Mikkel

Sure, though it's not that consistent! The track sides are 70.822 German Black Brown (not much rust at Farthing 🙂). It's a bit dull on it's own, but light drybrushing brings out a metal look, I find. The paving stone in The Bay was done a long time ago. IIRC, the flagstones are 70.837 Pale Sand. The edging stones were painted light grey (can't remember which one of them), which I regretted. The idea was to sand t back off but as can be seen here I got distracted from it! Must revisit when I set to work on the main station platforms. For red brick, until recently I used 70.814 Burnt Red with a bit of 70.984 Flat Brown. This is then given a wash of milky 70.918 Ivory. The goods depot only has a dash of the brown. It is a bit too red for my taste, although it varies a lot with the lighting (doesn't help when the sky falls down either). On the stables I mixed in more brown, approx. 4:1. Then on the station building I tweaked the shade again and used the very orange 70.829 Amaranth Red + MIG Sinai Dust Pigment. Note that the red only looks right if subdued with the powder. The latter method is unusual and I'm not sure I'll do it again, see: I don't know if that is much help, actually! Brighton Trafalgar looks fantastic as it is, with the nice brown on the arches and the superb light sand station building.

The original Rapido announcement featured an earlier roundtopped Class 2 (?) as one of the first photos. I weakened at the knees, but as I scrolled the actual 483 appeared and the contrast was striking. The Class 2 photo seems to have gone from Rapido's website, maybe they could see the problem!

Very crafty 😄 But there is another problem which I held back for fear of death threats: I don't much like the look of it! In my view, the firebox ruins everything 🙂

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.

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.

This is the Bachmann Dukedog chassis and tender, isn't it? I removed the plastic clip by hand, simply pushing out the sides. The plug in the tender was more tricky, I was worried about damaging things. But using small pliers and care it eventually came out. Note though that I have not tried reassembling it, as I'll be using a different tender for my Bulldog. Yours looks great, even without weathering it suits the layout very well.

A new cutting mat sounds like a good idea, Chris. I change mine frequently, though they aren't cheap. I suggest avoiding the extra sticky type, my 5 thou sheets simply tear up when I try to remove them from that one. From the photo it looks as if they aren't cut fully through? For the Evolution coaches, I ran a quick check against GWR coach diagrams. The All Third could pass for a stretched GWR C10 or C22 (depending on width) if the bizarre roof fittings were removed. From what I can see, the other two aren't really in the ballpark of any GWR diagrams, least of all the compo.

Thanks for the suggestion Keith. The SDJR isn't that far from Farthing, so I asked Paddington if we should give them running rights on the Berks & Hants extension. They said yes, when pigs fly. So I'm afraid it won't happen 🙂

Thank you Mike. I had forgotten that he died young. Alas, that makes it difficult for him to appear at Farthing in old age.

Yes, a nicely weaved history, Nick. Fictional layouts are lies, and as we all know lies work best when they are closely interwoven with fact 🙂 I mean that in a positive way: One of the wonders of railway modelling is that we can - if we want - weave history and imagination, as you do so well here. I am trying to get a feel for the atmosphere of the layout, e.g. how busy will it be and look. Is it more this... Penzance ... than this: Weymouth Or a bit of both?

I like the looks of that siding, and the track flow in general. Good luck getting the setbacks sorted, going back and starting again can be so demotivating. But you owe it to Sir Humprey 🙂

Thank you gents for explaining this, it all makes sense to me now.

Do we know when E.T. Lane was born or died? He just might appear in 1:76 scale somewhere, somehow 🙂

Many thanks Neal, will put that on the wishlist for Christmas!

Lovely views, John. I had not heard of the poly foam trick before. Can I ask how it improves uncoupling?