Huggy

I saw another post, on YouTube, an American guy who built his own cheap booth, which he uses on top of the kitchen cooker, and has it hooked up to his own filter in place of the one in the cooker hood! Must have a very understanding Mrs..... His kitchen looked too tidy and clean to be for a single fella!

Thanks Mike, that filter is the sort of thing I want to rig up in front of the fan somehow. The fan outlet is connected to the flexible ducting I mentioned, cut down to a manageable length, that hangs out of the window at the back of the picture (over our old kitchen's drain as it happens). Haven't used any paint with white spirit or other volatile stuff yet, sticking with acrylics until it's sorted.

Very interesting. I had a nice long walk around Newhaven last September, and got interested in the various lines around the quays, and this branch. Managed to pick up a reprinted OS map from 1938 of Newhaven South, which shows just how much railway there was in that town back then. Here are a couple of photos I took that day, one of what appears to be former East Quay trackbed and sleepers, and the derelict name board at the Tidemills halt.

I'm gradually gathering up a decent selection of brushes, paints and weathering powders, and had already had a go at weathering a couple of very old metal bodied mineral wagons, but having got that particular "bug", succumbed to buying a very cheap and reasonably cheerful airbrush kit to try my hand. It's really intended, I imagine, for doing nail art, or at least anything that doesn't mind the asthmatic little compressor not getting above 15psi and only delivering that in short bursts, but the brush itself doesn't seem bad, not that I would know! Anyway, it's serving the purpose for me to give airbrushing a go - I assume that if one day I buy some better kit, it will seem easier. Interestingly though, a stallholder at the Longfield show told me that for learners, a cheapo airbrush can be easier to get the hang of than an upmarket Iwata, though a compressor with an air tank is what one needs to aspire to. My first effort involved making a scratch "spray booth" out of some of the foam I'm using for landscaping my layout, but I quickly found that not having a ventilated one doesn't really work; even acrylic paint is something nasty you don't want to be breathing or tasting! Proper ventilated ones seem to go for £70+, but a scan of various forums showed me one idea, using a clear PVC storage box, with a small bathroom extractor fan fitted, the additional benefit being you can fit a light of some sort on top the illuminate the work. The originator of the post reckoned it cost him less than £30 with a B&Q fan, but that firm appears no longer to stock them, and I found a suitable one, with no timer or pull switch (not needed for obvious reasons), at online suppliers Plumbworld, which has turned out to be very quiet and smooth running. My only difficulty was cutting out a circle in the box without splitting it, but once the fan was installed, that covered the cracks and made the whole thing more rigid, so we'll see how long it lasts. The fan was from a range being discontinued, so a bargain price of around £7, I also bought a 3m length of flexible duct from the same source for around £3, a large Jubilee clip locally, and the suitable size box was £3.99, so inclusive of the postage from Plumbworld it all came together for around £19.50 - and it works. I had a suitable power cable hanging about the house, and wired it in to the fan. Luckily I can position it on a board over the old Belfast sink in our former kitchen turned workshop, and put the vent out of the window (Before anyone says, no, I don't have any water in the sink under my electric powered device!). It vents very well, though I quickly learned that the pipe end needs to be further out of the window if the wind is blowing, and I will rig up some kind of filter inside the box to help keep paint mist off the fan in due course. More airbrushing practice on unsuspecting rolling stock to follow. Using Lifecolor Frame Dirt and Roof Dirt a lot, with some odd touches of Rust powder etc. Huggy's home made spray booth, for less than £20. Bit of novice wagon weathering with cheapo airbrush kit doing most of the work. Does make bottom of the range Hornby rolling stock look better though.

That's odd. I've got a couple of the (tighter?) Setrack curved points on my progressing layout (very small baseboard overall), and the Hornby J52 that I recently disposed of ran pretty well through them, as does a Bachmann 03 shunter, though a fairly old 2-6-2 Ivatt tank with rather sloppy pony truck occasionally baulks and has derailed on occasion - but only when it faces one particular direction. By the way, I agree - Superquick kits are great, the goods shed goes together really well. Going to have a bash at weathering mine soon.

Wild Honey. - Webb Wilder

Never Tell your Mother She's Out of Tune - Jack Bruce

Part three of today's frantic bloggery should get me pretty much up to date with my little rookie railway modelling project. The track laying and first bit of ballasting on the scenic side of the layout went reasonably well, with just a little wailing and gnashing of teeth at having to take some up again here and there. Track is Peco 100 Setrack; the simple reason is, the finer scale track doesn't have turnouts that aren't too big for the room I have. Some flexi-track, second radius curves and No 2 points have been used though, and with what locos and units I've run so far, the dead frogs haven't been a problem if the track is kept clean, easy enough to do on a layout this size. The track is on cork bed throughout, the reason for doing it on the non-scenic side was simply so it lined up better at the baseboard joint. On reflection though, laying the track and THEN snipping through it at the joint with the cutters wasn't the best plan! Naturally, it kind of didn't really line up after that....... Track is stuck to the cork with Deluxe Adhesives excellent Speedbond super PVA; not too much is needed and it dries fast, and clear. Wiring is simple, for DC control. I put feeds in at four places on the oval, two on each board, and an extra one, not yet connected in, on the goods yard siding branch, in case it's needed later. At last buying a decent soldering iron (Antex) meant I got the job done along with a couple of connector blocks, and one for where my simple little Bachmann 5 controller plugs in. Points will be operated by the Great Hand in the Sky, at least for now. I have now decided that, to operate with just three sets of rolling stock at a time, the rear fiddle siding that goes to the right will eventually be cassette fed, for goods train marshalling mainly (Tillingham will have an invisible chalk quarry just down the line - it's located somewhere on the Kent/Sussex/Surrey borders near the North Downs by the way), and I need another short siding to the left just long enough to park up a one-coach motor train, the other longer one to accommodate the DMU set, which admirable and nice running though it is, seems to shed small details like horns if handled too much... Dart Castings items have been purchased for replacements. The extra siding will be laid when I pluck up courage to lever up the track that exists on that side. I have decided that 00 scale ballast is actually too big, this view reinforced by visiting a couple of decent exhibitions, so will probably use N gauge variety to complete the job. The Goods Yard will need a rough textured surface - advice on what sort of plaster/filler would be best for such a task, meanwhile the raised section that the town perches on has it's basics in place, and I've built part of the access road down to the station, and made a start on raising a bit of landform behind the platform, using 10mm medium high density foam panels, there will be a few slopes and retaining walls here and there to do, and the foam will form the basis over which I will lay some plaster bandage ground, and I've just acquired a static grass applicator for when it gets that far, but its a way off yet. I'm also anticipating delivery of a fairly basic airbrush set-up, with which to practice some stock and building weathering, as I've found there's only so much you can do with brushes. A likely victim on the loco front for a bit of dirtying up will be my Hornby M7 0-4-4T that's subbing for the H class that should arrive in the autumn. It was cheap enough for me not to worry about making a mess of things! I have also have a bash at weathering some old mineral wagons, and enjoy this side of it a lot, just one of the various things I'm having to learn at the end of my first year and a bit in the hobby. As I said before, all comments, tips and ideas gratefully received, and I'm finding other peoples blogs as well as RM and other magazines very inspirational indeed. I've decided 00 size ballast is a bit big, but I've only done between the rails so far, so can change the rest. At least I've found more than one colour of the stuff. Rail weathering soon .... The old M7 is likely to be the victim for my first loco weathering bash.... So is the goods shed, much too clean for 1960-ish BR! The access road down to the station starts here on the "hill", weathering a bit too enthusiastic perhaps?

Clearing a bit of space in the attic room that my good lady kindly permits me to use as an office/den/model railway and aeroplane room/music studio, still left only enough room for a layout no more than 4ft / 1200mm square. It has to be more or less central in the room, as the sloping roof would make running it round a wall difficult, even if there was enough clear space; there are a number of storage boxes also crammed in for general "stuff". I should point out, as we both have constructive hobbies, we converted our old kitchen into a joint workshop, me for planes and railways, she for jewellery making, after putting in a kitchen diner in half of our ground floor in the summer of 2015. Worktops at a good height, power light and water, a few fixed power tools e.g. Dremel and drill press stand, lots of storage space in the old cupboards (now pretty well full up of course) - all very handy, and the distance between workshop and layout / hangar two floor up gives one useful additional exercise! After sifting through free designs for small layouts on the net, I came up with the one you see here. I wanted a roundy-round layout to give trains a bit of a run, but with the front half nearest the camera scenic, and basic fiddle facility behind the scenes. This was started last autumn, two 4x2 baseboards being made as it may all need to be taken apart on occasion, should all far-flung offspring all return from various parts of the globe for a visit at once any time in the near future. The baseboards are typical ladder framed ply top jobs, carried on two modestly priced trestles, the only slight problem being that the floor is as level as all that; when the house had the attic converted to a third bedroom years ago, it had already been off-kilter for best part of a hundred years no doubt - it used to be a shop in the old days, next to another, which by coincidence was once a model shop! Anyway, after purchasing various secondhand bits of stock to get started on a bit of "playing trains", most of which has now been disposed of again to offest some of the cost of the project, I eventually decided that, being a Southern Man, having grown up in old South Eastern territory, a BR Southern region layout it should be. The nearby town of Rye, with it's station sited at the bottom of the hill the town stands on, was a bit of an inspiration, so Tillingham will have it's bit of townscape located at a higher level, to offset what will otherwise be a bog-standard flat railway layout, with low relief buildings in slightly under 4mm scale for a bit of perspective. I also tried to make it look just a bit less train set-ish, and gain some useful track length, by making the basic oval lay diagonally on the boards. The period will be late 1950s/early 60s, so I can use a bit of steam traction that I recall from childhood - H Class motor train (on advance order) with maybe a C class for freight, and their brief replacement a BR standard 2-6-2 or 2-6-4 tank, and for the later part of the period the Bachmann/Kernow Class 205 DMU. I treated myself to that long before any real scenic work was done, as the green set with small yellow panel they sell just happens to be one which in real life actually ran from my now home town of Hastings to and fro on the Marshlink line to Ashford - I probably travelled on it at some point! Had to have it, even if it busted the budget....... So these pictures are very early days, since then a scratch-built balsa based platform has been added, which is in all truth barely adequate for the two-car DMU, and only for use by the little 4mm scale passengers who have long-jump capabilities, but it does just fit. There will be the two-road goods yard with a coal merchants and the Superquick kit goods shed, maybe a bit of river in the front right hand corner, trains entering from the main line junction the other side of the hill through a tunnel, and exiting under a road bridge to the right. So far so good, one more post and I'll be up to date.... As you can see, the 205 DEMU only just fits in my platform - mind the gap everyone!

Hi - my railway interests have always included the byways rather than the highways; branch lines rather than main line expresses, odd industrial outposts of the old days, present day Heritage lines, that sort of thing. Hence, when I decided, as a long time model aircraft builder and flyer and with more time on my hands post-(semi) retirement, that I needed an additional hobby as weather patterns seemed to have gone a bit too much towards wet and windy down our way, model railways seemed a good wheeze. Along with, in no particular order, photography, various motor sport interests and playing bass guitar in a bar band. But where to start? Many wise men in various forums seemed to recommend something small, that you could finish fairly quickly. As we have little available space at home, that sounded like a plan. Having a few modest modelling skills from plane making gave me a bit of a start I suppose, and as will become apparent, balsa wood and adhesives etc intended for aero-modelling have found new uses on my layout(s) Project number one, with encouragement from a couple of local fellas into narrow gauge, saw me first make a 4 x 2ft baseboard, and plan a roundy-round industrial project, then abandon that for something even smaller before doing so much as lay a single inch of track. It will come in handy later, no doubt. So here it is, my little micro layout - pretty much a diorama really - which in a tiny space about 30" / 70mm x 10" / 250mm enabled me to try out track laying and ballasting, points control with wire in tube (aircraft control cable), basic landscaping with card and plaster bandage etc, building construction and backscenes, and a tentative start in weathering, in just about four months over the winter 2015/16. Buildings include Scalescenes downloads (the factory and terrace houses), the Metcalfe shop kit that came free with Railway Modeller in November '15, mildly customised, plus a scratch built balsa-based platform and ticket office, a diesel tank, and an overbridge across the exit to a "fiddle yard", one length of track for my little EBay sourced loco, hopper wagons and Liliput coach to potter up and down on. Sandyvale is a country town with quarrying nearby that supplies Sandyvale Building Products, makers of various concrete slabs, manhole sections etc, and who's boss (that's him in the factory doorway looking a bit like David Jason in Still Open All Hours) is a bit of a railway nut, and besides bringing in the aggregates, opens it up at weekends as a tourist attraction. The period is late 70's, early 80s. You may have seen these pics on another forum, but having settled on RM as my regular forum of choice, any appraisals are welcome, before the next blog, concerning my start in 00 gauge (as N gauge is a bit teeny for my slightly fading eyesight, and 009 a bit too niche without much secondhand stock to suit my fading bank balance. And I thought model flying was expensive!). Cheers all.

Wow, nice work!

Yeah, you're probably right, thinking about it. There are quite a lot of sub-sections already. Anyway, will be an interesting layout to follow, lots in a comparatively small space, with some great ideas. Good luck with all that wiring and ballasting mate!!

Like it! As a bit of a "newbie" myself, with just one test-piece 009 diorama behind me, and 50% of my new 00 project to go (which I may blog a bit of) it's always interesting to see what fellow rookies are up to, as well as pick the brains of the experts! Here's a thought : Maybe the forum could do with an additional sub-section in Layout Topics for "Novices layouts", so the simpler / less advanced / less tidy efforts of us guys can avoid boring the ones who've seen it all before, and encourage others who might not have all the tricks yet, but may come up with new gems.... like hiding a power socket in a hotel!

Great stuff, thanks guys. Really helpful, I'm finding some good info in this thread. Can I just quote you, CDF : "The beauty of the powders is that you can remove any surplus if you overdo it on plastics. I use a tiny drop of IPA on a cotton bud for this...." Will other beers do, I've only got some Hobgoblin just now? Or am I misinterpreting :)

I'm just getting in to weathering, and the results people are showing on here are all very impressive. I've got a selection mostly of Humbrol products, and one of the Tamiya triple sets, but the latter seems quite difficult to apply; it seems quite hard to get much on to the applicator they include. A few questions: To apply powders, what variety of brush, or alternative methods, are best? How do habitual "weatherers" clean their brushes? Mine seem to get very clogged up when using powders. As well as on rolling stock, what is best to use on card buildings and general structures? I just had a bash at a platform face, which I first sealed with matt varnish, and results are suitably grimey, but very patchy, and somewhat over-heavy in parts. I used Humbrol powder in MattCote as one of their videos suggests. On something else I had a go at, the printed (Scalescenes) brick paper discoloured - possibly because I didn't seal it well enough first. I noticed that damp fingers have a very bad effect too! All "rookie" tips gratefully received.

Keep pressing on and learning new skills in the hobby as I go, after my Rookie year. Finish my mini 00 layout Tillingham,and have a go at scratch building a modest bit of rolling stock. Happy New Year all.