HonestTom

I'm currently researching the same place and time (and I would also point you in the direction of coline33, who has provided a lot of useful information on the PLA railways). While I haven't specifically researched the boat trains, there is a photo of an LMS one on my thread here. It's hauled by an LMS 4F, one of the examples modified for running over the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway. I've seen photos of Ivatt 4MTs on the boat trains to Tilbury, but I don't know if they were used in the Royal Docks.

Many thanks to everyone for the information and advice here, it's very much appreciated. For the time being, I'm inclined to keep it plain black - I'm going to weather it anyway. Possibly when I'm feeling a little more confident in my lining abilities, I'll try for something more technically accurate, but I think I'll rely on a combination of scale, distance and dirt to hide my sins here.

If it would help, I took some fairly extensive photographs of Pet last time I was at the NRM.

Petite Properties do a couple of small industrial buildings. In Bachmann's old Underground Ernie range, now defunct, there was a kit called 'Industrial Units' which was a pair of small northlight buildings that can easily be converted into something more realistic (I just got a couple of a Certain Auction Website for £10, to give you an idea of pricing for second-hand examples). It's not card or plastic, but Townstreet do an excellent range of resin castings for industrial buildings that can be either used in low relief or can be built up into full-size buildings. You might also consider looking at the website textures.com. This is primarily intended for graphic designers, but is ideally suited for modellers looking for backscene photos - not least because you can download several images for free. Their industrial buildings section may be of interest, as might the derelict.

I should have specified - it's the ready-to-run version. Basically the situation is that I'm toying with the idea of a pre-grouping micro, as I've recently been painting/bashing some pre-grouping wagons. The current motive power is a Hornby Peckett, but it happens that I have a spare pug in LMS livery bought for a project that didn't wind up happening in the end. My thinking was that if I painted this, it would be a perfect addition to the project at minimal cost. Basically, it's less a case of "I need an L&Y pug" and more "it would be nice if I could repaint the one I have, but it's not the end of the world."

Hi all, I'd like to repaint my old Dapol pug in Lancashire and Yorkshire livery. While I've come across a couple of sources for the cabside number plates, the lining is giving me the heebie-jeebies. However, looking at photos of the pugs during L&Y days, I can't make any lining out. One of the preserved examples, no. 19, is plain black. What I'm wondering is, were the pugs always lined out, or could I get away with simply keeping it in plain black? Many thanks in advance.

I'd call that a definite success. Colonel Stephens seems to have been remarkably fond of that name...

I’m gearing up for some proper bashes, but in the meantime, here’s a project I’ve been wanting to do for a while. Possibly my favourite pre-Grouping company is the Metropolitan Railway, so here’s my attempt at a couple of their ballast wagons. M and E are surprisingly difficult letters to do freehand, and 241 is a guess - in none of my books on the railway could I find details of wagon numbering.

What era are you going for? I was wandering past Vauxhall the other day, and the arches there include a couple of bars, a restaurant and a sauna. In steam days, these arches housed a dairy, of all the unlikely industries.

I've often idly wondered if a decent model could be made of the Hornby D class, and it's great to see that yes, it can. I've always found the D-class strangely appealing - it doesn't quite look like anything else. Beckton Gasworks also built a couple of locos in-house based on Barclay machines, but received a sharp legal rebuke that prompted them to go back to buying in in future. I would guess it's because it has inside motion (thus saving the cost of a couple of bits of metal), has a fairly basic outline (so not much chance of breakage) and has a chunky shape (so a motor can easily fit in).

The visual image is definitely what comes to me first. I'll start with "I would like to build this kind of scene," then mentally translate that into how the layout will look. However, I'm not so hot on the practical side, so I might envision, say, a track layout that won't quite work, or fitting more into the available space than is physically possible. Oddly enough, when I'm working in theatre on props, costume or set, I tend to be much more practically minded. I suppose that's because I'm working to someone else's requirements, so the process is "we need this" => imagine prototype => mentally break it down => physically make it.

I fear the methods I used for the cottage might not be so useful for the detached house, but on the offchance that it is, the method I used was... 1. Painted the chimney in a cement colour, then picked out the individual stones in a darker colour and the chimney pot in terracotta. Once that was dry, I used some cheap black eyeshadow from the local pound shop to add some soot around the pot. 2. Painted the rendered panels white. Then, while the paint was still tacky, sprinkled talcum powder on to add texture. Where it got on to the timbers, I brushed it off as best I could. 3. Carefully painted the timbers, the window frames and the door dark brown, then added thin washes of even darker browns to add depth to the wood texture. 4. Painted the thatch brown to represent old straw, then again added thin washes of dark brown to add texture. 5. Picked out the doorknob and hinges with a black pen. 6. Added some ivy up the side, using fine turf scatter. It currently sits on a micro-layout of mine that's in storage, but I'll see if I can get some pictures at some point.

Those BTF films are a great resource for modellers, I've been known to spend entire evenings on YouTube clicking from film to film. There are some great ones intended for staff instruction. I think my favourite is a rather strange one called 'The Driving Force,' trumpeting the virtues of the Modernisation Plan with some rather artsy photography and bizarre music.

I was bored and I had some spare wagons with no plan in mind, so I painted a couple up for the Ankh-Morpork and Sto Plains Hygienic Railway. One’s an open wagon, which may wind up carrying agricultural produce, and the other is an ore hopper from the mountains of Uberwald. I figured that like many 19th century railways, the AM&SPHR would mark their wagons with a symbol, specifically an ankh. Given that the railway goes to places where they don't speak Morporkian, this would also serve to identify the wagons to the "less enlightened" people of the Sto Plains (and dwarves, trolls etc). Rather than attempt to fit "AM&SPHR" on every wagon, I've limited the lettering to "AM," which Lord Vetinari would no doubt consider to be the most important point. I think the grey is perhaps a little too light, meaning that the faded lettering doesn't show up very well. If I do any more, I'll go for a darker shade.

I really like the figures. Often in large scales, I find the figures let the layout down, but these ones are really well painted.

It's a Great Northern J50.

The darkest take on the Hogwarts Express is undoubtedly the version in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century: 2009, which got caught in the crossfire of a magical rampage by Harry, and I will only describe as "messy." However, it appears to be based on a Black 5 or possibly a Jubilee, despite one of the characters asserting that "it's like a child's idea of how a train should work." It's later implied that Thomas the Tank Engine and Ivor the Engine also fell victim. If anyone wanted to model this version, it would be a challenge, but I doubt you'd get many exhibition invites...

If you're going freelance, then you have a fairly free hand. The types of locomotive used varied from port to port, and even from dock to dock within the same port. For instance, the Port of London's Royal Docks were worked by rugged 0-6-0s, but their more tightly curved Millwall docks were the preserve of 0-4-0s. However, as others have noted, there were plenty of ports that allowed larger locomotives in. An interesting scenario might be exchange sidings, where your dock locomotives can exchange wagons with larger main line engines. With this, the sky is the limit in terms of larger engines. If passenger engines are more to your taste, you could model a passenger terminal where boat trains would meet the liners, like the ones at Southampton or Tilbury. These were built to take larger locomotives.

I think it has potential. There have been beginner blogs before, but everyone's experience of starting model railways will be different. As long as it's well written, it will find an audience. What I would suggest is to look out other blogs and see if there's any angle you can use to make your blog stand out.

There was a tram layout set in Leeds which I seem to recall had a rainy effect. Very atmospheric.

As Monty Python would say, “And now for something entirely dissimilar.” Here’s a Lancashire and Yorkshire wagon that I painted up as an experiment to see if I could. The donor is a Hornby 3-plank dropside. Basically, I saw a photo of a similar wagon on the L&Y society website, and having a suitable wagon with no plans for it, I decided to go for it. People complain about the lack of pre-grouping stock, but it’s not that hard to produce your own. Underground Ernie seethes in the background, bitter that his railcar is to be dismantled for spares.

According to Pottermore, it's in Scotland. Exactly where is unknown - the films imply Morayshire (Dufftown is said to be near) and one of the books mentions a map of Ayrshire hanging on the wall. One fantasy railway I've applied a lot of thought to is the Ankh Morpork and Sto Plains Hygienic Railway, which I think would be great fun to model. Pratchett really does his research into railway history in Raising Steam, but of course it remains quirky and fantastical. I think the pre-grouping GWR would be a good place to start, as we know the AM&SPHR's works are at Swine Town. The cover of the paperback version clearly depicts a Metropolitan A class, but I would guess these are only used on the suburban services through New Ankh (or possibly the dwarf tunnels that Lord Vetinari learned about in Thud!, which are signposted with a dwarfish rune consisting of a circle with a line across it).

I don't think it's a bad idea, it's not like they're dieselising the layout forever or rebuilding the whole thing to represent the diesel era. It's just a few trains.

Which house is it? I recently did the thatched cottage.

Many thanks, fortunately a 1 is an easy number to add... Re kitbashing, there are plans afoot. I was thinking I'd have a go at cutting one of those Hornby Toad Bs up when it comes out to represent a PLA brake van, and it looks to me from the footage mentioned above like they had at least one ex-LSWR road van, so I think Smallbrook Studio is going to be getting some of my hard-earned dosh. In the long run, I'd like to do more of the vans, but I want to get a bit more confident before I tackle them. The next PLA wagons in line will be some of those timber-carrying flat wagons, which look to be little more than a deck laid on top of a wooden underframe. Other plans for this layout include a short train of fruit vans, one of meat vans, one of grain hoppers and a bashed Triang trestrol. The latter will be carrying one of the larger, more cumbersome loads that would have gone through the docks (perhaps a bridge girder). It strikes me that the docks are a great excuse to include all sorts of unusual wagons and loads. When I mentioned my plans to my brother, he did say "So how big are you actually planning this layout to be?" It's fair to say that I already have far more wagons than I can fit on the planned micro, but I just really enjoy wagon painting. Thanks for that photo - it does appear in a couple of books I own, but too small to make out the detail on the loco, which looks to me like one of the ones modified for the LTSR lines. Your post is much better. Ta. Based on my research (which admittedly has been carried out mostly using the esteemed experts at Google Image Search), it seems to me that the vast majority of wagons seen on these systems would be main line ones. In London, ex-LNER vans (such as those Bachmann produce) seem to be very prominent. If you're specifically doing the PLA, the reason I selected the wagons I did was because they were ones I got from photos or that I knew were definitely on the PLA. In general, dock companies seem to have just got whatever they could get cheap, so any old pre-Grouping-looking wagon would do. What are conspicuous by their absence among my rolling stock are vans, due to the fact that there are so few suitable prototypes available ready to run. In reality, the PLA had an awful lot of vans for transfer of cargo. However, if you're planning to freelance it, you could get away with the old Hornby Hull & Barnsley van or the Triang closed van repainted.