David C

A very convincing model of a completely fictitious prototype! Can one go on holiday there? Seriously, though, there is some very good scenic work there. It would be nice to see some more shots of the railcars ..... and any other stock as well. David C

No problem as I've spent the last few days stewarding and building/demolishing barriers at Ally Pally, so no modelling time! Thanks for letting me know what you use - I'll have to check out The Range. David C

The little cameos and details, all beautifully executed, really make Broadwindsor fascinating to view. I find your work quite inspiring, particularly as I'm toying with the idea of building another layout to take out to exhibitions. My current one (Woodstowe) is really too heavy for me to handle on my own (or I'm too old and feeble to lift the baseboards easily!) to take out to exhibitions, so I'm thinking of building a smaller lightweight version to hawk around the circuit. Something with all the small scenes similar to Broadwindsor would be ideal. Thanks for giving me lots of ideas! David C

Can I ask what you used to spray the base carmine colour of your autocoaches? Did you use Halfords? The reason I ask is I've sprayed my coaches and ended up with differing shades! Both look right, but different! Nice modelling! David C

Thanks for letting me know about the SR van. Fascinating van - alas, I guess it was probably scrapped before my period, the 1950s, so even if I could locate a surviving 3D one, it would be too anachronistic even for my interpretation of Rule No 1! David C

Brilliant phots of a brilliant layout - as ever! One query: what's the first van (or third wagon) behind 4574? I'm sure it's correct for your period, but it looks rather like one of those featured on mid Victorian prints of the Liverpool & Manchester and London & Birmingham! David C

I've never felt the need to add texture to DAS, but you could try any or all of the following: 1) How about using cloth of some kind (with a loose weave) and either laying over wet DAS or wrapping your finger round the cloth and then dabbing the DAS. 2) Alternately, sprinkle very fine flock powder onto wet Das and then pressing it in. You might have to seal it after it is dry. Have a look at Eine Sekundärbahn in Layout topics, particularly Page 2. You may not appreciate German railways and the buildings are all plastered, but Tim Hale's scenic work is pretty good. 3) Yet another alternative has just occurred to me: sprinkle with different sizes of flock! If you want individual stones to project out differently, the only thing I can think of is to cut out some random bits of styrene of varying thicknesses and sizes and then stick them to the base before applying the DAS. Hope this helps. David C

What scale are you working in - and what kind of stone are you trying to reproduce? If 4mm, I'm not sure you need much in the way of texture, particularly if its dressed stone. When it's dry, you will probably need to sand it down a little. As Siberian Snooper points out, you may well throw up furrows if you impress the DAS when wet. I've only ever sanded with fine grade sandpaper, but you could try with a medium or even coarse grade instead. Incidentally, I've also sanded down the Wills coarse stone sheets. Although its a reasonably good product (it's the only Wills stuff where the courses actually match up to each other!), it is very recognisable. It's so common these days that you only need to look at a layout and you know what the builder has used! Sanding the sheets down a little changes their appearance considerably, depending on how heavily you do it. If you want a fairly flat finish, you may lose some of the courses between the stones, but these can be scribed in again - but that rather defeats the object of using the Wills sheets in the first place. A light sanding can still make the sheets different enough from the unsanded ones. David C

There was one of those wonderfully detailed articles that were a speciality of the late and much lamented GWRJ on the Aberayron branch some years ago. During the inter war years, a couple of 4 wheel coaches were parked at the terminus for many years. However, no one could ever remember them turning a wheel. Again, the Wild Swan book on the Looe branch records that there were two B sets in use, but also another 2 "singletons", both non corridor brake 3rds. They were there to be added to service trains should any random (Japanese or other) tourists suddenly appear out of the blue. Passengers to Looe were fairly thin on the ground outside of the tourist season (particularly Japanese!), so whether these coaches were stationed there permanently or only during the summer is moot. Going off topic slightly, odd singletons were not uncommon on other branch lines. A brake compo was allocated to the Bodmin branch and used on only one service each day (presumably for school children), between Bodmin Road and the terminus, a distance of what is (I think) less than 3 miles! Source is again GWRJ, this time the Special Cornish Issue! David C

Looks like a really good layout which captures the run down and overgrown nature of the prototype. Any more pictures and details of the locos and stock? I'd love to see it in the flesh, too. David C

One of the reasons which I think make your layouts so realistic is your use of texture. Roads, paths, platforms, yards etc do have texture, but it is much finer and subtler than ballast (even that intended for N gauge) which a lot of modellers use. This is what I have been trying to achieve in recent years, with what I hope is some measure of success. As I am toying with extending both my layouts, I am curious about AcrylMasse - is this a Heki product? David C

Nice to watch progress on your layout. The standard of modelling on Pottendorf/Grafenwalde is admirable. Am I right in assuming you are still keeping the Bavarian buildings and stock and simply swopping them over with the East German equivalents from time to time? I had thought of doing something similar with my layout (Weidenstein) as I have an as yet unbuilt kit of the same building, but have no use for it at the moment. Auhagen (who produce the kit) state that the prototype was at the terminus of a metre gauge line in Prussia, but it was a standard design in other states which were under the influence of Berlin. Attached is a photo of an example from Kalenborn, the end of the Kasbachtalbahn which runs from Linz on the east bank of the Rhine. The photo dates from 1984 when the branch was still run by the DB, albeit goods only, though these days it survives as a heritage line. The design is almost exactly the same at the kit except that the bricked areas are built with coursed stone and the Goods shed is on the other end of the building. I look forward to seeing Grafenwalde as it develops. David C

Wasn't Gwinear Road the terminus of all the mainline pick up goods to and from Penzance? Can't remember where I read that, but it would explain the number of sidings there. David C

If you are interested in prototypical operation, then another consideration is what kind of trains you run. Push pull trains are pretty boring: all you can do is run them in and out. The same is true of railcars and DMUs. A conventional train is marginally more interesting as the loco has to run round, but even then, it can get boring! The most fascinating part of model railway operation - for me, at any rate - is shunting. NCPS vehicles carrying parcels, milk churns etc can be added to and detached from passenger services and shunted to and from a loading dock, private siding etc. More heavily patronised trains can have additional coaches added or detached in a similar fashion. But the really interesting part of operation is running goods trains. Passenger trains tend to run at set times with the same stock almost every day, as do freight trains, but the amount and kind of traffic conveyed varies considerably, particularly agricultural. In the days of steam, most food was grown or reared in the UK and this was seasonal. The same was true of coal which in pre North Sea oil days was the primary source of energy for both homes and industry. The secret to adding interest to shunting is to have a lot of "destinations" at your station e.g. goods shed, crane, coal merchants area, feed merchants store, end loading dock etc etc. Specialised traffic wagons, such as cattle wagons would not appear very often and when they did, they would have to be shunted to the dock. Wagons carrying heavy loads and containers would need to be placed next to the crane and so on. Then of course on those lines which did not necessarily have a lot of goods traffic, these were often handled on mixed goods and passenger trains. These lasted well into BR days, too. Finding information on prototype timetables and the way trains were handled is pretty difficult. One of my layouts is an ex GWR BLT (see Woodstowe in Layout Topics - sorry, digitally challenged and can't post a link) which I play with using the timetables of two real life branches, Cardigan and Helston. The timetable for the former is reproduced on page 2 of my Woodstowe thread if you're interested. I found the information in the Oakwood histories of the lines plus a great deal more detail in the late lamented Great Western Journal. The latter has included a great deal of info on other GWR branches over the years as well, much of which has been gained from the reminiscences of railwaymen who actually worked the lines. For other prototypes, I don't know what other similar sources other than the histories of specific lines and possibly prototype societies . Is there a S & DJR one? Alternatively, there are members of RM Web who were professional railwaymen who might be able to help. Have fun with playing trains prototypically! David C

I've used DAS on many of my stone buildings over the years using many of the techniques outlined in Dave Rowe's classic book "Architectural Modelling in 4mm Scale". I don't know if its still in print, but it is well worth acquiring if you can get hold of a copy. DAS is simply smeared onto the styrene sheet and left to dry. You can sand the styrene beforehand if you wish - I do in any case, but only so I can see pencil marks - but I don't think it absolutely necessary. Whilst still wet, the DAS is impressed with the outline of the individual stones using the wrong end of a scalpel blade (careful!) or, as Mr Rowe suggests, bits of brass sections. As you proceed, you may (will!) find yourself thinking certain sections aren't up to scratch, but if the DAS is still damp, you can wet it and redo what you don't like. There is a tendency for the courses being embossed to either head upwards or downwards. Of course, some prototypes do wander up and down - that is part of their appeal - but if they all head in one direction, it wont look very realistic. It is worth keeping an eye out for this - I usually look at photos of real buildings to see how they vary. How does DAS adhere to the styrene? This is the clever bit (and it works with Polyfilla and other similar fillers). When dry, DAS is porous, so it simply needs flooding with Mek Pak to make it adhere. Make sure the sides and ends and the window and door apertures are soaked as well. It evaporates pretty quickly and can be further worked on almost immediately. Dave Rowe recommends DAS is spread over the building or whatever in a thinnish layer of about 1mm for stonework with mortar which is in good condition and a thicker one of about 2mm for walls with mortar which has decayed or fallen out. I prefer layers of about 2mm partly because if the building you are creating was built of dressed stone, you will need to sand the DAS down to represent it (after it has dried and been flooded with solvent). You can also add mortar by applying a watery mix of plaster to the courses and then wiping it off the surfaces of the stones before it dries. As the plaster mix dries, it shrinks enough to leave a 3D impression of stones which are proud of the mortar. One other thing I would advise is to make the stones at the corners of the building individually out of styrene and those around door and window apertures. The reason is that it is virtually impossible to do this with DAS and you usually end up with a rounded corner, which looks unrealistic to my eyes at least. I've never used DAS to represent brickwork, but I'm not sure if it would work. DAS is fibrous and you may find it difficult to get the straight, hard outlines of bricks. You could try ordinary Polyfilla or similar instead. I'll attach a couple of shots of some of the buildings built with DAS on my layout. Ignore the goods shed as that was built using Wills sheets, but the low relief maltings at the rear of the layout and the barn in the other photo were made of styrene and DAS. Have fun. David C