David Holman

Still no sign of the track building parts [though hopefully here soon], so have been carrying on with the station building, which is now ready to be painted. The pictures below show the walls and windows in grey primer, while the roof tiles are still in plain card. The roof is the traditional thin strips of card, snipped every 7mm to represent individual slates. These are then cut to lengths of between 8 and 12 slates, before being laid on the false roof and fixed with PVA. The ridge tiles are slightly thicker card, from a cereal box, while the chimneys were made from mounting board, covered with DAS clay and, once dry, scribed to represent random stone blocks. Chimney pots are plastic tube with an extra detailing strip of 60thou. Guttering meanwhile is two strips of plastic, laminated together and then filed/sanded to made the front edge rounded. At each end, a short section is filed to represent half round guttering, but most of the straight edge is then fixed to the wall with impact adhesive. The subterfuge is not visible from normal viewing angles. I also added some [very] basic interior detailing. In 7mm scale, windows are often big enough to see into, so it can be important to at least create the impression there is something inside.

Probably fine for a home layout, but hard soldering every time for me as my layouts regularly get taken apart (well, at least they used to) and put back together again for exhibitions. Am sure it is all this movement that has the potential to cause problems. The main ones I've had to deal with were broken solder joints on point tie bars, though there are ways to minimise this. The two worst were firstly a single stray strand causing a layout wide short and shut down and, most recently a dry solder joint on the plug/socket for my hand held controller. Both immensely frustrating as you first need to find where the problem is - though generally easy to fix, as long as you remembered to pack a soldering iron that is. I also once had a wire break on an alignment bolt on the fiddleyard. Unfortunately, I'd only got an 18 watt iron with me and spent 20 minutes gently warming up what seemed like the whole layout in an effort to get the solder to run! Nowadays, always take the 100 watt iron with me... Given I have attended over 100 shows, the number of problems has been minimal, but can't help thinking screw joints would increase the chances of something going wrong. A belt and braces approach seems to be best. No experience of snap connectors, but again, should be fine for home use.

Excellent news!

New Irish Lines now available to subscribers. Numerous contributions from folk of this parish, including yours truly, but perhaps most useful is an article by Andy Cundick, because you get pictures of his work. An all round eclectic mix, as usual very interesting too, not least a 15mm AEC twin railcar. At over 2m long, entire layouts have been built in less space - lovely stuff!

Fine combination.

Lovely stuff! See to remember Gordon used masking tape for canvas roofs and tarpaulins. Once painted, it has just enough texture, though this was in 7mm scale. As for resin casting, it has worked well for me in 7mm scale, just making masters for a side and an end. Am wondering if 2mm scale vans could be cast as a single, solid, body with an etched underframe and the same for loaded or tarpaulin covered opens?

A fine layout, really well conceived. The track laying disguises the narrow gauge superbly too. Will certainly miss this one.

Don't sneeze!

Fantastic work, Ken - these models really look splendid. Presume a floor needs adding too - at least for the cattle wagons! You are taking 3D printing to new levels, as that last photo shows.

Looking forward to the next bit of wizardry.

Sounds like you've cracked it, Tony. Downhill all the way from here! Just remember, if the solder won't flow, it's not hot or clean enough. My go to iron has always been a 100 watt jobbie, which is great for brass kits, though also have a 25watt for electrical joints and a 50 watt temperature controlled one which now gets used on loco building too. Whatever, enjoy!

Station Building for NPQ Still waiting for my track building materials, so decided I'd make a start on the station building for Northport Quay. If you've never scratch built anything before, then a building has to be the easiest way to start. Four sides, a roof and some openings for windows and doors, which you can buy if you don't fancy making them. What's not to like? I still have a full sheet of 5mm foam board, so this is the basic material. Easy to cut with a snap off knife, so a steel rule, pencil and some PVA glue are all you need to cut out the four parts and fix them together. The model is based on Westport Quay station, but a mirror image and a gable end, rather than a hipped roof. Two sash windows, two doors are all that is on the platform face, so nothing complicated there. Indeed, a rummage through my 'plastics' spares box [I have ones for etched brass, white metal and brass castings too!], unearthed some Grandt Line windows and doors. Not a perfect match, but this is not an exact model anyway. I also found enough Wills sheets of rendered stonework to cover the foam board shell. Westport Quay appears to be whitewashed in some pictures and plain stonework in others. As the model is intended to be removable, in order to break up the baseboard join, I may well make two versions, so one can painted in pre-grouping colours, to match my 1900s stock & this one in rendered stone. You will see that is it only just over 'half relief', so each end will be disguised by carefully positioned trees. Anyway, the pictures show what can be done in three or four hours, with minimal tools and basic materials. Plenty of detailing to add. I'd really prefer to be making track at the moment, but this should keep me amused in the meantime.

Fascinating! Had not come across that, but given the number of sink holes we now hear about, not surprised. There was also the urban myth of dozens of Stanier 8Fs being walled up in disused tunnels after the end of steam, in case of some doomsday scenario. These days, resurrecting them might be considered pretty terrible too...

"When I had a roller". Now there's a good throwaway line! Love it - and not surprised.

I think you are right. It makes the scene look more open and less cluttered, plus the loop is now a few inches longer too. Glad you like the bench work, though it is less neat underneath, I'm afraid!

Try Kitwood Hill Models. Laser cut ply, so really intend for the American market, but easy to put together and adapt. Supply dependent on demand though, so you may have to wait a bit. South Eastern Finecast do a turntable kit, which uses whitemetal castings for the wheels. Found it worked a lot better if these were replaced by ball bearings. Not sure if that meets your needs, but worth checking both websites.

Still waiting for track building materials, so have done a bit more work on the baseboards, cutting out the hole where the control panel will go. Two DPDT switches for the crossovers and three push to make switches for the uncoupling magnets don't take up a lot of room, fortunately. Next, cut and trial fitted the curved 'landscape' piece for the left hand baseboard, along with the holes for the track to exit to the fiddle yard. Today have been having another look at how the track work will fit in and as is so often the case, on the full sized model, things often don't work as planned on the drawing. Here, I've found that there isn't enough room for track for the mobile crane on the right hand baseboard, so have reluctantly decided that this will only run along the left hand board, parallel to the baseboard edge. This will be finished as a harbour wall anyway and leaves the option of maybe adding a second ship on a sub-board at a later date. As the coaster on the right hand board will have its own crane, this omission should be fine. Losing the crane track on the right hand board has at least freed up space to make the platform wider: as with everything else on a small layout, compromises have to be made pretty much everywhere! Playing around like this also helps in deciding how the track will eventually be made and laid. Suspect that much of it will be built in situ, with the platform wall/face actually going in first, as everything else revolves around it. Meanwhile, have also been playing around with what the back scene will look like, in particular trying to make this 7'6 x 1'6 footprint look much bigger. Hence have sketched in a small collection of houses, along with a few trees and bushes - the latter to hide both ends of the station building, along with the baseboard join in the back scene.

If you can get that far with some thin brass sheet, then you are already well on the way to scratchbuilding!

That is stunning. What a fabulous restoration. Astonishing price too - over here you could probably add a zero to it in some parts of the country! We're it mine however, not sure I'd want to share it with paying guests, while Mrs H is not keen on some of the dark wallpaper(!) The floors are stunning though, as is the preservation of all the original features. So, where would there railway room go...?

And very good it was too, though having taken the trouble to go to the Barber's Shop, it was a shame the SLNCR didn't get a proper mention.

Have spent a fair bit of time filling in various gaps in the baseboards. I've always had a bit of thing about avoiding earthquake cracks and lines in the sky - easy enough on a permanent layout, but far less so with an exhibition layout, which has to break down into short sections for transport. Fortunately, Northport Quay [or NPQ for short], only has one baseboard join to worry about, so that leaves little in the way of excuses in terms of trying to hide, or at least minimise its impact. The main aspects are as follows: Entry to/from the fiddle yard is easy, it will be hidden by a short tunnel. In addition, a curved back scene will hide the corner in the frames The right hand corner will be hidden by a combination of a warehouse and a crane. Current thinking is to adapt the Dapol/Airfix dock crane, the jib of which should hide the corner That leaves the central joint. Sod's Law meant that, while I got the backboards to line up nice and tight, subsequently discovered the baseboard surface had a 1mm wide crack. However, there is a fairly simple trick to sort this, that I learned from ace modeller, Gordon Gravett. Basically, you use some clingfilm one one face of the joint and smear car body filler on the other, then tighten the bolts and leave to set. As a result, I now have a near invisible join, that will eventually be furtherdisguised with removable 'jigsaw' pieces, to break up any idea of a straight line. Mind you, now need to file back the body filler a bit, as a line in the back board has now returned... The next stage has been to mock up the main buildings, to start to visualise the overall scene. Enter another of my pet hates - undisguised low relief buildings. Basically, I don't like to see thin slices of buildings that just end in the sky and try to hide them as best I can. On Fintonagh, careful angling of some buildings has helped disguise the fact some are only one or two cm deep. I want to do the same on NPQ, but envisage far fewer structures, so it will be a case of experimentation. The most obvious problem is the station building, which is semi-relief at one end. That will certainly need disguising somehow. Had hoped I might used the round roofed goods store on the platform of Wesport Quay to hide this, but while I may yet include it, it won't cover this problem. A tree is one possibility. Pictures from John Ahern's book on Model Railway Buildings [first published nearly 70 years ago] show both how and how not to tackle the problem! Finally, with Code 100FB rail and copper clad strip ordered, I've turned myself a roller gauge on the mini lathe, in the hope of starting some track making when the stuff arrives.

Definitely worth it.

Splendid prototype and that chimney certainly is a statement! Having built Enniskillen, shouldn't think there is anything too scary on this loco and with at least 1000 less rivets to do, less tedious too. So satisfying to have a rolling chassis - the rest is just cosmetic now (!). Will definitely look forward to seeing the model develop and seem to remember the Sligo also had a couple of GNRI 0-6-0s too, not to mention the Garrett that never was...

Sorry to progress again, but that footage of East Lynn shows what a fabulous layout it is. S scale, EVERYTHING is scratchbuilt. Not only that, but the locos all have working inside valve gear, while the signalling all works and with proper interlocking. All that is, except for the harbour, which has local hand levers, as per prototype AND also features chain shunting, using bollards and capstans. Have had the immense privilege of operating it twice and it is every bit as good as it looks. Now back to the coaches!

If I wasn't modelling the Irish scene, then the Midland & Great Northern would be very tempting! Fortunately, Trevor Nunn's East Lynn is a tour de force in S scale. Indeed so many pre grouping companies either side of the water are very much worthy of attention. Smaller trains, beautiful deliveries - so much to like!