having seen the images I took for the blog I will have to improve the weathering on the doors. It will help cover the scenic break bridge to the right of the layout. This means that, amazingly, I am still largely keeping to my original plan. Here is a view of it plonked in that location.

With my initial success of my high lighting mast under my belt I set forth today to install a lot more lighting. I wanted the lighting under the bridge to represent sodium lighting which is typical of the prototype so installed a couple of LEDs in there and did my best to cover up the wiring from view. (yellow lights installed in under bridge) So far so good. Next was the Linkspan proper. I wanted white light on this as looking at prototype night shots from Dover it's all white lighting on the linkspans to give the best light in these dangerous areas. (Linkspan lighting going in with the wiring to the second high mast included.) After every instillation I wired it up to my controller and made sure everything worked. Finally for today I decided to install some port and starboard navigation lights on the Linkspan (not sure how prototypical this is but I like the look as well as another white LED on the lower link span. Again wired it all up switched it on and... (oh...) (ah...) Well the navigation lights work well! I had been merrily daisy chaining all the LEDs with their built in resistors so what power that was left over would power the next. You can probably tell its been about 30 years since someone last tried to teach me basic electronics! So out with the wire cutters and strippers and a cats cradle of wiring emerged under my base board as I broke up the light fittings into max of 3 LEDs wired in sync and then wired the whole lot back to the transformer again. (suddenly alot more wires emerging from my baseboard) Wired it all back up, crossed my fingers and switched on the juice and hey voila! (sodium lighting under the bridge) (some light on the matter) (the layout lighting beginning to take shape) (there will be more white lighting to go on the top Linkspan but the navigation lights give a dramatic feel. I also like how the light shines off the water) One thing I found quite effective for the high masts was putting a layer of tin foil into the bottle cap to help reflect the light better and give a more even distribution as I only have one bulb up there. (light mast with tin foil reflector added) I will need to order some more white LEDs for the ship and building but should be able to make a start on lighting it up. Ferries tend to be lit up like Christmas trees! Thanks for reading

Well some more items are slowly getting finished.. A while ago I acquired a DJH Duchess .. named as "City of Liverpool" the name didn't match the loco/tender combination.. (Duchesses and City locos and tenders are a mine field) Eventually I bought some Fox nameplates for "City of Leicester" a very camera shy loco. This has been "shed cleaned" but I notice I have not finished - I need a bit of dirt on the top of the boiler cladding (where you can't reach it easily). It has a high level gear box and a Mashima in it and it can pull almost everything it has been asked to. I reworked a Judith Edge Ruston I built a few years ago. I was never happy with the BR Black livery so stripped the paint off it, refitted some items which were bent or askew then painted it as a "NCB Barnbow East Colliery No 7" red. Thanks to Mike Edge it now has a nameplate - "Asenath" - my Mothers name.. bless her. For its size it is quite heavy so it should be fine... And again Mike did some nameplates so that I could remember an Early Riser.. Purley Oaks.. aka Mal Stewart.. on a BRCW type 2 Baz

Who hangs on to old tins of paint, wherein gloopy remains stick to the bottom? I have an old tin of Humbrol 27004 Metalcote Gunmetal, most of which was used for airbrushing onto wheels and smokeboxes in a black/gunmetal mixture. During a search for suitable buffer head grease I found that the otherwise unusable pigment that remained in the bottom of an improperly closed tinlet had an interesting property. A lump of this goo was attached to a buffer head, smeared about a bit and left to dry. Once dry, it was gently buffed to bring out the metallic sheen. On 1444 I have used this simple process for the buffers, after treating them to a layer of Dullcote and some MIG Dark Mud. These two final photographs show the end result. Now I'm off to work on the Golden Arrow.

And so to painting and finishing. First off was to pop out to the garden and spray it with good old Hafords etch primer (the can's about eight years old and still going strong). Before I did this I intended to mask the lamp 'lenses' with a bit of Blue Tac but forgot. I got away with it. The signal was then appropriately decorated. The black is possibly a bit shinier that intended, I'm going with having a very keen S&T Dept rather than mess about. The grey is just the aforementioned Halfords Primer. I messed about for ages (earlier posts) trying to find the 'perfect' grey/aluminium colour and finally, after much opening of tins of grey paint and mixing such, picked a Humbrol grey - that is exactly the same colour as the primer. Hey ho! Then the control rods/wire/things were added and finally the blind for the back of the lamp fixed and painted. Apart from touching up a bit of grey where the black missed all is done. Other activities have been going on, clay, paint, signal wires, painting signal wires, 'rooting' the trees properly and so on. With most of the on-going stuff being more scenic until I can get more track and/or buildings and walls I think the next workshop project will be building second banner repeater. This isn't for the layout, but you get two in the kit so I may as well make it and put it on eBay rather than let it fade into the spares box.