David Holman

Quite remarkable. The way the church rises above the frontage is quite something. Must have taken a lot of planning too, with all those complex roof lines.

Think you are right in both Patrick. Nevertheless, shows the value of a simple mockup, especially one in the right colours.

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.