Linkdump Summer 2011

This was in my draft and still had the title "Linkdump Autumn 2010".  It's better on the web where I can find it more easily so I've added a couple more recent links and updated the title.

Modified C-Rail Tanktainers

How to build a hipped roof

Narrow gauge airbraked wagons, built by Julien Webb from 3mm scale kits

Lineside Industries (via Si from ngrm-online)

Modern 1:76 Scale Colour Light Signals

Plants and flowers by Will Vale on RMWeb

Ouse Viaduct/Balcombe/Lewes project an ambitious project to build a P4 recreation of the Ouse Valley Viaduct, Balcombe station, and Lewes Station using a Fremo style modular approach. They are going to build some generic scenery sections to link the main boards together. Their first baseboard is built and they've laid out the viaduct, and are making good progress.

The Elly James & Keith Light Railway - I've always admired James' modelling and his garden railway looks great fun.

Devil's Dyke Railway -  I've still not got round to watching this video of an old railway line that I've walked more than once.  I remember there being a good apple tree next to the track bed.

Narrow Gauge South 2010

It's now just over a month since Narrow Gauge South, and I've finally got round to uploading the photos I took to Flickr!  We had a good day out, and had our first picnic of the year.  I didn't take many photos, since I spent most of the day carrying my 2 year old daughter around so that she could see the layouts.  Her favourite was Torreton (pictured above), and she spent a few minutes looking in the mine excitedly waiting for the train to pop out.  She had definite ideas about which layouts she wanted to see, and on one occasion pointed out a layout that I'd missed!

Particular highlights for me were the Clydach Valley Railway, an impressive fictional preserved railway which managed to pull of the 009 cliché of having stock from well known Welsh lines; Khan, an 009 portrayal of German military railways in Namibia, and finally seeing Dunbracken.  I also bought a couple of things, but more about that later.

Links:
Mick Thornton
Michael Campbell: Blog Post, Pictures.
Fairlight Works: Blog Part 1, Blog Part 2, Pictures
Jamie Warne

Linkdump: Spring 2010

I currently have just under 40 draft posts.  Part of the reason for this is that I kept dumping links of things I find interesting or useful into draft posts.  To tidy things up a bit I've decided to collect all the things I've found recently in one post, with short comments.

Dales Peak: Going, going, gone! - A neat stacking module designs (and some destruction).
Micro 009 layout plans by Ian Holmes, one of which is now under construction.
Cool chipped paint via @Scalescenes - using salt, hairspray and paint.
Phil's Workbench: Tea leaves as ballast - I think this would also work as leaf litter in the larger scales.
Strange Worlds: Flickr Stream and article via Model Railroaders Anonymous - realistic dioramas made out of unconventional materials.
Traeth Mawr Railway: Assembling the backboard - Huw's Ffestiniog inspired layout begins to take shape.
Mick's Projects: Dartmoor Farm - a farm building built from card & and manilla envelope.

Dales Peak

Photo by Ian Robins. CC-NC licensed

Ian Robins' Dales Peak is a loft layout which is under construction. It is set in the Peak District and inspired by Tunstead Quarry. It's a two-level affair with multiple loops round the loft which always scores points with me. It also has a few locations so there will be a point to the train movements. There will be a couple of stations, a cement works, a quarry and a stone wharf. See Ian's trackplan for how it will all fit together. More pictures of this layout can be found on Flickr, the layout also has a blog and a website

Looking through the blog has given me another option for a building for my OO module. The kit in the photo above is Walthers "Glacier Gravel Company", the loading hoppers and building building behind are very close to what I had in mind, so I might be able to bash something suitable out of this kit.

The Riber Valley Light Railway

A new few new NG blogs have appeared recently. One that has caught my eye is The Riber Valley Light Railway by Simon K. Simon is modelling fictional railway serving a colliery in the North Derbyshire Coalfield in the '50s. He has a senario, a track plan and has completed some coal hoppers and his first loco, a Dapol Railbus bash on a Piko chassis. He's also growing some trees, which is something I'd intended to do this year too. I'm not sure if it's too late to plant some this year but I've ordered some Teloxys aristata and I'll give it a go anyway. Whilst searching for seeds I found a Teloxys Aristata blog which has weekly updates growing these plants.

Mike Hamer's B&M Railroad

You may have noticed a new link has appeared in the standard gauge links section. I thought I'd write a short blog entry about it - I may go back and blog about some of my other links in future. I found the B&M Railroad from a post on RMweb in the excellent Southerham thread by number6. Like him I'm a fan of American layout designs and would like to incorporate some aspects into my loft layout. The plan of the B&M is superb and gives an amazing sense of space in a 11'x13' room (which is tiny by the standards of American layouts). Now how can I include similar ideas and a double track main line? Well I've got plenty of time to think about it and already have a few ideas. Number6 has given me a few more things to think about with his plan.

Flickr Groups

As a follow up to my recent post here's some more Flickr goodness. Here's some more inspirational Flickr pools but this time there are no pictures of trains. Plenty of pictures to inspire sceneary and weathering though.


Picture by just.Luc licensed under CC by-nc-sa 2.0

The groups:

Tracks Without Trains
Weathered Wood
Any Derelict Building
Rural Decay
Urban and Rural Decay UK
Urban Decay
Walls only Walls!

World Wide Web

I've had a post in my drafts for quite a while about some things I've found on the internet and some new things which have recently been created. First something fun: a photo of what the WHR might have looked like in the late 70s form the Fictitious Liveries site. Hopefully they will do some more narrow gauge locos.

Tom Dauben has started a new blog for his next project which is called Port na Cailliche. It's going to be set in Scotland on the coast of the West Highlands and should be excellent judging from Dunbracken which is his current layout.

Frank Neubaur's 0 Gauge Homepage which has some excellent Garratts.

I've also been playing about with some google and yahoo web tools. I've created a google custom search which searches shops which searches manufactures and shops which sell narrow gauge models. Hopefully it should appear below, if not here's a link.



I use google reader to keep up to date (ish) with the narrow gauge blogosphere but blogger doesn't put comments in the rss feeds (Wordpress does though). I started playing with yahoo pipes in an attempt to get an aggregated rss feed of the comments on multiple blogs (in an attempt to get something like the Facebook News Feed). It does work but it's not that fast and I've only tried it with 3 blogs so far. I've just subscribing to the rss feed in Google reader and it seems to be working and the speed doesn't seem to be an issue.

I've also signed up to the Narrow Gauge Modelling Online forum which was set up in April. If you've not checked it out yet then take a look. There's some great modelling.

Belfield Hall Estate Railway

I've just read a post on Fairlight Works about Belfield Hall Estate Railway. I also remember Belfield Hall appearing in Railway Modeller and drawing plans based it, though I'd not remembered how young I was at the time. The two track plans which appeared in the Railway Modeller article also appeared in a recent small layout scrapbook. When I started getting back into model railways the first track plans I drew were based on the BHER too. Maybe one day I'll build a minimum gauge line too.

Inspiration (from April)

I started writing a post back in April about some of the layouts that had inspired me to get back into modelling and design a Gum Stump & Snowshoe based module. The post never got published but I've decided to update it slightly and post it now. I've tried to keep to the ideas I had at the time.

Whilst browsing the web I discovered the website of Brian Fayle. Underneath the Arches is one of many layouts on the site. It is 7mm scale with trains running on 16.5mm and 9mm gauge track. The layout has a road viaduct which splits breaks it up and makes it seem a lot bigger than it is. There's loads of detail and guessing what the people on the layout are up to is fun. Brian's website also has some good articles on modelling. I was particularly interested in his Directing Traffic about directing where the viewer looks.

Another modeller with a similar style to Brian is Anthony Goff. His Hilvermouth layout also has lots of scenes with interesting people. The layout is in OO9 terminus set in the 30's on the outskirts of a fictional town. He has a nice varied fleet of locomotives, some of which are based on real prototypes and some are freelance. They include a Double Fairlie and a Mallet. There's plenty going on around the railway too so in most of the pictures it's not the trains which draw the eye first.

Sometime in the spring I began reading the Fairlight Works blog. Back in April he only had one layout (Fairlight Works) but since then there have been a few side projects. He's also been scratch building a prototype PL class for Invercloy Loco Works and a Hunslet-style loco. He has a couple of large diesels in progress too: a Lxd2 kit and a drewey bash to make an Indian Railways ZDM5. The ZDM5 inspired me to think about a Bo-Bo diesel drewy bash too.

Another influence for the idea of a large diesel was my discovery of the Welsh Highland Railway. Both ends of the line have some massive narrow gauge locos - Castell Caernarfon and the Garratts at the Caernarfon end and the Lyd2s at Porthmadog. The Festiniog Railway Heritage Group Wiki is a great place to find information about both ends of the Welsh Highland Railway and the Ffestiniog Railway. It has great pictures of the lines, including photos of locomotives, wagons, coaches, engineering stock. It also has some great pictures of the WHR's number 143 SAR Class NGG16 Garratt. We visited the WHR(C) in June - we took some pictures but still haven't got the film processed.

Lastly for something standard gauge. Nigel Burkin's Platform 4a & 4b - is a superb model of part of Reading station set in the recent past. I love the Network SouthEast third rail EMUs but what caught my eye and made me want to do some modelling was the Buddleia (hopefully my 1:76 scale botany is up to scratch). I'm planning on trying to make some myself for my OO9 module. Once I get round to making it I'll let you know how I get on.

ExpoNG 2007

I didn't go but instead spent Saturday painting the living room. However due to the wonders of modern technology I spent some time yesterday evening looking at pictures taken by people who did. Michael Campbell has written a ExpoNG 2007 blog entry and posted some photos. Stephan Fulljames has also taken some photos. He doesn't have doesn't have a blog entry about them (yet) but they are well described on flikr. Edit: Stephan posted his ExpoNG blog entry at around the same time I posted this. There are also some photos by Simon King (MTA) in this NRM thread.

There were a couple of layouts that I remember reading about years ago. Benfield Hall (which I knew was going to be there) I remember from Railway Modeller and it is part of the reason I'd been thinking about pizza layouts. There was also Eitomo which is featured in a book I own "Scenic Railway Modelling" which was a plesent suprise. Another highlight was Stephan's photos was the Nn3 layout - the detail and the way the backsceen and model blend togther is amazing.

The pizza competition will be judged by Carl Arendt - Edit - the results can be found here.

Hopefully next year I'll be blogging about being there rather than other people's photos!

Rhyd Ddu: Woodland scenics vs IKEA

Colin Lea of "Rhyd Ddu" also saw the suggestion in Model Rail magazine of using 'Florera' from IKEA as ballast. He carried out an experiment 99p IKEA against £5.75 Woodland Scenics. His conclusion - Woodland Scenics is better. However I think the IKEA stuff could be useful in a yard where the ballast was going to be weathered anyway. See for yourself:

Rhyd Ddu: Woodland scenics 1 - IKEA 0 (AET)