Sasquatch

May 10

As the sun was setting behind the mountain, I saw a photo opportunity and had to run and grab the imaging device.

The newly finished barn area really looks the business in pure sunlight.

It should be noted that the D49 "The Cotswold" hasn't moved since my last photo shoot 2 weeks ago. I rather like this combo of early BR steamers with teak stock.

Squatch.

May 8

21 hours ago, john new said:

Guessing you will have seen this but jus in case you haven't..

Thankyou! No, I hadn't seen that before!! I have been very busy of late with other things and am in need of such great inspiration.

My son is coming in two weeks and is really very good with techy stufff so we'll be making some more Queensbury videos and I must make time to get as much finished on it before we film actual trains moving etc.

Regards Shaun

April 30

No trains but this is right adjacent to the station.

April 26

On 25/04/2024 at 02:11, ChrisN said:

Especially like the third picture, I think there is something special about two steam locomotives together like that.

Oh, there’s lots of opportunities like that!

How about 3, waiting to depart Exchange ?

There's two here where the lines temporarily terminate.

...and two here waiting to depart for Exchange. The D49 has a passenger service of mainline stock which will be given priority

The other train, a freight was quite lengthy and thus required class 4 power.

There's also a couple around the back of Bradford which have been sitting there for a couple of weeks.. The J50 is on the wrong road it would seem but is likely to set that Twin set back into the station at some point.

Theres even two more in front of the last two!

Another V2 ready to move off from Goathland before the GN tank can resume shunting.

Squatch

April 25

Just chilling this evening in the garage with YouTube hooked up to the HiFi after a grueling day on my knees laying floors and thought it was time we had some trains on here!

April 24

Hi Chris. About building sizes. Most modern houses (which we're almost all familiar with) are all very much the same size, average sized rooms with 8-foot ceilings! Older buildings are different. Houses of the poor could be downright cramped, especially the older ones built when folk were much shorter. Our Belgian cottage Cira1776 was one such dwelling, when we viewed it, the oak beams were only 5'6" clearance! (Some of which had succumbed to gravity in the middle too).

Later buildings had taller ceilings which got taller with wealth and status. I'm pretty sure that Mr. Prices house, given his status would have been quite grand! Imagine having those interviews with the locals in one of Mr. Prices reception rooms. The voices echoing around the room and the clink of china cups on china saucers. Wouldn't you also have needed an interpreter for some of the older locals?

Pugh, Pugh, Barney Mcgrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grubb.😁

Great stuff as always!

April 24

On 22/04/2024 at 12:14, stevel said:

Same here, I have roots 4" plus in diameter in the crawl space,ready to trip you over, and crack your head on a beam. Tell me how I know 😂.

Don'tcha just love crawl spaces. Black widow spiders, rodent droppings and scorpions hiding in every crevice. Ya can't run either, it takes a certain breed or some kind of madness to go down there...! Sometimes ya just gotta man up and get on with the job and it's always something like a blocked sewer pipe or wiring where you have to cut the power and face the job on your back with a dodgy flashlight.

April 22

5 hours ago, ChrisN said:

Lovely specimen Shaun.

It is a bit close to the house so you will need to be careful it does not undermine its foundations. 🙂

Here in Oregon every house seems to have that problem 😄

April 22

This next tree is worth a post all of its own. (Oh no, we're on the next page and he's still on about trees).

I've had this white metal tree for ages and don't remember where it came from. It had to be soldered up and after bending it I gave it a coat of primer.

Then, after the usual dogbedstuffin-n-darkbrownrattlecanpaint treatment, I added Noch light green leaves.

It makes quite a convincing ash tree. Still needs a little paint on the trunk and branches etc.

Here it is planted behind the new farmhouse on Queensbury which seemed like a suitable place seeing that there was a void there and we have two behind our house. I'll probably go on to make it a brother next.

Squatch.

April 20

2 hours ago, jcredfer said:

You maybe going to wish it was. 🤔 Back to the first comment, about tree height, it was a reference to your method of measuring the height of the trees - using right angled triangles. You didn't need to do the calculations, because you did it practically with that ruler, but the relationship between the Hypotenuse and the other two sides was still being used..... I'm sure that you will remember that Pythagoras discovered the relationship and it became known as Pythagoras' Rule. { A Squared = B Squared + C Squared }

Sports field square corners used to be commonly marked out using a 3, 4, 5; knotted rope; 9 + 16 = 25 - { ---'----'----- } Hence.....

..... are you really sure you are ready for this.....???

..... really???

The Squaw on the Hippopotamus Hide is equal to the Sum of the Squaws on the other two Hides. 🤔..😂

Once told, by the Maths teacher - so horrible, never forgotten.

Best wishes

J

That’s hilarious! I wouldn’t have got it though, wasn’t using Pythagoras really but still wouldn’t have clicked.
I’ve used Pythagoras to check posts etc. on job sites are set perfect and that usually raises questions or comments from the crew like WTF is he doing?

Too many carpenters rely on their tape rule far too much and waste much time and make many mistakes, especially in the land of feet inches and fractions there of.
Being of 1966 vintage I was one of the lucky ones to have learned imperial and metric. It has the advantage that one can give rough estimates of volume in imperial by converting the measurements to metric, do the math and convert the Liters into kilos and back to pounds in one’s head!

Baffles all my American homies!

April 20

You know when you're watching a film like Indiana Jones & the Dial of Destiny for instance, and when the train comes along it's a 9F.

How come the Nazis have a 9F, they weren't built until 54! And with mk1 coaches to boot.

Truth is, most people wouldn't know one train from another. This is my philosophy when it comes to trees. Some trees we need a prototype like an old oak, some silver birch or a pine (like the one next to Goathland's water tower). For the most part especially when there's a clump of them or a small copse we can get away with overlooking the detail.

This is where my rosemary trees fit in. This week I have been trying to perfect them.

The process is quite simple, snip away at each stage until it looks like a tree and use different adhesive for each step.

In this line up we have, from left to right…

Bare branch, rubberized horsehair fixed with super tacky glue, dog bed stuffing on spray glue, blast of camo brown, the snipped look and flock fixed with hairspray.

I doubt that I'll get these done this evening after such a productive day outdoors. Squatch.

April 20

On 18/04/2024 at 12:54, jcredfer said:

Aaagh, just remembered where you live now. You must have seen it all in live action, all three Squaws and their expensive imported Hippo Hides. 🫠

J

Have read that about a dozen times now J and assume that it's a reference to an old movie which I'm not familiar with or something?

The only live action we get around here has to do with squirrels, deer and nesting birds! (Apart from the occasional illicit marijuana bust, but that's got like covid. Nobodies concerned anymore!).

Regards Shaun.

April 18

Still on the subject of trees (this whole page will probably be about tress). This morning while sitting on the front steps drinking coffee and pondering the height of our cedars, I came up with a simple method of gauging their height.

My barn is 80 feet long. I stood back perpendicular to one corner holding a rule until the barn measured 16" at almost full arm's length. Thus every 2"=10'. With me so far? Then counting the paces walked to the corner of the building. 31 paces.

If I now find a tree and walk away in a straight line 31 paces and hold out the ruler at the same arm's length, I can roughly tell the height of any tree!

First, I measured one of our beautiful Oregon Mountain Ashes.

Approximately 70' or 21.3M.

Armed with a longer folding rule I went and did the same with the tallest cedar. 130' or 40M!

Lastly the pine behind the barn. 165' or 50M. A 1/76 scale model of it would be a whapping 66cm!

Squatch. Hope that you found that interesting.

April 18

5 hours ago, manna said:

G'Day Folks

We tend to forget the size of trees as we see them everyday, looking good.

manna

8 hours ago, ChrisN said:

Shaun,

It takes a brave man to do an actual scale size tree, as most people are worried that it will look too big and overpower the layout. Yours looks really good, and I like the way you have changed the colour of the grass underneath the trees.

Yes! I quite often ponder over the size of trees (and how many there are especially round here). We have pines and firs that are over 100 feet. One which died from plight and fell was much taller than that, getting on for 160'.

So, in 4mm that would make models of 40-62cm! Medford model railroad club have a huge layout in a club house at the Railroad Park with thousands of trees that represent the local area. Even in HO their trees are nowhere near true to scale.

Some years back we had to drop a dead pine near the bottom of our drive. The arborist laid it perfectly up the drive and it just fell short of the top gate. We cut it in half and it took three of us to roll it using 6' bars off to the side. It sat there for over a year when my friend came and took it to mill up. Some of that lumber has been used to construct stuff in the garage!

The tall fir fell across the creek and is not retrievable. If it were I'd never have to buy another piece of wood in my life!

If you ever find yourself in this part of the world then the awe inspiring Califorian redwoods are a must. We drive through them every time we take the dogs to the beach and always stop for a walk in there. Makes you feel like an ant under a hedge!

Regards Shaun.

April 17

This is Poubelle. Taken with my son when he was a toddler.

The two of them became inseparable. Poubelle guarded, watched, slept and played with him right up until he started school. Capone the older cat (who lived up to his name) sort of fathered Poubelle who grew into the most intelligent animal I've ever come across. This gives rise to my favorite cat story.

When living in Belgium I arrived home one evening to learn that one of the 6 cats and dogs we had at the time had pulled down the budgie cage. Sheila's mate Shirlock had flown off out of the door when my ex had got home. (She always blamed Trigger the Boxer but that's a whole other story). Our cottage was across the road from a farm with fields all round so my search was over rather quickly. The ex-wife exclaimed that Shirlock was long gone because this had happened at lunch time, and I was wasting my time.

This was midsummer, Max was in bed before sunset and his mum was watching the box which left me to deal with all chores before dark. Poubelle was laying in the road soaking up the last rays and didn't come in when I first called so I dealt with everything else; Chickens etc. Last of all I opened the gate and indicated to the big white cat that he had to come in out of the road now!

Instead, he stood up and got me to follow him up the road some way to the end of our hedge. I remember saying to him "OK this is nice just the two of us out for a little walk". Then he sat down in the middle of the road and proceeded to clean his claws like he had just made a satisfying kill or something. "That was a short walk Poubelle". I said. That's when he looked at me like I was stupid and stared pointedly into the hedge. "Shirlock"! Not only did Poubelle know where he was, he had made no effort to take him for a snack and waited in the right place to catch my attention at the right time like he knew that the bird wouldn't fly off!

Shirlock was snuck back into the cage in silence hoping for that surprise element the following morning at breakfast and Poubelle received a tasty snack from the fridge!

April 17

1 hour ago, ChrisN said:

Shaun,

It takes a brave man to do an actual scale size tree, as most people are worried that it will look too big and overpower the layout. Yours looks really good, and I like the way you have changed the colour of the grass underneath the trees.

I hope the dof does not miss its bed stuffing and comes to look for it.

😁 When the dogs tore up one of their old beds I was quite happy about it because they saved me a small fortune on Woodland Scenics Poly fiber. Two new beds from Costco probably worked out cheaper!

We had to tear out one of the rosemary bushes last week so have a small forest worth of those too. That was probably the dogs as well. It was in the corner of their fenced in area, so they liked to mark it with pee. They're both very intelligent and I'm wondering if they'll come up with a solution for the scatter and save me even more money!

Regards Shaun

April 17

It's a very busy time here in the spring, so finding modeling time isn't easy but a few evening hours have been spent in the garage doing some relaxing scenic work. I have one of those roll-around comfy office chairs, Radio Garden on the laptop which is hooked up to the HiFi and of course the new heating system.

The area between the new barn and Queensbury tunnel entrance will be needing a few big trees. They will help mask the baseboard edge of Goathland on the opposite side of the rear operating well when viewed from the front one! It's a case of bigger is better here, so I had a go at a huge oak. An old mature English oak can reach heights of up to 60' with a width of 70". That equates to 240mm x 280mm in 1/76 scale!

First, I cut a scrap of ply to 280mm and wrapped garden wire around it about 50 times. A rubber band was put around one end and the wires all cut at the other. After giving this a couple of good tight twists, it was clamped loop end in the vice and the elastic band removed.

The twisting began! After a good few tunes from my favorite radio station (StuBru's De Tijdloze) we have something like this.

The following evening I mixed up some glue, paint, baking soda and scatter, which was painted on to the trunk and all but the single strand branches at the top ends.

On the third evening the single end wires were trimmed and bent upwards and some dog bed stuffing was stuck on in clumps then suitable colored foliage mix applied using Aqua-Net hairspray. With the trimming, the loop removed from the bottom and the roots bent out, the overall height is roughly 240mm or a scale 60 feet!

For 3 evenings effort it didn't look quite right because I missed the step of spraying the dog bed stuffing with dark flat camo brown but it'll have to do!

Last night I made a few more trees of no particular species out of rosemary, dog bed stuffing and scatter this time remembering to use the rattle-can paint.

A few more will be needed before the overall effect is achieved but it's starting to take shape.

69441 has just emerged from the tunnel with the Halifax to Bradford service.

Squatch. Need to finish those roots!

April 16

On 12/04/2024 at 06:40, Sidecar Racer said:

'Tis ok to introduce a cat to a household with dogs but it rarely works the other way. Imagine; "putting the managing director back on the shop floor" sort of deal!

April 16

Cats. Personally, I don't know how anybody could live without one.

Over the course of 30 years I've had 15 in total. All very different and full of life. Each has their own story some of which are worthy of the time to share.

Currently we have two. Both gay males! Merlin the black (dominant one) is much older and the most well behaved of all 15. He's a very handsome guy that we found at the cat relocation center. He'd been in there far too long; the black ones always seem to be the last choice for adoption. Merlin's also quite a soldier having to deal with bad asthma caused by wildfire smoke and his partner Skatoosh, the speckled orange one.

Skatoosh is the complete opposite and who's behavior takes quite a lot of putting up with. I would hazard a guess to say that as a kitten he was deprived of food. I've seen this in people, always stealing and begging even though they have a fat gut. Growing up starving will influence one's behavior for the rest of their life! We cannot teach this cat to say off of the kitchen tops he knows to check for the skat-mat before getting up there and will take anything. We have found chewed up avocados, bananas, leftovers and kitchen towels that have a hint of the smell of food on them. He'll eat almost anything, is quite fond of bananas and will kill for the water from the tuna fish can! He's at the bedroom door crying to be fed bang on 5am every morning too.

Despite his naughtiness Skatoosh has one of the strongest, loveable characters you could ever imagine and is an absorbent of all things stressful. I only have to look at him sometimes and the worries dissolve away like magic!

Merlin declined to be photographed on the grounds that he only does videos these days!

There's more cat stories if you want to read more I could tell you about Poubelle (which is French for trash). Or Capone, Poubelle's mentor.

April 13

It's going to be interesting seeing how you go about building the "not quite round after all" roundhouse. Not saying that it isn't possible, just looks very challenging.

Fascinating stuff as always Graham, you've done an excellent job on the point work, there's something about bending turnouts that's very satisfying and it gives a very convincing look to the layout.

Regards Shaun.

April 10

On 06/04/2024 at 10:09, jcredfer said:

Likewise

J

On 06/04/2024 at 00:46, JRSS said:

I shall look forward to seeing the videos and seeing what you can achieve in a full weekend, no doubt it will be something special. 👍

Unfortunately things never go as planned. Other things had to take precedence over the modeling as usual. All I managed was to make some railings for the staircase landings and fix the stair cases in place on Queensbury.

One other thing which will be of enormous help is that I managed to get all the images of Queensbury and Bradford Exchange off of the old laptop!

Just wondering what my son's reaction will be the, first time he sees what I've built. The last time he saw the garage it was an uninviting, spider invested racoon toilet!

Today's plan after a call to England and a quick mushroom hunt with the dogs, is to make new (temporary) kitchen tops and get to work on more Queensbury scenic stuff. We'll see how this plan pans out.

Squatch

April 6

Sorry for the lack of updates folks. I have been very busy on a new project this week. Getting my son a ticket to visit for 3 months!

He'll be bringing his tech and we plan to make layout videos together amongst other things. I should be able to get a full weekend of modeling in now!

Squatch

April 1

13 hours ago, manna said:

G'Day Folks

Long time no post. Been very busy on other things, I've had to sort out and pack as much of my stuff as possible onto a trailer and transport it across Australia, I can't get it all on board, so I've had to be very selective, all of my Tools, that will be needed to refurbish the house, then whatever else I can pack. All up 100% of my tools, and 75% of my models/railway stuff is now in Queensland. I'll have to do another trip next year, as there are plenty of books etc still to be transported.

Very little in the way of modelling has been accomplished, except for the J54 now having a number, there should be a small 'N' after the number, but I can't find my yellow paint (not surprising really)

manna

Happy for you mate!

Having done the same thing, twice, I know it’s a good feeling being back in possession of your tools (and modeling stuff.) When I came to the states I had just two duffel bags of gear. Look at me now! Onwards and upwards mate!

J54 is the dogs do-dahs. If the back looks like it’s sticking up like a bitch on heat, it’s possible to place a 12mm long bit of plastic under that rear axle! At least the couplings on my 8 or 9 Hornby 060s now line up with all my stock!

Regards Shaun

March 31

10 hours ago, Sasquatch said:

You beat me to it!
I have gotten into the habit of typing the text up on the laptop which not only is preferable to that tiny touchscreen on the phone but easier to use and generally preferable as I like to improve my spelling rather than let my stupid phone try to out smart me😄

Having had a mild rant about it, I do like it’s camera and find it quicker to just edit the image on it. Only drawback is that AI can’t decide which way up my images should be. Thus the lengthy delay as all four had to be edited on the phone which then (strangely) corrects the issue!!

How’s the weather down there BTW?

That’s not very clear…

After typing the post on the laptop the text is submitted then I reopen the post in edit mode on the phone to add the images! Saves quite a lot of time by the end of the week too😃

March 31

7 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

I'll take your word for it...

You beat me to it!
I have gotten into the habit of typing the text up on the laptop which not only is preferable to that tiny touchscreen on the phone but easier to use and generally preferable as I like to improve my spelling rather than let my stupid phone try to out smart me😄

Having had a mild rant about it, I do like it’s camera and find it quicker to just edit the image on it. Only drawback is that AI can’t decide which way up my images should be. Thus the lengthy delay as all four had to be edited on the phone which then (strangely) corrects the issue!!

How’s the weather down there BTW?

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