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  • SouthernRegionSteam

    Coastguard Creek - 15 months of planning!

    By SouthernRegionSteam

    Hold on to your socks - this is going to be a lengthy one! (In fact it's so long, I've now split it into 2 separate posts - the next will be up soon...)   I think it's fair to say that you are all long overdue an update on Coastguard Creek. Due to other commitments, no real progress has been made since the last post way back in March 2021; almost 15 months ago! If anything, things went backwards for quite a while, as I kept finding more and more inspiring locations that I really wanted
    • 8 comments
    • 3,310 views
DonB's Bridgnorth Funicular Blog

Like Fagin, “I’m reviewing the situation”

Like Fagin, “I’m reviewing the situation”   Or, a Note about the decision to abandon the Cliff Railway model.   I had measured, drawn and made mock-ups of the various buildings at the lower end of the Cliff Railway to check that their mutual alignment was as it was expected to be. I was rather disappointed with the way the Mock-up buildings did not quite align correctly, and a couple of glaring errors were apparent. The worst offender was the lower station alignment with the track, there is
DonB

DonB

6
A Wellingborough Fireman

Musings

Well thats it - 24 months of my grandfathers working life. One of the things that I found frightening as I went through it was how few days he had off. He averaged 5 days off month in 1952 and 6 days a month in 1953. Given the sort of work he was doing he must have beena fit man. I'm not sure that I would have been able to keep up that as a work schedule - have we become too soft? And did he ever get bored of going between Brent Yard and Toton?   In the two years (putting aside that the many o
nomisd

nomisd

1
A Wellingborough Fireman

December 1953

Tu 1 8/33-6.10 Toton – Lloyds 48672 W 2 8/33-6.20 Toton – Lloyds 47976 Th 3 8/33-7.30 Toton – Lloyds 47978 F 4 8/33-7.15 Toton – Lloyds 47993 Sa 5 10/20-6.10 Empty Wagon Sidings 47279 Su 6 Off M 7 12.56-8.35 Brent – Toton 48541 Tu 8 12.15-10.50 LE Brent – Wboro 42764 W 9 12.15-8.45 Wboro – Derby 48364 Th 10 12.15-8.15 Relief F 11 12.10-8.45 Wboro – Derby
nomisd

nomisd

0
St Ruth

Kidderminster and Afterwards

I think that a good time was had by all at the 2mm do at Kidderminster on Saturday. I certainly enjoyed myself and St Ruth performed with its revised control panel... when we weren't just nattering that is. I'm not sure how many times we got through the schedule, but I think it's far to say that the pace was more leisurely than normal. Another welcome innovation was the snazzy barstool provided by Pauline in the 'front of house' department. I also got to have a look in the new demo signal box th
D869

D869

9
TomE's N Gauge Modelling

Ropley - Contain yourself!

Somewhere to store N gauge things.   Hi all.   Well, as usual things down at 2mm scale Ropley have been moving at a glacial pace! Quite the opposite from the real world location it seems.   As many of you will now know, Ropley will be making its first ever public appearance at RMweb live in September.     Gulp.     This will very much be as a work in progress, however I have drawn up a (short!) list of things I would like to have done by the time the show comes around. This is mo
TomE

TomE

2
Feltenham mk 3

All change!

Morning all!, after much consideration I have now come to hate the prospect of n gauge, just didn't feel it was to my enjoyment of creativity if you get what I mean :S love n gauge though and sure ill dabble in it again at some point!   So with that said, feltenham is now becoming a fictional station upon the lynton & Barnstaple railway! And yes I've already got the Heljan manning wardles on pre-order!.....6 of them! (Want to have 2 to give a personal name change! Don't want it being too p
Sr-Dixon

Sr-Dixon

0
Neil_S_Wood's Blog

The new layout

We knocked our house down and built a new bigger better one and out of that I got a bigger garage with a bigger workbench, a room for computers and models and, best of all, a designated layout room inside the house which has air con and heating. No more of that layout in the garage nonsense. We moved in a couple of months ago and the dust has started to settle on the sorting the house out. As my time has freed up from house stuff my focus has shifted back to hobbies so I have started buildin
Neil_S_Wood

Neil_S_Wood

0
A Wellingborough Fireman

November 1953

Su 1 1.40-11.15 Bedford – Castle Ashby 48423 M 2 5/45-1.45 Preparing Tu 3 5/45-1.45 Preparing W 4 5/45-1.45 Preparing Th 5 5/45-1.45 Preparing F 6 3/0-11/0 Relief Sa 7 6/22-4.30 Brent – Toton 48370, Nottingham – Brent 48150 Su 8 Off M 9 3.10-11.20 Wboro – Bedford 44161, Bedford – Wboro 44161 Tu 10 2.50-10.30 Wboro – Bedford 48304, Bedford – Wboro 48304 W 11 2.20-11.30 Wboro – Bedford 44145, Bed
nomisd

nomisd

0
Freshwater, Isle of Wight, in 2FS

Some buildings for Freshwater

At the Basingstoke show, the only building on the layout was a Ratio SR concrete PW hut. There are only four other major buildings required to complete the layout, but all will need to be scratch built. I started trying to create drawings for the station building, using a 3D drawing package, but the more I did, the more I thought about 3D printing the building instead of using plasticard and printed paper as I had orginally intended. The complex decorative brickwork would be really difficult to
Ian Morgan

Ian Morgan in Structures

2
Buckingham West

Now with added colour

Gents,   Thanks for all the comments. As you can see, I have taken it all on board. I have added much more grey to the roofs and covered the Lake sections of the roof. This was Lifecolor roof dirt, and the solebars are black (Lifecolor weathered black).         I airbrushed the roof dirt. Last time I used the airbrush with acrylics I thinned the, M 50:50 with distiller tap water, but it was thin and didn't stick to the under frames of the wagons. I was painting frame dirt to underf
Richard Mawer

Richard Mawer

7
AllScales' Gerlos Blog

Station overcrowding

Hi All,   Not a lot of progress today, but some testing was required, so it was time to get out some rolling stock, just to check if everything was going to fit.   This is a picture of the rolling stock (not all of it either) out to test the track:   The ZB historical rake is considerably longer than any of the loops in the station, so that will need to run in several trains, not as a single massive rake.   A number of years ago I tried the loco's and worked out that the big ZB diesels
AllScales

AllScales

0
Barry Ten's Blog

Evidence of Autumn

Following on from the last post, here's a bit more progress on the scene around the level crossing.   Mikkel made a good point that the shop looked like it could use a bit more weathering compared to the crossing gates. I decided to have a go at painting the window frames something other than white, which I reckon has helped to tone down the overall look of the building and made it more of a piece with the larger scene:     I've also begun to add some foliage in and around the buildings,
Barry Ten

Barry Ten

3
Building Buckden

Piecemeal progress at Buckden

So a little expansion a around the room has given me a neat fiddle yard, which will be a "through" yard once I drawbridge the door, and will have an extra road when I change to streamline points. 46444 and Wiggoforgold may be slightly upset at the yard contents today as I've been playing with modern image. No fear though- Buckden is still being built firmly in steam era and that stock will be back out of the boxes soon. I'm going to ballast and ground cover the fiddle yard so it will be semi-sce
Ivatt46403

Ivatt46403

3
The Legge Lane MPD Blog

Weathered coal wagons

A couple of wagons for the future "coal hole".     Only light weathering (so far); the coal is real, collected from an abandoned surface working above the town of Graissessac, Languedoc, France. The sieving process is not quite right, the scale "lumps" are possibly too small to be prototypical.   I should add that Graissessac is almost a ghost town since the mines were closed. I understand from friends who live nearby that many of the miners were Polish. One of the ironies of the area
Focalplane

Focalplane

0
A Wellingborough Fireman

October 1953

Th 1 12.10-8.40 Wboro – Derby 48265 F 2 12.10-8.50 Wboro – Derby 48962 Sa 3 12.15-9.55 Wboro – Derby 48305, Kirby – Wboro 48413 Su 4 Off M 5 9/50-6.55 Wboro – Brent 48107, Brent – Kirby 48293 Tu 6 9/50-7.30 Wboro – Brent 48008, Brent – Kirby 48269 W 7 9/50-7.55 Wboro – Brent 44249, Brent – Kirby 48100 Th 8 9/20-5.20 Liverpool – Brent 44764 F 9 9/20-5.20 Relief Sa 10 9/20-5.20
nomisd

nomisd

0
Brackhampton Snow Hill

Brackhampton North SB - getting down and dirty

Following on from last nights post, here's the same thing after ten years of wear and tear.     Weathering has been done with some Humbrol white weathering powder and some old cars weathering powders, mainly black, brown and rust. The leadroof was first washed with the white powder and white spirit. Lead tends to whiten as it ages and then it was given a wash of the black and whiote white spirit. This took the edge of the white and added the soot.   The sides were done in a mixture
rovex

rovex

0
AllScales' Gerlos Blog

Immigrants, they are invading!

Well, not quite actually! I finally got around to buying some actual people to populate the layout, as well as a beetle (car) to check sizes such as road widths. I've never gotten to this stage before! And with that I mean being somewhat realistic. My most scenic'd layout from my younger days featured one house and some road surface and very unrealistic grass. The whole lot was inside the reversing loop, with no way out! However that doesn't really matter when you're ten!   It wasn't until aft
AllScales

AllScales

1
The GC and Met in OO

Metropolitan 'E' class (III)

The next thing to do was to reprofile the cab roof. This was done using a dremel at a low speed; once finished lengths of plastic rod were glued to the cab sides and then a sheet of paper laminated over the top to give a smooth finish.   Work then moved to the smokebox. I needed to build up a new smokebox wrapper, and after efforts to use plastic sheet proved futile I took a length of 0.5mm by 1mm plastic rod, cut it into many 13mm lengths and then glued these around the smokebox (rather a
James Harrison

James Harrison

0
This is the slow train, crossing the border - a European Travel(b)log

7. Four more countries, including a little one

After passing through four countries in one day yesterday, it's the same number again today. Friedrichshafen to Lindau in a 2-car DB diesel unit. A few things of interest there, including the 'Alex' private operator of Lindau-Munich trains using newer locos and older refurbished compartment coaches, in a natty turquoisey-blue colour:   the Zurich-Munich train which comes in via Austria using a Swiss electric, and leaves (Lindau is a terminus) behind two German diesels:   and a half-tim
eastwestdivide

eastwestdivide

4
The Legge Lane MPD Blog

The Turntable saga - Meccano to the rescue

After several attempts, I have finally reached a reasonable solution for motorizing the Peco turntable. The two pictures show the arrangement:       Basically I gave up with attaching the motor directly to the plastic well and created a strong plywood substrate. The need to reinforce the plastic well now seems to be unnecessary, so those three holes in the plywood are no longer used.   Meccano parts did indeed come to the rescue. The motor is noisy but not as noisy as the previous kit
Focalplane

Focalplane

0
Feltenham mk 3

A night of track planning...rather than working

Morning all!   whilst I should have been working I came up with another track plan I might use, after some tweeking and advise from all of you peeps!   so here it is, labeled a few basic things to get the jist, let me know what you think or what you would add/change etc   Cheers, Paul
Sr-Dixon

Sr-Dixon

1
A Wellingborough Fireman

September 1953

Tu 1 5.40-1/40 Wboro – Toton (lodge) 48281 W 2 11/30-7.30 Toton – Wboro 48381 Th 3 5.20-1/20 Trips 43531 F 4 5.40-12/0 Wboro – Toton (lodge) 48678 Sa 5 11/30-8.10 Toton – Wboro 48363 Su 6 2.0-12/25 Brent – Nottingham 48618 M 7 8/33-3.50 Relief 41079, 40487 Tu 8 8/33-6.35 Toton – Lloyds 47938 W 9 8/33-6.25 Toton – Lloyds 48377 Th 10 8/33-7.25 Toton – Lloyd
nomisd

nomisd

0
Brackhampton Snow Hill

Brackhampton North SB goes all colourful

I have got around to painting the model of Brackhampton (pronounced Birmingham) North Signal Box I made several moons ago. I have been unable to find any decent colour pictures showing how the box was painted in real life and the girder supports were causing me some heartache. "black" seemed too stark and dark stone didn't seem appropriate either.   Anyway, last week I was leafing through a new book of GWR structure colours in Ian Allan's Brum bookstore when I found out that some features on G
rovex

rovex

3

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  • Blog Comments

    • Yan
      Post Scaleforum 2024

      By Yan · Posted

      Thank you for leaving the comments and thoughts guys, much appreciated.   Both Butley Mills and Ditchling Green are with new owners that are currently refurbishing them. Even the modelling skill and composition still shine through, so they were both well worth seeing in the flesh. One of Iain Rice's layouts I'd like to get the opportunity to see is Trerice.
    • BarryP
      Post Scaleforum 2024

      By BarryP · Posted

      It's good to see so many positive reviews of a model railway exhibition. I did dabble in S4/P4 way back and Iain Rice's writings were inspirational. I saw Butley Mills when it was first shown at Scaleforum in 1987 and I loved it. Gordon Gravett's models are fabulous and I would love to see them in the flesh, as it were. I did visit two shows specifically to see the magnificent "Pempoul" layout that the Gravetts built, that was the finest I've ever seen. I'm dabbling in "O" Gauge and an opportuni
    • Keith Addenbrooke
      Post Scaleforum 2024

      By Keith Addenbrooke · Posted

      Good to see it was a positive experience - and really nice to see a couple of photos of Ditchling Green (I didn’t realise it was still around).  Always struck me as a lovely layout: an early example perhaps of the ‘less is (so much) more’ approach to railway modelling that is now widely appreciated.  Keep up the good work, Keith.
    • Mikkel
      Post Scaleforum 2024

      By Mikkel · Posted

      The layout and info display looks very good. Thanks for posting photos of the other layouts, always a gift for those of us abroad - especially when they are this good.   Imposter syndrome is common I think, it can hold us back but on the hand I'll take that over bragging anytime.  
    • Mikkel
      Netherport and Basuto Quay Chronology

      By Mikkel · Posted

      That sounds like a good approach Nick, thank you for clarifying. A sense of space is so important, less is more and all that.   The Penzance photo shows unloading of flower traffic from the Scilly Isles (no date). It features on the front page of this volume by Tony Atkins. The book is perhaps not unexpendable and a tad dry, but it is informative and some of the photos are lovely.    

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