Ian Holmes

The Summer issue of The Dispatch is now ready to download! 

Head over to https://micromodelrailwaydispatch.com

Hope you enjoy it

Ian

Looking good. That stone wall frames everything quite nicely

On 03/06/2022 at 18:34, F-UnitMad said:

There were two RM articles on Allied Marine; one the 'overall' layout description and a later one that was a close-up look at some of the details. I will dig out my scrapbook of treasured articles & find the dates, but yes 1978 I'm sure.

 

Looking forward to this layout, Ian, especially in P48!! 👍👍

Pretty sure the layout was in November 1978. If I recall correctly '78 was also the year of Roy C Link's seminal "The Art of Compromise" Article.

Ian

1 hour ago, 33C said:

Love scrapyards. Modelled one myself many years ago, inspired by "Allied Marine", which i saw in the "Railway Modeller", i forget the year. Mine had only 2 sidings, for scrap wagons in and cut pieces out. And it was dirty, buried rails, weeds, tyre tracks, cranes and a little Playcraft, North British diesel shunter. I put a mirror at the end of one of the sidings so it seemed like it continued on across a road, with an old gate laying to the side. Fooled the wife into thinking i had "knocked through", much like your first photo! Watching with interest.

Ah yes, Allied Marine,

one of my favourite layouts from way back when. 
 

Ian

12 hours ago, SteveyDee68 said:

How about “This needs to be in the Micro Model Railway Dispatch”?!

 

😉

I think I've said it once already. Pages are waiting in a future issue of The Dispatch...

Ian

Brilliant! What more can I say?

Ian

"Will 'Tyteford Halte' ever be considered to grace the pages of 'Micro Model Railway Dispatch' maybe, but I will need to move house first and then perhaps contact Ian Holmes to see if it could feature in a future edition.

All the best for now and good luck with all your railway modelling projects."

Just drop me a line when you're ready

Ian

Thanks for the kind words.

Thanks to the contributors, and if you haven't contributed yet.

Please do.

Ian

"as the whole aesthetic is scrap and reused"

That's a brilliant, (and brave) idea for the presentation. 

Ian

16 minutes ago, mullie said:

What a great little layout, must look up the online magazine.

 

Martyn

Here's the link.... https://micromodelrailwaydispatch.com.  all the issues are just a click away.

Ian

I'm really pleased that the Micro Model Railway Dispatch is influencing other modellers. 

This layout is looking great!

When you get this little layout finished pleased email me (MMRDeditor@gmail.com) and we'll see about featuring it in a forthcoming issue.

Ian

As @F-UnitMad rightly pointed out The Micro Model Railway Dispatch now has a website. I haven't done any serious web design since the days of Adobe PageMill. So bear with me on the initial look of the website. Now you can now go to https://micromodelrailwaydispatch.com/ and download the Spring Issue, It's available.

I hope you enjoy it. Plenty for everyone from the smallest scales to the largest scales. 

Great little video. Good view of your automatic uncoupler at work.

Enjoyed watching it.

Thanks

Ian

A great looking micro layout. Clever of the Scalescenes kit

ian 

10 hours ago, kevinlms said:

Plenty of articles over the years have been left unnamed. Whether deliberately or by mistake, who knows.

 

In the 50s & 60s, there were a few generic items such as 'laying Peco track' or similar (usually in what we think of as 'Junior Modeller' or 'Proprietary Modeller'. These were commonly unnamed, but it is suspected that they were written by S.C. Pritchard.

Not by Cyril Freezer, as almost always his name appeared against his article.

According to his obituary the late Roy C Link was a frequent user of the RM Staff nom de plume as well

Ian

6 hours ago, F-UnitMad said:

It's a great question, and harks back to an earlier, more formal age.

That reminds me of watching test cricket on the TV in the early 70’s it was not unknown for players to be known by their initials then. A.P.E. (Alan)  Knott for example,  even R.G.D. (Bob) Willis slipped in once in a while. I wondered if it was a Gentlemen and Players thing. 
Thanks for all the interesting answers everyone.

I was doing some research on inglenook model railways just now. The general consensus is that A R Walkley was first to exhibit the concept in 1925/26 with his portable goods yard layout. 
Walkley was a prolific, skilled model maker, scratch building locomotives in scales as small as 1mm =1foot. 

Indeed this portable goods yard layout seems to have been scratch build in H0 scale. Revolutionary for its time. All this information is pretty easy to come by. But what was his name? Arnold Richard? Alan?  Does anyone know?

My curiosity is getting the better of me.

Ian

10 minutes ago, Northroader said:

Jordan, you bum, I was all set to nip up to the loft and paint a coach this afternoon, then I followed your link to the Dispatch, which was something I was totally unaware of, and which has set my thoughts off into all manner of directions, and no modelling gone forward!

 

I’m sorry reading The Dispatch can have unexpected side effects. Please consider subscribing to my little publication and building a Micro Layout. 

Ian

Nice job. I built a layout in a week once. A close deadline really sharpens the mind.

Ian

3 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Trusting that this won’t be considered extending it, because it’s meant more as a delve into history:

 

I’ve just been re-reading Yuji Niwa’s very influential article “The Micro Layout Concept” in NG&IR No.4 (1990). What I had forgotten is that he traces the concept back to a layout (600x900) built in 1966, which began a trend for what were explicitly known as micro layouts in Japan, culminating in a book dedicated to them, published in 1979. I wonder whether the term was imported to the U.K. with that book, although it was, IIRC, entirely in Japanese. I remember seeing the book, but not being able to afford to buy it at the time, which I would have done if I could, simply for the photos of exquisite little trains on exquisite little layouts. It seems to me that the Japanese tradition grew in parallel with the British tradition of tiny layouts, things like Larpool & Easington, the two meeting for the first time c1980.

Yes, it is considered extending it, and it's very rude. I drew a line under our discussion, which was going nowhere and people seemed to be getting fraught. Yet you see fit to carry it on. This would be an interesting subject, suitable for its own thread and discussion. But you seem to want to score some petty "last word" point. 

That’s enough. There’s no need to turn this into a schism of P4/S4 proportions. 
I’ll just reiterate my comments from October and let that be an end to it.

“Personally, I have always considered four square feet as a rule. There has to be a hard and fast upper limit, otherwise you receive submissions from 8 square feet to as much as 16 square feet. 

Carl often referred to large scale layouts that exceeded 4 square feet as “in the spirit of a micro”, which is something I’ll gladly carry on as the magazine develops. 

Right now, its early days and I’m still trying to find a direction for it. I have features I want to run and things I want to try, but still carry the spirit of Carls original“Micro layouts for model railroads” website

I appreciate you taking the time to read it and share your opinions.”

Ian

Looks great! Nice use of the scalescenes buildings

Ian

Well, I don’t know why I bother. I really don’t. Way to go to destroy someone’s enthusiasm. Two issues in a row now you’ve queried the accepted definition of a Micro Layout. I hope this is not going to happen every three months from now on. 

It's the first day of Winter so that means it's time for the Winter issue of The Micro Model Railway Dispatch. There's lots to see and enjoy. Including a special Winter/Christmas layouts special section.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5oejrx0kvyhr1p0/Dispatch Issue 3_final.pdf?dl=0

Enjoy.