brylonscamel

Here's a long view of the station / harbour / street scene at Braeside. I'm always reminded on these views how much card / kit built modelling we've used and it's still taken ages to get this far. Although I like scratch building, I'm not sure how much it would have slowed progress - maybe a smaller layout and the whole thing would have been built to represent a real location!

Some running photos from a Christmas playing trains at Braeside

.. where there are fish, there are seagulls

.. a fish auction is taking place in a Scottish harbourside

.. among the winter projects is the spruce-up of a Lima class 40 body (destined for a Bachmann chassis) ... Shawplan etchings, judicious window filing and a primer coat - she's already starting to look like a proper big EE !

.. over the Christmas period, Dad and I decided to relax as well as busy ourselves on the railway.

I started making some videos of trains passing by on our railway 'Braeside' to try and capture sound and motion. Here's a DMMU passing the newly installed station nameboards and newspaper cabin ... DMMU | Braeside by Brian McCulloch, on Flickr

I felt like rolling back the clock to the 80s - so Sunday was "British Rail blue diesel day"

The lighting adds such a wonderful atmosphere.. is that an A4 lurking on No.1 Road?

"diamond crossing take 4" - that sounds like quite a project on its own

.. it's been a blue era week. 47408 get's a bit of weathering ....

.. some gardening completes the weekend's activities on the cutting mat!

A rather simple project but this small workshop has just come off my cutting mat .. and it marks a bit of a switch to using plastic sheet rather than paper and card. (I make no claims to have built the hoist, which is a Bachmann item to complete the picture!)

The cutting mat has been my friend this weekend with a scratch built workshop and a repainted lorry for the harbour!

Each set of windows has 3 x individual pieces of glazing (cut and filed to shape from transparent plastic sheet). The sheet has to be reasonably thick to give the glue and edge to fix to. PS The Shawplan etchings are very nice but I struggled a bit with handling them and you still have to cut away the original window surrounds.

Re: Weathering - I also had a couple of 'old tat' practice pieces to start with! That's definitely a good plan. The airbrush is a very useful tool, you can 'soften' any colour applied with a brush or a pen - plus it's great for applying varnish coats. Re: The old Lima (now Hornby) class 40 body is a good moulding and I found it possible to pick them up relatively cheaply. The window surrounds are the worst part of the moulding, really heavy, thick bars but they can easily be filed back to something more pleasing. There is a very fine etching available from 'Shawplan' which also does the trick but I had some issues working with them and settled on some careful filing. The thing is you have to make your own glazing which is pretty time consuming. Here's the previous one I did - D234 "Accra" using a modified Hornby body. The glazing is a bit wonky but I'm happy with the overall effect!:

Hi Paul - thanks again for the kind words. There are a few fun winter modelling projects in the pipeline; a class 26 and a class 29 plus some carriages & wagons, lighting for the layout and trying my hand at foliage and trees!! .. have you got much planned? (PS I forgot you were following my Flickr account - be warned, you'll probably be bombarded with pictures of my cycling adventures and the dog among the railway stuff)

That's very kind of you - I must say I'm liking the 'I'll show you mine, if you'll show me yours' aspect of this forum - there are some fine examples of other peoples work popping up on this thread already! PS I'm sure each one of us has an activity we like least. I don't enjoy stripping paint - messy, time consuming and nerve-wracking!

.. I've really been enjoying the chance to spend time with the cutting mat and some sheet plastic.

I stumbled on this and I love some of the details - the mould around the gutter spout is brilliant!

..more first class figure painting there Phil! - what scale are the military figures you posted? .. the detail that you've picked out on the mouldings is impressively fine. (I just answered my own question by going to the W^D Models website)

That's superb work in that scene from your O gauge layout - everything about that scene works so nicely - even down to the the cat at the man's feet and the punctured oil drum! I agree about the relaxed poses - that was my hope when I started to place figures on 'Braeside' - I feel these groups work better for a lack of 'shovelling'?

Oh I wouldn't worry about being boring - we're all members of a railway modelling forum after all and you can assume we are like minded individuals!

.. Thanks for the tips - I'm interested that you found acrylics that work for you. I found myself using enamels as I'm used to the way they flow and remain workable when thinned. I might invest in some Games Workshop acrylics to see how I get on. I assume you still finish off with a matt varnish to protect against handling?

Oh I love these! .. the facial detail and colour really brings them to life. Hmmm .. this is something I need to work on. PS I did laugh about 'looking like coal miners' - although a mistake in this area could come in handy if you are modelling a coal mine.