David Holman

Only 42 years JB, the March 75 Railway Modeller in fact. I cut out the article and still have it. 16 feet long, it still looks the business, even by today's standards. WLW 2-4-0 Galtee Moor was one engine and 0-6-0 Shannon the other. Fully lined, as you'd expect. So glad I was able to meet him.

A couple of folk have asked me about these, so have attached photos of ones I made using dimensions & photos in the Patterson book. High tech they ain't, but hopefully of some use. To 7mm scale, I've included a 'rule' to help with re-sizing if you want 4mm. At least by going smaller, any errors are reduced accordingly!

Eight, I think, JB - check out the obituaries section of RMWeb. There are lots of photos, plus links to other sites, including Richard's own.

Just back from a short holiday in the West Country, which included a visit to Pecorama in Beer, Devon. Have met Andrew Burnham, editor of Continental Modeller, several times at exhibitions & he came along to the Chatham show in June. When I mentioned my wife & I would be staying near Beer, he immediately offered to give us a tour - something I was not going to miss out on! We arrived at 10am and Andrew kindly give up the next three hours to show us round - not just Pecorama itself, but a tour of the editorial offices, the Beer Heights Railway and the factory itself. Never again will I look at a humble piece of flexitrack in the same way. As the home of two major national magazines, the offices are relatively small, but pretty high tech, while on the stairs leading up there are several original Cuneo paintings. RM Editor Steve Flint was there & studying the latest edition of BRM as we arrived & I'm sure the other editors do the same. The new RM was just in [not published until Thursday], so I was able to see my own article in 'Talking Points', reviewing 30 years of exhibitions with my own layouts & the Chatham club. A tour of the exhibition layouts followed, all beautifully presented in 'home settings', to show that everyone can find space for a railway. Next we went into the gardens [fabulous] and across to the Beer Heights railway sheds. Lots of 7.25" locos present, including some actually built on site. The tracks wind their way around the gardens, with superb views of the local countryside, in a route totalling over a mile. The line is fully signalled too and up to three trains can run at once. The highlight though was the tour of the factory. Nestled into the hillside, it is a significant local employer of over 100 people. Andrew showed us the new moulding machines [installed at a cost of over £3 million]. Though they are of a 'standard' design, all the masters are machined on site. Lots of high tech stuff involved here too, but also good old fashioned, very skilled, workshop practice - no wonder they can build miniature steam locos on site... We saw track and points being assembled on the production lines, along with N gauge wagons, while in the paint shop was a fascinating new printer which can do things like private owner wagon sides in N gauge upwards. We finished off with a ride on the railway & indulged ourselves with tea in the Pullman car before we left. We felt extremely privileged to have been behind the scenes of one of our household names in modelling. Next time you pick up a bit of Peco track, reflect on the amount of skill and engineering that goes into it and marvel that it costs so little. Pecorama is well worth a visit at any time and is a super day out for all the family. You are unlikely to get a tour like I did, but the rest is still fantastic on its own.

Just noted on RM Web that the great Richard Chown has passed away. Obituaries are accumulating for the pioneer of Irish broad gauge in 7mm scale. Castle Rackrent was very much the inspiration for my Arigna Town layout, but Richard started his back in the early 1970s when there was less than nothing available & everything was built from scratch. The system eventually grew to over 200' in length with eight stations and was very much operated to prototype practice. It was a delight to meet him at Manchester back in December and a complete honour to run his model of Lissadel [in early SLNCR livery] on my layout. Innovative in all sorts of ways, his obituaries will be well worth reading, not least because he was by all accounts a lovely man and a real character.

Only just noticed this thread, but I've done a few GNRI vans in 7mm scale for my Arigna Town layout. At first I batch built in plastic card, but needing multiple copies, I just made masters of sides and ends to make moulds for resin casting. Easy enough to do and you can put every effort into making the masters as detailed as possible. Should work in 4mm too. I wrote it up for the latest version of New Irish Lines. Another source of wagon drawings might be the Alphagraphix card kits. In effect, they are a colour, 7mm scale drawing and at £3 each do not break the bank. However, undertake detail is lacking....

The photos show things in reverse order. The first is the final bit, using a damp cotton bud to remove excess mortar colour from the surface of the bricks. This is water colour, which is washed on top of the acrylic brick colour [burnt sienna in this case], once the latter is dry. Before that, the chimney stack had been built up using pieces of foam board, fitted into the ridge of the roof. A thin coat of PVA goes on, then the DAS is smeared all over, including the top. The latter will give the impression of cement rendering around the bases of the chimney pots. Once the DAS had dried [leaving overnight is best], the surface can be scored with a scriber of choice to give the brick [or stone] courses. I find it helps to have an old toothbrush handy to scrub away the dust made by the scribing. It is also useful to arrange to have a light source coming in from one side, that way, the scribed lines show up better. For brick courses, I scribe horizontal lines a scale 3" apart, with vertical line 9" apart for brick faces. The final picture is a close up of the upper storey of the station building, scribed and painted as above. Tedious, though not as bad as might first appear. Indeed, the hardest part was actually getting started. One big advantage of this method is you can accurately make brick courses go round the corners of buildings. Not recommended below 7mm scale though...

Several people have asked me about using DAS clay, so here are a couple of posts on what I do. However, I must point out that this is all taken from Gordon Gravett's books, particularly 'Building a Layout in 7mm Scale' [Wild Swan]. For those of you who have not come across DAS before, the first picture shows a pack. It comes in both grey and terra cotta colours and is an air drying clay which also contains a proportion of shredded paper. Once opened, keep the pack well sealed and it will last for months. I smear the DAS in pea sized balls on to a frame made of foam board. Use PVA/Resin W to stick the foam board together, but use dress making pins to hold while it dries. Coat both sides of the area to be covered in DAS with PVA, or walls might warp. The DAS should be spread to around 1mm thick and will dry overnight. If you get any cracks, they can easily be covered over with further additions. The next post will show how I did the chimney.

Not even making haste slowly at the moment, but bits and pieces are getting done. The station building is one of those projects that absorbs time for little apparent effect, though as you can see, it does now have a roof and some decorative bargeboards, plus a chimney stack. Doors and windows have been made too [plastic sheet and strip], with a basic interior on the upper floor. The other work has been on the road and pavement around the station & shops. These have been done as per Arigna - so a card base [on formers to create a bit of camber], then painted with gloss grey and talc sifted on. Vacuum off & repeat as necessary to get a smooth tarmac surface. Curbstones are plastic strip, while paving slabs are self adhesive address labels, pre-painted, laid and then treated with weathering powders. The end terrace has become a bicycle repair shop, as suggested by others, while you may also be able to spot drain and manhole covers in the road surface. These are on an etch sold by Langley Models and have been treated with 'Birchwood Casey Gun Blue', which blackens them without needing to use paint. Will put something in the workbench thread shortly about using DAS clay.

A little gem!

Looks pretty darned good to me. Very sharp.

Mmm. Dribbling again. Lovely stuff.

A shining example of 'less is more'. Hopefully Patrick will forgive me if I say it is not state of the art, but everything is to a consistency high standard and it just all hangs together so well and the artistry produces the atmosphere that isn't always there on other layouts, no matter how good technically. Would make a very good magazine article methinks and must be a great place to watch the trains go by.

It seems to me that modelling sometimes goes through phases where you feel you are busy doing stuff, but don't have anything to show for it. Such has been my workbench of late and not particularly helped by preparing for the Chatham Club's Exhibition in June either. By the by, Andy Cundick's Valentia Harbour is appearing, so worth coming along on 3-4 June if you are in the area - details in the magazines & RMWeb. So, the Unit now sports a red buffer beam, but that hardly counts as it was all of 5 mins work. However, did make a start on my home made 'resin kits' for some CVR vans and do now have one completed. Took me a while to get my head round it, because I'd cast the sides quite a while ago and couldn't remember how I'd intended to build them! Anyway, the resin sides stick together well with cyano, then it was a case of adding a 60thou plastic floor and 20thou roof to make the van body. Despite trying to add everything to the masters, there are one or two bits of strapping that needed adding, plus making up the Branchlines etched chassis. More work include the wheels, which need new [brass] axles to cope with 21mm gauge, plus Slaters top hat wagon bearings. So, kit of parts, but not really a kit at all. The cast sides and ends will prove a real time saver though. The chains on the doors are twisted fuse wire and are a nice touch in this scale. One of Barry Norman's ideas. Photo shows it in weathered grey [spray primer], hand lettered with a gel pen, as per my SLNCR wagons. Note the wagon itself is less than half the size it will appear on the average laptop screen. The other pictures are of progress on some of the buildings. These are being made from 5mm foam board, covered in DAS clay. In the case of the station building, this has been [tediously] scribed for brickwork. Effective, but wouldn't say it was my favourite pass time. The two shops will have a plain, rendered finish, which is much easier. The shop windows are all plasticard & strip and require detailed interiors. Still trying to decide what sort of emporia they will be, but plenty of info online, plus there are the Alphagraphix kits which can be quite useful for such things, even if you don't use the rest. Not really showing in the pictures is the end terrace behind the good shed. I've built it as a workshop, but can't decide what is made there. Sensible, vernacular suggestions welcome, but not the manufacture of holes for toothbrush handles, please...

Nowt so funny as folk, as they say where I originate from... Seem to remember seeing stuff on the Antique's Road Show - Dinky Toys or such, that had never been out of their boxes or seen the light of day. Evidently worth a fortune, but as nobody knew what was actually inside, could have been the Emperer's New Clothes. Down in Kent, we have an artist by the name of Bob Fridd, who creates all sorts of amazing things from scrap card, but one of his party pieces is to reproduce Dinky/Corgi Toy boxes [hand painted] and then get folk to tell the difference from the originals. I use the above merely to illustrate what can & does float different people's boats. For me, I'd rather pay three grand for a quality scratch build that the same for a mint, boxed, rare Wrenn A4 or some such, because the latter [though good for its day] is nothing compared even to a Bachmann today. Slight exaggeration, of course - wouldn't pay big money for anything I could build myself and have the pleasure, dubious or otherwise, of doing so. You pays your money and makes your choice, but sometimes I wonder...

Excellent work, Mick. Sits well with the coach too and both are going to look good on Bantry.

It can be interesting to see how others have built things! Indeed, am not entirely sure what folk would think of my stuff if they knew what was under the paint, filler etc... For me, the crucial things are it looks good and runs well [if applicable]. What Eoin is doing is pure craftsmanship, which the rest of us can only look on in awe and wonder - hoping it inspires us to make our own stuff a bit better as a result.

Now at the painting and finishing stage. Photos in Patterson's book show that the Unit was a couple of shades darker than 'wagon grey', so have hand painted the top coat in Humbrol No 27. Underframes are my usual weathering mix of matt black, 133 brown and gunmetal 53. It now needs weathering, but before that will have to work out how i'm going to do the lettering. A bit of research into transfers [either home made or suitable commercial fonts/colours] is required.

Nice one, Mike, the backscene successfully ties the individual scenes together.

Fab. love the colours.

Back in my [primary school] teaching days, I always told the kids to paint what you see, not what you think, whenever we did any observational work. Therefore direct observation is the key, though this inevitably also means using photographs, both of which introduce a range of additional parameters. Season/time of year, plus time of day and weather will all influence colour tones, while the period in history being modelled is also important, for what is in the landscape is continually being influenced by humans. When using photographs, the above also applies, plus the caveat that early colour film was significantly slower than today, so tones may not be accurate. Then there is lighting on the layout itself. Fluorescent tubes are notorious for flattening colours, so the old maxim of modelling in the same light you are presenting in applies. A further issue lies [quite literally] in the eyes of the beholder - not just degrees of colour blindness either. Men's eyesight increasingly sees shades of green less well as we get older, so getting the opinion of your significant other may be of value - as well as when getting dressed in the mornings... So, research your subjects carefully and don't rely on memory. Indeed, even with the verdant shades which come from Ireland's plentiful 'liquid sunshine', I'd advise going for more subdued tones than you might first think. Colour fades with distance, so the smaller the scale and the wider the baseboards, the lighter the tones need to be. That especially goes for back scenes. Also, whatever materials you use, aim to blend as much as possible. Personally, I never use a single shade of scatter or fibre and with electrostatic fibres often have three or more colours mixed together.

That is one serious piece of gingerbread. Very intricate, very impressive.

My fault, I'm afraid. Got an invite last year, filled in the form, but didn't put the date in my diary for some reason. Hence when details arrived in the post last week for second weekend in May, it was a bit of a shock as I am already committed to stuff with family and friends that weekend. Not good though, when the layout features in many adverts... Many shows do actually confirm attendance after you've sent in the form, but not all and I was caught out earlier in the year, but in that case was actually free, albeit at short notice. Doubly disappointing, as I visited the Derby works open days many times in my 'spotting' days. Next year, hopefully. So, apologies if anyone was hoping to see the layout there and in particularly to the show's organisers.

The two part resin from Easy Composites lasted over four years, but the new stuff looks different, so who knows. Have already used a fair bit in the first week, so fingers crossed! The mould making stuff definitely has a shelf life, less than six months once opened, then it won't set. Traders Hobby Holidays recently told me they no longer stock it for that reason. Shame, as mail order costs really jack up the price.

It has been three weeks since I did much modelling, unusual for me, as I like to keep things ticking over. However, home decorating and school governor duties took precedence, plus I was held up by a lack of casting resin. Easy Composites did not have any of their basic stuff in stock and the more advanced type needs a 'de-gasser', so I had to wait. Anyway, casting resin arrived on Monday, so have been busy running off sides and ends for CVR wagons. I'd made the masters & moulds a while ago, so could get on with producing parts for cattle wagons, dual purpose vans and goods vans, plus a CVR brake. The latter I'd already had a go with using the last of my old resin, but am not convinced the castings are as sharp as they could be, so have only made up one for now. It looks ok, provided you don't get too close! Construction involved glueing the sides and ends together [cyano], then mounting on a base of 60thou plasticard, this in turn being fixed to a standard Branchlines etched chassis. Foot steps [two each end], various hand rails, glazing and a roof were then all that was needed - plus couplings and I still need to psyche myself up to add the safety hooks and chains. Fiddly ain't the word. It will eventually get a fair bit of weathering, though not until I've worked out a way to produce the CVR logo. I also cast the bonnet, radiator grill & cab roof for the Unit. The first two have been fixed in place, but the roof must wait until I've painted the cab interior, added a driver & done the glazing. However, it is nearing completion, so the next time you see it, hopefully it will at least have been sprayed with primer.