Friday Update: Twenty Six Twenty-five…

Welcome to Friday! It’s boiling! I am whistling through this weeks update so I can get the big dog out for a walk before it’s too hot, so grab a nice long cool drink and join me for a look at what has been happening here…

Narrow gauge large and small! 16mm ‘Tattoo’ emerging from the Bootlane kit, liberally sprinkled with brass parts and scratch built extra detail - hand lined, she is now waiting plates and decals. A touch smaller, some sugar cane 009 models from various types of kit - the livery unifying the somewhat different style of locomotive. I’m still happy to take commissions, there is capacity in this years workload - drop me an email to discuss your requirements.

Now, for something completely different… Lametton halt is providing a varied diet of activity - from tree making to bridge building - as the basics of the composition transform from sketch, to cardboard to reality. 

The usual twisted wire armatures for these two ‘signature’ trees - the others, and there are lots of them, will be formed from quicker materials. Once the basic form is created I coat the trunk in PVA to secure the branches and give the bark mixture something to stick to - and that can be seen curing in the photo above.

The half relief view block road bridges are directly inspired by prototypes on the Looe branch. These are card covered foam core with styrene overlays. Slaters stone with 10 thou coping and 120thou cap stones, these look the part and are stiff and light, giving me some confidence to handle them during the construction phase without damage.

I have been a champion of Will’s ‘Coventry Rail Works’ since I first came across his Peco graim hopper conversions a few years ago - I built a rake of these as prototypes and helped with the decal design… lovely things, and I still have one in the collection. More recently he has helped me out with the HEA, I’ve 10 of these! This week, an exciting new wagon arrived, the Procor covered lime hopper - these did see service on Speedlink, so will form another wagon in my late 80s early 90s collection. As time moves on and Will refined his offering, I believe good news is that he is working with another excellent British 3D printing company to bring the kits to print on demand in this country! More when I can, and in the meantime, some research on colours required for this example…

Last weekend I took my son on the Churnet Valley Railway again, something we did a similar time last year. 33102 did the honours on our train up to Ipstones, the journey through the Churnet Valley is rather lovely, as are some of the moorland views - but 33102 was rather disappointing - a consummate performer with little fuss or noise, my first Crompton experience. Apparently, I’ve learnt since, they have a silenced exhaust!

We had lunch and then raced the steam hauled second train of the day - seeing her at Cheddleton before driving up and finding ourselves pacing her at Ipstones!

Our trip back to drop him at his Mum’s gave us a chance to watch some commuter trains at Congleton - the first time I’ve visited the station despite spending many years just up the line at Macclesfield!

Final piece of news this week, and just in, the scans I had done at Modelu the other week after the book launch are now in the wild, and you can add a mini James to your own project, currently a set of three, I’ve asked if they can be split into individual poses too… 

Just one of the three poses you can purchase from Modelu 

So there we have another week done, and time for a relaxing weekend. I’m hoping to make some small but important progress on Penpont, possibly other project too - weather dependant of course! Whatever your plans I hope you’ve enjoyed a week of my blogging and can find time for your own hobby. Thank you as always for the support, until next time, more soon…

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