Rebuild the Railway in Bricks: Lego at the National Railway Museum, York

I'll be the first to admit, I've fallen out slightly with the Railway Museum in York. The visit last summer left a bit of a sour taste in the mouth, and I wasn't planning to return until they've finished all the rebuilding work (so, in about 2050 then). But, with Half Term on, and wanting somewhere to go for a jaunt, we found out there was a Lego Railways themed exhibition on.

I've fallen down a bit of a rabbit hole lately, looking at the world of custom-built, British, Lego trains. Lego don't have much interest in British-outline railways, so some very talented builders have been knocking up their own designs. No, I don't need yet another new project or scale to work in, but I find these builds fascinating. I mean, just look at the craft and love that's gone into the Forth Bridge!

Highland Coos.

The layouts were spread around the museum, and a right variety they were as well. Big roundy-roundy layouts, and proper model railway-esque out and backs. Showing what can be done with a bit of creative thought, the Lego components rebuilt into a very passable 2MT. And look at that overall roof! Very impressive.

L-Gauge UK Railway are the overall body, acting as an umbrella organisation I gather, that lots of model-makers are part of.

Up on the top deck was this rather fun layout, incorporating loads of cameos and pop-culture references. "Bridge Street" by Nicola Rippon. I had a chuckle at the canal boat from "Wallace and Grommit: Vengeance Most Fowl"

Liked the little cameos too, like the flooding over the tracks.

...Nice.

The majority of the layouts were in the main hall, and I'm going to have to use this opportunity to moan a bit more about the place I'm afraid. It was very busy in the museum, and access wasn't helped by a number of exhibits being screened off for repairs and maintenance. Boy, sure would be nice if there was a major engineering workshop to fix oh wait, they closed it down and scrapped it in favour of push-button, paid-entry things for children. I'm not saying there isn't a place for that in the museum, but maybe that could have gone into a purpose-built space somewhere in the Yard outside, but clearly it was more important to sell that space off for housing land.

The usual problems also happened with two huge cafe and shop spaces within 30 feet of each other, both busy. I've worked in heritage catering, I know you can't help it when Technicals happen and things like the card machines fail, but again, surely that's space that could be used for exhibits? Or just a bit more space to soak-up the crowds?

They're STILL rebuilding the entrance and the roads, necessitating outside walks, awkward entries into the two separate sites, and a grand tour of derelict, truncated sidings and building sites.

Despite the cold, the playground was busy... but things like this weren't working, apparently. Though (risking being just a taunt to the children?) a miniature train WAS trundling around, just not stopping at the station. The adjacent hall was finally reopened... though all that seemed different to me was an expanded cafe space inside, another shop, and the fact the toilets were now portaloos outside.

Right, final bit of negativity to get off my chest before we try to end on a high; the lighting inside, whilst moody and dramatic, makes photography very tricky. Which is a shame, because in the noticeably-quieter side of the site were some more very good exhibits. We were particularly taken with this 'classic' Lego layout. Both me and Amy have a fair bit of this generation Lego that we've inherited from our parents, so it's nice to see it displayed.

Tunbrick Wells West was a great one to end on (we were also taken with the smaller-scale Didcot layout, but the poor lighting meant none of the photographs really came out well of that one sadly).

Light and sound-fitted locomotives, and a nice out-and-back operation with a mix of heritage steam and diesel locomotives.

This Class 08 wins the award for model I'd most like to make. No, I remind myself again, I really don't need another scale and gauge to work in...

Good grief, it's Soviet-level bleak. Mindyou, I'll probably be nostalgic for this when there's 2000 houses here. So; museum, disappointing again, but the exhibition inside, very good indeed, and some very impressive builds by some talented makers, which made up for it.

 

In Praise of Model Shops: Frizinghall Models, West Yorkshire

I thought I'd start doing some mini-posts, in praise of some of the model shops I regularly use.  Whilst I do from time to time use online ordering when I'm up against a tight deadline, I do prefer to use actual shops where I can. This is my local shop, Frizinghall Models, in Baildon, near Shipley, West Yorkshire. Somewhat unassuming from the outside, this is the third premises they've been in since I started shopping with them. BTW, no commercial interest here, no sponsorship- I just wanted to mention places I love shopping for these projects.

...and then you get inside. Everything neat, clean, and tidy. Quick note- there's a lift to get upstairs, even a loo that shoppers can use. The shop itself is pretty huge. Railways in pretty much every commercial gauge from some Z up to G, as well as Airfix and similar plastic kits, slot cars, some general toys, and more, They're good for modelling tools and scenic bits/accessories. They've a decent online shop, and reserve/pre-order system.

I've always thought you can judge a good model shop by if they have a working layout, a legacy of my two childhood haunts in the West Mids, A.Oakes and Ace Models of Dudley, now both sadly closed. They both had awesome working layouts, and Frizinghall has this huge N layout with DCC sounds. There's also a multi-gauge test track by the till.

This is what makes the shop so lethal, at least to my bank balance. The sort of random mix of projects I do would be impossible without access to these boxes full of random second-hand bits and pieces.

The chaps there have stopped asking me about the mad mix of things I buy. This was one trip! N gauge water tower for a 009 project (same with the flexitrack and points), van and some plasticard section for a BRM, new razor saw, and the rest for a pair of Hornby Collectors Club articles.

The only downside is the distance from 'civilisation', it won't get passing trade on an industrial estate on the edge of suburbia. That said, there's a main road with bus stops adjacent, Baildon railway station is about a 10-15 minute walk away, and there's lots of free parking outside. Honestly, my project work would be so much harder without this place.

I hope to do a few more of these pieces over the next year- please modellers, support physical shops where you can. 

 

This month in BRM; Modernised Station in 00

Bit of an interesting brief for this one; modernise a traditional, steam-era building for a station. I was doing this alongside another practical piece, looking at retaining walls, so the obvious solution was to combine the two, taking Stourbridge Town Station as the loose inspiration.

Ah yes, good old Town station. I used this station a fair bit when I was at Sixth Form in the Midlands. How I remember it, with a class 153 on the shuttle...

...and as it is these days, with the Parry People Mover.

It's quite nice that such a small station, on such a short line, survived, and even had a new-build, manned building.

Other details I looked at- I found I had to try and pick a time period, as not all 'modern' features (defibs, solar panels, LED lighting etc) would appear around the same time. In the end, I went for the early 2010's, a period I was regularly using the trains.

The building kit, and laughably rudimentary instructions.

Everything in white plasticard (sheet, strip, and channel) is an addition.

The platforms were cobbled from two base sections from the scrap bins at Frizinghall models, various types of embossed plasticard, and the edging created from bits of the decking of an Airfix pontoon bridge kit.

Key for the modern image were the posters and signaege; more on this anon.

Also note the CCTV cameras, perfect for the paranoia, War on Terror days of the 2010's.

More accessories, from Peco. These do illustrate a slight problem though; they're sold as 'modern image', with the problem that most of the model railway fraternity seem to consider 'modern image' applies to anything from about 1968 to the present day. The big, chunky TV display monitors for example would be LED flatscreens these days, most likely.

So, the signeage. The idea was to create a Stourbridge-esque station, but after some thought, decided to set it where I grew up (specifically where I went to Scouts), in Lower Gornal. This is a district of Dudley, and is a former industrial town which about 100 years ago was served by a halt on the GWR line to Wombourne, and an industrial tramway.

I probably went way, way too over the top with this. The signeage was custom-created, with the exception of the Centro logo which was scanned from an old leaflet.

THIS is how over the top I went. Dudley's transport as it should have been, had the various authorities not decided 'screw it, buses will do'. My little station exists as part of a network taking in the former freight-only lines of the Earl of Dudley, and the GWR route through Dudley to Brierly Hill which is eventually, finally, and haltingly, being sort-of resurrected as a tram route some 5 decades after it was first proposed.

Other posters, railway and security related...

...and some nods to prior shoots and projects. Hallie is rapidly becoming like Terrence Cuneos mice he'd paint in to his works... In my case, Spot The Robot Girl.

And here's the building, with a fair amount of weathering, on the platform. A bit of improvised lighting in it too.

I ended up acquiring a few better-quality figures to populate the platform.

And shooting the header pic. Making use of the Edenvale Tramway boards, and a few random buildings.

This is one of those scenes that doesn't really show up on the page, the overgrown, litter-strewn remains of the old platform still in there. I probably need to start reigning it in with doing stuff like this, to minimise the amount of unnecessary work I generate for myself.

...aaaaand on the page.

I really enjoyed this build come the finish. I even managed to get it over the line a week and a bit before the deadline!

 

BRM Magazine; Vandalised Coaches

Somewhat surprisingly, I was in BRM twice this month! After the goods sheds, another project with a bit of vandalism and wreckage. This time; vandalised coaches. The brief was to use some transfers to replicate broken windows on the coaches, then there were some more transfer sheets with bits of graffiti. My brief was to use them, and do some more graffiti too.

Inspiration; this rake of old parcels stock in Hellifield yard. They've been there for as long as I can remember, slowly decaying. Nicely accessible though, as they're unfenced when the cafe car park is open.

The coaches I'd be using for the project- a bit of a mix of eras, potentially a problem. The transfers were designed for Mk.1 coaches, so I needed to use them, but graffiti is a bit of a modern issue. In the end I decided to model a modern-era rolling stock restoration yard, and assume the Mk.1's were upgraded mainline vehicles. Two of them are those magazine partwork coaches that were being sold about 20 years ago.

First tests of the weathering process, using some old toy train/starter wagons to get some practise in. 

I wanted to avoid any problems with I.P or copyright, so whilst a bit generic, the graffiti is based off my own artwork and characters. More on this shortly...

For the shoot, to save time I renovated the depot scene from the Burneside-esque tramway project, adding some new buildings from another scrap Hornby Diesel Depot.

Test-fit of the Railtec transfers.

With the dark livery of the coaches, I realised I needed to paint some base layers in white acrylic. Citadel paints as usual.

All looking a bit clean and too bold here, for long-term stored coaches.

They looked rather better with weathering; downward-streaking with cotton buds and kitchen towels, with various washes of watered-down browns, greens, and greys.

Though the transfers weren't designed for the longer windows on the Mk.4 coach, I was able to combine some of them. They ended up a bit creased, but I reckoned I could play that off as a problem with the protective film layer a lot of modern coach windows have.

Oh yes, the artwork. As I said, I wanted to avoid copyright infringement, so used my own artwork. Arf the husky appears in several places (as he has been since about 2002!), the names of the graffiti artists are either nicknames my foster-daughters go by, or in the case of Rhyd a character from another project I've worked on, and Teal was a notorious, if mysterious, graffiti tagger at my first secondary school.

And then there's Hallie.

Robot Girl From The Future!  There's a proper explanation of her in the earlier Medical Monday post on the leg break.

Cartoon versions of her, her ever-present (and somewhat long-suffering) teddybear, and her male counterpart, Hal, appear throughout my work planner, and I've started sneaking them into the BRM projects too. 

Having incorporated Hallie on the practise diesel shunter, and her and her robot-brother playing teddybear-tug-of-war on one of the tankers, I thought a prominent big piece of one of them on the otherwise rather plain Mk.4 might look good.

In the fictional world of these shoots, Hallie and Hal are pop-culture characters, so the idea is one of the taggers has painted her. The artwork in question, "Caught Ya Napping" is inspired by a famous, early piece of full-height carriage graffiti from the New York El Trains in the 1980's.

And that's that. Something a bit different, and a little darker in tone perhaps than some of the projects I've done lately. A nice change in subject matter to my recent fare though, and rather fun, and an excuse to do something arty.

Aaaaaand in the mag.