Leaderboard

Over the years I’ve gathered a small collection of anecdotes and photos that document quirky situations and customs on the real-life railway. The idea is to re-enact them in model form while the glue dries on other projects. The Slipper Boy story was one attempt at this, although admittedly that one got a bit out of hand! Here’s another, simpler one. First, the props: ***** Clear as mud, I suspect! Here’s what it’s all about: Railway Magazine, January 1906: Just another incident on the everyday railway, but we can’t allow this stuff to be forgotten! Below is an attempt to re-enact it in my Farthing setting. I’ll see if it works without words: ***** That was the event as reported. But I wonder what happened afterwards? All those tasty eels, and no ice left to keep them fresh... A quick discussion among the staff, perhaps, to find a solution? 🙂 ***** PS: I couldn’t find a period description of exactly how live eel were transported in Edwardian days, so the container seen here is loosely based on a 1970 FAO publication which documents a method that does not seem out of place in earlier days: "Live eels can be transported in small quantities in tray-boxes […]. A typical wooden tray-box contains four lift-out trays about 50mm deep, each designed to hold about 10kg of eels graded according to size. The top tray is usually filled with crushed ice so that cold melt water trickles down through the eels during the journey to keep them cool and lively. […] Each tray has drain holes and is divided across the middle to make a total of eight compartments holding about 5kg each, that is about 40kg for the whole box. The lid of the box is nailed on, and the whole is steel-banded both to prevent pilferage and to prevent the eels escaping through the joints. Boxes of this type are used successfully for live transport not only within the UK but also for 24-hour journeys from the Continent with little or no loss." Source: http://www.fao.org/3/x5915e/x5915e01.htm#Live storage and transport

I've finally completed my scratch built Bodmer single no.124 of the London & Brighton Railway. It's taken a year of blood sweat and tears, trying to be too clever and paying the price! Details of the project have been promised to the HMRS in the form of an article for their Journal, so rather than spoil that I'll just deposit a couple of images here in the meantime. Further details of this project can be found on a previous blog entry entitled 'Build a Bodmer Competition - not!', or a more comprehensive write up should be in the next HMRS Journal out this summer.

Being inspired by what id seen at Warley.. I set to work building my first layout (Tunnel Lane ) using tips from all the mags ,Facebook groups etc.. The goal was to get it in a mag and do a few exhibitions.. So 4 months in to the build to be appoarched by Model Rail for a feature I was totally blown away, Then with Tunnel lane finished, I really wanted to build another but this time and due to lack of space I wanted to build a micro layout. Armed with a Scale Model scenery baseboard Little Quarry was born ,and the start of Tunnel Lane Model Railways . I was also approached by Railway Modeller for a feature with Little Quarry which got me my first commission, Oldbury (as featured in the current BRM magazine)! I've also built 3 dioramas Portmadog, Barton Road and Barmouth for Alan at Modelu , I've built numerous layouts and commissions which In due course will gracing the pages of BRM. I do have a very active Facebook page which you are all very much welcome to come and take a look at https://www.facebook.com/groups/tunnellanemodelrailways/ YouTube channel https://youtube.com/channel/UCjf0qzVOWI1FsI3ouS7eaEA I also have an Instagram page of the same name to This is Little Burford my first dabble at 0 gauge.. Thanks for taking a look Regards Dan

Ok, so where were we? Ah, yes the victim had been reduced to pieces (or at least stripped of its means of movement( and was ready for reconstructive surgery. So now it is time to address the thorny subject of wheels. As I mentioned before, you have basically three choices: Aland Gibson, Markits and Ultrascale. So lets compare what you can get for how much using a Bachmann 2251 Collett goods as our exemplar. Ultrascale offer a conversion pack that includes all wheels (inc tender) and crankpins - in fact as they state - everything you will need. They also have notes offering advice on how to do the conversion. What you get from Ultrascale. See: https://www.ultrascale.uk/eshop/products/view/CAT007/30 This will set you back £96.58 for wheels with Nickel Silver tyres or £70.57 for brass tyres (some Ultrascale packs offer steel tyres too which seem a couple of £ cheaper - the 3F tender engine for example). Ultrascale also state that the product is supplied as per the image. I take this to mean that the wheels arrive in the case of the the 2251 ready assembled - so quartered, correct back to back gauge, pins fitted and and with a (brass) gearwheels fitted in place. All you have to do is drop them in and add the coupling rods, reassemble, test admire followed by a bragging session at your local club of choice (although if you don't do the bragging at a model railway club you might get some odd looks or comments). So all in all quite a good deal. You can get the wheels unassembled with separate pins included and without a gear wheel for about £10 cheaper (in the 2251 example) - just make sure you select the correct diameter axle for the driving wheels. The biggest problem is that the range or ready assembled wheels is quite small - The range of Bachmann steam engines covered is just 5, but both the standard DIY wheel range and the diesel conversion range is much more comprehensive. Which brings me to a useful digression … whatever your interest period if you are moving to EM or P4, buy a cheapo 2nd hand Bachmann or Hornby diesel, convert it (much quicker and simpler than a steam loco - I did one using an Ultrascale drop in set in under 30 mins) and you'll have something to test your track with (aka playing trains) while you build and convert your way to finescale nirvana. Markits also offer complete conversion packs, the GWR 2251 is £72.15 (I emailed them to check) and for this you get all wheels (all with nickel silver tyres), 'super deluxe' crankpins and axle nut covers. The Markits wheels will need assembly (and the gear wheel(s) salvaging from the victim), but they are self quartering so that is a considerable amount of heartache and pain done away with. It is unclear whether these packs use their 'standard' profile or the finer flanged RP25 profile. If you know please let me know. It is also unclear from the website/catalogue whether P4 profile wheels can be supplied (I'm not hopeful) so these are probably an EM only option. Again, remember to state gauge (OO is their default) and axle diameter when ordering. Sometimes the Markits axle nut covers etch included in the conversion packs have balance weights too (for example the LNER V2) - a bonus that will save you fabricating them later. Finally, there is Alan Gibson. AG also offer a conversion pack for the Bachmann 2251 Collet Goods at £20.00 with steel tyred wheels. However, this pack is for the driving wheels only. So when tender wheels, crankpins and coupling rod bushes are included that takes the price up to £37.70 (prices from the most recent catalogue (2018) on the Alan Gibson website). So buy Ultrascale and get a drop in set, spend £24.43 less and you get everything you need for Markits but with some assembly required, spend £34.45 less than that and you get Alan Gibson with quite a lot of assembly required. But what Alan Gibson has in its favour (apart from being cheap) is that because its not an all in one deal you can spread the cost. Being a perennially poor thanks to a multitude of children much as I would love to buy Ultrascale drop in products (and if you ask me to do a conversion for you I'm afraid I'll insist you do) I usually end up using AG products. So having laid out your choices in wheels, I'm going to ignore choice and concentrate on the ones that are cheapest and also probably need the most work. (It has struck me that these two things may be related). The first thing to note is that Alan Gibson doesn't have an e-commerce portal (unlike Ultrascale), but then again Markits don't either (or do lots of others) relying instead on human determination and the innate stubbornness of the finescale modeller in trying to press money on businesses that often give an impression of not wanting to take it off us. For AG products there is a short cut - the EM Gauge Society stock his conversion packs and a limited range of other AG products - but unfortunately not the whole range. Happily they stock both EM and P4 versions, so another reason to be an EMGS member (even if you do P4). So in preparing and assembling our AG wheels there are 4 different tasks: Fit crankpins Fit balance weights Assemble on the axle Quarter them Fitting crankpins. This is the job I do first for a number of reason, mostly centred on its much easy to do them now than when the wheels are on the axle (or even on the loco). Some points to note: Some Alan Gibson wheels (the very earliest ones made for the range, like if my memory is correct, the J15) don't actually have any crankpin holes. Instead there is a blind drill mark at the location where you have to drill the hole. How big a hole? Ideally 0.75mm (see https://www.trfastenings.com/Products/knowledgebase/Tables-Standards-Terminology/Tapping-Sizes-and-Clearance-Holes ) as this will mean that the M1 machine screws AG supplies as crankpins will then cut their own thread in the plastic wheel centre. However, I have used 0.7mm drill bits quite successfully. The difficult bit is making sure that your hole is at right angles to the face of the wheel. Take your time, look at it from many angles as you slowly drill the hole.... If it isn't it might be enough to cause binding as it will, as it rotates, slightly increase and decease the distance between the wheels (or actually the pins) and we all know thanks to the great Iain Rice the importance of wheelbase and coupling rods matching.... don't we? I have in the past done this by hand, but now that I'm the slightly smug owner of a drill press and machine vice, hand shake is now a thing of the past. Here we have a set of AG wheels destined for a Bachmann Stainer mogul (or it might be a Jubilee, but I think a Mogul). Left is as it comes out of the packet with no crankpin hole. Centre, with the crankpin hole drilled - and you can see its right on the edge of the indie of the boss. Right, countersunk ready for the crankpin to be fitted. Although I'll talk about coupling and connecting rods separately, it is also worth considering the combined thickness of the coupling and connecting rods, especially as with some that aim for a more prototypical profile (and why not?) through using multiple etched layers they can end up thicker than the bit of the AG crankpin that is left sticking out of the wheel. (It is also worth checking this even if you intend reusing the RTR rods - better safe than sorry.) If they are too short it can be solved by getting longer ones (yes I know - duh!!) (still M1 though) from any one of a multitude of sellers, many of whom inhabit ebay which at least makes buying them easy. However, longer ones can make using the GW quartering jig hard as they will be too long to fit in the receiver (answer only use long ones when you have to, shorten them as much as possible (but still giving you 2mm proud of the rods, screw them half in way, quarter the axle, and then screw pins fully home - but more on this later). The M1 machine screws have countersunk heads but the wheels do not have countersunk holes to receive them. So grab a 1.5mm or better a 2mm twist drill, centre it in the hole and give it a quick couple of twists (but no more) to provide a counter sink but not one so deep as to go through the wheel...I normally don't even put it in a pin vice, instead just holding it in my fingers. It is possible for the screws to unscrew themselves if the crankpin nut or eccentric crank is a bit tight on the thread. As this happens when the wheel is mounted on the loco, it is very difficult (but not impossible) to get it back in without undoing a lot of work. So when, happy with all other aspects of the budding relationship between wheel, rods and crankpin, you decide to fully screw the pin home, stop just before the head goes into the countersink. Using a pin introduce a bead of superglue between crankpin head and countersink and quickly screw home. This is especially important if you have overtightened the screw at any point and therefore stripped the soft plastic thread the screw cuts for itself. On some of the wheels the rear of the boss intrudes into the spot where the countersink will need to go. So grab a scalpel (or better yet a chisel ended scalpel blade and carve away the area so you have nice flat space to countersink. Fit the balance weights. Take it from me (because I have forgotten to do this at this stage enough times), it is a lot easy to fit the balance weights now. The can use etched or pre cut plasticard ones from Markits or Ultrascale (or indeed anyone that makes such things) or you can make your own out of 5 thou plasticard and a set of dividers. Once the balance weights are fitted you can also, should the urge take you, paint/blacken tyre rims and paint balance weights - again its a lot easier now than once coupling rods are in place and you are staring at your new pride and joy wondering what isn't quite right (and its starting to annoy you....). If you are one of the sensible people doing an ornate pregroup livery that has wheels other than black, definitely paint them now, and you may as well line them too if needed. For the Claude Hamilton I found that an egg cup was the perfect radius for finishing off the balance weights. Just to show that I don't do what I say I should do. I forgot the balance weights on the Claude Hamilton until I had reassembled everything... Assemble the wheels on the axle. First things first. Make sure the axle is the right length (because it won't be if you are EM'ing your loco - AG supplies P4 length axles that you have to reduce to length for EM). Finding out what the correct length is easy. Take a pair of wheels and your back to back gauge. Using hands (if you're like me you'll need two) hold the wheels on either side on the back to back gauge. Then (possibly using the third hand that you get issued with on joining the finescale fraternity) place a digital vernier /caliper/gauge across the two wheel bosses, note the distance, and then, because you are squeezing the wheels too hard to try to keep a grip on everything, catapult them into the air. The next bit may sound bad, but it really isn't. Reduce the axle to length. First use a black Sharpie (or similar) pen to paint a nice thick band around the axle roughly where you'll be cutting. Then with your vernier calipers put one end at the end that isn't black, and gently lay the other vernier prong aginst the other, spin the axle with your fingers and lo, a thin line shall appear around the axle. And there was much rejoicing. Which was rapidly stopped by the thought of how to cut the axle accurately. You have effectively two choices: Put axle in Dremmel (or similar) shove in a vice, set Dremmel in motion, attack with bastard file until either the axle is the right length or you say goodbye to your fingers. I DO NOT USE OR ADVOCATE THIS METHOD. I know exactly how hard it is cleaning blood of walls and the ceiling (admittedly this was after a minor table saw accident but my darling wife still doesn't let me forget about it and the club I was with at the time were a bit off with me too as it was their walls and ceiling). The safer way is to use a lathe with a parting off tool. Preferably someone elses - another reason to join a club, access to machine tools and gadgets you use too infrequently (or are too expensive) to justify having yourself. The next important job is to offer up one of your newly trimmed axles into the slots for the driven axle. Make sure you have an equal amount of axle sticking out of each side and part with your Sharpie (or similar) where the gear wheel needs to go. Marking the position of the gear wheel on the axle. Then using the bastard file knurl the axle where you have marked. This means, on a resilient surface (not a hard one) like a cutting mat, using the short edge (mines about 4mm across), place it on the axle where you have marked roll the axle while pushing down hard with the file - don't allow the file to wander - and bingo a knurled axle that will probably grip your final drive gear wheel. Knurling the axle for the gear wheel. Work out how many spacing washers for each axle. A tip - if you have outside cylinders etc go for no sideplay if there will be a wheel lurking behind the cylinders or slide bars - its just too infuriating to assemble everything and then find that on a curve the crankpin fouls the outside gubbings. For the other non gear wheel axles, probably not more than 1mm in total (unless you have a huge wheelbase and tiny curves to get it round). On the axle with the gear wheel, as much as you can without causing the gear wheel to lose contact with the intermediate gears - probably less the 0.5mm in total. So take the chassis, measure its width where the axle slots are, take this away from your back to back measurement and divide by 2 gives you the sideplay possible on each side. Then just add 1/8 inch brass washers of suitable thicknesses until you have the sideplay that you want. Take a 6mm (or there abouts drill bit) and using your fingers give it a quick twist where the axle fits into the rear of the wheel, just to take the sharp edge off and help the axle locate itself hopefully perpendicularly to the wheel when its is assembled. Now its time to assemble the wheels ready to quarter them. As I use a GW wheel press and quartering jig I'm assuming you will too...So: Take an axle, add the gear wheel by pressing it on carefully and without twisting it until it is in the correct position. Add any brass bearing that might have been included on the victim by the manufacturer, add the required spacing washers each side and grab a pair of wheels. And move to the quartering section. Repeat with the other axles. Quartering. Using a wheel press and quartering jig like the GW models one to fit AG wheels (or Ultrascale self assembly ones) should reduce your troubles here, but there is wheel wobble to think about. (I'm not going to worry about Markits ones as they are self quartering.) Simply put, even using the jig might not stop a wheel going on not quite square leading to a wobble. My view is that this is caused by the wheel boss sticking out beyond the wheel tyre, allowing it to twist on the mounting stud as the wheels are squeezed in the press. To stop this I have superglued 30thou of plasticard about 6mm above and below the mounting stud on each side of the wheel press. My modified GW wheels press. So you now should have the jig, with a wheel in each half, an axle with all the bits (bearings, spacing washers, gear wheel etc) and you are wondering how to get it all together. Well, it can be a bit of a juggle but three hands probably won't be needed - (but doing the chamfer of the inside of the axle socket mentioned above will help), and gently close the jig until the axle just starts to engage with the wheel. At this point stop, reach for your back to back gauge and insert it so that as you close the jig with finger pressure the B2B gauge will ensure that you set the correct gauge. Squeezing everything together with the B2B gauge in place. The jig is designed for axles that are the correct length, but this might not be the case, and it is easier to set the B2B now, rather than later. When you feel the jig press the axle home, release it and you have a wheel that is probably square and probably quartered. But until we get the coupling rods on, we can't be sure that each axle has exactly the same quartering...

In 1845 the Swiss engineer John George Bodmer constructed a pair of 2-2-2 locomotives at his Manchester workshops for the Joint Committee of the Brighton, Croydon and Dover Railways. Born in Zurich in 1786 and later apprenticed to a millwright, the young engineer showed much promise and a strong talent for innovation. He moved to Lancashire in the 1820s but continued his connections with Switzerland and Baden in Germany. His particular invention was that of an opposed cylinder steam engine in which two pistons moved in opposite directions driving two crankshafts, a 'balanced' engine. He continued to expand this idea and the two locomotives for the Joint Committee were his most famous, or perhaps infamous, machines. Purchased for £2100 the Committee took delivery of the engines in July and December 1845 and numbered them 123 and 124. The locomotives each had a pair of double pistons, the conrod of one passing through the hollow conrod of the other. This complicated arrangement was powerful but very costly to maintain. The tenders supplied were carried on six wheels with a mechanically driven feed pump mounted between the frames to feed the loco via a substantial hollow pipe which also served as the coupling between tender and loco! Typically the loco itself had no brakes but the tender sported huge wedges of timber with iron shoes which when wound down, wedged themselves between the wheels and the rails which in extreme circumstances could lift the tender clear of the rails altogether. Predictably this had disastrous consequences and the engine allocated to the SER after the dissolution of the Joint Committee left the rails at Pluckley on the 23rd May 1846 killing the driver. However a subsequent enquiry proved that a large stone left on the line by errant youths was the cause of this particular accident. Unfortunately this did nothing to assuage the opinion that this 'foreign' locomotive was more trouble than it was worth and after some modifications and very little further service the loco was sent to Ashford where it languished until being dismantled in 1880. The Brighton engine had better luck although it was rebuilt first by Craven, then again by Stroudley who even saw fit to name it 'Seaford'. Thankfully a photo exists of it in this guise but it can be seen that not a great deal of Bodmers original design survived, certainly not his balanced pistons which did not survive the Craven rebuild. And so to the model. A friend of mine declared that he was going to build Seaford which prompted my response that i was intending to build the 1845 version. "Let's build them simultaneously and do a joint article for the HMRS" he said. "Great idea" I replied not fully aware of what I was letting myself in for. Nevertheless the short straw had been drawn and everything else put on hold to scratch build Bodmers 1845 balanced locomotive in 4mm scale to EM standards. Since nothing about it is conventional it has tried my patience to the extreme and progress in painfully slow, however I hope the following photos show that it is at least getting somewhere and I hope to be able to add to this blog in a positive manner in the not too distant future. If you never hear from me again you'll know it didn't go well! Portescap gears in a scratch built box to get them in the right positions. It fits, just! Haycock firebox. I hate doing these....! Frames and springs. The trailing springs were double coil springs hidden in the axle guide casting as per the tender. The story so far..... Thanks for looking!

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.

What goes through a modeller’s mind? 'Very little', my wife would say, and she’s not far off! Am I the only one who enters a Zen-like state of mind when operating the layouts? It begins like this. You decide to run some trains, forget all the worries. Get the gear out, set up on the dining table. The engine purrs into life, pulls a train off the traverser. You get down to eye level, begin to dream. What if there was something else behind those windows? Distant spires maybe? Lots of spires! Then even that melts away, and you enter a world of dreamy blue skies. Floating freely… …in an uncomplicated world… …where time… …stops… …and the light… …is mellow. Peace, man. Then reality kicks in. It seems I’m expected to lay the table. Ah well!

Outside the Box at Watford. A southbound Freight passes a northbound Express. A Bakerloo Tube completes its journey from Elephant & Castle as it arrives in platform 5. Looking north towards Harrow, plenty of activity taking place. Thumping south at Linslade, 1005 heading for home territory. Looking north along the Harrow section of the layout, with the Watford section along the other side of the loft. Looking north along the Watford section of the layout near the Loft Access hatch. Another fairly recent clip of video from the layout. West Coast Main Line N Gauge Layout (Part 18) - YouTube

During my enforced rest from vigorous carpentry I decided it might be a good idea to make a cardboard mock up of Bosmelin so I could get some idea of what the scenery might look. Of course such a course of action is recommended by most layout designers and often mentioned by the more skilled builders. Of course like most people I initially omitted this step and ploughed on with wood cutting and baseboard building. But I have to say having effectively been forced into making a mock up I have learnt how useful it is. I decided on quarter scale which has proven about right. For a smaller layout than Bosmelin one third might be tried. I didn’t make each of the model baseboards separately but split the scenic front of layout into 3 parts. Using Anyrail I printed the track plan off 1:4 and used this to create the card track beds. I then used polystyrene to form the land and duly covered this with plaster bandage before finally finishing with an interior filler to which I added a dollop of PVA. Once dry I painted the surface with emulsion from some tester pots I bought cheaply in Wickes when the colour range changed. And here’s a couple more pictures showing the process to this point. mde So having produced what I thought was a lovely model of a model I stood back to admire my handicraft. However, something was not quite right. I had made the backs of some of the boards too high. This meant that the landscape was too high and consequently too steep. Major surgery ensued with the backs being cut down and large chunks of the land being removed. I was now presented with another problem as the revised profiles were no longer ‘right.’ To gain sufficient height in the land the boards needed to be deeper. Fortunately the overall design allowed for this as I had always intended to have a proper backdrop to the layout. That is to say a three dimensional perspective driven backscene rather than a flat “D one. I have had Paul Bambrick’s book ‘Creating a Backscene’ for a while and referred to this to see what was possible. And here I will end this blog post and will describe the next stages of MiniBos in the next post. In the meantime if you are interested in scenic backscenes you might enjoy a look at Paul Bambrick’s website: http://bambrickstudio.co.uk I do think that the backscene is the next ‘big thing’ in the scenic railway modelling. See you soon! View the full article

Well, it's been a while! I've been back to work, furloughed, back to work again, furloughed. The railway had to find a corner and wait a while. There has, however, been progress. I'll keep this post as concise as possible and give you an idea of what's been happening. NCE DCC. I took the plunge and bought myself an NCE PowerCab starter set for christmas. Really impressed, after a lot of research I can see why NCE repeatedly comes out on top as a great entry system to DCC. More on this in an upcoming blog post - it's been an interesting journey finding the pro's and con's, pitfalls and bonuses of each DCC product (specifically decoders!). Arts and Crafts. I've rekindled my paper mache skills and made embankments around the titular bridge! My method is: Cardboard formers Gaps filled with newspaper 3 layers of plain white paper (strong base) 4 layers of newspaper (easy to layer and smooth things out) 4 layers of kitchen paper (for the textured finish) The strip of 300gsm brown card I laid down the hill for the road base was pointless, I don't think it made any difference to the lumps which evened out anyway when it all dried. On the second board, an early platform attempt is awaiting resurfacing - I'm contemplating a filled and painted surface, but I'm still researching options and looking for the best option. I've been testing out "soil" paint colours and some foliage in the newly ballasted run-down goods yard. The layout is definitely taking shape as a preserved railway, with some areas well maintained and others awaiting the next fundraiser or National Lottery grant! Future areas will be painted more grey-brown to represent the clay-heavy soil of the North Somerset area. I'm about to launch into the world of static grass, watch this space... I'm still undecided as to what the two sidings north of the platforms will be. The idea was a factory, but now I'm tempted by a loco shed... I think ideas will come into focus once the platform and station building is built. I've been playing around with weathering the ballast - I don't have an air brush, and I like low-tech low-budget solutions, so I've brushed on watered down acrylic for light weathering, and neat black and greys for the oil & coal stained areas where locomotives stand, as well as the top of the loading stage. Some real coal is on order to create some wagon loads and a coal stage. I used wood glue (Gorilla was what I had on the shelf) for applying the foliage as it dries clear and is more tacky than watery. I certainly works better than the cheap-as-chips PVA I use for cardboard, paper mache, etc. Loco's and Rolling Stock: Some new toys have appeared in the past few months. After all, you've got to spend some time playing trains! Here's the list - photo credits to KMRC as they do a great job of showing off a model in its natural habitat. Bachmann 31-361B, Class 03 in BR green - I LOVE this loco, high build quality, super smooth, crawls very well, and the NEXT18 decoders are brilliant for wiring a stay alive to. I'll be doing a subsequent blog post on my DCC choices and what my go-to products are now. Hornby R3721, Class 61xx Large Pairie GWR green - waiting for a decoder for this, nice model but a little fragile. DJ Models K2203, Class 13xx 0-6-0 GWR green - lovely to look at and runs okay on DC, but on DCC it lurches each time it starts moving. It might be down to the Zen Blue decoder I originally paired it with, and I considered returning it as the mechanism is really not that great... but I'm going to try a Zimo 6 pin and see if I can get it running at least as well as it does on DC. I've also bought a selection of Dapol GWR wagons - the NEM pocket springs are very easy to bend or snap which means Kadee coupling's can play up, but all fixable. You can also see my old Dapol 14xx which I've DCC fitted. Slightly wobbly runner but it was my first ever loco so I love it all the same. And I think that just about brings us up to speed. Not as detailed as my previous posts, but I'll try to update this blog more regularly to document my progress. I hope you are all keeping safe and sane in these crazy times!

With increased woodworking activity on the baseboards now that the door to the railway parlour has been replaced my enthusiastic sawing, sanding & rasping has caused me to develop tennis elbow. So all that industry has ground to a halt. So I’ve been working on Parsnip Cottage – one of Petite Properties products and I’ve now started making a 1/4 scale model of the layout to mock up the scenery. Of course conventional wisdom decrees that this is the first thing you do. But we dew diff’runt in Narfolk! Here’s some pics. View the full article

An opportunity presented itself to drag the baseboard outside yesterday and take some photos in the rather dull afternoon light. At last I feel some progress is being made, or in other words, what a difference a bit of ballasting makes! I took a few more photos to show how some of the areas are finally tying together after some further detail was added. Oooh look, ballast at last! This is my own somewhat unconventional technique since the ballast in the 1840s was all over with only the rails showing. This can be a bl**dy nightmare when it comes to keeping things clear enough for smooth running. A view under the bridge. The stables with the tall Greyhound in the background. The tannery, with a little more detail added and some 'bedding in'. The somewhat neglected back yard between the Greyhound and the Tannery.

Once the children were safely tucked up in bed and with an unexpected hour to spare and not really fancying tackling anything big, I decided to make a chair. Scrap brass for the seat, a bit of wire, some solder and a lick of paint.