BRM Magazine; Goods Sheds in N

An interesting month for me with British Railway Modelling, I have two thematically-similar articles in the same mag! So today, part one...

This was the final of the first round of projects BRM asked me to do, this time 2025; building, personalising, comparing and contrasting two different N Scale Goods Sheds. One traditional plastic kit by Ratio, one laser-cut wood and card kit by Ancorton Models.

The Ratio one; a reasonably old, but very well designed and made, kit.

It went together without much fuss.

Paint mixed up from Citadel Acrylics and weathering washes.

Lovely glazing.

I didn't want 'just' a goods shed, so turned to the KWVR (naturally) for inspiration. Oakworth shed with the 4F on display...

... and down the line, Bahamas Locomotive Society museum at Ingrow. I thought something like this would be nice.

A balcony and interior was cobbled together from the kit sprue and scraps, with a diecast Lone Star Locos Jinty, garishly repainted. How much of this would be visible, I was unsure, but the plan was for a big glass fronted door.

Loosely inspired by this.

Again, using scrap and sprue.

The platform-side of the shed, with home-made posters (from some of my older projects).

The Ancorton Models shed, built at work in the mornings before shift. Mainly because it could be done with PVA, the fumes of which didn't disturb my fellow Technicians in the office.

Lovely card details for the window frames.

Having done several upbeat and jolly projects, I went a little more grotty with this one, and wanted to model the building looking a little neglected and run-down.

The idea was an old railway goods shed, repurposed into a lorry depot with new doors and things, then subsequently abandoned.

And grafiti-covered, A few in-jokes with the latter (as clearly I'm no Banksy). A My Little Pony for Younger Child, Arf is in there on the right of course -my cartoon wolves get everywhere- and it's tagged by Hallie, who's my Robot-Child at the Day Job in my simulated hospital ward as she's a bit of a rebellious hooligan at the moment due to some bugs in her programming.

Needing a header pic with both in shot, I turned again to Ingrow, KWVR for inspiration, though inverted. In reality the preserved railway is at the lower level, the former GNR was higher up, but the two station sites really were quite close together.

Bricked up tunnel. West Yorkshire is full of bits like this, where the Midland and the Great Northern fought a pointless battle, squeezing their railways through the valleys and mill-towns.

Possibly went a bit over the top with the greenery.

Well-kept yard up the top, overgrown one with the remains of old inset-rails below.

Another civilised indoor shoot!

Inspired by the old Crossley Evans Scrapyard down the road from me, where they had until recently a pair of Ruston 88's buried in greenery. All scrapped and gone just before I started work on the project so I couldn't get a prototype pic for the blog, but I could at least model a representation of it. I had a 3D printed body acquired years ago from Shapeways, which seemed to fit the bill.

And here in the mag- it's always a bit of a mystery to me the way print schedules work, I produced this project as one of the first four I did way back last Spring, and here it is in early 2026 after lots of pieces I've done in the meantime.

Once more, hats-off to the team, who've made it look awesome on the page.

Another fun project, not the sort of thing I'd have done off my own bat as it were, and the fist bit of N gauge I'd done in a while.

Garden Railway Saturday; Poppleton Community Railway Nursery

Just a short post today; the next instalment of our 32mm scale project, and a trip to the ever-brilliant Poppleton Community Railway Nursery in York for plants.

We've been coming here for nearly a decade, off and on. It's a former British Rail, before that British Railways, before that London-North-Eastern-Railway, plant nursery. Here, they once grew the flowers and greenery which would be despatched to stations all over the network. In later years it fell into ruin, before being resurrected by a volunteer group who are bringing it back to life bit by bit, every year. 

We needed some plants for the garden line, and what better than a garden centre which has a working narrow gauge railway running around the place?

As I say, we've been coming here for years. I'd heard about this place years ago, and visited with Younger Child on something of a whim. An afternoon of cake and plants did the trick, we've been back pretty much every year excepting the Plaguey Times.

So yes; another piece in the mag, albeit one with no actual modelling. We planted up a lot of what we bought here on the visit, there's still more awaiting the Spring and the finalising of the scenic work. Should be some actual model-making coming up soon, we've just nailed 4 projects in the last fortnight, which should be coming up some time soon.

 

A silly winter project, for the Wolf Express

A lot of modellers like to produce a nice little project over the winter. This Christmas, I've seen beautifully detailed N gauge loco sheds, nostalgic Triang period-pieces, intricately detailed miniature engineering builds...

... I decided to see what I could do with the Wolf Express set. Well I wasn't about to sell or give it away, I'd found myself really taken with it.  That said, I wasn't keen to spend a lot of money on this build.

Bargain Corner at a certain Swedish Furniture Emporia supplied a suitable, cheap baseboard.

Some scrap wood from the pile a bit more material for it, a top layer to sit on some plywood risers.

The track was hot glued down.

Landform from foam packing material.

Then uggins of papier mache, and some sawdust to fill the gaps under the track.

More sawdust to provide a bit of texture (and speed up the drying time).

Trees were picked up this year, and last, from the local garden centre in their post-Christmas sales.

Several of these, purchased for a couple of quid apiece, bulked out the middle of the board after cutting down with a set of wire trimmers.

And here's the completed little project. A bit scrappy in places, admittedly, but it was fit in around other work so was done in a bit of a hurry.

Against a plain backdrop.

A suitably more festive backdrop!

Like I said, not the most serious of projects. I'll probably upcycle the bits and pieces of it (keeping the wolves of course, they're awesome) but it was nice to do a bit of a build over the winter. Maybe next year, I'll do something a touch more serious.