Railway Research Trip; Corris Railway

This has been on the 'to visit' list for quite some time, the Corris Railway in mid-Wales. With the garden railway being heavily inspired by the real line (seen only through books), I'd been wanting to shoot some pics here for years. Finally the stars aligned and we'd be in Wales during one of their running days.

After a week of sunshine, the day naturally dawned gloomy and miserable. Still, we'd pre-booked tickets, so headed off.

Corris village was amazing. Very pretty, and very friendly. A proper post office in a library, and a proper little village shop and cafe in the centre. Very pleasantly old-fashioned.

Inside the rather Tardis-like station/museum was this impressive model.

I remember seeing this in the Railway Modeller way back, and liking how it looked. It's presented very nicely in a display case in a corner of the book area.

In rolled the train, Hughes-style newbuild (a replica of one of the original locomotives; the surviving original machine is now over on the Tallylyn Railway in the next valley). In fact this whole train is a beautiful example of modern technology, all the coaches are new-builds in the styles of the originals.

The carriages were one of the main things we were there to see, and they are truly lovely.

One for our editor at GR, who recently built a garden-scale out house.

Love a workshop, and this one is terrific. Very modern, light, and airy.

More potential fodder for articles.

Loco running-round.

Old waterwheel at the end of the platform.

Staffordshire blue bricks. Would love some of these at the house.

Pretty much everything in this shot has been built by the preservation society, and it's truly impressive.

Back to Corris, and the museum.

Atmospheric, though shame about the weather, especially with the sun and blue skies that were just around the metaphorical corner.

Final thoughts? Loved this line. The vols were incredibly friendly, the trains are impressive, and the railway has grand ambitions- that, on the evidence of what they've achieved so far, should be very achievable. 

 

In praise of model shops; Porthmadog Models

Another instalment of me gushing about model shops today; this particularly handy establishment, Porthmadog Models. Handy, because half a dozen times a year, we go to stop at my parents' caravan in Porthmadog, and invariably I work on projects there. And equally invariably, I find I need some bit of plasticard, or pot of glue, or similar. You can't order online when you're in a caravan or a tent, you need a little model shop, and this place has been fantastically useful to me over the years.

This is what I love in a model shop; it's bright, airy, neat, tidy, well-kept, well laid-out, and incredibly well stocked. The place carries a huge, huge range of wargaming, plastic kits (planes, cars, military, civilian, figures, and more). Tools, materials, it's fantastic. They quite often have vintage kits, and some real oddities like dinosaurs, and knock-off Lego. They don't have much in the way of model railway kits there (except, happily, the full range of Dapol plastic kits, a lot of Metcalfe, and some Knightwing), but that's more than made up for me by the huge range of other bits and pieces here.

I've spent a fortune here over the years, and very happily at that; the owners are friendly, chatty, and welcoming. A few years ago they helped us source a big selection of kits for Scouts. I never visit without buying something, usually several somethings. It's the kind of model shop you can go into for a couple of pots of paint and come out with a kit for a 2CV, sheets of plasticard, and a Metcalfe Tudor House, for example.

Finally, a gratuitous shot of "Blanche" on the Ffestiniog Railway, which is a ten minute walk away, and which just adds to the experience of a visit there.

 

May The 4th Be With You; X-Wings

I've been doing an awful lot of railway modelling lately, and felt like I needed a little palette-cleanser. And with May the 4th, Star Wars Day, coming up, I threw this together at about a weeks notice.

I'd picked this kit up online; I already had a toy X-wing in the same scale bought about the time Rogue One was out, and had a smaller Revell X-Wing in the unbuilt kits box. 

The Revell kits were well-moulded in some senses, but there were loads of moulding points, pips, and a bit of flash to clean up.

Interestingly the smaller-scale one is pretty well identical to the larger, just without the ability to pose landing legs, but there are a few bits (like the engine intakes) which the smaller one does a bit better.

A problem I had was that the mini kit, bought about 12 years ago, had long lost its canopy, so I had to quickly manufacture a replacement from plasticard. The Rogue One toy X-wing had a solid canopy, so even though the larger-scale kit had a transparent cockpit glass, I ended up modelling all three fighters painted solid, to match.

I left all three fighters in their base plastic colour (this needed to be a project done in a hurry to meet not only the deadline of May the 4th, but fit in around a busy week at work and a build for a mag too). I copied the toy with regards to detail painting the red and cream, and some gunmetal on the engine exhaust cowlings, then washed all three over with Citadel Nuln Oil to bring out the panel lines and give some texture.

The squadron lined up... interestingly there are some details the toy one does better than the model kit as well, and some where it's a little cruder. Still, it would do for the pics I had planned...

Last year, I did some pics for Gerry Anderson day, and then some more for Warhammer, with aircraft kits photographed out on location, as if they were in flight; no photoshoppery and minimal post-production, trying to do as much as possible in-camera, so I built a rig to 'fly' them off. I wanted to more of the same this time with the X-Wings...

Ah, duct-tape, the Technicians Best Friend. The rods for the aircraft are a pair of telescopic aerials for radios, the top ones (the rig would need to be inverted) are garden canes, because by this time I'd arrived at the shoot location in Wales, and couldn't get anything else locally. 

The rods inserted into thin plastic tubes, cut from 1mm syringes (we have thousands of these at work, out of date stock our department has ended up with).

I needed a few last background details; these were built literally hours before we set-off for the Bank Hol weekend in Wales. Two torches, some housepipe connectors, some plumbing parts, food lids... Cobbled from bits in the 'useful scrap box', we have the defensive towers. As you can see from the silhouettes too, the sprues from the kits were also re-used, more on which shortly...

So why Wales? Well, I'd had less than a week to build the X-Wings, I certainly didn't have time to build a Death Star. Luckily, Criccieth, a few miles from where we'd be staying, has this rather brutalist bit of sea defence work on the north beach...

A Long Time Ago (yesterday morning, in fact)

In A Galaxy Far, Far Away (Criccieth, West Wales)

With a rather handy drainage channel, which was about as close to a Trench as I could think of for the pics. I'd used it before as a canal in a project, and it seemed ideal here with a bit of set dressing.

And here we go; a bit of minimal work in post-production with the brightness and contrast largely hides the various rods holding the fighters up.

For the gun turrets, I used transparent plastic drinking straws, which are illuminated by the beams from the torches, to look like laser beams.

"Stay on target..."

"I can't manoeuvre!"

"Stay on target!"

More playing with the brightness and contrast with a huge slab of concrete, to try for a starfield backdrop.

Shame about the tufts of grass, but I liked the slabs as a backdrop too.

A nice, fun little project; I took some more, using the beach for a direct "Rogue One" reference, which I'll post separately later in the week :)

 

Garden Railway Saturday; National Garden Railway Show, Stoneleigh

Something a little different for this weeks Garden Railway Saturday- out first model railway show where we were on the 'exhibitor' side of things.

Having worked late, we got to Stoneleigh, near Coventry, fairly late but with a beautiful sunset greeting us.

A walk from the hotel on the site to recce where we were going was a pleasant end to the day.

The next morning, high-vis jackets donned, it was into the venue to see our office for the day.

The layout had been built the afternoon before, by Big Boss Editor Phil, ably assisted by Andy, who set up the Digital Command Control side of things.

It was a rather nice layout- lots going on in two gauges, multiple locomotives, and the impressive selection of real plants (borrowed as usual from a local garden centre).

A few fun things for people to spot, including Shaun the Sheep, who we took mild joy in moving around the layout and re-posing.

We'd shamelessly bought a few of our models along; the ice cream cart being in the current issue (which was being given away at the door).

Also the luggage barrows...

...benches...

...Estate Loco and the Permanent Way Hut.

Wait, a few seconds ago! Digital Command Control, you say? Yes, the outer G-gauge line was operated digitally. The Future!

Points could be controlled...

...and the tram, two diesel shunters, and tank loco. All had sounds, all had extra features, the tank loco also had working steam effects.

It was great fun, and we did a lot of channelling the Scout Leader side of things we do, and got kids to drive the trains. A pair of children came back again and again, one of them needing to be practically dragged away by his mom at closing time.

We managed a few laps of the wider show; 1500 visitors through the day apparently, a record.

We were next to a huge 32mm-gauge line, which was very impressive. Mix of live steam and electric trains.

Yellow Classic Camper Van.

Lovely gauge 3 class 08 on Warton Road.

Winner of the model I most wanted- this terrific gauge 1 pug.

I'm a sucker for a miniature railway; this one was incorporated into a massive gauge one layout...

...as was this boating pond.

Sheep on an Irish-themed layout.

Nice tramway scene.

Slightly Wes Anderson-angle.

So; despite all this model-making malarkey, particularly in recent years, this was our first time exhibiting (technically... I mean yeah, we hadn't made the layout, but we were helping run it). It was a fantastic day; it was great to finally help out on something concrete for the mag, it was fun getting the kids to drive the trains, and yes, it was a lot of fun actually playing with a big noisy train set too. We'll be back next year for more!