Railway Research Trip; The Tanfield Railway

Last May saw us ticking another new (to us) railway off the list, with a visit to Tanfield, in the North-East. This has been on the to-do list for quite some time, and we nearly went last October.

Boy, sure glad we waited until the weather had improved in the Spring, much nicer...

About the best you could say about the conditions were that it made for atmospheric photographs. 

The railway, however, was excellent. More than lived up to expectations based on what I'd read in the mags and online. This is another of the giants of the British railway scene, even if it hasn't got the massive express engines and the like. It's just gloriously, fantastically, doing its own thing. The railway celebrates the industrial past of the North-East and does it in style, vintage coaches, small tank engines and diesel shunters, and some very quirky stations.

"Twizzel", which might have skyrocketed up towards the top of my list of favourite locomotives. Cute name, and it just looks, well, 'right' as a machine.

Only the week before this I'd been wearing shorts in a mini-heatwave, back in Wales. This day, we actually ended up in gloves at one point, and had to get hot drinks at each station.

This was the sort of thing I was here to see; vintage coaching stock and small locomotives. There's a project coming up for British Railway Modelling, see...

Plenty of chances for detail shots, both outside the coaches...

...and inside. Great place to have a small but heated family argument with the Childs. Ask me how I know.

Anyway, ruffled feathers smoothed with copious amounts of glowering silence, hot drinks, and pastry goods, it was time to stroll over to the engine sheds at Marley Hill. This beautiful little Armstrong shunter, a real dinosaur of a loco, was pottering about.

Moody shot.

Andrew-Barclay taking on water.

Lots of opportunities for cameo shots around the place.

Back to the sheds.

Love an Austerity, and the NCB-liveried no.49 was looking smashing.

A very characterful station at Andrews House; this will be inspiring a Hornby piece as well in due course.

Back onto the train for a run to the other end of the line.

"Twizzel" again on the mixed train.

This was the best part of the day for me. I've been doing a lot of research for the upcoming projects, a chunk of which has been the industrial railway photography books curated by Gordon Edgar. By dint of young age I missed the dying-days of industrial steam railways, but the Tanfield manages to replicate some of the grot and grime. Getting a chance to shoot moody pictures like this was terrific.

If there was a downside to the day (beyond the domestics... though is it a domestic if you have the row outside of the house?) it was the distance away. I could have easily spent another few hours here, but it's a long run back to West Yorkshire, especially in the awful weather, so we thought we better hit the motorway.

Still- characterful railway, amazing locomotives and stock, beautiful countryside, friendly volunteers; we'll be back for more later in the year with a bit of luck. In the meantime, plenty of inspiration for at least two upcoming projects...

 

This Month in British Railway Modelling; Miniature Railway in Miniature

Kitsch-Summer continues (shall I hashtag that? Get it trending?) for me in British Railway Modelling magazine. Wanting a colourful project, what better than an upper-middle class back garden with a miniature railway in it?

Miniature Railways come in various shapes, sizes, and locations; originally, when doing a piece on such lines, I was tempted by something like Fairbourne, but I'm doing rather a lot of beach-set projects this year, so wanted something a little more distinct.

Here's the basis; some of the excellent Z scale bits from Rokuhan of Japan.

Everything else was made from scrap and upcycled bits.

Converting the American loco before repainting it into a bit more of a British livery.

For the house, I used a venerable Airfix house kit picked up at the Keighley show, left hollow to hide the controller and batteries.

All looking a bit grim here, with the base colours washed on.

That's better :)

Mini station, patio, and spot-the-ball. Mainly because there were some figures and accessories left over from the Summer Fete build.

Guess this means it's somewhere in the West Midlands then; I envisage this as being an affluent suburb along the line featured in the 'modernised station' and 'retaining wall' pieces. Ooh, it's a shared universe, like The Avengers.

Trying to do the 'family' home thing with a repainted Metcalfe playground.

The pond was a bit of an experiment with poured casting resin in a plant tray.

A functional micro layout; about as close as I guess I'll come to making a model of a miniature railway, at least for the time being.

BRM as usual making it look awesome on the page.

 

Hornby, The Collector: A Lovely Vintage (more fun with tinplate trains)

I really need to get a grip on the work I do for Hornby, as, whilst their projects are only 4 times a year, they tend to become absolute monsters. This month is no exception. Having fallen in love again with clockwork tinplate trains, and wanting something a bit bigger than the little circular layout I built a few years ago, I embraced the bigger space available in the new house, and thought I'd go large.

Some scrap desktops from work and a bit of testing (alright, play) on the living room floor showed a larger layout was sort-of do-able. It was mostly a copy of a trackplan from an old model railway book of appropriate vintage, but even so, there were bits I had to omit, and worse still, the curves would still need to be super-tight. My Edwardian ancestors might have been happy to fill the front parlour with trains, but I wasn't going to be able to! 

(Actually, my Edwardian Ancestors weren't of the class to have access to large train sets, and would I suspect be turning in their graves if they saw what their distant relative, me, was doing rather than earning a hard crust farming or sallying-forth for King and Country, but heyho).

So, using the scrap desktops from work... yeah that was a poor idea. The exposed chipboard edging needed framing-in to stop it crumbling. Then hinges needed fitting so this mammoth board could fold up for storage. And it weighed a TON. I'd have given myself a hernia just trying to carry it out of the workshop.

A rebuild with ply followed, the original desktops being upcycled for smaller-scale projects. Another issue reared its head here; the layout was so large it couldn't actually be unfolded properly in the workshop with its low ceiling. This meant the layout needed to be left either in this state, or the hinges unscrewed and the boards separated, lest nobody be able to access the washing machine.

Cork placemats for the ballast.

Track laying; rather more brutal and industrial in tinplate.

Properly gauge-testing this time. The original plan had been to have a tunnel here, but it didn't quite work with the height available, so a cutting and removable bridge would have to suffice. 

Normally I'd use packing foam for the landscaping, but with such a monster of a layout to cover, I ended up using spray foam (of which we had some in stock). The carved-off bits were saved for re-use in later projects.

Papier-mache and painting followed.

There wasn't room (or time) for much in the way of detail work, beyond some bits of fencing and some bushes.

I was quite happy with the removable bridge though.

The layout folded up...

...and unfolded. Easily the biggest layout build I've ever done.

So... here it is. And do you know what? I'm really, really unhappy with it.

It might be in the style of the sort of layouts built a century ago, but I find myself really disliking it. Too many rough bits, too many bland areas. Too much that looks (and is) unfinished.

There are odd areas; I like the vaguely moorland atmosphere of the far end...

...and I'm quite happy with the level crossing and bridge.

The station is a bit too bland though, just huge expanses of nothing.

I think the issue is that there's simply too much of it. And at the same time, the trackplan is a bit chaotic. There's too much of having to throw points and lean over it to avoid derailments.

The layout in print. Or rather, not print, as the Collectors Club has effectively gone over to digital-only, because The Future.

So what now? I really liked the mini tinplate layout, but it was too operationally bland. This one, whilst more operational, is just too much of a monster. I think a third and final layout for my collection might be in order, somewhere between the two, size-wise. I suspect chopping this one down will be the solution, But that's a project for next year I think. Maybe I'll learn my lesson for the next Hornby project, but probably not!