Ben B

Guessing it'll become a boutique camping coach. Nice example though, and at least it will survive. There's quite a few bits in the NRM I fancy, reckon I could find room in the garden for the Port Carlisle coach, I need a new shed...

There seems to be two Angels- I used both in my pics. There's a smaller one, with toy like wheels at the wingtips, which came in a double pack with the armoured car. The bigger Angel (about on a par with the Airfix one) is nicer, but the pilot is horrifying, with big goggle-eyes. I recarved it to look like a full-face visor...

Class 97's rather than 37's, strictly speaking... the Cambrian Coast Express runs into Criccieth with the first excursion of the year. Being apparently the only photographer in town to lack a pole to stick the camera on too... After a nice afternoon on the beach, the weather had turned somewhat when myself and Elder Child went out to see the return at Minfford. Impressive, from this eye level from the public footpath. Lovely smell wafting down on us from the buffet carriage too :)

A couple from Whitby last Autumn during the half-term, where the NYMR's 31128 "Charybdis" was arriving into the town with a train from Grosmont.

I couldn't get the transfers to apply to most of mine, the kits were so old the transfers fell to bits or wouldn't separate from the backing paper. How did you get on with the SPV? I found it a very odd kit- the 'working' features really complicated the build (it had all the gubbins to motorise it, but not a motor itself which it said had to be bought seperately), and the caterpillar tracks at the back didn't work well with the aged rubber tracks, but the body moulding was rather nice. Again, I struggled with the transfers, but it was fun to paint even if I made a mare of the shade. The can of spray I bought turned out to be a different shade, and rather watery, compared to the label.

Those are some nicely turned-out builds! I notice your Cloudbase still has the missiles, mine pinged off somewhere across the garden, to confuse future homeowners or archaeologists ;) The Sky 1 looks good, I'd not come across that one before. I think it's what annoys me about these Imai kits. there's some good bits there, but they're either slightly too kit-like to be toys, but too toy-like to be kits. Though I will say, the larger Angel went together nicely and if anything, I think I slightly prefer it over the aged Airfix example.

True, but it was in running order a few years ago, a colleague visited the yard for a photoshoot and spoke to the foreman about it. The Ruston is also of some significance apparently, being an ex-military loco. Hopefully if the industrial museum doesn't want Prince of Wales, somewhere like the Middleton Railway might have it. Even in it's current state it's probably not beyond saving, and given that there's not many industrial diesel locomotives that hit the market these days, someone might want it. I wonder if the Ruston 88ds pair that were acting as overgrown buffer stops still exist? They were at the station end of the yard, seem to have been there since the 1980's out of use.

It took me a while to get this one done; I picked it up last summer from the wargaming shop in Llandudno, but only got around to finishing it in April! I've never been a massive one for playing Warhammer, but I'm into the books (the "Ciaphas Cain" and "Gaunts Ghosts" series are terrific), and I love the models and designs. It was my friend Owen buying himself a Rhino (for a tenner! Ah, 1995, those were the days) that first got me into 40K, and I soon bought myself a Rhino kit with my pocket money, starting me down the 40K route. The kits tend to be high quality, and when the Rhino was updated and re-released a couple of years back, I had to get one of the new takes on the design. Modern 40K tends to be very high-quality, nicely detailed kits in excellent-quality plastic. We do a lot of the figure sets with our Scout group, Citadel supply a large box with figures and paints, and basic versions of the game rules. I hadn't built one of the vehicles in a while though, so the Rhino was a bit of a refresher. Though a rare problem here- there's a design fault with getting the floor plate to attach to the side assemblies. Apparently this is a fault of the kits, other modellers complain about it... nothing a little bit of filing-down couldn't cure, but a surprising little slip-up at the design stage. The model assembled. It harkens back to the original 1990's Rhino but looks a bit beefier and heavy duty. The mouldings are nice and crisp. Undercoated in black acrylic. Rather than use proper Citadel paint shades for the main coat (I was in Wales at the time and didn't have any to hand) I ended up using a tin of gloss yellow from Wilkos. Which I suppose could now be counted as an antique... I'd also lost the transfer sheet somewhere in the intervening year, but luckily a chap on eBay was selling some cheaply. When I was first into 40K I collected Dark Angels marines (painted in green), but for a change thought I'd go down a brighter route with this model, and went for the Imperial Fists in yellow. A bit of dry-brushing dirt, and a wash of Nuln Oil (my favourite go-to for weathering vehicles) bought it all together. Trying to think where a bright yellow IFV would blend-in, I thought I'd take it with me to the beach :) Point of fact I was in Criccieth to get some shots of the Cambrian Coast Express... ...like so... ...and knew I'd have a couple of hours to kill. I rather like getting miniatures pics out in the real world, trying some forced perspective, natural lighting shots. Back near the caravan we were stopping in, I thought I'd try some pics up on the hillside where the moss helps the forced-perspective work. Shame about the weather. I thought I'd have another go when we're back in May- same shop in Llandudno, I managed to get one of the Imperial Guard Rogal Dorn heavy battle tank kits which had been out of stock near where I live, so if I manage to get that built in time, I'll be trying for some more pics soon... It's also re-kindled my interest in a long-stalled project, building an armoured train. A few second-hand purchases of Guard tank kits, and two cheapy Newray G gauge train sets later, hopefully I can get that project underway over the summer :)

Spon Lane again; during the final few years before the works closed, the pro-railway management often hired-in small steam locomotives from preservation societies to supplement their fleet, and attract enthusiasts for paid photo charters. On a misty October morning, Pug 51218 (visiting from the Worth Valley Railway) waits for the doors to A-Shop to be opened, so it can collect a couple of loaded wagons.

Father-in-law who lives in Bingley popped in earlier, said when he drove past this week it looked like the scrap was all gone, and the diesel shunters were parked up under the road bridge. Hope they don't get the chop... the blue Hunslet has local significance, being a survivor from the Esholt Sewerage Works lines; it would be nice to see it join the tank loco from there up at Bradford Industrial Museum.

Cracking photos! Incidentally, the scrapyard is now being cleared and redeveloped, though happily still for railway use. It's going to house a servicing point and depot for Northern, for the Airedale and Wharfedale EMU fleets apparently. Always wish I'd made more effort to photograph the scrap trains when I moved to the area in 2007, they were still just about clinging on. And I wonder what will happen to the industrial diesels still on site...

Some great modelling- I really like the logical approach to the designs being taken, and the fact this sort of imaginative freelancing is very rare in standard gauge 00. Those triple-electrics are absaloute beasts!

Creative choice to make the final result greyscale, but not convinced by the foreground greenery photo-shopped in to hide the baseboard edge. Nice touch to use the blur filter on that layer though :)

I pre-ordered "Welsh Pony" from Frizinghall models, better get off my backside and build that micro layout for it now :)

I keep forgetting which photos vanished in the crash. Think I have the original pics archived on a flash drive somewhere. Funnily enough I was thinking of revisiting this for a 4mm micro layout in the 'transition period'... Steampunk to Dieselpunk. Would allow me to do a monorail using some old Triang TC diesel bodies I found in a scrap box :)

The view from the Foreman's office... it's a warm night at Spon Lane in 1979, as the night shift take a tea break. Unnoticed by the men, a fox darts along the towpath beneath. (I've dug out some unused pics from the diorama as I start on a proper micro layout of all this)

Sorry for the confusion caused- I gather it's something close to gauge 2, yes. A fellow modeller in the US says he heard from a Lionel rep it was a commercial descision to keep the Ready to Play range exclusive and incompatible with other manufacturers. Some of the trains can be re-gauged, it varies from the relatively easy (the diesel), to the tricky (Hogwarts), to the nightmarish (Polar Express). Lionel must have cottoned on, as more recent trains are glued together, not screwed, so no chance of re-gauging without massive effort. Where it gets confusing, is Lionel used to make a lot of this to actual 45mm gauge. I do wonder if Hornby thought they were getting the G trains, rather than isolated, incompatible sets. It's a shame, the point of the project was to explore Hornby using this toy range as a sneaky back-door to the garden railway market, especially as firms like Playmobil have given up on it.

Head-on at Betws-Y-Coed a few weeks ago :)

Going large; hopefully this counts, it's still in the spirit of the topic :) I've done a project which has ended up in "The Collector" for Hornby, looking at a 'what-if' revival of the Triang Big Big name. The idea is that Hornby made a wider range based off those Lionel "Hogwarts Express" sets they imported a few years ago, so I extrapolated from what was in the Lionel RTP range already. Wanting a tank loco, I thought I'd do some repaints of the Thomas set (what with Hornby not having the Thomas license any more). Repaints underway, with the faces removed. I didn't want to do too much modification, figuring that in the early days of this hypothetical range, Hornby wouldn't want to tool new toys for the junior market, but just commission repaints for the UK. The inspiration was this toy, a re-liveried Thomas push-along. In hindsight I wish I'd shortened the smokebox, but I was re-using the Lionel components and design, including the plug-in baseplate which held the face. The new smokebox was a bit of a cobbled-together job (being near the end of the project) using a rubber and plastic furniture castor, plastic sprue, and some bits from medical cannulas (unused scrap stock at the day job). Bright yellow version for a more 'toy' set, following the "Polly"/"Nellie"/"Connie" tradition :) There's a very, very vaguely-outlined plan for a layout if a house move comes off, or maybe re-gauging from Lionel's stupid wide gauge down to 45mm...

Love the 21" micro layout, so really looking forward to seeing this develop :)

True, but I was thinking that the Welsh Government have already formally admitted they'll abandon Fairborne when the time comes, so will the Cambrian Coast line through the village be diverted or defended? Of course if by then they've gone through with the plan to restore Bangor-Afonwen, which gets talked about periodically, then that'll be an option to keep the coastal towns served even if Fairborne goes under.

Love the bright yellow van, but the modeller should probably have weathered it before popping it on the layout :)

According to google translate, it's "how how!" and Corsican. Guessing it's some kind of witty tag for the 'artist' but damned if I know the context... still, lucky he didn't get zapped writing that high up on the nose of an electric unit...

I mentioned the other day about my BR red American tank loco. Finally found the box it was hiding in! Still not sure on manufacturer. And it's untested... but it's staying as it is, part of the collection. I have a spare body in plain black, as I fancy a very unlikely yellow/black chevron-liveried example for my Spon Lane layout, an industrial internal-user line in a 1970's West Mids engineering works. Why they'd even have a US switcher... is a problem for Future Ben to work out ;)

I'd been thinking something like a 101 for the views and big windows, as well as a heritage atmosphere which might attract some extra punters. To be honest, what the Conwy line actually, probably, needs are just more trains a day, as does the Coast. That would need Transport for (South) Wales to get their affairs in order though, and appreciate what exists north of the Heads of the Valley road. Given I read yesterday they are actually cutting some Cambrian Coast services, retiming others, and punting the summer-only hourly Shrews-Aber trains to 2026, it seems unlikely...