David Holman

Nice one! Always a prototype somewhere, it seems.

If anyone is in the Birmingham area on Saturday, Fintonagh is at the above exhibition in the H Suite, Edgebaston. 10 30 to 16.00 makes for civilised hours, or would do if it hadn't taken me six hours to do the 160 miles from home... As the title infers, most layouts are mainland Europe in origin. Still interesting though, as always feel we can learn a lot from looking at other genre, even if it's a case of wouldn't do that in a hurry! Anyway, if you are going, do come and say hello.

Interesting, am at Euroex in Birmingham this weekend (interesting concept for Fintonagh given the current political situation!), so will look out for that paint. Have a few Vallejo paints already and find them really good. As for the corner stones, a rub down with a file/sandpaper soon cures any rough surfaces, while a trim with a scalpel should sort out the corners. It is a lovely building and a small bit of tidying up really will ice the cake.

Nice one, not least because it has character - an indefinable quality that can sometimes be lacking in model buildings (kits especially), because they are almost too sharp or too square. I rather like the upper storey rendering, as it looks very much like that on buildings on the Cavan and Leitrim extension to Arigna, while the shot through the door is just sublime. Are the corner stones a bit rough though? Pictures I have seem to show them 'well dressed', especially compared to the random stones in the rest of the walls. Equally, vernacular buildings nearly always used what was local (such materials are heavy and you don't want to move them far if you can help it), so if that finish fits the area, then it is right! Fine work, because there is artistry there, as well as modelling and the two, for my eyes at least, make a great combination.

The left hand end of the layout is starting to come together, with the addition of part of a distillery and some weathering to both this and the loco shed. Not sure whether those of you in the Republic have access to BBC 1, but a lovely programme over the last couple of years has been 'The Repair Shop', where highly skilled individuals are challenged to bring interesting objects back to life. Needless to say that Steve, the clockmaker, is a bit of a hero, but I love them all and frequently take inspiration from the patient, gentle approach they all take to their work. Kirsten, the ceramics expert is another favourite, particularly for the delicate way she overpaints repairs made to broken pottery. Frequent, light washes of colour are the norm, rather than go in with just one or two coats. Would love to say this is my method, but am afraid I tend use to one or two fairly solid coats of the base colours and then start altering tones from there, using a variety of media. Hence for the stonework on all the buildings, light washes of acrylic in lighter tones than the base colours go on first, then a few individual stones are picked out in darker or lighter tones with a fine brush. Once this is dry, I get out the weathering powders and again using fairly light tones, give all the walls a good dusting over, working the powders into the mortar lines as I go. Most of it ends up on the workbench [or better and old tray, when I remember], but the main thing about the powders is they completely flatten the paintwork, so you have an absolute matt finish. The powders also make the window glazing nice and dusty too. The slate roofs are done much the same way, with individual slates picked out in lighter tones [essentially blue, black and a lot of white, very watered down] and again once dry attacked with weathering powders. I find pale browns and beiges soften the roof quite well, but pay particular attention to the direction of the dusting. On the walls, a general scrub usually works, but on the roofs, the powders need brushing downwards from the ridge tiles, to simulate the action of rainwater running off. Worth comparing the photos below with earlier ones to see the difference. Hopefully, they are subtle! The distillery has been labelled as 'The Belmullet' and it produces 'Blacksod Bay Irish Whiskey' [note the e], the lettering being done on the computer and the the print off stuck to some thin plastic sheet with a micro strip border.

The current edition of Railway Modeller has an article on N gauge T-trak. They made a module for a big convention in Japan, where the format is really popular.

Mmmmm, lovely stuff. There are so many facets to the layout, so many cameos, while the overall views hang together so well too.

Always look forward to seeing progress, Tony.

Not sure you need many figures, in fact I can't see any people at all in that photo, but maybe it is Sunday. What I can see is a lot of litter, which ought to be easy enough to make, though in 4mm scale, the pieces will be very small. Also noticeable is how smooth the ground surfaces are - no doubt a mix of crushed ash, oil and mud. As for puddles and wet patches, the former ideally go in first as pieces of clear acrylic, while the for the latter, I find Humbrol Gloss and Satin Cote work well, rather than ordinary varnish. Am sure you'll have loads of fun with a static grass machine, while Gordon Gravett's book 'Modelling Grassland and Landscape Detailing' covers all the aspects you are likely to need, including weeds, flowers, roads, pavement, yards hedges, puddles and mud. It is the Bible of scenic work for me, anyway. Goods Yard is a superb model that can only get better with more detailing. Enjoy!

A lovely piece of work. Will it have a backscene/fascia to frame it? Not sure anyone has ever done rain effectively, though Gordon Gravett shows how to do puddles and wet patches in his book on grass, weeds and mud. Years ago, remember a layout where everything had been given a coat of gloss varnish. Set in Dorset, I'm not sure how effective it was, but have always remembered the name - Piddling Down!

Good luck with the show and hope it all runs well.

Lovely details, which of course is exactly what doing a diorama is all about.

More visualising Having got a fair way with the loco shed, I next wanted to sort out how it will 'sit' in the lefthand, rear corner of the layout. In an ideal world, both the landscape and separate, sky, back scene boards would be curved at about 10-15cm radius, to avoid a right angled corner in the scenery. However, this is not practical [at either end], so a bit of subterfuge is required. What I'm doing is to use a 'flat' - essentially a 1 cm deep gable end of what is meant to be part of a whisky distillery. This is angled slightly, so that when viewed, the lack of depth won't be apparent. In addition, I've painted another section of this building on the back scene, but at right angles to the 'flat'. Between the signal box and the white building [which is the admin section of the distillery], there will be a scots pine, about 20cm high, which I'm hoping will help to hide some of the above too - including the hole in the sky, where the main line exits to the fiddle yard. The Belmullet Distillery - home of Blacksod Bay Whisky - will be a useful source of traffic to the railway, with not just grain in & booze out, but also peat to fire the boilers. There are of course peat workings nearby and this also gives me the excuse to build and run two or three of those splendid 'peat wagons', made from converted WL&W six wheel coaches, by boarding up the windows & removing the roofs.

Hooker's Green. Not a special liniment for the big boys [and girls] of the front row, but a very useful dark green, which I use a lot for scenic backgrounds. Comes in a variety of mediums - oil, water & acrylic. On the Belmullet backscene it was mixed with ultramarine [and lots of white] for the distant landscapes and yellow ochre, burnt sienna & again, more white for the nearer landscape.

Nice. Very nice in fact. That track just looks so right - no doubt because it is!

The purchase option is there, DC. Marcway will do custom pointwork in 4mm and 7mm for a fee, usually about 50% above standard gauge, which actually not much more than Peco. Coaches, wagons and diesels not much of a problem, though steam outline conversions of RTR more difficult I think.

Beautiful work!

Presumably, you don't take it with you on the bus, or do it while watching TV?! Rather fabulous though and so important to the overall scene.

Details and painting It has taken a fair bit of work to get this far. The list includes: Filling in gaps where the stonework sheets are joined, both inside and out, plus at the corners Tidying and levelling the shed floor, then scribing in the setts/bricks Painting the window frames, then glazing them when dry Painting the interior walls white, then toning them down with weathering powders Making and fitting the two front doors Adding the false roof, then putting on strips of slates made from cartridge paper nicked every scale foot. Downpipes, made from 2mm square plastic strip Two smoke chimneys on the roof ridge, plus cap and pot for the chimney [whitemetal casting] in the workshop area. Plus painting the exterior stonework All the painting has been done with cheap, art shop acrylics. I used white, black and ultramarine for the slates, with the same colours, plus brown for the stone walls. The doors, windows, guttering etc are a mix of hooker's green and yellow ochre. The model still needs final detailing, not least some weathering, while ground cover will be built up on the base, before it is eventually screwed to the actual baseboard. Have yet to decide whether to add any interior lighting. Lurking behind the shed is a low relief building that will form part of the distillery. Am hoping to blend it in with the back scene like I've done with some of the Fintonagh buildings, with probably something like a scot's pine near the signal box to hide the inevitable liberties needed with the perspective.

Sounds fabulous. While you may not yet have space for a layout, there sounds like plenty of opportunities to create a fair few pieces of the jigsaw puzzle for when you do. And, dare I say, it would be really interesting to see and read about how you get on with them too.

Many thanks, Mike. I somehow read it as T-scale, so was in awe of so much stock that small! Nevertheless, N gauge is still going some and for a project this size and am sure you are right going for overall impressions ahead of complete fidelity. At the usual range of about a metre,am sure it all blends together beautifully. Thanks again.

Bearing in mind how tiny all this stuff is, it would be fascinating to hear more about where all the stock comes from - bodywork, mechanisms, couplings and so on.

Lovely stuff!

Further to the above, remember Roy writing about how his locos had little if any springing, but lots of weight, pick ups on every wheel and big, beefy motor gearboxes, with robust frames and bearings too. Trains ran long distances, so lightweight chassis and mechanisms soon wore out. We found the same thing at my local club, where we are building a 7mm scale tailchaser. The circle bit is 4m in diameter, so one circuit is at least 13 metres or forty feet, while the 16 foot straight sections take that up to over seventy - a scale half mile. Hook a loco up to a reasonable train and you need to be careful. Even five minutes circling round is the equivalent of a whole day's running on a terminus - fiddle yard layout. As several people have found to their cost. For example, a big V2 with just a Mashima motor gearbox would found to be running very hot and subsequently required a much more robust set up. Can't speak for many RTR models, though there are well known issues with early Heljan diesels - heavy, but prone to gear damage. The moral is go carefully when letting trains circulate. Check them every couple of laps for signs of over overheating and likewise for wear if they get used a lot.

In this month's Railway Bylines. Eight pages, with some fine photos, including a particularly good one of G2 655 on Kilfree turntable.