David Holman

Gorgeous. Model really captures the prototype.

I use Halfords spray primers for the two wagon body colours and Precision Paints roof dirt. Humbrol do something similar. Dont be afraid to mix some talc in with the roof dirt to add a bit of texture to canvas type roof.

As the old saying goes, every journey begins with the first step... With so many stunning rtr models now available, I am convinced that a good model railway is within the reach of anyone. The trick is knowing where to start. For me it was making buildings. These have the distinct advantage of just needing to look good, with no need to run well! The same can be said of scenery. What really got me going was 7mm narrow gauge, where freelance modelling meant I did not have to worry about total accuracy. Good fun too, making my own loco and coach or wagon bodies to run on commercial chassis. Start simple and make haste slowly - too many people getup off by trying kits that are too complex. As for scratch building, it is only a kit where you make the parts yourself and plastikard is very quick to get going with. Ordinary card too. I have been doing this for25 years now and have built up a range of skills in that time. For me that is the great joy of model making.

Tis great to be giving a bit of inspiration to others. The basics of this model (and indeed the railbus and coach number nine), is David Jenkinson's Carriage Modeliing Made Easy, from Wild Swan. Sadly no longer with us, he writes and illustrates in a very easy to understand way. Along with the Art of Weathering and Iain Rice's books on layout design, it is one of my most used guides. Plus Gordon Gravett's ones on scenery of course. While all are more aimed at 7mm scale, there is so much that is transferable and most of all, you are given a clear feeling that their ideas are achieve able by the average modeller. More than anything else, these books have helped immensely in developing my skills and I really cannot recommend them highly enough

Whose are the etchings? Tempting to think they could be blown up to 7mm... Have a thing about 2-4-0s. My Great Eastern E4 [much fettled Gibson kit] is a real favourite and the 650 looks another little gem.

Following John’s gentle [& entirely justified] comments on the railcar’s front end, have been trying to improve matters. The slight curve he mentions is there, but hardly shows. I’d used a piece of 40 thou to pack out the centre [as you can see from the pics] & at the time wondered if 60 or even 80 thou would have been better, but decided that was too much. Space now for rude words… Short of a complete rebuild have tried to fettle it up a little by sanding down the corners and feathering this towards the centre – hence adding about another millimetre to the curve. Have also thinned the waist beading and that round the grille, all with the aim of telling the eye there is more to it than it thinks. Could still do with a bit more, but that is as far as I dare go for now. At least the pics against a gridline show that there IS a curve, even if it is not so apparent away from them. Just goes to show that total accuracy doesn’t always work & some things need exaggerating to show up well – something weathering guru Martyn Welch often mentions. Ho hum – have begun work on the trailer, so will endeavour to make the curve more apparent. Could well be that with the waist beading being straight at that end, things will look better anyway. A couple of pics of the sides to show what I’ve been up to.

Hear what you say John - getting the subtle curves right is what makes diesels and the like difficult. Have just had a look at the colour albums and think the waist beading may be too wide. I used 60 x20 strip and maybe 40 would have been better. Am also increasing the tumble home on the bottom corners, with a bit more off the sides too. The dark green top coat may well make a difference as well. Will do a bit more fretting before that, but would not like to be making such adjustments in a smaller scale. Only goes to show how much effort goes into getting 4mm modern diesels right.

Thankyou kind sir. Appreciate B is currently somewhat undressed and unwell, to say the least. The cab controls on my model are very much a guestimate of what might be there, based on the preserved Walker Railcar at the Finn Valley in Donegal. Not sure now if I want to know how accurate I've been, though could always call my model Railcar C and assume a second one was built later! The photo link goes to some mouth watering pictures. If you ever come across any pre-CIE wagons, I for one would be very interested.

Like scenery, road vehicles are a key part of making a model railway seem realistic. However, while they can look ok in photos, at an exhibition, one needs to be careful about where to put them, as unlike the trains, they are not going to move. Faller systems excepted that is. As in most 7mm scale layouts, Arigna Town does not have a lot of room for stuff beyond the railway fence, so I’ve tried to be selective in what to include. Apart from the little donkey cart and the Austin 7 at the garage, there are three commercial vehicles and a car. Even so, not all should be on scene at the same time as I am determined not to fall into the trap on making it look like the M25. The two lorries are both Classic Commercial kits. One is a Leyland lorry, loaded with building materials. It is mainly resin castings, with some etched and whitemetal details. The other is a much older, whitemetal kit, revamped under the CC label. I’m not sure of the prototype, but am hopeful some of you will tell me. The Morris PV box van is my latest acquisition. Also Classic Commercial and again mainly resin, with some very fine stainless steel etches for the windows and finely cast whitemetal wheels. Took ages to build because you need to stop and paint things every so often. Like the other vehicles, the wheels are sanded flat where they sit on the ground, a subtle, but very effective treatment I recommend to anyone. The only other vehicle is the oldest, being a Dinky Austin Somerset from my childhood. Committed sacrilege by removing the paint and chassis, then added seat, new wheels and glazing. The numberplate is that of Dr Ian Allen, the Suffolk GP who took many railway photos in the 50s & 60s. Doubt if he made it to Ireland though. Old Dinky and Corgi toys can by useful in 7mm scale, but one needs to be careful where they are put as most are to either 1:50 [or 1:48] scale so are much too small when put alongside a 1:43 model. The last pictures are some figures for the interior of Railcar B. I mainly use the Peco figures for passengers. They are cheap, but also rather nasty, with lots of flash and rather mediocre detail. The 6 I had left were of just two different types, but am rather pleased with the adaptions I’ve made, not least because three have changed sex! A bit of work with some needle files gave them more of a waist [& even a bit of a bosom]. Similar work got rid of caps. Guess I could have got the filler out to make trousers into skirts, but for inside a coach compartment, they’ll hopefully pass muster. Rather cruel enlargement though.

Railcar B’s tractor unit is now taking shape. The body part is not very big [less than 2 metres long] and built around a shell of 40 thou plastikard, with 20 thou overlays to form the right tumblehome. The advantage of this is that it leaves a nice little slot to fit the glazing. Sections were also cut out for the door handles and footsteps. The complex shape of the roof was very much made up as I went along. Began with various layers of plastic strip, then added filler and began the careful process of sanding it all to shape. This was made less easy by the headlight, which is a piece of plastic tube fronted with a spare casting from the Morris van kit. The two marker lights are two pieces of brass tube, fitted into holes drilled in the body, while the beading is 10 and 20 thou strip. Made up a radiator unit for the roof using plastic rod and strip, with 10 thou plastic used for the box it sits in. This is let into the roof by sawing two slots. Thus far, the simple chassis seems to run well, so must hope it has enough power to pull the trailer…

Lovely artwork on the kit and the A class looks good too. Never realised CIE ran jets though...

Pancake motor and probably the same amount of detail, or lack of it, as the O gauge 4F. Appallingly crude by today's standards, so why do these things hold such a fascination and command such prices? I too could be tempted, but no idea why!

Bob Symes and the Dukedog on the Bluebell. Bet nobody then thought the loco would be available rtr...

Very nice indeed. I would need at least ten metres to do that in 7mm scale!

Cement is heavy, though the plants were not necessarily large. Somewhere in the back of my mind lurks a thought that there were a couple of Sentinels bought by CIE to shunt the factory near Limerick? For those of us working in 7mm scale, there is the option of ready to run as Skytrex produced a model a few years ago, while Walsworthmodels models will build you one for just £150.

Yes please!

Whoever's that is - it's a superb piece of work

Right first time, Richie - good old Wills sheet of the random stone variety. Works as well in 7mm as 4mm, to my eye at least. Based the model on the ones at Sligo and along the SLNCR. Have included a closer picture, which also shows progress on Railcar B, where the tractor unit is taking shape. Have created a more modern version of the Donegal's controls, with a proper driver's desk, throttle and brake levers, gear lever, plus a few dials and switches. Whether they are right or not is anyone's guess, but if not, are hopefully small enough to still pass muster. As for St Alban's, remains as good as ever - one of the must see events in the South East, along with the Uckfield Show, Chatham [esp in its new venue] and Alexandra Palace - the latter being great for the larger layouts.

Wow - that collection is quite something and a really valuable resource for modellers in terms of incidental details and colour. We have vehicle number plates, a lovely range of prototypes, lots of ideas for buildings, plus loads of info on the colours of peoples clothes at that time. Also brings back memories of my first visit to Ireland, one of the many minor highlights was being stuck in a traffic jam in Nenagh - it was market day. The vehicle in front was a cattle lorry and its passengers had clearly been feasting on spring grass.. The steady stream of liquid manure coming out the back of the lorry was slowly filling up the gutter, much to the consternation of the two housewives who had just scrubbed their bit of that pavement!

Have also seen the Alcock and Brown pic somewhere. Visited the site near Clifden back in June - presumably the narrow road out to remains of the Marconi station follows the line of the little railway? also saw the Vimy bomber last year in the Science Museum. In the confines of the hall, it looks enormous, but also very fragile. Apropo nothing in particular, the A&B picture reminds of one of the Spurn Head Light Railway in East Yorkshire. As well as a similar railcar, it also had a sail powered trolley...

In between faffing around with Railcar B, have been trying to complete the van castings I did just before Christmas and photos show progress thus far. Actually not a lot left to do, just a bit of painting to pick out the handrails, hinges etc and a bit of rust/oil around the axle boxes. Decided to go with the SLNCR 'semi' for the round ended vans and used the photo album of the Cavan and Leitrim to produce the canvas roof on the middle section. Could do with a couple of ropes to hold the tarp in place - assuming this is how broad gauge vans were set up as well? The tarp is just a double thickness of masking tape, with some 40thou square strip on each end. The piped GNRI vans are almost the same as the earlier 9 ton vans, but re-did the mould as the original silicon was starting to go off. Painting is Halfords orange/red primer, with my usual Freestone Models weathering powders. Get the impression that these vans did not have automatic brakes, but were just piped to fit in with those that did. Hence have fitted pipes but not extra brake blocks. Hope I'm right as am almost out of brake blocks and they are not my favourite modelling job! At last weekend's St Albans show, managed to buy some 'flowers' from Greenscene. The trick with these [very] brightly coloured scatter materials seems to be to mix them with the usual green scatter first, as this reduces the intensity - unless you are planting flowerbeds.

Thanks for thinking of me! Am probably going to do the interior in LNER teak, which fits with the effect you mention. Trouble is we are talking 57 years on from the end of the Sligo, so who knows what fading, changes etc occurred in that time. Had the same problem with the W&M railbus. A visit to Sherringham was good for general shape, driver controls and so on, but seating fabric had not doubt been replaced a number of times and the little vehicles have been at work in preservation about four times longer than for BR. If only Casserley, Peters and Whitehouse had visited, but don't think the famous Bentley ever got that far north, but we do at least have his fabulous film of the Tralee and Dingle. Now there's another project worth doing!

The smaller/cheaper versions do indeed work well and are well worth considering. A puffer bottle is also still good for tight corners. The full size static grass machine undoubtedly covers quicker and its higher charger is better [in my experience] for longer fibres. However, in 4mm scale, they are not as useful, so unless you are contemplating large areas or working in 7mm scale, the tea strainer type is well worth having. Quite simply, nothing gets close and such devices have moved scenic work to a new level. One day, maybe all layouts will be done this way!

An auspicious moment this afternoon, as the railcar’s tractor unit ran under its own power for the first time. Only 4 coupled wheels, but a lengthy process getting there, which has taken me out of my comfort zone and learning some new techniques. A key issue was the fact that the Slaters wheels, being small diameter come on a 1/8” axles, for which there is no broad gauge version available. The answer was to cut the axles in half and then lengthen them with some brass tube. Eileen’s Emporium do a 1/8-3/16” tube, which is ideal because that means a standard 7mm scale gear box can be used. However, the axles have squared ends, important for quartering coupled drivers, so the problem was how to ensure this worked in extended form. After much thought, realised that my wheels, being disc rather than spoked, had two holes at 180 degrees. At 2mm diameter, I also had some brass rod of this size, so I threaded two lengths through the holes and these held the quartering while slow setting Araldyte was used to glue everything in place. The last pictures shows the axles in a set of plastic frames, quickly put together to check alignment. Initially made the extension tube too long, so it later had to be filed back. This was because I now needed to use some sort of hornblock system, or the motor/gearbox would have been a permanent fixture in the chassis. A bit of research on the web turned up the excellent High Level Kits version. A quick phonecall got the etchings to me inside a couple of days. They are very easy to fold up, but I did not have any 1/8 axles alignment jigs, so made my own from some silver steel rods in a block of wood. The distance between the axles was easy as had previously bought a set of profile milled coupling rods. These were used both to mark out the side frames and the axle jig. After that, things went together fairly well. Frames were cut out from brass strip with a piercing saw and soldered together using my new York Model Company magnetic jig, which hold things at right angles while you apply heat or glue. Fitting the motor gearbox came next & then epoxyed some PCB strip to the outside of the frames and soldered 0.5mm phosphor bronze wire on for pickups. This all needs tidying up, but am afraid when I get to this stage, I really need to know that my efforts have resulted in something that works. As it happens, the rods needed some easing – probably because I used Derek Munday’s heavy duty crankpins, rather than the 12BA nut and bolt that Slaters provided. As you might expect, the former are more robust, but also a tighter fit, hence the easing. Hopefully the pictures help fill in the gaps, but am happy to say the chassis runs well – even on my old H&M Clipper. I always use this to test a new chassis. Being a simple rheostat, if there is anything sticky in chassis, it will result in jerky progress – something that modern electronic controllers often iron out to some degree. Hence you know whether the motor is likely to run hot or not too.

Skill and artistry in equal measures. While not my scene, tis not difficult to admire either.