andyram

Please don't mis-understand my comments. I enjoyed the show, even if the layouts were not really for me. Like I said it was perfect for those who like to see the older models in action and the constant action does appeal to the youngsters. I also referred to it as a "Trains Day" rather than an exhibition at the start of my entry. I was simply giving a description of the event for those who could not go. Totally agree that the bacon sandwiches are excellent value!!!! Like I said at the end of my entry - the show has given me an idea for running a similar event at my South Derbyshire school to act as a fundraiser. Thinking further on this subject, I think I could convince enough traders to attend. Just need to find those layout owners who would be prepared to attend any such show!

A second weekend in February, and a second model railway show! After visiting Stafford last week I found myself at the Allestree "Trains Day" today. This show takes place annually at the church hall in Allestree, Derby. I believe it is run to raise funds for the church whose hall it uses. A large model railway show with lots of impressive layouts and various trade stands this isn't. With no more than 12 exhibitors this had a more intimate and family feel than the large show at Stafford. In fact it took me just 20 minutes from entering to have seen every stall. Had I not stayed for a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich from the refreshment window and not made three circuits of the room I would never have made my visit last an hour. I had hoped to find some scenic items amongst the trade stands as I need a few things for my next scenic project on my Skaleby layout. Sadly I was to be out of luck. Most stands featured a good mix of new and second hand Hornby and Bachmann locos and rolling stock and some items of Lima, Hornby Dublo and Triang, but featured little in the way of scenic items. The only such stock available was from "Derby Trees" who were selling their range of HO gauge trees from a stand alongside the "Famous Trains" charity. This is a group who are trying to construct a large OO gauge model railway in a building inside the city's Markeaton Park. The lack of scenery seemed to spread to the layouts within the show. There was an ecletic mix of layouts, most of which fell into the "train set" category. These featured a series of ovals with trains travelling around continuously, never leaving view, with a few storage sidings for spare stock. The big attraction was that the layouts featured models from the past and some manufacturers and ranges long consigned to history. One layout featured a display of Triang Hornby with an A4 and an 8F travelling around in opposite directions hauling passenger and freight sets respectively. The only loco on display was an 08 shunter parked in the sidings at the rear. The scenery consisted of a few buildings and a little scatter material with no variation in height, no hill or enbankment in sight! Another exhibitor displayed a collection of old tinplate clockwork Hornby 0 gauge, whilst another had an impressive collection of working Lone Star. Three circuits of track featured British and American outline models hurtling around at breakneck speed. There was also a small N gauge display of two circuits stuck to a green baise board and a large working display of Triang Battle Space. The only out and back layout was an "L" shaped Thomas model. Trains arrived from the fiddle yard to a large station area complete with engine shed and goods yard. Whilst the buildings were all present no other scenic work had taken place and it did look like the buildings and track had been placed onto the table at the start of the day. There was no run round facility so trains pulled stock one way and propelled it the other. As a modeller who visits shows to admire others work, view spectacular models and gain ideas and inspiration for my own layout - this show did not provide anything for me. But for those who like to view the models from yesteryear it was perfect. The constant movement of trains also provided plenty of entertainment for the children who are not going to be interested by constant shunting and interventions from the great hand in the sky. Maybe this show will act to inspire these youngsters to be the modellers of tomorrow. There was certainly a decent crowd of youngsters enjoying the action. What the show did do for me however, was to plant a little seed of an idea in my head. If this was run as a fundraiser for the church, perhaps I could convince my headteacher to allow me to run a similar event in our school hall. Maybe that would provide an ideal event for my school's latest fundraising drive. Now there is an idea!!

As half term approaches I am beginning to plan my next bout of scenic work on Skaleby. As mentioned in my previous post I am looking to work on the rear station platform by adding a dry stone wall to the rear and adding various trees, scatter and other foliege. I am also hoping to tidy up the board as it has become a little bit of a "dumping ground" during the last few weeks as the baby takes priority over everything else. Unfortunately it looks like I will have another job added to the railway's "to do" list. As I mentioned before, the layout has been hampered by the "flying fur" from the house rabbit that shares the railway room. I have had to clear small bits of fluff and hair from those locos which are stored on the layout at regular intervals. This week my trusty Railroad Jinty needed quite a bit of "defluffing". Sadly, despite my best efforts, it seems that the engine is developing a problem. Whilst running a train this morning the motor sounded quite rough. I can only describe it as a bit of a "croaky" sound. Strangely it only makes the sound when travelling forwards, as the motor is fine in reverse. It looks like I may have to learn how to do a few more loco repairs next week. In the meantime I thought I'd add this very old shot of the engine on the layout. This was taken before all of the boards were in place. The shorter running line resulting in the use of the old coaches.

That explains why it looked familiar. I am sure that I saw this at Derby last year. It was a very impressive with so much happening. I loved the scenics too. Many of the buildings seemed to be from the Skaledale range. Just goes to show what is possible with off the shelf products.

I forgot to add a comment in my entry about something that did happen whilst I was at the show today. A tannoy announcement stated that an exhibitor had had a loco stolen from their stand. I do not know whether this was taken off a layout or trade stand. Either way I feel it is sad that there are people within our hobby who would do such a thing. An absolute disgrace!

I had been looking forward to today's Stafford show for the last few weeks as it would be my first show visit of 2012. This would be my 4th visit in as many years and I knew that there would be plenty of high quality layouts to see and lots of trade stands to tempt me to part with my hard earned cash. I was a bit worried by the snow forecast for the day, but relieved that it hadn't appeared when I left this morning. As someone who is building my first solo project at home I was hoping to get some ideas for my Skaleby layout and also pick up a few supplies to help with my next scenic project. Unfortunately I was not able to pick up the dry stone wall pieces I wanted for my station scene. I did trawl the stalls looking for bargains and whilst one or two items tempted me there was nothing which caused me to put my hand in my pocket. As a subscriber and regular reader of the Hornby Magazine, I always look out for those layouts that have appeared in its pages. I hope that these shows give me a chance to see some of these layouts "in the flesh". Today I enjoyed seeing "Dagnell End", a brilliant Southern region layout set in the London suburbs. The scenery on this is excellent. The station and track is set amongst several levels of scenery giving a real urban feel. The scratch built buildings are superb and I loved the touch of having glass walls on the half relief buildings at the front of the layout. The detail in the church was excellent, and the cinema foyer was very effective too. This layout also features a working underground section. The last time I saw this it was working very frequently, but in the time I was stood there today no trains moved. Another Hornby magazine layout was "Bash Street" which is set in 1959 and was making its last visit to an English show. This was the first time I had seen this layout and I was very impressed. It certainly caught the grime of a city location very well. Just a shame that this is the one and only time I will get to see it. The Hornby magazine's own layout "Berrybridge" was in attendance. This is a fairly simple layout compared to the other two mentioned, featuring a station, single road engine shed, goods yard and little in the way of non railway scenery. It is still a very nice model however and it was nice to see the trains running through the station on this occasion. The last time I saw Berrybridge was at the Bachmann event at Wirksworth when space meant that there were no fiddle yards and the model was used as a shunting layout. It certainly looked much better in its full exhibition set up.Perhaps a more scenic back scene would have improved things further. Easy for me to say though! There were a few other layouts in attendance which I had seen in the past. The shelf layout based on Cromer is small, but effective. I am not normally a fan of modern image layouts, but this one has kept me entertained at two previous shows. The operators did throw a steam special into the mix today. One modern image layout that really did catch my eye was St Giles. This Western region, Rail Blue era layout, had a constant flow of trains which is always important for maintaing a crowd. The scenics were good too with lots of detail packed into their busy street scene. There was even an Inspector Morse jag parked with a police van outside the pub. These extra touches always raise a smile. The Stafford society's own layout, New Haden Colliery, was there again. This is another one I have seen in the Hornby magazine. I like this one as there is always something happening with plenty of little tank engines shunting coal wagons, trains arriving and departing and passenger trains passing on the line at the front. The pit buildings are very well detailed too. When I first saw this layout it had a large back board. This, I think, made it difficult for the operators. Maybe that is why it has been removed. Now you can see everyone moving around behind as there is no back board at all. It does spoil the illusion somewhat. Talking of spoiling the illusion....surely someone on one particular layout should have noticed that on shed they had two standard 4's, BOTH numbered 75029!!!! That really is poor in my book! The best layout for me was EM gauge "Alkham". This branch line terminus station was set in rolling countryside scenery with beautifully modelled buildings and was brilliantly lit. Trains ran at realistic speeds without stalling. I could have watched it for hours and would still have found new things. Excellent! I should mention the Soar Valley Clubs layout "Dorehill St.Stevens". It claimed to be new although I am sure that I have seen bits of it before. It was huge!! Lots of trains and very entertaining. I really did enjoy the Stafford show. My only regret is that the snow started about 1pm, and I did rush the last hall in order to get away before the weather worsened.

As a regular visitor to the SVR, and someone who has regularly photographed this location I have to say that I am loving these pictures. The layout looks fantastic.

I'll certainly look out for you if I make the Syston Show. I remember seeing your "Summat Colliery" in the Hornby magazine, and at one of the Derby, Mickleover shows in recent years. I quite liked it and watched it for quite a while. Will certainly say hi!

Like the idea of such a cover. It could be something to consider for the Easter holiday perhaps. In the mean time I had better stick to running the cheaper "Railroad" models on the line. A shame, as I have some nice models just waiting to run, including a Bachmann SDJR 7F, ex GCR 04 and "Sir Lamiel" amongst others!

It has been sometime since my last entry on Skaleby, and things have rather ground to a halt, hit the buffers or any other phrase you can think of which means tools have been well and truely downed! Other things have rather taken over. Our first child, Amber, was born on the morning of the 13th December 2011. Therefore I have had rather more urgent priorities of late such as feeding, nappy changing, sleep and finding enough time for work as well. At times like this I rather wish the myth that teachers only work from 9am - 3.30pm was true! There has been no scenic progress on Skaleby to report. But rather like many others at the end of 2011, it has been a good time to reflect on the progress so far. It was only in April 2011 that the baseboards were installed in the spare bedroom so progress has been quite rapid. The track layout was finalised and track around the station area was pinned down. I have since built three embankments, added scenery to one of these and started the scenics around the rear of the main station building. I have started the scenery around the small engine shed and laid out track for the fiddle yard. I do now have one area where I can photograph trains and the scenery looks finished (see photos in the earlier posts). Not bad for just a few weeks work, spread over the last 8 months! Of course I have managed to run trains. Even in the last few weeks I have stolen a few minutes to keep trains running. It does help that the layout shares the spare room with the family's house rabbit, who just happens to need his exercise each day. As supervising the rabbit comes down to me, I do manage to sneak a few train movements each day whilst also catching up with work on my laptop. Who says men can't multi-task!!! The down side of this room sharing arrangement is that the rabbit fur seems to have a nasty habit of flying up and settling in all areas of the layout. I seem to be forever tackling the cleaning of stock with small tweasers and a paint brush! At present it is keeping the trains running and the trusty SDJR "Jinty" has made many return trips with the Standard 3 82020 substituting when the Jinty is "in the works" for de-furring!!!! With half term approaching I have received "permission" from the transport minister (aka the wife!!) to resume scenic work. At present I am not quite sure what I am going to do next as there are so many half finished areas. At present my mind is drifting towards working on the rear of the rear platform with the idea of working on the scenery from the back of the layout to the front. I will need some stone walled sections in order to do this though as I know that at Goathland dry stone walls stand at the rear of this platform. I do not have any yet so I will have to keep my eyes open over the next few weeks. I do have a busy few weeks of shows to visit. This weekend sees the new Derby "trains only" swapmeet which has moved from West Bridgford. Much better for me!! Who wants to go over to Nottingham (except to see the Rams pick up three points with only ten men!!). Then I have Stafford Model Railway show before half term. With the Leicester show at Syston also falling around half term I have three chances to get what I need. Mind you the last two events will probably also serve to re-ignite my dreams of building a layout for displaying at a show - Skaleby is strictly a home only layout!! I think that dream may have to remain on hold for a few more years...unless those 6 lotto balls drop for me of course!! I will post pictures and updates as and when!

With preparation for the impending birth of our first child, I have had precious little modelling time. But I did find some time to work on the small engine shed area. The track was laid on a cork base rather than on the Gaugemaster foam ballast as before. I want to hand ballast this area with a darker tone of scatter material to represent the ash, coal and general shed area dirt. I used rolled up newspaper, covered in a layer of plaster bandage to create some small contours to the ground in order to seperate the area from the main running line. I have purchased a small coaling stage to stand outside the engine shed. My 0-4-0 Hornby collector club loco has been posed in this area for the first of today's pictures. This weekend I have been using the layout to test a couple of locos ahead of selling them on EBay. The railway has been quite busy. Here a Bachmann J72, number 69022 passes the signal box with a van train. One of the favourite locos in my collection is the Bachmann Standard 3 tank. Here it stands in Skaleby station with a three coach train of Eastern Region mark one's. This shot shows the progress made in the station area so far.

A fantastic looking layout already. I'm already green with envy at the size of it!!

me neither!