Barry Ten

Thanks, all! Proof of how inspiring a day in the good company of friendly modellers can be. Roll on the next member's day!

Graham - as you've probably gathered, I'm not averse to running the layout as if it is somewhere else in the country, such as Cornwall. Thanks for the kind words. Olddudders: you're quite right about the roof but there's a reason for it - the roof is due to be replaced, so I haven't put snow on it yet. I have some Wills sheeting ready to go on over the original card roof. The other cottage in the winter scene does have snow on it, but I don't seem to have a picture of it yet.

Cheers, Neil. The flowers need a bit more work, don't they? My wife's going to have a look at them later, she won't hold back, especially as she's got a bit of a thing about bluebells. Let me know if you're ever back up this neck of the woods, needless to say - would be delighted to show you the layout.

Being a lazy sort I've generally got by with taking photos the easy way - whack the camera on aperture priority and hope for the best, basically. However tonight I decided it was time to bite the bullet and have a fiddle with some different metering modes and manual white balance. I don't know but to my eye these photos get a lot closer to what the layout looks like in the flesh, to to speak - there's none of the pink cast present in the other pics, even though I fiddled around with the colour balance on those quite a bit. These are straight out of the camera, with just a bit of cropping. Here's my old Hornby 4F, recently given a new lease of life with a decoder and renumbering/weathering job. 44422 was one of the left hand drive variants which ran on the S&D. I can see why people have a problem with tender drive generally but these Airfix-style units seem quite decent to me, and the ones in the 4F and the 2P definitely respond to a decoder well. I shortened the loco/tender gap but otherwise haven't done much to the model, which runs very well at low speeds. And here's the T9 again. Quite liked this one so thought I'd have a go in b&w as well: While things seemed to be going well I had a bash at taking some shots of the winter module, but these haven't come out as well, I think. The colour balance seems spot-on (this is what the sky looks like in real life) but the images are quite grainy. Some more experimentation needed, obviously.

Very nice, I must do that headcode box mod on mine.

Interesting, Graham. It took me a few attempts to get my head around the programming of the Walthers turntable, which also has a sort of "learn" mode. The instructions for these things never seem quite as comprehensive as the writers imagine.

Thanks, all. I'm having some trouble with getting "punch" into my photos here, not sure why. They tend to look a little underexposed, even though I'm using aperture priority, tripod, timed shutter etc. I don't have the same problem taking shots on the N scale layout, which is only 18 inches lower than the S&D one. I wonder if the fluorescent tubes are somehow messing up the exposure, even though they're not visible in the frame when I compose the shot? Perhaps I need to spot meter off the loco/scenery - could it be that the large expanse of sky backscene is confusing things?

The red ones are just some old coloured scatter I've had for donkey's years - maybe Noch or something similar. I've also used some MiniNature tufts and Noch laser-cut daffodils here and there. Agree with you about the headcode, by the way :-)

Too late now! I ripped out the red flowers this evening and changed them for some purpley bluey white ones which look a bit like bluebells. The red ones will look good on the high summer module, though.

Thanks for the kind words, all.

Ballasting is now complete, track weathering has begun and I've taken another look at the occupation crossing on the spring module. I'd originally placed the pillbox in front of the railway line but I found I was always moving it whenever I wanted to take a photo. The solution was to relocate it toward the background, on the other side of the line, and fill in the ground it occupied with a bit of hanging basket liner. The pillbox is now just plonked down on the existing scenery, making it easily removable. Last week I added some red flowers but while these add a welcome splash of colour, I think they detract a little from the spring atmosphere I'm after, so they'll have to go, to be replaced by dandelions, daffodils, buttercups etc, and/or perhaps some bluebells. Modelling a specific season has had me paying a lot more attention to old railway photos, no bad thing really as it adds another dimension of interest to much-perused railway albums. If it's spring it must be close to summer as this 7F has been rostered for passenger duty on a rake of MK1s. The coaches have been close-coupled using the Keen system, which is very easy to fit - one of those excellent products which does what it says on the tin.

Here's the 1/24th Trumpeter Hurricane Mk1 I have been building for 5 years - still needs a few fragile parts added, and some upper-body weathering, then it's done. It is quite a big kit, but oddly it looks smaller now that it's painted and decal'ed - or have I just got used to its size over the years? Just finished this Tamiya Panzer II - still have to make a little base/diorama for it: I went a bit gung-ho with the weathering, but it is nice to be able to do that occasionally. And finally - not weathered at all, and in need of some toning down - a 1/72nd Revell Stearman trainer: It's a slippery slope, this non-railway modelling, but very addictive... and yet another reason to spend time in model shops - what's not to be liked?

It's based on the Gaugemaster one. I cut the land off and discarded the sky, then glued the land bits onto a sky blue backing (the land on the original sheets came up too high for my liking) and then airbrushed the lot with white to fade it down.

One of the great things about yesterday's very enjoyable RMweb member's day - due thanks to all involved for their hard work - was that I came away itching to try my hand at achieving some of the brilliant scenic effects I'd seen during the show on a number of layouts. In particular I was impressed by the textures and variety of scenic effects on Re6/6's fantastic Netherhope Halt diorama, which I kept coming back to with a view to taking mental notes. Tonight I got out the scenic box and spent a fun half hour adding some more texture and overgrowth to the spring module, particularly around the area of the brook. Most of this was in the way of weeds and flowers, although I'd like to come back and add some more static grass at some point. Treating layout building as a journey, rather than a destination, I'm happy to keep coming back to this area from time to time and as mood suits. Keen-eyed viewers will also note that the track is now partly ballasted, although it is still be lightly weathered. After years of using dilute PVA, by the way, for the purposes of this layout I am using dilute Copy-Dex, which has the effect of remaining slightly springy and sound-absorbant. Other than that the ballasting method is the same as usual, and the dilute Copy-Dex behaves similarly to PVA. The S&D layout, because of its construction, is very quiet in operation so I've been keen not to lose that effect if at all possible. Here are a trio of shots, with a couple of recently detailed and weathered locos - none of which are typical S&D runners. The T9 is a Lord and Butler "Dirty Boy" weathered example to which I added some additional toning down and grimy hues with Tamiya pastels, while the N class is the out-of-the-box weathered edition which has again been toned down a bit with pastels.

Yeah, would be. And the Southern heritage livery too. They'd be fools not to.

Fantastic! One of the best colour schemes ever, still looks great. And lightning!

Ta, Stuart!

By way of a brief update, here's a shot of the locomotive terminal under construction. Getting the turntable and roundhouse aligned was a major headache, but after much fiddling around I eventually managed it. There is a handy template supplied with the Walthers turntable, but even so I still found it quite tricky to get everything right. I have wired in some of the tracks but there are still more to go - it's one of those boring jobs I can only face in small doses, since each track needs a lot of filing to match the profile of the turntable road. You can also see the Walthers coaling stage, which is a very pleasing but complicated kit - and I'm still not done with it! I have some sanding and ash facilities to add, and then I'd like to add some diesel fuelling points, possibly on a siding on the other side of the main. I'd had the Walthers turntable for two years before powering it up - fortunately (after a bit of a learning curve) I got it all working nicely, and it is a very impressive piece of kit. Eventually it will feed the 9 roundhouse roads plus a couple more open-air tracks. Meanwhile - but not too far away in layout terms - more progress on the branchline. It's probably not too clear from the track plans I've posted, but the idea here is that the branch climbs away from the main at 3% (as the main descends at 2%) and then diverges, with one direction crossing the main and heading out onto the peninsula. The other track continues on to serve some high-level industries located near the servicing terminal. The diverging route, at 11" radius, is the tightest visible curve on the layout but given that this is essentially an industrial spur, I think it will look acceptable and offer a nice contrast to the more generous curves on the main. I thought of having the branch cross the main via a bridge, but in the end opted for the main diving into a short tunnel. There's an odd visual illusion going on here whereby the branch looks less steep than the main. That's it for now, cheers for reading.

Excellent piece of work!