Barry Ten

Harry Styles and Dua Lipa are both accomplished military modellers with an interest in the Napoleonic period, often meeting up to stage miniature re-enactments of Waterloo. You won't see Taylor Swift or BTS there, though - they'll be down the boating lake with their radio control ship models.

New brush, new tin, and five thin coats! To be honest I was a bit doubtful but it's too wet and cold to be faffing around with airbrushes right now, and I didn't have a rattle-can in anything like the right shade.

In related news, a long-lost studio model of the Enterprise has seemingly resurfaced after 44 years ... https://www.therpf.com/forums/threads/red-alert-lost-3-ft-tos-enterprise-found.354596/

I would suggest giving it time, if you haven't already done so? I've not seen the new episode yet, but the series as a whole has been fantastic, top-quality television, with brilliant characters - not just the now-departed Perez, but Tosh as well, who I now assume will have a more prominent role alongside the new detective. And the scenery and atmospherics of it have been part of the enjoyment as well.

Progressing with the Meng P51-D Having done seven Mustangs in metal finish, I decided to go with the green decal scheme offered by Meng this time. This was brush painted using a satin mid-green out of my paint drawer. The instructions indicated light green but even the mid-green looked a bit too light/vibrant so for the final coat, I added some black into the mix. The rear fuselage panel is loose at the moment since once it's clipped in, you can't remove the canopy.

On the topic of Singles, this is more of a problem case than a solution, but I thought it worth showing. It's an M&L Dean Single which was bought in a partly finished condition. I've soldered a few more bits together but it's still very much a work in progress. It runs quite well as a standalone loco, but the top speed is a bit slow so it doesn't have much in reserve when under load. I feel it should be faster, especially with those big drivers, so some kind of remotoring/regearing may be required. I've only ever done very limited testing with a borrowed tender but it struggles with more than about three coaches. Every now and then I get it out of the box, fiddle with it for a few hours, then put it back and get on with something else. I hope I crack it one day.

I think I might have owned that book at some point, although I doubt I still have it. My dad had some Goon Show tapes which we'd listen to on car journeys.

If you dig down a bit into the timeline, it says: "A reinvigorated Lionel started off the 1990s with the reissue of the legendary No. 700E locomotive. In 1992 Richard Kughn and rock musician Neil Young, an avid model railroader, created Liontech, chartered to develop exclusive new model train control and sound systems. Liontech's RailSounds II™ debuted in 1994 on the Santa Fe Mikado. This all-new digital system captured a real-life Mikado's actual sounds, and propelled Lionel to the forefront of model train technology." https://www.lionel.com/articles/timeline Ol' Neil talks a lot about his trains and Lionel in his autobiography Shakey, including the big barn where it was all housed, but that was just before the end of his then marriage so I don't know how much of it still exists.

Agreed, the Rupert Davies Maigret is very good. Every now and again I'm tempted by the 1/8th scale Traction Avant from Heller, then sanity prevails! The 1/24th Parisian bus was enough of a struggle.

Not even Mr 'Erriot could save that horse.

Having said I wouldn't start a new kit until I'd finished with the big Tomcat, I decided it wouldn't hurt to sneak another Mustang onto the desk. This is the 1/48th Meng kit. What's interesting is that it's basically snap-together, so in theory no glue is needed. I managed to get this far tonight: I did use a tiny bit of solvent here and there, but most of the parts are just held in place by ingenious tabs. It's perhaps not as detailed as the equivalent Tamiya or Airfix ones but will still make a nice model, I feel, and certainly goes together quickly. The different sprue colours remind me of the Matchbox kits from the 70s.

Depending on what you make of Sam's Trains' Youtube channel, there's a piece by him where he looks at the wagons and attempts to assess their accuracy based on engravings of typical trains of the period. From what I remember, the horse and cattle wagons are much too long/tall, being stretched to fit on the existing carriage chassis, and the open wagons are just the existing Rocket tender and also unrepresentative. I don't always agree with Sam's reviews but in this case I think he made pretty persuasive points, finding the models to be unrealistic, expensive and poorly-provided with animals.

And then there were Somerset & Dorset lamp codes, which were their own thing entirely, right through to BR days.

Depends how many left-facing ones are left on the transfer sheet.

I enjoyed it as well. I must admit when I saw it in the mags, I thought Jools Holland's layout was a bit of a dog's dinner, but seeing it moving, with his explanation of how it all relates to his personal experiences, the UK and European influences, made me warm to it immensely.

I saw one in an episode of the 1960s-set TV detective series George Gently a few days ago. It was the one about a murder at a Butlins-style summer camp. They'd mocked up a sign at the entrance to the fictitious camp, but there was a clear errant apostrophe in it. Shocking!!! Even more shocking, for fans of the series, I discovered that the original books aren't set in Northumberland!

Lie Dream of a Casino Soul - The Fall

Over the last couple of months I've been mostly modelling in N, adding an extension to the peninsula board on my American layout The new stuff starts more or less where the road in the foreground goes from grey to unpainted card, which is where the original fascia board went. Similarly, this service road along the yard tracks used to run along the edge of the board, but there's now room for a bit of water to poke into the scene. I feel that the additions have given the scene a bit more room to breathe, setting the trains back into the landscape. Cheers, Al

Unfortunately there will always be idiots who give a bad name to any hobby. I had to take the CAA online competency test for drone and and r/c planes, which includes all the rules about where you can and can't fly, then the BMFA "A Certificate" for basic flying competence, before my club would allow me to fly "solo". Of course I could still go out and do something stupid or antisocial on my own but at least I've had an awareness of the rules.

Here's a link to the website for the Mauch Chunk model, if anyone's interested: http://homauchchunk2.co.uk/modelling/ As I said above, I was really impressed with it at Warley. It hit that sweet spot for me, with a nice balance between beautiful scenery, well-laid track and interesting CNJ stock.

Many thanks - I wasn't familiar with Jim Thorpe but looking at some pics just now, I can see where the similarity comes in. It looks like a lovely spot to spend some time in! Edit - reading a bit further, I see that it's the basis for that Mauch Chunk layout which I very much enjoyed at Warley a while back.

Many thanks, Benjy - I've been catching up on your fab UP layout with much enjoyment.

Pushing on with the reworking of the peninsula, I've done a bit more on the drop-down water feature. Sounds a bit posher than what it is, just a few square inches of lowered scenery to hint at the edge of a river or harbour. Once I'd sealed and painted the base, I poured a couple of layers of water product over two evenings. The stone retaining walls were recycled from elsewhere on the layout, hence the scruffy look. Ideally, one should cut off one of the columns of stone on one side of each casting, but I don't bother with that as it reduces the overall length of walling you get in one pack. I feel that, once weathered and blended, they look OK and I hate throwing good modelling stuff away! A different angle on the peninsula. I'm pretty happy with the way these changes are falling into place. With the baseboard edge further away from the track, I think it all has a bit more room to breathe. It's not so long ago that I was considering removing the peninsula in its entirety (feeling it was taking up too much space in the room) but for now I'm rather happy not to have proceeded with that change. Once again I have done a reshuffle of the buildings, trying to find a configuration which looks right and works with their varying depths. I think I'm nearly there. This is another view which unavoidably brings the fascia and associated under-layout clutter into view. Funny how the eye doesn't really register this stuff when we're just looking directly at the model; we seem to be able to tune-out all the non-railway stuff quite happily, but the camera is much less forgiving. This FT set has been running without its leading horns forever. I must get around to finding some spares as it just looks wrong without them. Cheers and thanks for reading.

The director of Southern Railway visited the UK between the wars and went back with the directive to paint SR's passenger locos in lined Virginia green. He would have seen our Southern locos in olive, and possibly LNER locos in Darlington and Doncaster green. I found that SR malachite was a pretty good match for Virginia green when I came to repaint a pacific.

I bought and used quite a lot of the Digikeijs DCC controlled carriage lighting units, which are undertstandably now very hard to come by. Yamorc don't seem to offer a similar product, so can anyone advise on an equivalent? The Viessmann ones also seem to be hard to track down. I know there are lots of DIY lighting kits out there using LED strips, but the nice thing with the Digikeijs ones was that they came with pickups and were easy to install in European models.