Saturday, 11 October 2025

Garden Rail Saturday; 16mm Society Show at the Barrow Hill Roundhouse


We recently went to the Yorkshire 16mm Railway Society show, which was being held over the border at the Barrow Hill Roundhouse. Years ago, this show used to be held at Elescar, in Sheffield, but when that attraction fell on it's backside, they moved the show elsewhere. Some years ago, we attended one run at the Richard Dunns leisure centre in Bradford (another venue that also fell on its backside due to be killed-off by the owning Local Authority... sensing a theme here?). Having done the superb show at Llangollen in the Spring, we were keen to do another garden railway-specific exhibition this year. Plus, it allowed us to nail several birds with one stone, as we needed to recce the place for a visit we're doing at the end of October, and get some pics for an upcoming Hornby article.


Nice first loco to to greet visitors, a Class 02. I have a feeling this one used to work on the industrial branchline near where I grew up.


These pics are for the Hornby article; top-and-tailed train on the demo line.



Detail pics in the yard.




Nice old buildings.




Inside the goods van.


Texture shot on an old Speedlink wagon.


Cabbing a Deltic.


Love those old dials and switches.


The garden railway show itself wasn't too bad. Small compared to Llangollen, but a lot going on, fit in around the full-sized locomotives. It was a little difficult to get decent pics with all the background stuff though.


Yep, I know I was drooling over this at Llangollen, and I still am.


Though this comes a close second... if I had a spare 2 and a half grand.


A rather nice Ffestiniog England, though the ex-Groudle loco is more the right proportions for our own garden line.



Overall, a nice day out- different atmosphere to Llangollen, the only other garden railway only show we've done. Lots of interesting bits and pieces picked up too for the next lot of projects, and a jolly chat over lunch with the editor of Garden Rail.


Looking forward to coming back here in late October for a shoot; more on that later in the month...



 

Monday, 6 October 2025

Medical Monday; Track Marks and Dog Bites, for the Undergrad Team


More medical shennaniganary (is that a word?) for today's post, making more stick-on wounds for the adult robots, for the Undergrad team.


Undergrads (4th year medical students) are one of our regular courses, and a handy test-bed for prototype fake wounds as they have a very open, friendly, and innovative faculty.  One of the scenarios we do on the first week involves a patient with old, semi-infected injection marks on their arms, to represent a regular drug user.  When I started, we just used paper cut-outs glued to the robot.


However, I found some scrap arm skins in the spares box, and set to work. The first passes with the bruises were a little on the dark side, and needed diluting down.


Bruises from yellow acrylic and make-up, and puncture marks with a soldering iron. Veins with diluted skin marker.



They don't look too bad on the robots, toned down a bit. Better than paper cut-outs, anyway.


One of the other scenarios was a dog bite, that goes infected. This was the first of these wounds I ever did, so it was a bit basic; skin belt with puncture marks done with a soldering iron.

Trouble is, it was a bit of a rush-job, and the faculty did try to subtly point out to me, it was a bit on the big side, as if our poor victim had been bitten after a pint or two one evening at The Slaughtered Lamb. Don't Go Out On The Moors, Lads.


I needed a slightly more realistic size, and don't have a dog. I also didn't think going to the kids ward and finding our emotional support puppy, and getting it to bite a robot, would go down massively well so resorted to another raid on the paediatric props box.


grrr, nom nom nom nom nom. A more realistic size stencilled on.


There we go; a bit of fake blood into the wounds, some bruising and raised veins for the infection, and much better. Though I'm thinking of a slightly more subtle mk.3 version soon, maybe over the summer.







 

Saturday, 4 October 2025

BRM Magazine; In Suburbia (00 scale houses)



Another piece in British Railway Modeller; this time, it was kits for a pair of of the redesigned terrace houses.


Looking for inspiration literally close to home; I'll admit to not really looking at our street much, but once I had, I started spotting the myriad of differences and details. If anything, I thought I'd need to hold myself back with what details I included


A lot of parts in the kit, but well laid-out, and lovely clear instructions.


Lets go through the Bay Window...



Modifications to the kit, adding a basement storey and modifying the roof over the bay windows.


Raising the ground texture.




The kits came with paper to roll into chimneypots, but being less patient (and wanting to inject a little variety, to better match my own street) I went for various lengths and thicknesses of plastic rods, and even old lollipop sticks, coloured with permanent markers.


I had a vision in my mind of how I wanted the header pics to look, and planned on a diorama. I probably should have just shot the houses against a white background, as they were, but I've got into a habit of doing these big, over the top scenes now. In my defence, it can be used in other pics and as a backdrop in other articles though.


Installing the houses.


The little details would make or break the scene... these are nice, if ridiculously fiddly, flowerpots by the German firm of Busch. The plastic plants to go with them are even fiddlier, so I compromised on scenic scatter and Katy Sue Designs flowers.


Ah yes, the lighting; we'll come back to that, but sufficed to say a few sets of old, cheap battery Christmas lights ended up being used.


More interior details; again, this will be revealed what-for as well.


Going mad with the scenic scatter for an overgrown garden, but the basement window is in there somewhere. In hindsight I could have done this feature on a different house where it would be more visible, but I suppose it's nice having a hidden detail in there somewhere.


We're getting to the time of year again where you can't guarantee decent natural light when you need it, so the final pics were shot somewhat hurriedly before work one morning when it was still gloomy outside.


The side of the diorama that isn't on the article, but will appear in a future one.


So, the lighting; this was a bit of a cock-up with the project on my part. The Editor wanted me to have a separate part of the article all about including working street lights, but I didn't have the right power source to run them before the deadline hit. It's going to be a job for Future Ben, but at least the houses are rigged up with lights and and impression of interiors.


Emergency Water Supplies sign in Carlisle, photographed over the summer. Amy went to some trouble whilst we were at Uni to record the many surviving WW2-era signs around the place, and with this diorama partly inspired by where we lived in Carlisle...


...it seemed appropriate to include one on the street.


And here we have it, the finished diorama. The idea was to have 4 contrasting houses, all basically the same but with modified details, and each with details and figures that represented a different generation living inside.


This is effectively our house, with the neat little box hedge arrangement we inherited when we moved in.


One house on the end with an older couple living there (nice garden and mature tree, but the greenery is a little out of control to show the owners are getting on a bit and can't maybe keep up to the maintainance). Distinguished Gent and his dog leaving the house.

Overgrown garden in the empty, for-sale house next door. And look, a same-sex couple looking to move in. Who says we modellers are stuck in the past? I thought it was a nice subtle detail to include when the figures turned up in a second-hand box.


And the house belonging to the young family. A bonkers mess of colour and chaos (been there, albeit some years ago now). Well it wouldn't be a Benjy project without the inclusion of a gratuitous beachball, something that's become a staple of the summer-themed projects this year. Actually this scene was directly inspired by one of our neighbours who was hosting The Dreaded Five-Year-Old Girls Birthday Party. Ah yes, I remember the chaos when we hosted parties for our kids, and wondering how it was time passed so slowly when you were surrounded by screaming and shrieking 6 year old kids.


Again, little details hidden in the scene for people to spot, based on real life, like the boy trying to pop the birthday-girl's balloon.



And here it is, on the page.


The team at BRM have done an excellent job, as ever, with the design work.