Railway Research Trip- The National Railway (Cafe, Building Site, and Softplay) Museum, York

Amy and I ended up in York recently, a planned overnight stop before catching a steam special to Carlisle in the morning as a joint birthday/anniversary celebration... which got cancelled a few days before, because West Coast Railway Company can't organise a railtour for toffee, broke several of their steam engines, and couldn't/wouldn't hire a replacement loco. Rather than spend a day and a considerable amount of money on the excursion, we had a day shopping and walking about in York instead, and because we're railway enthusiasts, we ended up ambling over to the National Railway Museum for a brew and a sit-down in the afternoon, because we're middle aged now.

Well, I say the National Railway Museum, because that's what it was most of my life. But some advertising agency got paid a presumably obscene amount of Government money a few years ago to rebrand it, and they dropped the 'national' as being too old fashioned/right wing/some other reason, delete as appropriate.

You know, it takes some real confidence to have this be the first thing visitors see. An overgrown, empty yard, rusting and severed tracks, and a single weather-beaten and neglected crane.

Look, I'm going to have a rant here. It's Rail 200 year!  A celebration of railway heritage, technology, and future, and this is the nations main railway museum, in one of the busiest Northern tourist cities, in the middle of the school holidays.

It takes some wonderful planning to have two thirds of the 'premier' railway museum shut for refurbishment, with the only access from the city being a long, lonnnnng walk around a building site, with a marvellous view of the ex-museum outdoor spaces which have been cynically sold to become a massive new housing estate instead. But it's ok, because there's a lot of isolated infrastructure for cyclists, and a level crossing to nowhere for, some day, some demonstration trains to run.

Given the amount of cyclists who complain about the dangers of the level crossing/street running in Porthmadog, I can only imagine there'll be some interesting complaints in years to come. And the homeowners with the new houses backing onto the museum will have a thing or two to say as well, I'm sure.

Finished with the slightly bitter attitude? No, not quite. Because I've started openly calling this place the National Cafe and Softplay Museum.  Going inside the one remaining hall, slightly tatty as it now looks (all those nets on the roof to catch any falling glass), there are two large spaces given over to cafes. Within 30 feet of each other. And two shops, within 100.  Oh and a few trains, several of which were surrounded with hoardings to stop you seeing them, and most of which were covered in dust.

There's no 'narrative' (urgh, buzz words), just a few random trains. And you definitely get the impression that the museum are a bit annoyed they have to have a load of inconveniently large lumps of metal getting in the way of the important business of selling two small mugs of tea for £5.20.

The old workshops and engineering space is now a kids 'push button and make things spin/glow/move' play space, with paid entry. I get the importance of encouraging S.T.E.A.M, I really do (Scout Leader and ex-School DT Tech hats on), but was there really nowhere else on this massive site they could have built it? Oh right, they've sold a big chunk of the site to be housing land, whoops. There's a certain irony in obliterating your heavy engineering space to create an area for getting kids interested in technology and engineering.

Anything positive to say? Thank goodness the archive is still there; one of the best things they ever did here was turn the museum stores, all those models and smaller artefacts, into an exhibition space.

Then there's stuff like this. The Freightliner brakevan/pod. This spent years out in the yard rusting and falling to bits, so it's lovely to see it brought indoors and tarted up.

And nice to see things like the Class 84 on prominent display, given the museum has a few celebrities that hog the limelight. I suppose when you have fewer trains, just doing everything about the likes of "Mallard" is the easy option than celebrating the lesser exhibits.

So yeah, I was very disappointed. I get it, I've worked in the heritage sector- the country has no money, and suddenly all those commercial stuff like gift shops and hideously expensive coffee are the only ways to keep the lights on. And selling off the yard outside to be housing land? Well, this is technically a national museum in the Science Museum Group, and exists outside of London, so selling the museum spaces off (yes, also looking at you, Science Museum Manchester) is a fact of life.

And yes, the museum did need a bit of tarting up and building work clearly needed doing. But could it not have been done before, or after, the Rail 200 celebrations? 

York Railway Museum left a bitter taste in the mouth... but it was very much washed away (spoiler alert!) by an unplanned trip to their out-station facility at Shildon the day after, of which, more in another post.

 

Medical Monday; Break a Leg!

Continuing the sagas of a Medical Education Technician in the NHS, building things on a budget of tuppence ha'penny and a bag of wotsits, because we're not (yet) privatised like the Yankee Health Service.

Oh yes, slightly more graphic Trigger Warning this time:

Yeah, something a bit more medical. As well as the Lab stuff, the main bread and butter of the job is in simulating medical scenarios with the Robots. Now, before I joined the job, I had no idea these things existed, but welcome to the world of High Fidelity Medical Simulation.

This is Hallie; The Myth, The Legend, The Robot Girl (From the Future!). She's not a Cylon, Terminator, Doll (living, killer, or otherwise), and you don't spell her name H4LL13 or any other Leet nonsense. She is, however, as close to getting a real child to practise treatments on as possible. She cries, talks, looks at you, changes her expressions, and simulates a full range of medical conditions with variable blood pressure, heart rate, organ sounds, and more. About the only thing she can't do is get up and walk about.

Anyway, one of the scenarios we do a lot of is the good old fashioned Trauma one, with a broken leg or arm. As a parent of three Catastrophe Magnets, two of whom have snapped limbs during their carefree childhood years, yeah this is all pretty familiar.

The original simulated leg break I made a few years ago was two lumps of fibreglass under a kind of belt of latex skin. Not bad, but sticks up a bit too much, and our Old-As-God's-Dog Thomas Splints wouldn't go properly over it.

So, I raided the spare parts boxes. And a scrap bone used previously for I.O Drilling practise.

The plastic air-filled bladder sits between the latex layers, to give it a bit of flex. The top part of the bone is glued in place, the other one pivots ever so slightly. 

The net result is a bone that flexes and moves, simulating two ends of a break rubbing together.

The first test in the field, as it were- part of Hallie's Summer From Hell, and in in-situ training session in the main hospital A&E Department.

The wound was fitted under her leg skin, and more makeup was applied, bruising atop, and grazed knees (complete with dirt and grass). The bruising is rather crude, done with vaseline, fake blood, and eye makeup (we're now investing in some proper wound makeup, as doing sessions like this have provided some justification in opening the department purse to buy the proper stuff).

Note the bulge at the top of her left leg, where the wound is. I also neglected to warn the Faculty that the bone moved and grated realistically. Whoops.

All turned out alright in the end though!  Succesfully treated, wound sorted out, and (simulated) transfer to the trauma unit at Leeds arranged. And with a quick clean-up and a reset, Hallie lives to fight (and plot the downfall of us meatbags) another day.

 

BRM Magazine; a holiday cottage in TT:120

When I was asked to contribute some practical articles to British Railway Modelling magazine, the first of the deadlines was for this; personalising a Hornby TT:120 'Shepherds Rest' cottage.

I've not modelled in this scale before, and after some thought, decided to model it as a holiday cottage. Something colourful and jolly anyway.

I decided to standardise for this article series on A4 sized bases (a plan which quickly went out the window with the later builds), and planned something inspired by Hellandbridge Level Crossing, near Bodmin. Google it, and look at how inspiring this scene is/was when it was open to trains.

The scenic work was done using scrap materials, all bits of card and foamboard offcuts, and some filler which was surprisingly still pliable despite lurking in the shed for over a year...

I'll be honest, a snow-scene was tempting at this point, except that...

...BRM had sent a selection of flowers, greenery and so on, and I had a lot of my own bits and pieces to draw on too. In the real world at this point, Spring had Sprung, so doing something colourful and flowery became the order of the day.

A few modifications were made to the building, like painting on curtains, and repainting the roof before some light weathering.

Using various dried moss, scatter, and such, I wanted it to look slightly overgrown with flowers.

I also added on a conservatory to the back, though had to add some greenery to hide how slightly crude it came out. Moral of the story, use finer plastic strip...

The shoot was undertaken in the back garden at the in-laws, as at this point (end of April) there was a bit more greenery there compared to our own garden.

I only have a single TT:120 loco at the moment, one of the Hornby 08's. I wish I'd weathered it a bit, though at this point I was thinking of selling it on, so didn't want to mess it up. Ironically, following this project, I'm tempted to hang onto it in case I do some more modelling in TT.

Lacking another building for the other side of the cottage, I chopped up and repainted a scrap Minitrix N gauge station building.

Oooh, arty greyscale. Again, might have looked nicer if I'd weathered the loco, but whatever.

...aaaand in print. As usual the BRM team make it look great on the page!

 

 

Medical Monday: Blunt Sharps

I really enjoy making model railway stuff, and gluing together kits for tanks or futuristic fighter planes from Gerry Anderson shows.

I also have three kids and a mortgage, and a desire for me and the wife, and said youths, to sleep indoors and eat hot food. To which end, because all the fun Toy Train business is lovely but doesn't pay a lot, I have a Proper Job.

Having worked in the catering sector (waiter up to manager), a Lead Exams Invigilator, and as a Product Design Technician, and more, I've ended up for the last few years as a Medical Education Technician at a major Northern Teaching Hospital, for that most wonderful and head-desking of British institutions, the NHS. 

It's a weird old job, which can vary between being a butcher of sheep carcases for Chest Drain training one day, to driving high-tech simulated robot patients the next. And every now and then, I can shoe-horn my skills and talents for miniatures or model-making into the job. So I figure I might as well share some of it on here, as beyond my immediate colleagues at the job, nobody really sees the behind the scenes work that goes into this malarkey.

I'm aware though it might not be everybody's cup of tea, especially if you're here normally for the toy trains or futuristic APC's, so...

...still here? Jolly good, I'll crack on.

(There'll be one of these trigger warnings for each of the posts on this subject, just to be on the safe side. This month is rather tame, and I won't be posting any of the really grim or grotty stuff I do, but all the same, I know sometimes the medical stuff can be affecting to people, so please feel free to stroll away if you think it'll be upsetting.)

One of the courses we regularly run is "Managing Patients Who Pose A Risk", a training course for all grades of staff from Cleaners to Nurses, Porters to Consultants. We have our mocked-up ward, and we have faculty who re-create and simulate 'challenging' situations that have happened, and how staff can both diffuse it, and protect themselves. Previously, for instances where patients have armed themselves, we've used cardboard cut-outs and the like.

It's always annoyed me a bit, as the medical faculty put their hearts and souls into their teaching aspect of the sessions, and consequently I've set myself a bit of a mission to raise the fidelity of the Simulations from the aspects of it we support.

We have disposable scalpels for some of the meaty stuff up in the Lab, so I salvaged a few, removed the blades, and thoroughly cleaned it all up.

1mm acrylic, slightly flexible, and carefully filed to remove the sharp edges or points. I also cut-off and re-mounted the blade securing lug.

Three different scalpels, based on commonly-used blades (I used the real thing as a template).

Spray-undercoated, then brushed with metallic Citadel acrylics. I deliberately went for a gunmetal shade rather than bright silver, just so I could differentiate these from the real deal at a glance.

I also wanted some fake scissors, and so used some of these disposable clamps. They're not good enough for our regular use, so they've been kicking around a drawer since I joined the job.

More acrylic, and painted up to broadly resemble DeBakey Forceps with the two-tone shades, but again, in a darker tone to allow me to not mix them up at a glance.

So that's the medical stuff that a patient might nick and arm themselves with, either to threaten their own health, a fellow patient, or staff member. But we also needed weapons smuggled into the wards or building. After watching some slightly terrifying American Health Service videos about disarming patients armed with the kinds of weapons the General Infantry carry (you know, in case all those deer and things the Yanks are hunting are riding around Wyoming in armoured cars), I set my sights on something slightly more realistic to a British hospital, and a small, easily concealed knife.

Being as I didn't have a budget for this project, I was looking for what we artists call 'found objects' (or tat, if you will), to repurpose.

These are plug-in supports which separated the two levels of a set of vintage filing trays. Said trays will turn up in a later post, having been repurposed in turn for another project.

Same acrylic for the blade as used in the scalpels.

And thus, a passable kitchen knife.

Another thing we needed was patients 'self medicating'. A rare, but bloody vexing problem. I started by  simulating a little bag or two of white powder (flour and crushed sea-salt... and that, Constable, is all I will be saying on the matter until my Solicitor arrives). I then turned to the syringe boxes; honestly, we have hundreds of these, as we re-use every damned thing we can lay our hands on.

How to do the needles raised a few issues. Having looked at blunt sewing needles, I found some plastic rods in a box which have tapered, but blunt ends. No idea what they're for- they're probably for a particular kind of surgery, and no doubt cost about £160 each on Supply Chain.

Fluid inside from hot glue, which was squirted in, then the whole lot was bunged in a freezer to set.  One of these will have a plastic protective cover re-fitted to the needle too.

And that's that, for this post- some more stuff will be made once these have been shown to the faculty, and there'll be some bits in another post too.  Maybe something slightly more medical-themed for the next one. Hopefully this will have been of interest, if a bit different from my usual fare on here.