Chubber

Well, that's RM Web for you. Years I've been burning electrons here for years and never stumbled into the Bacup triangle. Glad to have fallen in now, full of admiration and appreciation. A splendid way to spend a wet, grey Autumn day! Doug [Edidet for splling mistkakes]

Good luck on Saturday, Woody! D

Have a look at my GWR engine shed fot Bears End, I have included a sketch that shows using a razor blade to trim corners. Burred over the join becomes invisible, just be sure that you trim along a straight line and align each wall sheet accurately with the bottom edge of each wall. Isn't likely that the corners will be covered by a quoin strip in stone or blue engineers brick? Before about 1910 the corners were usually bull nosed, afterwards square. In all truth, the man who says 'your 1 mm high bricks don't join accurately at the corners...' is probably suffering from advanced Rivettocounteritis and needs to get a life. Good luck, Doug

I think there is just about enough 'brown', but perhaps a smidgin' more 'oily looking' low down. Hi, John, nice spread in September's RM, by the way. Doug

Last week in Spain/SW France Doug

Luffly work, the subtle weathering around the hopper woodwork is masterful, as always. Some questions, if you wouldn't mind What are the particular GWR colours you are using, how do you achieve the rivet effect on the tank, how big is the model, I'm guessing about 1 ft high, and how do you get the window details so crisply finished? Doug Edited to ask 'do you have a patented jig for stair construction?' D

Allan, how did you make the curved top window frames in the 'O' gauge Railway Hotel picture in post 139, please? Doug

I have explained my methods in post 77. It works for Metcalfe models too. [Ah! But be I a gert lunamery?] Doug

Very lovely, please could you give us an 'Ow-I-diddit' for those hotel windows, please? Doug

This 'G' scale interior quality, don't try and kid us it's 'OO' ! VG Star... Doug

The signage on the end of the building is marvelous, and the bay windows on the terrace make me very jealous! Doug

That is very effective. I remember Colron, very very well. It is NOT, repeat NOT the stuff to let a little 4 year old girl come into contact with when she is trying on a bridesmaid's dress...Oh how I remem., sniff,.....ber, sob..... Doug

Thank you all for your kind remarks, I'll just say again that I am retired, have all the time in the world to do things, and other than printer ink my stuff costs nothing so that if it goes wrong I just bin it. Sadly, whilst all being incorporated into a layout called 'Bear's End' I have to take down the layout and revert the room to a bedroom once more.... Whilst I can admire the technical complexity of some of the magnificent work done in plastics by previous contributors to this thread [there is much more in some of their blogs] I do so enjoy the challenge of making it look real with cornflake packet, florists wire, clear recycled plastic, CD cases, old calendar backs, scraps of mosquito blinds etc, although I have to admit to buying station valance, not for the want of trying, I assure you. Since plastic 'I' beam RSJs rose in price to be 50 pence for a 30mm length I've made my own, tack-welding strips together with superglue before running a fillet of PVA along with my 'Fine Tip' glue applicator, my vade mecum. Weathering Scalescenes paper with water colours is not difficult as long as you use a good paper about 90gsm and printer ink that does not run when dampened, [Epson Durabrite is very good] To make a spreading 'damp' stain, make a patch damp with clear water, and at the bottom drop in a drop of the green/dark mixture you choose. The capillary action of the paper will draw the colour through the paper in a far more convincing way than you could ever paint it. Even plastic can be weathered with water colour by adding a little gum-arabic to the paint/water mixture, with the added advantage that it can be wiped off with a damp cotton bud. Try Naples yellow, a heavily sedimenting pigment mixed with Paynes Gray, a grey based on Prussian [?] Blue as a moss/mould colour, it can be mixed quite thickly, and splattered with a toothbrush onto a dampened roof to be moss, or dripped as a liquid into a damp patch to be a green damp stain. New Gamboge and Cadmium orange mixed makes a convincing yellow lichen on sunny aspects of most roofs and Sepia is a good brown 'dirtier' rather than using a plain black. Mixed with Prussian Green it makes the sort of colour that you'd find on brickwork somewhere always wet and Prussian Green will make a convincing weathered copper colour. Ivory black washed around window frames allows its sediment to penetrate into very fine cracks and joins around glazing, etc. and soaks into distressed wood without looking like runny black paint. Wooden lolly sticks, Bar Stucks stirrers etc colour nicely left to soak in a container with a mashed up black inkjet cartridge, drying out a nice weathered grey [see Mill wheel access steps etc] Finally, for now, proving that you do not need plastic to do 'engineeringy' things, some sluice gates entirely made from card, florists wire, little slices of wire insulation and scraped and sanded cocktail sticks. If you're not bored into catalepsy by now and wish to know how I've done something, please do ask, best wishes, Doug

A mill building The same mill at night The wheel inspection access of the same mil Run-off stream thereto Unusual subject-a lime-kiln Low relief workshops Bombed terrace [after Stamshaw, Portsmouth 1950s] detail thereof The Ringwell Alarm Clock Co. Bear's End Station Mk 1 Skew built tunnel Harbour Offices Warehouse [With permission of the copyright holders] All in card and paper, save glazing. Doug

Finally for this session, some perky little tits..... Doug

and on the floral side, got quite excited this year when in addition to our normal pale mauve bee-orchid [top], we found a white one nearby, which I can't find in my books... Not quite sure why the lower one is shown sideways, it didn't leave here like that... Doug

And here's another Vulcan bomber in dazzle camouflage...a bit out of his way, a Jersey Tiger Moff. Doug

This chap[pess] Bombylius major is the ultimate jump-jet! Perfectly adapted for long tubular flowers you know when they are around 'cos they make a Greek yob's moped sound like a Rolls-Royce, and when two have a hissy-fit over whose flower it is they are quite loud. Also known as a Beefly. Sadly they predate on Solitary Bees by flying over their nests and dropping eggs nearby which quickly hatch, find the bee-burrows and start to slowly but surely eat the bee-larvae. Taken last week in the wild flower bit of the garden. Doug

John, she's adorable! WE got caught the same way.......the top picture is 'Don't forget me pose' when we get the car out and the lower one is 'Gimme bisket, I've been good, gimme.....' Doug

In 1959, aged nine-and-three-quarters I used to cycle N. Camp station to look at trains. Harry the signalman [he always seemed to be on day-turn] let me into the box with the tacit permission of the Station Master [Mr Robinson?]. After a while I and spent so long there my Dad came down to check there was no 'funny business' going on. I became useful enough to be given an orange weskit and elementary safety training and I'd wander around doing errands and cabbing the Q1 [30001] that was often around. I came to know the time table, warning bells etc. When in the box I'd pull the gate lock and stand on an upturned 'Lucozade' crate to polish things with 'Duraglit'. I didn't encourage any chums to tag along, it was my 'grown-up' place, and with a bucket of wedges and a long handled hammer I'd potter about replacing split ones which came back to the cabin and the ticket office for firelighting. I don't think I caused anyone to fear for my safety barring the time I fell off the cattle/horse-dock rails onto the track splitting my lip, and it was only my elevation to Farnborough Grammar School, a developing interest in aero-modelling and Army cadets that gradually seduced me away from the railway. [You go to fire guns in the Cadets] I appreciate that nowadays comparatively silent locomotives could be on you before you realised, and that colour light signals don't grind and squeak a warning, I feel nostalgic for those halcyon yet decidedly grubby days and have a certain pity for todays lads who have no opportunity to grow up in a similar 'independant' way. Doug

Seen recently on a trip to Mallaig...........I wonder how many Mbs/cwt of nutty slack? Doug

Poop-poop!

Hi, Woody, Having recently re-read my Wallingford Branch [Paul Karau] book, MM would equally well re-enact a W'ford cameo, where the locomotive [in the W' case a 14XX or 517] would be spotted immediately next to the cross-over/run round turnout so that coal could be shovelled directly from the loco coal wagon into the loco bunker..... Doug

You beat me to it by a nano-second, John. Woody's lighting makes it seem more 'branch-liney'.......[No, I haven't been overdoing the RLW...] Doug

That has got to be one of the best railway puns I've heard in years! Huzzah![but I don't get out much...except Germany, Austria, Switzerland and France in the last 3 weeks...] Doug