David Holman

This would make a very fine project for someone and a great place for watching trains go by.

Nice! And a rather elegant 4-4-0 too...

Have carried on tinkering with the backscene this week, so am putting the latest pictures in the layout section. It's as much about doing a bit of 'proof reading' by taking photos, which give a different perspective to seeing the layout on its own. Had to get in some fresh supplies to add more detail and texture. These included a couple of new, good quality artists pens and some cheap oil pastels, which helped me improve the two trees and add details to the buildings. Far easier to do windows, doors and gutters with felt pens than paint brushes! I also found half a roll of 'cool white' LED strip, which is self adhesive, so after a bit of soldering to make a new plug, I now have much better [and more even] lighting over the layout. Hopefully, this makes for better pictures and you should always do painting in the same light as you want to display/exhibit your models. At the moment, I'm still not sure if some of the colours are right - the houses for example seem a bit dull. However, it now feels like it is time to start on the scenery next to the backscene, including the walls and a couple of trees, as this will help blending everything together.

Iain Rice's formula is that a train should be able to traverse a scene three times its own length to look 'right'. Seems to work & is something I've stuck to over the years. Have also always felt that odd numbers of vehicles, especially bogie vehicles, looks better somehow than even ones. Got no explanation for this whatsoever! One of the joys of 2mm scale is to have decent length trains set within the landscape and 10 wagons or equivalent sounds good to me - would that I had the space in 7mm scale!

A fair few sheets of the stuff in my models! Never actually built any of the card kits, as I just use them as a drawing/template for building them out of plastic sheet and microstrip. They certainly turn out well though.

Am afraid I read the title of this thread and immediately wondered if we had royalty as one of our posters...

Think you will understand it all better than me Ken. There is a bit of lathe work, laser cutting and 3D printing involved too - though am sure there are alternatives. The sections on cranes and RC locomotives will hopefully be most use to me. Apparantly, a lot of pioneering work has been going on in Germany, where, apparently you can already buy HO scale RC model cars!! How good/how much have no idea, but another few years and no doubt we will all have AI controlled vehicles scurrying around our layouts. Donkeys, sheep and cattle too, with any luck.

On Monday, spurred on by kind comments, I went to look at the back scenes and must confess they looked pretty horrible. The camera can and does lie, I'm afraid... The colours all seemed too dark and or dense, while what should have tried to present a three dimensional scene looked disappointingly flat. Hey ho, I thought, these things rarely work out first time, but Monday's work wasn't much of an improvement either, as the dull colours were still coming through the next coats of paint. I'd tried adding brighter tones and textures but, even brightly lit, it just wasn't right. Clearly a new approach was needed. Starting from the ground up, as it were, I painted in the areas of bare rock and then used crayons and felt pens to add detail to these areas. This looked better, so I continued with the felt pens, sticking to pastel colours as shown below. Various greens were used to add what looked like thicker foliage and low bushes around the rocks. Have since gone over some of these areas with a pale yellow pen, which has helped tone things down. In the course of doing this, I realised that by varying the direction of shading, I could better suggest contours on the hillside. A few more touches and we now have what what I hope is a more effective scene. Other work has involved further layers on the back ground hills and water, while I've also added a couple of trees to provide a bit more variety and [more importantly] help hide the join in the backscene. Although I've used flash, the shadow from the shelf above hasn't helped and in this case, the painting now looks better than there photo! Feeling a bit more pleased with myself, I've also started blocking in the buildings and foreground details. More felt pen and crayon work to come.

Here's something that might interest you, Ken - a new book by the remarkably talented Giles Favell. Giles has been building radio controlled 7mm scale road vehicles and cranes for several years, but this book shows that he has expanded his portfolio considerably. Starts off with a look at his layouts, then there is a chapter on modern components [and how to source them], before dealing with the construction of individual models. He started off with die cast models of flatbed trucks and vans, graduating to articulated lorries and working cranes. This side of the water, these models feature on a layout called Denton Brook, which notably has several road vehicles wandering around, but also a quite extraordinary working crane lorry. However the book shows he has kept busy with things like a 7mm scale Austin Seven [tiny!], a tipper lorry and even a traction engine. As if that wasn't complex enough there is a fork lift truck, self propelled railway crane and even a 'walking man' - albeit with a hidden mechanism that owes much to ice berg theory. There is also a section on radio controlled locos and he is now producing 4mm scale radio controlled road vehicles... All rather splendid, though I must confess I understand very little of it at the moment! For anyone interested, the book is published by Wild Swan ISBN 978-1-912038-62-6 Amazing models.

That little book has so much inspiration in it for modelling the North West of Ireland! As for view breakers, that is a challenge, though the Achill line did have a tunnel of course. Being near to the sea, a short tunnel through a headland would look ok, while the headshunt means locos would not be shuffling in and out during shunting. Large buildings are thin on the ground, not that many trees in that part of the world either. a clump of Scots lines perhaps? Maybe arranging a low hill at the front edge could work? Wouldn't need to be very high to hide a 2mm train and would look fine rising up from the water's edge. Another thought is simply framing the two stations as two separate pictures, with a short, 5-10cm frame in between. Being at right angles to each other, viewing both stations at once is not easy anyway and is a dodge I've seen used effectively a few times at shows. Larass is pretty complete/discreet as a scene, while the run into/out of Cullenamore should work well with that section.

Iain Rice coined the phrase 'bitsa layout' and have occasionally wondered about Waterford, especially with Mount Misery forming the back scene, as suggested. Have also thought the Waterford - Tramore line could make an interesting project, albeit with a fairly limited amount of stock. Seem to remember neither station had many points, because most of the tracks radiated from the two turntables.

This latest version looks a lot tidier and flows better. The overbridge will hide the exit to the fiddle yard nicely, though beware making a ramp down to the yard too steep - even a 50cm slope will give a gradient of more than 1 in 10.

Always interesting to see the thought process behind any layout. If Richard Chown had modelled on 2mm scale, suspect Castle Rackrent might have been similar. The headshunt makes eminently good sense in avoiding blocking the main line when shunting and seems like a lot of Irish stations had one. Both stations have that all important feeling of space and even without the place names, buildings, etc, if you saw them in isolation, would say 'Ireland and MGWR'. Looks a great project and the Killala photos are fantastic.

Thanks folks. Hopefully it will provide the all important depth to what is a very narrow scene, but a fair bit of work still needed! Nothing wrong with using photos, Ken. Some can be a bit bright, but choose the right ones and they can be very effective.

Now that is rather nice! A typical example too of how a humdrum prototype can seem so much nicer in model form.

Backscene Decided it was time to grasp the nettle and tackle the backscene. Have done a few over the years, so here is my take on such things. My leanings are probably more artistic than engineering, being left brained and generally untidy, though working as a primary headteacher meant I had to learn how to be better organised! First up, materials and for me it is pretty much a case of anything goes, so lots of paint brushes, with the old school hogs hair ones favourite for blocking in larger areas. Paint itself is cheap acrylic, from places like The Works, where a big tube costs the same as a much smaller one from an art shop. For detail work though, pencils, pens and crayons are more useful, I find. 20 odd years ago, I bought a set of Berol Karisma water colour crayons [easy to see which ones are used most] which are lovely to use and they still have plenty of life in them. Felt pens of various types come in handy too - a case of finding what works best for you, while ensuring plenty of options. I often get people telling me that they can't draw or paint, but while there are obviously some people who are naturally talented [look at Picasso's early stuff - he really knew how to draw], the basic techniques are easy to learn. When I was still a class teacher, there was a great art programme on TV called 'Look, Look and Look again', which pretty much sums it up - that and the basic rules of perspective. When I am painting a backscene, have found a few other things apply: Start furthest back, probably the sky, and move forward Distant colours are much more faded and become almost monochrome the further back you go You'll need about 10 times more white than any other colour Yellow ochre, burnt sienna and hooker's green are the other main colours, along with cobalt blue - and very little black It is best to build things up in multiple layers Colours always seem to be darker on the backscene than they appear in the palette No matter how hard I try, I always start off with colours that are too strong and have to tone them down! The rest of the pictures show progress thus far. Sky first - a fairly plain pale grey, pretty much as per the weather today, then the sea: a slightly darker shade than the sky, with a hint of blue. The hills come next, mainly greys for the distant ones, with grey/green for the nearer slopes. A lot of work still to do here as I want to try and replicate rocky hillsides with patches of gorse and heather, so only an impression at the moment. Another 'rule' is that it pays to just do half an hour or so, then stop for a bit. Chances are, what you thought looked ok will be less satisfactory when you go back, but you will get there in the end.

A clever design, John. Thought the quoted 260m was way too short! Full size, the Junction's platform would be 6.4m long - over 20 feet in old money, so guess it would need around 30x15 to do it full justice. Not unlike Retford really. A large barn in 7mm scale, but could probably fit in a single garage in 2mm. Any takers?

Nice one. At the other end of the scale have just been reading the excellent Rails Through Tipperary, which has made me wonder how much space you'd need to model Limerick Junction? A Google search suggests the platform is 260 metres, about 800 feet in old money, but that is only 13x 60' coaches, so feel sure it must have been longer at some point? Add in the siding and the Limerick - Waterford line and you'd need a very large shed to do it in 4mm scale!

Cassettes have a lot going for them, especially in terms of saving space as shown here. My ones use aluminium angle instead of actual track, which improves rigidity. Accurate alignment and good electrical connection (you can't solder aluminium) are the two main issues. Solved mine by screwing the angle to thin plywood, with the screws projecting underneath. The cassettes rest on two strips of brass, which are connected to the track feed, so the current passes through the screws. Alignment is simply a strip of wood that the cassette is pushed against. Minor adjustment can by made via shims of plasticard, though haven't found this necessary. Long cassettes can be unwieldy and you certainly wouldn't want to rotate a whole train! However have a separate loco cassette means only the engine needs moving and turning, using simple handles as per Northroader's picture.

Thank you kind sir! Blakey Rigg has great atmosphere and really captures the top of the Moors. What an amazing place it must have been. If I was starting again (and knew what I know now), then it would definitely be S for me - big enough for detail, small enough to fit in a reasonable space. Plus a track gauge of 63/64ths of an inch as added idiosyncrasy! Good to know that all the stock you made for Kilbrandon will be seen again too.

All couplings are a compromise, but Kadee are as close to buckeye type as you could want. They do require careful setting up to work properly on a shunting layout though and while the couplings themselves are really neat, the uncoupling magnets can be intrusive visually. I use pairs of rare earth magnets on Fintonagh, set vertically 5mm apart in the track. This works well in terms of uncoupling, but being only 3mm diameter means a very small area in which they work. Tension locks work, but are horrible to look at - especially on the stunning rtr models we have now. Worst of all though is the sight of those enormous N gauge couplings on the smaller locos - almost half the length of a Terrier or 03 diesel. Thank goodness the 2mm FS folk have decided better alternatives.

Looking really smart and going at pace too.

Fintonagh was meant to be going out this weekend too, for the Nailsea Show. However have had to cancel because of Covid. Not me, but the friends we were staying with. Next outing therefore will be Expo Narrow Gauge South at Eastleigh on 23rd April.

Nice one. Plenty of ideas to play with there, John.

Sorry we couldn't oblige, Leslie!