PaternosterRow

7 hours ago, down the sdjr said:

Nice photos,

Multi layer with about 25 different focal points is how pro model photographers do it i believe. Nice thread on here somewhere all about that using Photoshop.

I am like you and prefer standard shots, never got them as good as yours here. I have a modern smart phone than takes better depth photos than my oldish Canon SLR, amazing how far phone cameras have developed.

Cheers.  My wife got a smart phone a couple of years ago and the snaps she takes on our walks are amazing.  I saw an advert for the new Waway phone and its camera capability is unbelievable.  I’d wager that smart phones will make most traditional cameras obsolete within a few more years.  Photoshop and programs like it totally befuddle me -  one day, I hope, you’ll be able to just load a pic and just type in what you want the PC to do with it!  I’d just love to be able to add smoke/steam effects but simply haven’t a clue.

6 hours ago, DavidLong said:

Hi Mike. 

 

How much of that galvanised wire have you got left? Enough for a few more station roofs?

 

Ever thought of doing your local station? That would use up a few lengths!

 

David

 

Hi David.  That looks quite recent!  I’ve thought about it believe me because it’s a beautiful little place with its strange head shunt arrangement.  However, I prefer Tralee Station as it still has its old signal box and although it’s very much the same style it has a much larger siding facility.  The route of the old narrow gauge track line  (the Dingle/Tralee)  can also still be traced in part and you can still see the gates at the rear of the Station.  Tralee has many personal connections and I love to tell the story of my Uncle John who did National Service in Britain in the late forties (RAF).  He was so proud of his achievement that he wore his uniform on a visit back home to Kerry to see his Mom and Dad on Leave.  He got off the train at Tralee and a group of men threw stones at him and called him a Black and Tan!  He stood his ground, stared back at them and told them to get off their backsides and do something useful with their lives instead.  He owned a shop in Birmingham for many years and always thanked his lucky stars for having the gumption to go to Britain to seek a better life.  Like my Dad, he was a man that knew his own mind and always refused to follow the crowd. 

4 hours ago, Killybegs said:

Fabulous work on the roof

Thanks very much, Killybegs.  It's sort of a freelance structure that has been copied from many different types of this sort of station roof.  It's so important to get everything straight as the one thing this hobby demonstrates is that the eye will forgive a lack of detail but it wont tolerate things out of true.  Mind you, if a qualified engineer put his eye along some of my joints then he'd have no choice but to condemn it!!   

14 hours ago, simon b said:

The shots under the canopy are stunning, very atmospheric.  

Cheers Simon.  That sort of London grot, canyons of brick feel is exactly what I was after.  

Just a few night shots to show off the under roof section.

I quite like this shot -  look at those superb valves and cocks under the cab.  It's a beautifully detailed model.

A final shot of the whole layout.  The points are all push pull and the frogs are juiced by the blades, as in the old days, and as long as you keep the blade contacts clean they give no trouble at all.  I'm rather proud of the small control panel and took my time with it.  All of the connections are push together types and were salvaged from an old 'on demand' boiler that was being disposed of at work.   

34 minutes ago, Mikkel said:

Wonderful, Mike. The master of atmosphere - and much more. The "Lyceum" structure, while simple in some ways, is a visual delight!

 

I'm impressed how you keep turning out new layouts (even when they are revamped ones). The rest of us post when we've got some small detail done, you post every time you've got a new layout.

Great praise.  Thanks, Mikkel.  You know, my modeling obsession drives my wife batty sometimes.  I’m not a drinker so this is my way of relaxing and, consequently, my out put is very high.  I’m not a great Telly watcher either so that probably contributes too.  The lock down was very boring and we weren’t able to go into Killarney for our usual walks, meals and cinema trips so there was little else but to get my head down on the bench.  However, we were luckier than most and could still go for long walks down the country lanes out our way - so I’m not at it all the while!  You mention that you only seem to post when a small detail is completed, but ‘what’ detail it is!  I am, as always, in awe of your skills and patience.  That’s another problem I have; impatience and a need to find shortcuts toward completion.  Hence the wire and 2D textures - not everyone’s idea of railway modelling though.   

1 hour ago, DavidLong said:

Hi Mike. Good to have you back, it's been too long! Back to Perry Barr form. For some reason High Trees just didn't quite do it for me. It seems that your more constrained projects are a more natural fit for your style of modelling. I don't mean to push you into a particular box but you do seem to have a particular talent for tightly defined scenes. Look forward to more pics of the latest opus.

 

David

 

PS I would expect a blanking plug to solve your problem with the Q1. DCC chips can be very variable in performance when asked to process DC.

Thank you David.  I couldn’t agree with you more.  Micro layouts have always suited my style and I prefer them entirely to Chocolate Box scenes.  There’s something about the urban environment that draws me, perhaps it’s simply because I grew up in a city.  Also thanks for the advice about the Q1.   

1 hour ago, MikeOxon said:

Beautifully conceived and photographed.  You have shown that RTR stock and careful weathering can bring that elusive sense of 'reality', when treated so imaginatively

 

Mike

Thank you, Mike.  High praise indeed from a great modeler.  I spent a while this morning looking at your very interesting blog. I die a happy man if I could create that picture of yours of the Broad gauge train.  Early steam is a fascinating story that is rarely modeled.  

12 hours ago, Alex Duckworth said:

Hello Mike, glad to see that your work is as excellent as ever. Hope all is well with you.

 

all the best,

 

Alex.

 

Cheers Alex, all well here although I had a wee stint in hospital (not virus related fortunately).  Hope all is well with you and yours.  

Brilliant work, Mike.  I’ve lately become fascinated by early steam locomotives and have been investigating the various range of kits.   Brass stuff is hard to construct and paint and it obviously takes years to learn the skills.  3D printing therefore seems the fast forward way of construction for this era and you seem to be in front regarding this.  In awe of anyone willing to experiment and lead the way - just like the prototype!  Gooch was years ahead of his time too and Brunel was lucky to have found him because, I believe, his initial loco designs weren’t up to the job.  Great stuff.

Wowzer!  Fantastic attention to detail and research as per usual.  This is just a lovely model and think you have amazing building skills in this fiddly scale.   I can feel another story following along shortly with the Dean Goods as star.  As always I am in awe of your abilities.  Brilliant workmanship.

Excellent idea!  Love to see more of this develop as it is a pity that you can only mostly get carriage kits in brass which is notoriously hard to paint.  It would be brilliant to see them printed with the colours and lining if this was possible.  Very clever stuff.

Never saw this till today.  Beautiful model. What patience cutting out those vents.

Welcome to world of model railways my friend.  I’ve been back at the hobby for the last 11 years and I still get things wrong regarding track laying and electrics etc.  The hobby can be very frustrating but also very rewarding.  Just keep plugging away and it’ll all come together in the end.  Keep posting too - you’ll get plenty of help on here.  Good luck and regards, Mike.

Lovely work, Wenlock.  Fabulous paint job.  Really impressed with the accuracy with all the leather horse tackle.  How I wish I had your patience and steady hands.

Great recovery!  Painting stuff is a pain in the proverbial.  Loved the four stages video and you are, as per usual, brilliant at the technique of showing rather than telling the tale.  A great example of the trials of the modeling bench.   

Beautiful precision as ever.  

Great piece of modelling.  Love the accuracy and how dead square you have got everything - great craftsmanship and attention to detail.  Beats my wire efforts hands down.  All that brass must of cost a pretty penny?  How much has been your outlay so far?

Mike

1 hour ago, AY Mod said:

Superb atmospheric shots as ever Mike! Sitting here watching 'The Right Stuff', many years since I last saw it, a mammoth film.

Thanks, Andy.

That film is brilliant.  I’ve just watched ‘First Man’ and a documentary about Armstrong - fascinating stuff.  He must have been an easy choice for the administration - just all the right attributes.   

Nailed it with this post, Mikkel.

I often get called out of my dream state, it takes at least four times before I start to take notice.  Sometimes she is even reduced to screaming the house down!  

5 hours ago, Mikkel said:

That's a new side of your modelling interests Mike! The model looks excellent.

 

There was a documentary yesterday about the "second race for space" being driven now mostly by cowboy billionaires. 

Cheers, Mikkel

Yep,  I’m a bit of a space geek in addition to a railway modeling nut!  I don’t do too much space modeling though.  The Dragon rocket was picked up about 16 years ago from a shop in an airport lounge and had languished in the box for about ten years so I decided to have a go at a launch tower for it.  

Think I saw that doc too - there was also another one on Elon Musk and his Falcon rocket.  In spite of his obvious flaws I actually think he is a bit of a genius.  Got a lot of guts starting from scratch in the rocket business and actually making a success of it.  His crew ship made the first unmanned test docking with the ISS last month or so.  He has also sent up about ten successful supply ship deliveries to the station so far.  The current Boeing effort is still in the build and test stage even though there’s a lot of talk about it.  Branson seems to have been shaken by the death of a test pilot a couple of years ago - probably why there has been nothing in the news about his space plane.  Think it’s very much the case that private enterprise will make the next big leaps over the coming decades.  Mind you, whilst Apollo was government run it was actually private businesses that built the hardware - Boeing, Grumman, Rocketdyne etc.  I think if the business people dance to the tune of government bodies then things will go alright in the end.  It has to be said though that NASA has had its fair share of cowboy types that have made dubious decisions down the years.  Ones that have led to unnecessary deaths.  There’s no guarantee of ability/competence with either public and private sectors it seems.

3 hours ago, bcnPete said:

T - 9 

 

Great post Mike and a terrific model. The outside shots are superb. 

 

If I understood correctly, the Rocket is a model but you scratch-built the launch pad? If so, that’s great modelling. Really captures the scene beautifully and the concrete base reminds me of Thunderbirds/James Bond 

 

As for the way the world is going...It’s almost too depressing to read the newspapers and watch the news these days...thank goodness for model trains (and rockets ) to escape for a while...

Thanks, Pete.

The tower is another one of my soldered wire constructions.  It helped that the actual tower is a square construction apart from the angled legs.  It meant that I could make up each side in the same jig etc.  The rest is cardboard and bits from the spares box.  In fact, the gantry arms are made from a discarded handrail that came with the Walthers turntable used in my Barrow Hill Roundhouse layout!  The cardboard pad is indeed pure Thunderbirds/Bond and it even has the blast channels built in.  It helped that I was able to source the almost side on shot of the prototype from the NASA site - this made it easier to work out the correct dims etc.

Alas, the modern world seems to be in a very sorry state.  Perhaps it’s because the West no longer has any real common enemy to threaten it anymore?  Societies that don’t seem to pull themselves apart from within.  It seems a pity we haven’t forged a solid goal like we did with Apollo - for one small moment in July 69 the whole world seemed to come together.  Ah well, at least we all have our hobby and RMweb to distract us from the depressing news we have to face night after night!

9 hours ago, DavidLong said:

Lovely piece of work, Mike, and very atmospheric pictures. I love the concept of Cape Killarney but not much possiblity of rocket launches last time I was there, it was blowing a gale and the rain was horizontal!

The moon landing brings back some nice memories for me. I was staying with an aunt and uncle, both now long gone, in Bristol. We watched the landing on television, all in black and white of course, we had a day at the cricket watching Gloucestershire v Lancashire and the rest of the time I had the delights of a South West Rover. All those hydraulics!! 

 

David

Cheers Dave.  Yep, when it rains over here it can get quite biblical in proportion.  Yet we do have our lovely days and it can be a really beautiful place.  Besides the pace of life more than compensates for the bad weather.

I always remember my Dad waking me up to watch Armstrong’s first step.  Again, a grainy black and white image and I wasn’t sure what was happening.  It was just great to be sat against my Dad’s knee and enjoying all the excitement.  My parents are both sadly gone now too.  I remember Mom buying me a little book called ‘The Space Race’ from the Brooke Bond Tea company and I had to collect the cards from tea packets to go with it.  I used to pester her to buy the tea and there was a competition amongst my friends to get all the cards.  I never managed to get all of them, but I took that little book everywhere with me - such a treasured possession.  Of course, it got lost like everything else, but a few years ago I came across a completed version at an antiques fair here in Tralee.  Opening it up brought back all the memories and even the sensations of the time - a magical experience.  It was a great time to grow up and the future looked so bright to our generation.  The wires went up in Perry Barr where I grew up and we had those fantastic electrics.  But we also had the Harrier Jump Jet and Concorde to wonder at.  Not forgetting the brilliant APT and the magical 125 that came hot on the heels of all the rest. We had so much to look forward to back then and I often wonder when and where it all went wrong.

Smarter they often are, but not necessarily wiser.  Only age can bring that edge.  Unfortunately, the young never quite get that.  Oh, the way of the world indeed.  Each generation wants to build its own set of wheels, yet they always end up using the same old spokes!  Does this, I sometimes wonder, mean that our species is ultimately doomed, or, will we always somehow manage to scrape through?

You know a lot has been said about the late Rev Denny and his Buckingham layout, but every once in a while you come across a modeler who is every bit as good as he was.  You have scratch built an entire fleet of WCML locos, built a masterful layout and wired it up like a real railway.  Totally blown away by all this.  You need to write a book with some beautiful double spread photos.  I’d be the first in the queue for it.  Really inspirational stuff. Mike