David Holman

MGWR John. Scroll up to see origins, but yes, 'tis a drover's van. The Sligo had a couple too.

Dirty, but still subtle, while the correct track gauge (nicely blasted and painted) makes the whole scene hangs together really well.

Nice. Very nice. Many thanks!

Great thread and fascinating info as ever.

Not surprised to see that even the control equipment is an architectural masterpiece! DCC certainly not two wires. If only...

Never into war gaming itself, but always interested in how non - railway modellers do things. There are techniques out there we can learn from and master craftsman Gordon Gravett is a keen advocate of such things, being a professional model ship builder in the real world.

O gauge models and accessories mentioned I see. Are we to be tempted by something in the larger scale?

One for the Bantry boys maybe?

Lovely work and you CAN see the weathering, but the effect is really subtle and understated.

Thanks John and indeed everyone for the kind and positive remarks. Retired these days and Covid 19 certainly enables plenty of spare time. However, even when working [I was a primary headteacher and then schools advisor], doing 80-100 hour weeks in term time, found that a bit of modelling time was very important for my well being in what was an often stressful job. Much of this type of modelling is essentially fairly simple and repetitive & like most apparently complex things, breaking them down into easy stages is half the battle. I guess that is where experience counts, though believe me, I regularly still get things wrong. The Tram Inn, see pics below, is indeed fairly small - mainly because it is only half relief and designed to blend into the painted back scene. As you can see, it is made from 5mm foam board, covered in watercolour paper and then painted to look like render. Have turned it upside down, partly to show the construction, but also to show one of my favourite dodges for making guttering, where I just use 80thou plasticard, rounding one edge to look like half round. From a normal viewing angle, it can't be seen & is very quick and easy to do. Buildings are a good way into making something from scratch, because they don't move, so you can concentrate on making them look nice. Would say making wagons is probably a good first step with rolling stock, but coaches and locomotives do require a fair bit of skill, however there are some nice kits out there to get you started, while there are some excellent threads on this site with folk adapting ready to run models to Irish prototypes too.

Just when I thought I'd finished building the MGW vans, was looking through Ernie Shepherd's bible on the railway and discovered the lovely photo which Roger had clearly used as part of his planning for the Alphagraphix card kit. Up till now, I'd been using the latter, along with a rather grainy photo of the prototype, which I now know is a copy of a print of a copy etc, etc. As the cropped details show below, there was not only the bracing between the axles to add, but the canvas roof [and associated fixings], along with some hooks and brackets to hold the doors open. Hence spent a couple of hours this afternoon, faffing around with all manner of things from plastic strip brass wire, tiny eye rings [from the Dingham couplings etch], masking tape and thin cotton to create all of the above. Hopefully you can work out what went where from the photos.

Severn Models do an etched lever frame and like all their stuff it is a little jewel. Advice is to assemble with cyano, so worth checking their website to see if it matches what you want.

Nothing fancy, because there were on!y two slats on the side ones and just one on the ends. Used 60thou square section for the outside frame and 20 x 80 for the slats, fitting them in situ. Applied solvent and then held the slat in place with fine nosed pliers for 30 seconds till the solvent grabbed enough. Did a single in each position around both vans, by which time the solvent had gone off enough to add the second. Noticed that Warb was making his louvres for his church on the workbench, making half a frame and adding the slats to that, while Archers, the transfer rivet folk, have louvres in their catalogue, which could be very handy if they had the size you want. Otherwise, louvres are a complete pain, I think, including the fact that the spellchecker here insists on calling them lovers!!!!

Finally managed to finish the two wagons. Has taken around 24 hours modelling time for the pair, so not too bad I guess, given the number of pieces and amount of work. Most of the final stuff was making the louvres and then it was a case of fitting the roof. A small moment of inspiration here came from a photo of a converted turf coach, where internal boarding resulted in thicker than usual sides. Seemed to me this idea would be useful to help fix the roof better, so added 100 x 40 thou strip all round, then filed this to the profile of the roof. Hence got a good area for the D-Lemonine to do its welding. This solvent really has been useful. It may take longer than MEK or similar solvents, but the evaporation is much slower, allowing plenty of time to position the roof, whereas MEK evaporates like mad, so much so that if you left the lid off the bottle I suspect most of it would be gone in an hour. Anyway, an all round scrub with the glass fibre pencil, then a wash in warm water & they were ready for priming. Actual painting and lettering must wait until I've done the two GSWR vans first though.

There is something special about large scale layouts when they are done well and that second picture is a stunner. European and American outline examples have taken off here in recent years, the latter especially. The logistics of transport and setting up are quite something though! As for floor to ceiling layouts, Richard Chown's French layout was quite something. The deck of the viaduct was about 2 metres off the ground. Never one to shirk a challenge, was Richard.

Interesting way of doing the louvres. Works very well too.

A stunningly good model. Well done Phil. Presume it is 4mms scale but could just as easily be 7, 10 or 16 from the photos. Really fine work.

Indeed! Should have included both, but have at least had the pleasure of driving to them in decent weather. More that I can say about the Ring of Kerry - three attempts, but rain and low cloud each time.

Like Mick, it is far easier to list the ones I have done, but if ever somebody invents I time machine then the Swilly, Tralee and Dingle, Valencia Harbour, Derry Road, the tramway section of the Cavan and Leitrim, plus the CVR would all be on my list.

Wagon and coach stock on Fintonagh [7mm scale but 21mm gauge] uses 4mm scale wheels with axles replaced with 2mm brass rod. I twirl the ends of the rod between my fingers against a spinning slitting disc in the Dremel. Crude, but effective, while using brass instead of steel for the axles means they aren't attracted to uncoupling magnets I use with Kadees.

Less than a week ago I wrote of how adding micro strip strapping to wagons could be therapeutic. However, since then have been doing little else and it is quietly driving me nuts. The two MGWR vans only have about 80 [!] pieces between them, but the plates that hold everything together add up to over a hundred separate pieces for each van, while there are over 200 rivets too. Take the small plates that go round each length of strapping - often two or three to each - it involves five separate pieces [four of them just 1.5mm square] with three rivets - plus two of the small squares have rounded ends. Ok, it only takes a few passes with a file to do the latter, but believe me, it all adds up! Thus far, I think I've got all these bits done, along with what appear to be two metal vents on each side - each of these comprising another five individual parts and four rivets - but there still remain two louvres on each side, with one more each end. Had I thought ahead a bit more, I really should have resin cast the body work, for even with just two of each van, making just a side and end for each would have cut the work by 75% AND I could have made my fortune marketing them to other 7mm scale broad gauge modellers. Well, maybe not the latter! Oh well, slowly getting there and, fingers crossed, the GSWR vans appear much simpler. The photos hopefully show what I mean and include some pretty cruel enlargements of some of the detailing.. There is also my GW model rivet press, without which this work would be a lot harder. This really is a quality piece of kit and if you use the added table can not only churn out straight lines of rivets less than 1mm apart, but [if your maths is up to it] create circles of them too.

Sounds like nice balance you have planned, John. Three six wheelers would look good and easy enough in 7mm scale from the Alphagraphix kit catalogue. Not sure if there are any rtr in 00, but am sure someone can enlighten.

230 x 4 = 920mm, which is indeed about three foot in old money. Wouldn't worry about exact measurements though, because even the largest railway room will always incur a compromise somewhere. Better, I think, to follow the Iain Rice rule of a train needing to travel at least three times it's own length across the scenic part of the layout to look realistic. Rice would also counsel against long platforms as they take up a lot of space for little operational value - but then he has always favoured freight traffic over passenger as being more interesting. Anyway 230' of platform is enough for three modern coaches, or around seven six wheelers, which sounds like a nice amount to me.

Should have mentioned Giles Flavell. Two layouts, The End of the Line and The Yard. Both significant for their radio controlled, 7mm scale road vehicles. Giles is also into working cranes too. As for narrow gauge, Pempoul of course, but Bridport is pretty special.

Favourite Layouts I'm not entirely sure what it is that attracts me to a model railway, but I suppose the simple answer is that it needs to be interesting in some way. I remember once seeing a comment on RMWeb that this particular person was not going to come to the Chatham Show because 'there wasn't much N Gauge'. Well, how narrow minded can you get? Actually, don't answer that, because of course narrow mindedness is probably behind many of the world's ills and not for this forum. What I will say is that anyone who limits themselves to only following a single strand of our wonderful hobby is missing out big time, because there is so much to enjoy. One of my all time favourite layouts was Bramblewick Cove, by Tom Harland. Tom, who sadly is no longer with us, was a professional artist and we persuaded him to bring the layout to Chatham. Beautifully presented, it was in many ways not much more than a diorama, but on a grand scale. It featured a section of the North Eastern Railway near Whitby, I remember standing in front of it, in the company of Gordon Gravett as we marvelled at its scenic beauty and stunning back scene. 'Not a lot going on though, is there?' I said to Gordon. 'No,, it doesn't matter does it?' he replied - and how right he was. However, what I will say is that, generally any layout which has little movement on it and especially any layout that doesn't run well [finger poking and derailments in particular] is not going to hold my attention for very long. The Guildford Club's 'Normandy Junction' may not be the most scenic, but for continuous action it is hard to beat. 0 gauge, about 40' x 20', with at least five tracks, there is always something running and they have enough stock between them to make it interesting too. That said, when next to them at Tolworth a few years ago, there were times when it got a bit noisy, especially when a Heljan 33 and eight brass coaches was roaring round! Dainton Bank was another great 'watching the trains go by' layout. Incorporating the prototype's severe gradients, it presents a calvacade of big [0 gauge] trains, often double headed, or with a banker and I remember going back several times to enjoy the spectacle of a 9F and 30 oil tankers, or a King and a Castle on ten pullman coaches. Each train easily worth the thick end of four or five grand and beautifully done. The ultimate in this genre for me goes to Stoke Summit. No station, just the double track East Coast mainline, with a slow road for uphill/northbound traffic. Fully signalled and properly run, you regularly saw folk actually trainspotting and writing down loco numbers! With at least 30 roads in the storage loops, there was plenty of variety too. All of the above fall into the fine scale category, but I can get just as much enjoyment from historic stuff. Hornby tinplate and Hornby Dublo never cease to charm and still run well too, as their operators happily sit in the middle of a cloud of ozone. A few years ago the Chatham Club was gifted a collection of American Flyer models. These are S gauge [1/64th] and in many ways somewhat crude. They also need somewhere between 3 and 5 amps of power to run and need a garden railway controller to run them. Despite the steamroller wheels they have a charm all of their own and include some remarkable animation. For example one of the box cars has a brakeman that actually vibrates his way along the roof and a similar strategy enables both cattle and people to move about on platforms! Another favourite is a 2-6-6-2 Mallet, where the boiler is not fixed to the front engine, so when it goes round a sharp curve, it seems like the boiler is carrying straight on for a second before suddenly veering away! I quite like some of the fantasy layouts, like 'Wensleydale' in the current RM, with mice and cheese mines, while somehow I find the Lego layouts can be very good - perhaps a throwback to my childhood, Equally many of last year's Great Model Railway Challenge efforts left me cold, I'm afraid. Guess there is a thin line between charming and naff in my head... What else deserves a mention? Gordon Gravett's layouts, of course - a peerless mix of art and museum quality modelling. Anything by Iain Rice also works well for me and likewise Barry Norman - probably for the same reasons. Barry's Lydham Heath is an S gauge tour de force of the wonderfully decrepit Bishops Castle Railway Indeed, if I have a favourite scale, it is probably S gauge and if I was starting again, I'd like to think it would be where I'd go. Hence, if I was asked to name my all time favourite, it would be Trevor Nunn's 'East Lynn'. Mixing Great Eastern, with Midland Great Northern, everything on it is scratchbuilt and runs likes a sewing machine. The locos all have working inside valve gear, the track is fully signalled, using miniature lever frames that are a delight to operate - all using rubber band linkage beneath the baseboards. Everything is built to museum standard, so goodness knows what this lifetime's work is worth. Have had the great pleasure of helping operate it a couple of times and working the harbour section is a particular delight because you have to chain shunt. The loco of choice is usually the 50 year old GER tram engine and manual dexterity is essential because you have to work out which bollards to use to get wagons on/off parallel and perpendicular tracks. There's no lever frame here either, you use locally sited ones because, as Trevor says, 'that's how it was on the prototype'. Magic. Am sure there are others that deserve a mention, for all sorts of diverse reasons. If any of you have your own favourites, why not share them with us and especially why they do it for you?