Friday Update: Ten Two Twenty-two...

Back on the road again this weekend and as I’m exhibiting I can’t use the train so the car it will be, off to Doncaster later today for the Festival of British Railway Modelling…

A new CAF197 in the Network Rail headshunt at the east end of Chester Station last Sunday.

In the workshop this week and it’s on to two layout commissions, the first of which is taking shape below (but as I write this today I’ve two big boxes in the bottom room as I’ve taken over more space in the house to be able to progress the work in parallel). These will be Bishopsbourne and Shades of Mountain Ash, and are constructed in my usual manner with a 12mm ply base (and a 5mm stiffener under neath which also lifts the edge off the shelf), 9mm ply ends and 5mm ply front and back. Both now painted and sealed so the next job is to add some track bed before moving onto track laying. The box lids and lighting will be made later in the commissions, it feels good to have got these done as it’s my least favourite part of creating model railways.

What will become Bishopsbourne playing nose tot a few Cambrian N items whilst I was weighing up the pros and cons of a smaller scene.

A pair of Revolution tank wagons arrived recently for my own projects, the grey one is destined for the Cambrian and the brown for Paxton Road. I fancied taking the latter with me this weekend so I pushed on with some weathering. A wash of 98/33 in varying proportions was used on the chassis and lower tank body, this was removed in vertical strokes using a wide flat brush to give the effect of road dirt on the underside of the tank. A little more to add when the airbrush is available but less toy like now.

Paxton Road (also on display this weekend) played host to the Network Rail 37 I wonder for a few days before passing this on to George. Such a smooth runner, and really captures the character of the prototype, I have lowered this one by cutting deeper slots in the nose lighting boards on the chassis and removing the cab interior. You also need to remove a bit of the clip on the inside of the body so the sides don’t splay out when you push it down. George has already weathered it to match his other one, as he said, we just need a layout now!   

With that in mind we spent a few hours mid week discussing our thoughts, firming up the decisions we’d made about composition and thinking more on baseboard style and construction. We’re planning on adapting the cameo box construction I use, so it will be interesting to see how that works when used in multiples to create a longer scene.

Mocking up at George’s, discussing how we were planning on moving this layout project from paper to reality.

Finally, a scene from Beaverbrook with the locomotive that started the whole TerraTransport alternate history, the Intermountain U18B. This was one of my earliest H0 scale projects, and this end of the layout could stand in for anywhere really with its large sky. I’m still hoping the custom Modelu scan of me standing on the end handrails of one of these locomotives arrives soon, as it would be so good to appear in miniature on this layout!

If you’re at a loose end and close enough to make a day of it I hope to see many of you at Doncaster, however if distance of other commitments mean can’t make it then have a great weekend. Until next time, more soon…

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