Martin S-C

You may wish to test several similar products before you find the type of foil that works best for your needs...

Any 4-4-0 gets a thumbs up from me. Very attractive engines. Add a single axle pony truck to make an Atlantic and I'm putty in your hands. Any more axles (and six driven wheels) is overkill!

1) Using a new blade slice off the moulded plastic securing rings from the model's deck. 2) Take a pin drill and drill out a hole beside the steel loop on each ring. 3) Glue in lengths of 0.3mm brass wire and clip off the bits from underneath. Ensure a small length is proud of the deck to make an additional anchor to glue new rings onto. 4) Pull 8 links off some chain. I have a few different sizes of chain laying about but settled on a copper coated steel chain that was 15 links per inch. When I squashed the oval links mostly circular with flat pliers they came out about the right diameter. The rings were a bit chunky though. 5) Glue circular links behind the new raised studs on the wagon deck. 6) Thread cotton through the links back and forth corset style (ooh, er, missus) and glue the loose end away out of sight somewhere. 7) Paint securing loops rusty colour. Repair all the damage your eager fingers have done to the rest of the wagon's paintwork. Grr. 8) Enjoy.

The sheeted pic of the MR open you showed, Compound, has more convincing brake blocks. Is that the Slater's model?

I'm bemused by how many people think that sacks of stuff, especially feedstuffs, were shipped in open wagons without sheeted protection. Almost (caveat - not all, but almost) every PO open wagon you'll encounter would have been built and hired to carry coal even though it's exterior might advertise some product or whatever. Sacks of feedstuffs, grains, bales of textiles and so on would all have been conveyed in vans or at the very least in opens protected by sheets. The thought of what rain might do to sacks of flour or grain doesn't bear thinking about.

Regarding music and pastimes, I find that listening to Classic FM while driving keeps me under the speed limit!

I bought some very thin (aka narrow) brass strip from Eileen's at a recent exhibition and the plan is to use kit-supplied plastic running boards but stengthen them underneath with the brass. This means I can be lazy and don't have to a fettle the brass into anything that looks like a running board - its just an out-of-sight strengthener.

Thank you James. It's curious. I had refrained from discussing this model and I felt sure that if anyone brought the subject up, it would be you. It shows that you have a good eye for interesting architecture. No, not my work, I am sorry to say. The mill model was another happy encounter on e-Bay. It cost me the princely sum of £22.00. I do waste horrible sums on e-Bay but now and again when the planets align and the chicken entrails portend a great victory I do get a bargain - enough of them to offset the bad (aka expensive) days. A while ago, when I was going through my replacement collection of Railway Modeller magazines I realised it was a copy of Allan Downes' model of Houghton Mill. I confess my heart skipped a beat wondering if by some insane chance trail of fortune he'd sold his model and it had found it's way to me but no, this is a reasonably skilled rendition of either Allan's model or the actual mill. Probably Allan's version as it is compressed down considerably in the same dimensions as his.

Yet here in the UK we get several cases a year of poisonous spiders, etc travelling into the country in tropical fruit shipments.

Division Bell might be the Floyd's finest work. If not, then Wish You Were Here. The story of how WYWH's cover art was made is amazing; well before digital effects they had a guy wear a flameproof suit and set him on fire. It took several takes to get the flames just right. The bloke was not amused apparently. Curiously enough I am into a lot of the more chilled end of EDM and electronic ambient music these days. Great to do modelling to, or have on in the background when I'm reading. Very relaxing.

I turned my keyboard over a couple of weeks back to clean it out. I didn't need to buy anything for sandwich fillings for three days.

Great work on the Melton Works, Annie. I adore that signal cabin in the foreground of the first image. I'm a big fan of rail-served industries as you know so of course gasworks sidings always get a thumbs up from me.

Thanks for that observation Andy. I felt there was something lacking about it but couldn't put my finger on it, and now you have. I shall add some more ropes.

Curse you sir! My keyboard is now wet with sprayed tea!

So an island platform GCR style? Nice. I like those works. Ridiculously small, even with the enlargements, considering the network it supported. I love maps. I could stare at them for hours. When I was representing Swindon in my Highworth route I put in just enough sidings to make it look "works-ish" and so that activity writers could script things happening in there but most of it was a backscene. If you drove a train from the footplate it looked ok. If you went up in helicopter view it looked very weird!

I like the dead tree. Was that a fortuitous find from the garden? I have a tupperware box of dead garden bits I hope to make strategic use of later on.

Thank you all for all kind comments. Your feedback really empowers me and makes me want to crack on with all this. James - cheers, that confirmation is good to have. Yes, Annie the LNWR beer van is a really nice vehicle. The chassis is brass but very old, it wouldn't surprise me if it dates from when brass kits were just starting to hit the mainstream. I'm pretty sure the end stanchions are matchsticks. It has its rough edges but as you say is a thing of its time and has obviously already had a long career on someone's layout. The slightly crude construction has that feel to it which says a lot about when it was built. I am very pleased I came across it. There were three of them being sold by the same person on e-Bay and my bids were enough to secure only one of them. David - thanks. Yes, I'm pretty excited by the whole thing. Its by far the most ambitious model railway I've attempted. I suppose some might call me a cheque-book modeller by employing professionals to do a lot of the work but the other option was to build it myself and if that were the case I would never ever have attempted such a huge model. I'd have gone for something much smaller. I was ruminating on the issue of "quick fix" modelling just the other day about how micro layouts are more and more common nowadays. People often speak of "this years layout will be...", build something, play with it for an exhibition season or two then sell it on and do something else. Of course smaller homes may be one reason for this but as you mention the attention span of our modern times might also be impacting the hobby. The old model railway hobby where the Ahern's, the Denny's and the Hancock's built a layout for life seems to be far less common these days. I think I just invest too much into the things I create to ever want to sell them. The 2 or 3 small layouts I have built in the past and which reached a presentable standard were all very very painful to part with even if they were only extremely average in construction and presentation. Mason - thanks for your comments on the rolling stock. My problem is I like goods wagons far too much. I really ought to get some passenger coaches finished and a couple more locos for the line will soon be a necessity!

Sets would have strengthening coaches added on busy days such as summer Saturdays and these could be quite different in age and traffic use.

Yes, I'm thinking this cannot be too hard. Insulating the existing wheels or swapping them over, removing the stud contact shoe and wiring up for 2-rail. I don't see that anything more than that is needed. It is a DCC model, equipped with sound. Not sure how I can test it though, not having any Marklin track or a controller!

Which kit have you used for the underframe?

Yes, Mikkel, in fact a mix of black and sepia watered down. Then dry-brushing with the same brown/grey tone as the sheet but lightened with some white. I've tried to suggest an agricultural sheet belonging to the ploughing engine owners, rather than a railway company one. I wanted a bit of variation. The problem with the foil is it comes out too crumpled. Looking at photos of real sheeted loads the sheets tend to be mostly taut and you can't get that effect with foil without great risk of tearing it. I made up the empty Lowmac so that I can swap the wagons over for when a ploughing engine is delivered or collected from a yard. Chuffinghell - I am sorry to hear about that. I have had a pretty low mood over winter since cutting my thumb but the recent warm weather has inspired me to gird my loins and press on. I've suffered depression before and find that sitting and staring at a wall doesn't help. This time after a protracted period of feeling sorry for myself I made myself get up again and push on. I hope you too get over your present problems, whatever they are.

No comments needed for this I think, should all be self-explanatory, the only tricky bit was getting the paint to adhere to the foil. Pre-coating it with Testors Dulcote fixed that.

Completing a few part-done projects that have been hanging around for a couple of months. I hate it when that happens. Two more wagons finished today, or rather, this is in fact only one wagon. It might not look like it, but I assure you it is. I bought this pair of ye olde Airfix Lowmacs carrying traction engines from the very talented Dave Clarke at Lineside & Locos early last year. They are very nicely weathered and nothing wrong with them at all. This was early in my collecting phase though, and before I'd settled on the pre-grouping period for my layout. When I did, the showman's engine, being from the 1930s, was of no use to me. The ploughing engine is somewhat out of scale as well, being rather too big. I checked that the Lowmacs were okay for 1919 and discovered that the GER introduced a 14t type in 1886, somewhat different to this pattern which is a 25t BR fitted vehicle from 1952 but following the construction of the earlier GER/LNER vehicles. So, going on the happy discovery that such vehicles were around just post-Great War I wondered if I could do something about the other problems. The 1930s showman's engine was easily dealt with by just removing it. I plan to sell it on second hand. As you may have already become aware from my prior ramblings, when I operate a model railway I like to have removable loads so I can move wagons about the place with a bit more meaning and function. The fixed-on ploughing engine remained a problem therefore. Then I had a minor brainwave and thought I could use the empty and loaded Lowmacs to represent the same vehicle and swap the actual model over by hand in a goods yard if there was a ploughing engine to be collected or delivered anywhere. The final problem was the overscale model and I reasoned that it would be unlikely to convey such a valuable piece of equipment unprotected from the elements and decided to cover it with a sheet. This conveniently hides most of its bulk. The chimney was sawn off at the actual hinge point above the smokebox, to be carried in front of the engine on a folded tarpaulin. The sheet covering the model was half of a foil wrapper from a creme egg and I gave it a spray of Testors Dulcote to provide a matt surface to take the paint. I gave the foil a coat of my ever-useful Mig acrylic "faded Sinai grey" military colour which is a fantastic tone, the virtues of which I've extolled on here before. I use it for all kinds of things, but mostly dirty unpainted wood for wagon interiors. It happens to credibly pass for the brown of a faded canvas sheet as well. This came out horribly glossy however but a wash with a mix of black and sepia washes flattened this down. I then drybrushed over the wash with a mix of the Sinai grey and white. Additional ropes were added from the sheet corners down under the wheels. A heavy piece of machinery such as this would be secured by chains of course but I felt I'd done enough. Some matchsticks with the business ends sawn off were glued under the wheels as chocks and left unpainted. The wagon I'd removed the showman's engine from had some clutter glued onto its deck and was drybrushed over to give it a paler appearance. Some identical Powsides rub-on transfer letters and numbers from various wagon sheets covered by an ink wash were applied to both wagons to finish the job.

It has here!